Last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) received a fact check from an energy expert in the middle of a congressional hearing. President of the Western Energy Alliance Kathleen Sgamma corrected a false claim touted by AOC suggesting that federal land was used for a substantial portion of oil and gas production.
“I just want to start off by correcting something the ranking member said in her opening statement. She claimed that oil and gas production on federal lands is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance explained to the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. “That’s a complete falsehood,” she maintained.
As Sgamma explained, the portion of federal lands used to extract the resources is close to nothing. “That’s based on a misreading of a USGS study of greenhouse gas emissions. And if you actually look at the numbers, production on federal lands and waters accounts for 0.6% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, not ‘nearly a quarter,’” Sgamma continued. “Even the Interior Department stopped using that number after I simply pointed out the numbers from the USGS report.”
“I urge you to submit formal requests for information on the coordination between the Department of the Interior, including its various offices and bureaus, and environmental and activist groups,” Sgamma added. “I believe those requests would uncover a trove of information of inappropriate collusion outside the public eye and outside formal Administrative Procedure Act processes.”
Sgamma further noted that the truth behind said collusion would aid efforts to remove unnecessary regulations imposed on the oil and gas industry. “The information would be very helpful as states and groups like Western Energy Alliance seek to overturn many of these regulations in court, a Herculean task given the sheer volume of them,” she said.
AOC was shut down by incoming border czar Tom Homan, who rebuked claims by the progressive “Squad member” regarding the separation of families at the southern border. “So we as members of the United Nations signed on into an international human rights agreement, saying very clearly that family separation is a violation of international human rights, and we pursued a policy that violates human rights. You know, Mr. Chair, I was looking, how did we get to this point?” AOC questioned.
Responding, Homan defended a “zero-tolerance” policy he promoted, informing the representative, “I recommend a zero-tolerance … the same as is whatever US citizen, parent gets arrested when they’re with a child.” However, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t appear to acknowledge this argument from Homan that illegal immigrants were being treated equally to American citizens who violated the law. “If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in a car, I’m gonna be separated. When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from the family,” Homan emphasized.
Watch Sgamma offer a rebuttal to AOC’s false claim below:
Alliance Pres. Kathleen Sgamma today corrected @AOC over #climate disinformation she repeatedly uses…
“She claimed that oil and gas production on federal lands is responsible for about a 1/4 of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a complete falsehood.
“That’s based on a… pic.twitter.com/FgqkinHjWO
— Western Energy Alliance (@WesternEnergy1) September 19, 2023
