“We sit on an ocean of energy in West Virginia with nearly 214 trillion cubic feet of untapped natural gas in the Appalachian Basin, a resource that is even greater when considering the rest of the United States’ reserves.”

Those words came last week from U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting he chaired to discuss new authority being considered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Manchin said FERC’s new commissioners want to add further roadblocks to the permitting process for natural gas pipelines in the name of “climate change.”

Questioning FERC officials, Manchin said “(You all) acknowledge that no federal agency, including FERC, has established a threshold for determining what level of project greenhouse gas emissions is significant. Why do you all think FERC, whose primary purpose is to regulate efficient and reliable energy, should be the first agency to set such a standard, rather than environmental agencies?”

He’s absolutely right.

West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania sit on a sea of natural gas and oil that could help fuel our nation for decades to come.

There have been issues in recent years with getting that gas to markets outside of our region — FERC regulates interstate pipeline permitting and construction for projects such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline — and the latest move by FERC to consider climate change will only make getting those projects approved more difficult.

In fact, Manchin said during the hearing that if the Mountain Valley Pipeline is not completed, it likely will signal an end to large interstate pipeline construction projects that carry fossil fuels.

“In my view there is an effort underway by some to inflict death (on these projects) by a thousand cuts,” Manchin said.

That’s concerning, particularly since the United States was well on its way to being energy-independent before the Biden Administration shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and enacted bans on drilling.

One thing we’ve learned recently is that relying on foreign imports of natural gas and oil ends up costing consumers.