U.S. REP. BILL JOHNSON

MARTINS FERRY — Congressman Bill Johnson is concerned President Joe Biden’s order halting new oil and gas leases on federal land will negatively impact Eastern Ohio.

“I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that Joe Biden is coming after our domestic energy supply and the jobs that come with it. He told us during his campaign that this is what he planned to do,” Johnson, R-Ohio, said in a statement provided to The Times Leader. “This, despite the national media ‘fact-checkers’ who rushed to Biden’s defense when he said he would ban hydraulic fracking before he said he wouldn’t. And, Vice President Kamala Harris said she would do the same. So, this is no surprise.”

Biden signed executive orders Wednesday making the climate crisis a focus of foreign policy and national security, creating a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and task force, protecting 30 percent of federal land and water by the end of the decade. One of these orders halts all new oil and natural gas leases on federal property and offshore and launches a review of all current permits and leases.

Biden said his executive orders and focus on climate have the potential to create millions of good-paying jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure, transportation. Biden also said his plans will not come at the expense of workers in extraction industries, such as coal and natural gas.

“It’s not time for small measures; we need to be bold, so, let me be clear: That includes helping revitalize the economies of coal, oil, and gas, and power plant communities,” Biden said. “We’re never going to forget the men and women who dug the coal and built the nation. We’re going to do right by them and make sure they have opportunities to keep building the nation and their own communities and getting paid well for it.”

Johnson said there already have been job losses from the revocation of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit. It was being built in the center of the United States, running from Texas north to Canada. He also believes Biden’s plans to move the country away from fossil fuels to green energy will lead to “more job losses, higher energy prices and decreases in America’s energy leadership role in the global economy.”

“The bottom line is that this is just the start of a war against domestic energy that will target not only jobs, but also the cost of living for those who use electricity and drive a car. These policies are bad for America and will impact everyone. They will especially hurt the Mahoning Valley and rural Appalachia,” Johnson said.

He noted that emissions have already decreased in recent years because of the natural gas drilling boom.

“But the ‘Left’ has once again moved the goalposts, and the national media is happy to market and communicate this destructive, job killing policy. Americans deserve better,” Johnson said.

Locally, the only federal lands situated in the Ohio Valley are in Wayne National Forest. Dysart Woods in Belmont County is part of that forest, as are portions of Monroe County.

When the natural gas fracking boom began several years ago in the Ohio Valley, many officials in the industry and government believed it would be a boon for the area. The influx of cash for some in the form of gas and oil leases on private and public properties likely has helped the economy. But many of the oil and gas jobs initially were filled by workers in the industry from outside of the region who follow such jobs wherever they may be in the country.

Still, spinoff jobs and resulting business have thrived in the form of more people shopping in local stores, eating in local restaurants and spending money in the area that would not have been here otherwise.

But there is a cost associated with the industry that some continue to complain and worry about — the impact of the industry on the environment and people’s health. From noise and dust generated by truck traffic running on communities’ narrow roads, to explosions at drilling sites that have resulted in deaths, injuries and property damage, numerous examples of that impact have been cited.

And for years, people have been waiting to hear the final word on whether a cracker plant will be constructed in Dilles Bottom in Belmont County by a foreign company. The decision to move forward was put on hold indefinitely last November by PTT Global Chemical America, along with the estimated thousands of jobs that officials say building of the plant will create, and the feared pollution that environmentalists say it will spew.

Johnson is not alone among legislators who decried Biden’s plans. U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, criticizing Biden’s executive orders.

“This is an economic energy and national security disaster,” Capito said. “In my view, this order moves America from energy independence back to relying on foreign sources of fuel. And a lot of times these are the countries that have much laxer environmental policies than we have right here in the United States.”

Speaking Thursday, Capito said she had heard these claims before during the Obama administration and during former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign for president in 2016. Capito said failed climate policies of the past helped decimate West Virginia’s economy and push some into opioid addiction to cope.

“I’ve seen this playbook before, so we’re back to the future,” Capito said. “I remember the same people saying the same things. And I remember the utterly unachievable regulatory requirements that Gina McCarthy created in her position as head of the EPA that decimated my state. I remember the thousands of jobs lost and still lost and the hopelessness, and the succeeding opioid epidemic that followed.”

Joselyn King contributed to this report.