WASHINGTON — President Biden on Wednesday stepped up his efforts to ease the pain of rising gas prices and reduce America’s exposure to more volatile global energy markets due to provocative actions by Russia and Saudi Arabia. Did.
The administration will expand domestic production of electric vehicle batteries and its distribution grid a day after officials said the U.S. would release millions of barrels of oil from its Strategic Oil Reserve and Mr. Biden would consider additional oil supplies. announced a $2.8 billion grant for retreat this winter.
The move highlights that energy security is now at the center of the Biden administration’s economic policy. happen.
Biden’s order to release an additional 15 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was to address immediate concerns about rising gas prices, a concern recently raised by Saudi Arabia in concert with Russia. made worse by the decision to cut oil manufacturing. In total, 180 million barrels of oil have been released since Biden approved the reserves for use in March.
The Biden administration is poised to increase its emergency supplies this winter, despite concerns that the country’s energy security could be endangered if stockpiles were depleted.
“We call it the Plan Ready,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday. “This will allow us to act quickly to prevent oil price spikes and to respond to international events.”
Biden has described the release as a way to blunt the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine while domestic energy producers ramp up production. About 400 million barrels remain.
President Biden
With the midterm elections approaching, here stands President Biden.
In his remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden refuted the notion that his administration has curbed domestic oil production. Instead, he called on companies to ramp up production and called on the federal government to replenish the Strategic Oil Reserve when oil prices fell to about $70 a barrel, even if demand for oil slowed in the future. He said he could sell it.
The president also accused oil companies of making profits and warned Americans not to raise prices as they grapple with inflation.
“If the cost of oil goes down, so should pump gas station prices,” he said. “My message to American energy companies is that they should never use their profits to buy back stock or take dividends.
Separately, the White House on Wednesday announced that the Department of Energy would award $2.8 billion in grants created as part of the infrastructure bill passed earlier this year.
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Funds will go to 20 companies in 12 states for projects related to the production of lithium, graphite and nickel used in electric vehicle batteries. One of his grant recipients, Talon Nickel, said he will use his $114 million awarded to set up a processing facility for battery materials in Mercer County, North Dakota.
The North Dakota facility will process ore the company plans to mine in Minnesota. This is his one in his chain of complete domestic supplies of battery-grade nickel that Talon is building in partnership with Tesla.
While the Biden administration has stressed the importance of boosting domestic production of electric vehicle batteries, which currently relies heavily on China, administration officials said permits for new mines and processing facilities in the United States would require It also admits that there is a risk of contamination.
Talon’s plans to build an underground mine to extract nickel from the water-rich areas of northern Minnesota have sparked concern from some in the area, including the Ojibwe, who gather wild rice nearby.
The company’s chief foreign affairs officer, Todd Mullan, said the decision to locate the processing facility on an industrial site in North Dakota rather than near the company’s proposed mine in Minnesota addresses these concerns. He said the company would build a “cement containment facility” to neutralize and contain waste from ore processing.
“We hope this will be seen as a step towards addressing their concerns while still producing the materials needed for the US electric vehicle battery supply chain,” he said.
Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and chief executive of Sila, a manufacturer of battery materials, said the company received a $100 million grant that will allow it to scale up its Moses Lake, Wash., factory. .
Sila’s technology replaces graphite in electric vehicle batteries with silicon, making them smaller, lighter and reducing the need to import materials from China. Sila’s first announced customer, Mercedes-Benz, plans to introduce the technology in sport utility vehicles that go on sale around the mid-2000s.
Biden explained at a manufacturing event attended by subsidy recipients at the White House that the race to make batteries in the United States is part of a broader economic rivalry with China. He said 75% of his battery manufacturing is done in China, which controls almost half of the global production of battery contents.
“China’s battery technology is no more innovative than anyone else,” Biden said. “By undermining U.S. manufacturers with unfair subsidies and trade practices, China seized a good chunk of the market.
The subsidies, which could take years to come to fruition, are part of the Biden administration’s long-term strategy to move away from internal combustion engine-powered vehicles and half of all new cars sold by 2030. to achieve the goal of making the
But the use of strategic oil reserves has fueled criticism that Mr Biden is endangering the country’s short-term energy security for political purposes.
“The Strategic Oil Reserve was built not for the Democratic Party’s election crisis, but for the national energy crisis,” he said. Wyoming Republican Senator John Barraso. “Joe Biden is depleting emergency oil supplies to their lowest level in 40 years.”
Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president’s “low approval ratings are no good reason to continue to plunder our oil reserves.”
On Wednesday, Mr Biden denied he was releasing more oil with the midterm elections in mind.
Mr Biden said he had “no political motivation at all” and said he had been working for months to bring gas prices down. “It motivates us to make sure we continue to do what we have been pushing for,” he said.
Jack Ewing Contributed a report from New York.