Executives from some of America’s largest oil companies agreed to testify before a congressional committee—hours after a different slate of oil executives refused to appear before a separate committee.
On Tuesday, the House Natural Resources Committee announced that the chief executives of EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum declined to participate in a hearing next week that would have focused on the industry’s stockpile of approved but unused drilling permits on public lands. The three companies combined hold more than 2,800 of those approved permits.
Hours after Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva blasted the CEOs for refusing to appear before Congress, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced that a subpanel would hear from Devon, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and Pioneer Natural Resources executives at a different hearing next week. That hearing, scheduled for April 6, is titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.”
The hearing comes on the heels of a new report by Oil Change International that found American oil and gas companies are on track to reap windfall profits of between $37 billion and $126 billion in 2022 alone due to high oil prices as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Quote of the day
It’s part of the circle of life, one of the links in the chain, and without it the whole thing breaks down. I’ve lived here in our traditional territory in Anacortes my entire life, and I have seen what is happening with all the natural resources, but with kelp and eelgrass in particular.”
Picture this
Rabbits and hare tend to be a favorite meal for a bobcat, but venomous snakes make the menu every now and then. They are also known to eat small deer, lizards and birds.
Photo: trail cam/USFWS
(featured image: Wikimedia Commons)