Mike Pence’s Plan to Drill, Baby, Drill

Former Vice President Mike Pence has hit 40,000 donors and qualified for the first Republican debate on Aug. 23, and perhaps he’ll tell the audience in Milwaukee about his new plan to drill, baby, drill. Mr. Pence published an outline of an energy policy Tuesday, and it’s both a standard GOP package and a reminder of the political stakes in 2024.

“Democratic energy policy under the Biden Administration has been based on the deception that fossil fuels are not a part of the world’s energy future,” the plan says. “According to the Department of Energy, the world consumption of liquid fuels like oil and gas is expected to increase 36.7% from 92.1 million barrels per day in 2020 to 125.9 million barrels per day in 2050. The world consumption of natural gas is expected to increase 31.3% by 2050.”

Calling out President Biden’s unrealistic assumptions about green energy is a good start. From there, Mr. Pence promises to:

• “Take advantage of the shale revolution by opening federal lands for leasing.”

• Reform the National Environmental Policy Act “to cut permitting times in half and get domestic energy online.”

• Review and remove Mr. Biden’s executive orders that stand in the way, such as regulations on the “social cost of carbon” that “give federal agencies extraordinary new power to regulate every type of energy.”

• Repeal “the host of refinery regulations put in place in recent years and establish goals to increase refinery capacity.”

• Deregulate liquefied natural gas infrastructure to “build more pipeline capacity and export terminal facilities.”

• Provide long-term regulatory certainty, regardless of which party controls Washington, by passing “laws that statutorily guarantee access to energy development and extraction while setting specific timetables for government leases and approvals.”

• “Eliminate the Department of Justice’s ‘Office of Environmental Justice,’ and stop policies that help extremists use the courts to stop domestic energy production.”

These ideas unite Republicans, but give Mr. Pence credit for joining the policy debate and putting himself on record. Americans care about gasoline and energy prices, so this is favorable political terrain, if GOP voters choose to fight Mr. Biden on it. The risk of nominating former President Trump is that everything else will be drowned out by arguments about whether he should go to prison for trying to overturn the 2020 election or delete Mar-a-Lago’s security tapes to hide documents.

Do Republicans want to be talking about that in November 2024? Or do they want to make the case to voters, whether through Mr. Pence or a fresh face, that Mr. Biden is wrong in trying to throttle U.S. energy production?