U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today applauded a recent court ruling that paves the way to increased domestic energy production. The decision by the U.S. District Court in Wyoming is a strong rebuke of the Obama Administration’s to reverse current law that streamlines the permitting process for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
The Obama Administration had sought to unilaterally reverse the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT 2005), a bipartisan energy law that responsibly expedited environmental reviews of oil and gas drilling on federal land. Sen. Hatch helped write EPACT to make American energy production more efficient and cost effective for both producers and consumers.
“I applaud the court’s decision to ensure that domestic energy producers can responsibly extract American energy from federal lands in accordance with the current law,” Hatch said. “I have never seen an Administration so hostile towards American energy production and more welcoming of more foreign oil. I just can’t understand why the Obama Administration wants to make it harder to develop the energy we have, and continues to search for ways to import more oil from overseas and send more jobs offshore.”
The court’s ruling comes just days before President Obama plans to announce his new effort to import more oil from Brazil, showing once again that his Administration favors foreign oil over American energy production and the job creation that comes with it.