Addressing the pain at the pump, and the decisions that led us here

Energy, it heats our homes, powers our phones and gets us from point A to point B. And the cost of it is only going to further increase if we don’t take action. The ongoing war in Ukraine and rising demand for energy continues to strain markets and may soon become a full-fledged energy crisis.

Here in the United States, we are experiencing some of the highest gas prices in over a decade with the average cost of a gallon of gas in Illinois coming in at $4.57 compared to the $2.98 consumers paid only a short year ago.

To be clear, we didn’t get here by accident. Dating back to January 2020, the American energy industry has been crippled by decisions from our federal government including the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and stalling the leasing process for oil and gas production on federal lands – all while calling for the elimination of the use of America’s energy resources altogether.

Politicized decisions around the energy industry haven’t just been limited to Washington, D.C., however. Some of the blame for rising energy prices must go to a group of Wall Street banks, money managers and others who have succumbed to green pressuring around ESG investing, and we’re seeing that play out in the markets. While consumers are now stuck paying exorbitant amounts for gasoline or sky-high bills for an unreliable electric grid, money is flowing to an increasingly problematic group of activist investors.

Now we find our nation and our European allies in a compromised position, asking countries like Venezuela, Iran and other OPEC members to increase their production to help offset the void that Russian energy embargoes are creating.

However, members of our federal government continue to neglect the fact that the same industry they once demonized, American energy, can fix this issue by working together.

Here in the United States, we have access to some of the largest natural gas and oil reserves anywhere in the world. While some have environmental concerns related to the production of oil and natural gas, our American energy industry has continued to invest in the research and development of new technologies and techniques that have allowed it to reduce its emissions during the production of oil and gas by nearly 60%.

Rather than pointing fingers at the industry and making it more difficult to build the infrastructure needed to support our energy growth, slow playing the industry’s ability to access 2,200 federal drilling leases currently being litigated in court, or sitting on the 4,621 drilling permit applications currently with the Bureau of Land Management, why don’t we do something constructive?

By working with our American energy industry we might find ourselves being able to reduce energy prices and create jobs in addition to the 11.3 million the industry already supports along the way. Now ask yourself, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing now, would it?

Josh Sharp is the CEO of the Illinois Fuel & Retail Association representing more than 500 small companies in the petroleum distribution business. He resides in Edwardsville.