Biden Nominee Aims to Bankrupt US Fossil Fuel Companies as Kerry Seeks to Kill US Coal Plants

A very controversial Biden nominee wants to bankrupt oil and gas companies. And her comments, when combined with a recent revelation by climate czar John Kerry, appear to spell doom for America's energy sector.

President Joe Biden has picked Saule Omarova, who grew up in the Soviet Union, for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) – a position inside the Treasury Department regulating the banking industry.  

Omarova was caught on video saying the Biden administration's goal is to put oil and gas companies out of business even as Americans across the country face rising gasoline and heating oil prices. 

According to The Daily Wire, Omarova's comments were made in March during the Jain Family Institute's 2021 Social Wealth Seminar (SWS) series.  She later said that the economic fallout and heavy job losses that would ensue would be too much for the U.S. at this time, saying, "we cannot afford" it.

The 22-second video clip of Omarova was uncovered and released to social media by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative research group.

In the tweet with the video clip of the Cornell law professor, the AAF wrote: "Biden nominee Saule Omarova saying the quiet part out loud. On the oil, coal and gas industries: 'We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.'"

The clip begins with Omarova speaking. 

"Troubled industries and firms that are in transitioning. And here, what I'm primarily thinking about is primarily coal industry and oil and gas industry," she said, looking into the camera. "A lot of the smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order."

"At least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?" Omarova asks. 

Biden nominee Saule Omarova saying the quiet part out loud. On the oil, coal and gas industries:

"We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change." pic.twitter.com/luMR2HEMK9

— BidenNoms, A Project of AAF (@bidennoms) November 9, 2021

Meanwhile, governments are considering calling for pulling the plug on coal power to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a draft deal under negotiation at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland. 

The COP26 climate deal draft released Wednesday calls for accelerating "the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels," though it sets no timeline. 

Even though no timeline was set for the end of the mining and burning of coal for fuel, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry told Bloomberg News that he believes the U.S. will completely stop using coal by the end of the decade. 

"By 2030 in the United States, we won't have coal," Kerry said Tuesday during an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, at the climate conference. 

"We will not have coal plants," he added. 

"We're saying we are going to be carbon-free in the power sector by 2035," Kerry said. "I think that's leadership. I think that's indicative of what we can do."

Axios's Andrew Freeman noted, "The U.S. did not join in a pledge signed by more than 40 countries to phase out coal-fired power plants in the 2030s and 2040s. The Biden administration has a goal of decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2035, but it doesn't have a policy of ending coal use by 2030, as Kerry's comments may have implied."

The website reported a proposed provision in the Biden administration's $1.75 trillion spending plan, which would have rewarded power producers for reducing their emissions and thereby incentivized a move away from coal, was scuttled by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

Even though coal is not the dominant power source in the U.S., it provided a fifth of all U.S. electricity last year and even more this year, according to the U.S. Energy Department's information agency. 

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