Ex-Treasury Secretary Blasts ‘Hostile’ Fossil Fuel Policies: ‘We Made a Mistake’

Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, speaks during an event at the London School of Economics, London, England, on Mar. 25, 2013. (Jason Alden - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, warns that the U.S. government has made a mistake by taking a hostile approach toward fossil fuels.

“We made a mistake by canceling the Keystone pipeline. We made a mistake by slowing down all kinds of permitting activity. We made a mistake by being hostile as a country to natural gas,” Summers said in an interview with Bloomberg, aired on Oct. 7. “We need a different kind of energy strategy than the one that we’ve had. We need a strategy that is balanced, rather than an unbalanced strategy of total hostility to fossil fuels.”

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden revoked permits to build the 1,179-mile-long Keystone XL pipeline, which was expected to carry around 800,000 barrels of oil per day into the United States. The pipeline construction was scheduled to be completed in just a few months.

Biden then went on to sign multiple executive orders that halted natural gas and oil leases on all public lands. Under his administration, the country has issued the fewest oil leases since the Second World War.

A recent study by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that President Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies have cost Americans dearly.

If former President Donald Trump’s policies were still in place, the United States would be producing an extra two to three million barrels of oil per day, the report states.

In addition, the country would have also seen an additional 20–25 billion cubic feet of natural gas output. “This translates into an economic loss—or tax on the American economy—of roughly $100 billion a year.”

OPEC+ Cuts, Manchin’s Fossil Fuel Push

Summers’s observations came while responding to OPEC’s recent announcement to cut down oil output by two million barrels per day.

President Biden is “disappointed by the shortsighted decision” by OPEC+ at a time when the global economy is dealing with the negative effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in a statement.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called the OPEC+ decision the reason why the United States must become energy independent and energy secure so that it cannot be intimidated by foreign advisories.

“We have been blessed with an abundance of domestic energy resources, which we can produce cleaner than elsewhere in the world, and with that we have the ability to ensure energy independence and security for ourselves and our allies,” Manchin told Fox News.

Manchin also called for reforming the fossil fuel-permitting process so that such permits are issued faster. Currently, the process takes several years.

The senator has in the past sided with Republicans to end the moratorium on federal oil and gas leases as well as restart the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.