BATON ROUGE — At a July 26 press conference, General Russel Honoré, the former military leader and current climate crusader, decried the high costs of energy for ordinary Americans and named the culprit: “price gouging by greedy oil and gas executives.”
“Across the country, gas has gone up to five, six dollars a gallon this summer. That’s just plain wrong,” said Honoré. “Families are spending several hundred dollars just to pick up groceries. Working and middle-class families can’t afford these prices.”
Despite Louisiana’s status as an oil and gas-producing state, residents here have been paying high energy prices. Recent declines in the cost of crude oil and petroleum products on the global market have meant only minimal reductions in the prices that consumers pay at the pump and for their home energy bills. Energy prices began rising sharply on news that Russia would be launching a ground assault on Ukraine earlier this year. Those prices have continued to rise, first attributed to disruptions and global shock caused by the act of aggression in Eastern Europe, and later attributed to inflation.
“When fuel costs rise, the price of everything goes up,” said Honoré. “Beyond what you pay at the pump, most of the products you buy were trucked to the store on diesel, and the electricity for your home these days may well have been produced at a gas-fired plant.”
Honoré said that energy companies also are planning to build nearly a dozen gas export terminals on the Gulf Coast pending approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Each of these terminals will serve the exclusive purpose of liquifying gas drilled in the U.S. to be sold overseas.
“As if jacking up prices wasn’t enough, these oil and gas companies now want to make even more money selling American gas overseas, and the more they sell, the more prices will keep going up here at home,” said Honoré.
The General’s remarks were streamed live on Facebook and can be viewed at facebook.com/events/596014268580791