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WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Congressman Garret Graves released the following statement after the Biden Administration awarded Lease Sale 257. President Biden broke a 77-year-old record – issuing fewer acres for oil-and-gas drilling offshore and on federal land than any other administration.

“Like a kid being forced to eat their vegetables, it’s great to see the Biden Administration being forced to award the leases for the sale they held over a year ago. You would have to go all the way back to the Truman Administration in the 1940s to find a president that has done less on American energy – and we didn’t have the technology then. The reason we have a surging cost of living, unaffordable gasoline, and utilities is a direct result of the failed climate change agenda of President Joe Biden. They have no idea what they are doing. The Biden Administration has blocked more American energy production than every president in modern history. To put it in perspective, in President Jimmy Carter’s first 19 months, he provided nearly 100 times more lands and waters for oil and gas production than President Biden. During the same period of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Reagan provided more than 375 times more area to American oil and gas production than the Biden Administration. It took Congress changing the law to force President Biden’s hand to issue today’s lease sale announcement. It’s too little and too late. It is unacceptable for an American president to beg Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Iran for oil while telling our own American citizens that they are prohibited from new oil and gas production. The worst is that all of this is being done in the name of saving the planet but their strategies have resulted in emissions going up, not down. We need our president to fight for American jobs and American energy security – and stop drilling American families.”

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