16-04-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The White Whale of Reforms
Niall Ferguson and Nick Kumleben offer three suggestions in 'Trump Must Deregulate U.S. Energy to Unleash AI Dominance' (op-ed, April 9). They encourage the administration to reduce regulatory burdens on natural-gas drillers; let the EPA grant states the right to license Class VI CO2 sequestration wells; and keep the 2022 Inflation Reduction tax credits for sequestering CO2.
Yet they miss a fourth measure that is equally if not more important: pipeline permitting reform. Without new natural-gas pipelines to feed more fuel to generating plants or new CO2 pipelines to carry the captured CO2 to sequestration wells, the first three steps will be for naught. Permitting reform is needed to shorten and simplify endless environmental reviews of proposed pipeline projects, and judicial reform is needed to stop opponents from gaming courts to find liberal judges to invalidate pipeline construction permits after they are granted.
