Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is slamming the Biden-Harris administration's energy policies and moves to block projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and increased energy exploration in Alaska as undermining U.S. energy security.
Perry, who served as the secretary of energy during the Trump administration and is currently a member of the board of directors at pipeline firm Energy Transfer, said in an interview with FOX Business that the Biden-Harris administration's moves risk reversing the progress made in increasing America's energy security in recent decades.
"Certainly, people my age remember the gas lines, the reliance upon foreign oil, and we never want to go back to that," Perry said. "We need to be in control of our energy resources in this country, and that's basically what we've done over the course of the last 40 years is to work towards that."
"If this administration continues to act the way that it's acting – and I always say, listen, don't necessarily look at the words of an administration, look at their actions – look at the first things that the Biden administration did when they came into office: Halting the [Keystone] XL pipeline. They clearly sent messages to Europe that they weren't going to get in the way of the Russian pipeline, that Nord Stream 2 pipeline," Perry said.
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President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on the first day of his administration over concerns about its impact on climate change and the environment. Also in early 2021, he lifted sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline – though he later reimposed them after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"We had, during the Trump administration, the United States becoming energy independent, that's a good thing for the economics of the country," he explained. "It's a good thing for the environment, because American clean-burning natural gas is what's going to be the real driver of the energy out there. And it obviously has a massive impact on our national security."
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Perry went on to say that the U.S. should be investing in pipelines, such as the canceled Keystone XL project, as a means of harnessing resources to drive economic growth and facilitate a more secure system in the U.S. and around the world that isn't reliant on adversarial countries.
"I think the continual building of pipelines in the United States is a priority, and the reason it needs to be a priority is because we've been given this extraordinarily abundant resource. We should use it to create jobs, create wealth, but also to improve people's quality of life in places that don't have access to this," he said.
Perry explained that energy infrastructure helps the U.S. not only through domestic energy security, but by providing a more stable energy supply to America's allies and the developing world without them having to rely on Russia for oil and gas, or China to build new coal power plants.
"I think it really matters to the world that they can count on the United States," Perry said. He added that the Biden-Harris administration's efforts to pause new liquefied natural gas export facilities could force countries in Europe, Africa and Asia to increasingly rely on Russia or China to meet their energy needs.
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He noted that President Biden's decision to block expanded energy exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, portions of which had been slated for energy development, ultimately benefited Russia and China by taking a significant energy resource off the table.
"These are people making decisions who've probably never been to Alaska a day in their life, nor care about Alaskans. They obviously don't care about Alaskans because the jobs that get created with the development of that part of the state [has] a stunningly powerful positive impact for Alaskans," Perry said.
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"This is an anti-human flourishing movement, this isn't an environmental movement. These people are saying, 'We live in our nice, air conditioned homes. We fly around on jets. We are going to enjoy the benefits of fossil fuels, but you people, nah, we don't think so because we want to feel good about ourselves and that we're doing something to save the environment,' which is just nonsense on its face," Perry said.
