Biden Expands Effort to Lower Gas Prices and Secure Energy Independence
“When the cost of oil comes down, we should see the price of the gas station at the pump come down as well,” he said. “My message to the American energy companies is, you should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends. Not now. Not while a war is raging.”
Separately on Wednesday, the White House announced that the Energy Department is awarding $2.8 billion of grants that were created as part of the infrastructure legislation passed earlier this year.
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The money will go to 20 companies in 12 states and will be used for projects related to the production of lithium, graphite and nickel that is used in batteries that power electric vehicles. One grant recipient, Talon Nickel, said it would use the $114 million it had been awarded to help set up a processing facility for battery materials in Mercer County, North Dakota.
The North Dakota facility will process ore that the company plans to mine in Minnesota, one link in the first fully domestic supply chain for battery-grade nickel that Talon is building out in partnership with Tesla.
While the Biden administration has stressed the importance of building up some domestic manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries, which is now heavily reliant on China, administration officials have also acknowledged the pollution risks in permitting new mines and processing facilities in the United States.
Talon’s plan to build an underground mine to extract nickel from a water-rich area of northern Minnesota drew concerns from some in the area, including Ojibwe tribes who gather wild rice nearby.
Todd Malan, the company’s chief external affairs officer, said the decision to locate the processing facility at an industrial site in North Dakota, instead of near the company’s proposed mine in Minnesota, was a “direct response” to those concerns. He said the company would create a “cemented containment facility” that would neutralize and contain waste from ore processing.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/us/politics/biden-gas-prices-oil-electric-vehicles.html