Questioning Biden’s sincerity

Questioning Biden’s sincerity

Addressing a crowd at Youngstown’s M7 Technologies last week, Vice President Joe Biden hyped the administration’s “efforts to create an economy built to last.”

How can Vice President Biden promise a healthy economy in the long-term when the Obama Administration logjams one of the nation’s best job creators at every turn?

Thanks to a production technology called hydraulic fracturing, natural gas drilling is responsible for 80,000 jobs in Ohio since drilling began in the 1950s. But the good fortune doesn’t stop with oil and gas workers. The shale gas boom has rejuvenated the manufacturing sector, affording manufacturers a cost advantage over foreign competitors with a byproduct called polyethylene that’s used in countless finished goods.

It has also spurred construction of manufacturing plants that buy natural gas for fuel or as raw material to make chemicals, plastics and other products. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC estimated that similar investments could create an additional one million U.S. manufacturing jobs over the next 15 years.

So why is the administration encouraging EPA’s new air emission standards for hydraulically-fractured wells when the industry is already improving air standards on its own? Why is the Administration turning a blind eye to regulations that needlessly charge manufacturers millions in fines when that money could instead be invested to continue this growth trajectory?

Thomas Pyle, Washington, D.C.

The writer is president of American Energy Alliance.