Dagen McDowell fact-checks Biden's plan to tackle high gas prices

President called on Congress to force oil companies to pay fees for unused leases

FOX Business anchor Dagen McDowell joined "America Reports" Thursday to react to President Biden accusing oil companies of colluding to keep energy prices high as the president unveiled his strategy to tackle pain at the pump.

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DAGEN MCDOWELL: Joe Biden is the castigator in chief. He knows how to do one thing well and that's cause a problem then scapegoat private industry for it and blame somebody else. Again, big evil meat, that's why the beef prices were going up and big oil has been a target over and over again. I'll point out one thing. He is going to add fees on to oil companies on their wells from leases they have not used in a certain number of years, and also acres of land that they are "hoarding." That is according to the release. According to the American Petroleum Institute that’s not what's going on. When you lease land for exploration and production, you begin paying rent on it immediately. And in terms of the unused permits, there are 100,000 producing wells right now on federal land. There are 9,000 permits that are still in the process to start production. But when you start production you need additional things. You need to get permits for the right-of-way to access the actual leases, you need to build pipelines to transport fuel, and that's one of the areas the Biden administration has been dragging their feet in terms of producing these permits and the pipelines.

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