Posted on: 04. 14. 21
At Pro-Gas, LLC, we’ve been very interested in how politics influence our industry’s performance; and the latest Biden presidency is no exception.
As we’ve covered in the past, President Biden has already made significant changes in our industry with the cancellation of the XL pipeline that former President, Donald Trump, greenlit.
However, with the unveiling of President Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan earlier this month, it’s clear that the XL pipeline cancellation was just the beginning of both positive and negative potential changes for our industry.
There Will Be More Jobs Within Our Industry
Although President Biden is definitely focused on expanding clean energy, he still hasn’t completely taken attention away from the needs in the fossil fuel industry. According to an article from CNN, The American Jobs Plan will invest $16 million into our industry and help us plug up countless defunct oil wells.
This plan means that there will be hundreds of thousands of available industry jobs open to complete this massive project. The article from CNN claims that this is a win-win situation because it will put industry workers in union jobs, while also cleaning up the local environments where these unusable wells dwell.
What Are the Benefits of Cleaning Up Orphan Wells?
According to the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission, there are around 56,000 verified orphan wells, but there could be up to 3 million other wells that have been unverified since at least the 19th century!
So, why should industry facilities care about cleaning up these wells aside from job creation? Here are some of the biggest reasons:
- Unplugged wells can cause groundwater contamination
- They create surface environment contamination
- They constantly leak methane into the atmosphere, increasing the amount of damaging greenhouse gases
Not Everything is Greener On Our Side
Although new jobs are in the works, there are other issues that our industry will have to contend with and adapt to as the new infrastructure plan begins to take shape.
As the infrastructure plan expands, our industry will definitely experience more competition with electric vehicles. According to an article from S&P Global, President Biden’s plan includes a $174 billion dollar investment in the electric vehicle market.
As great as this move is for members of the electric vehicle market, oil and gas professionals can’t help but brace for the rise in electric vehicles as we struggle to get new projects for our own industry approved.
Where exactly are the funds for the new infrastructure plan coming from? The question has many answers, one of them being the oil and gas industry.
As part of the move to cover the $2.2 trillion dollar infrastructure plan, President Biden seeks tax code changes for our industry that will:
- Eliminate subsidies facilities and drill sites claim
- Discourage investment in future projects
We’ll keep you updated as this area of the infrastructure plan unfolds.
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