Alabama Public Service Commission President Twinkle Cavanaugh is confident about the future of energy production in the U.S. because of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election.
President-elect Trump has promised to focus on more fossil fuel energy production as soon as he gets into office. Cavanaugh believes President Joe Biden’s policies have increased costs and make the country less energy independent.
“You know, I believe there’s going to be a very big change that we’re going to see beginning on really day one,” Cavanaugh said Monday on “Rightside Radio” with Phil Williams. “You remember the negative changes under President Biden on day one, he killed the Keystone pipeline. I think you’re going to see the opposite with President Trump on day one. He’s made some great appointments when it comes to an all of the above approach, meaning using all fuels, including the fossil fuels.”
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She explained how killing the Keystone Pipeline was not good for energy prices and not good for the environment.
“That’s 850,000 barrels of oil that would come from Canada down to our Gulf Coast refineries,” she argued. “Well, we still get that oil. It’s just that now, instead of a pipeline going one way, you know, south, instead, we either get it on a train or a tanker truck. Usually it’s it’s on a train, but that’s 1,125 train cars daily going south. You’ve got to have all of those going back north to pick up in Canada again. So that’s 2,250 train cars daily doing what one pipeline could do at a much less expensive cost to the consumer. So their policies make no sense. They’re not green. You know, they talk about green. All they are is pulling green out of everybody’s pocket, and that’s what they want.”
Cavanaugh also discussed how higher energy prices affect the rest of the economy.
“If you get up in the morning, and I usually ask people, did you get up this morning and put some contacts in your eyes that are plastic, a byproduct of oil, or put on glasses that are plastic, byproduct of oil? Did you jump in the shower and use soap or shampoos byproduct of oil? Did you go to the kitchen and turn on anything, your hair dryer, your dishwasher, anything using electricity. You’re using byproducts of oil,” she explained. “There. Did you happen to eat a bowl of cereal, the fertilizer for those oats or wheat, or whatever it might have been, where that’s a byproduct of oil, and then, you know, it had the farmer had to use his tractor. The farmer had to get the cereal to market. All of this is using oil. And so when a barrel of oil goes from $42 to today, it being right at $75 a barrel, then obviously it’s going to increase the cost of everything we do in life.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
