A spike in oil prices resulting from the conflict between Iran and Israel only motivates the Trump administration to work harder to lift suffocating regulatory burdens on domestic energy production, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told Newsmax on Tuesday.
Oil prices climbed more than 4% on Tuesday as the Iran-Israel conflict reached its fifth day, with no end in sight, Reuters reported.
In March, the EPA announced 31 deregulatory moves that it said would spur the U.S. economy by rolling back rules that, according to the Trump administration, have unfairly burdened the energy industry.
"It just is further motivation to work hard every day to get all these deregulatory actions over the finish line," Zeldin told "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
"What we saw ... over the course of the last few years was this push towards suffocating industries out of existence altogether, going after all sorts of forms of baseload power and messaging it as if something like wind, which is an intermittent source, could be treated as a substitute for baseload power, which obviously it's not.
"We want to do our part to unleash energy dominance. President [Donald] Trump campaigned on it," he continued.
"This is a Trump mandate that we are fulfilling. So asking me what my views are and how it impacts us when we see what's happening with current events overseas — we wake up motivated every single day to just make sure that we're delivering on this agenda. And today is no exception."
The average price of regular gasoline nationally is $3.17 a gallon, according to AAA, about 3.6% higher than before Trump began his second term in January. When Trump's first term ended in January 2021, the price was at $2.39 a gallon.
"We're going to do our part at EPA," Zeldin said. "We're members of the National Energy Dominance Council, which is chaired by [Interior] Secretary Doug Burgum. ... The vice chair is Chris Wright, the secretary of Energy.
"There are other agencies with equities involved with the NEDC. The president created this council.
"It's important for us to be working together, to be collaborating. I was with Secretary Burgum and Wright in Alaska for about a week," he continued.
"Just about a week-and-a-half ago is when we got back focused on what is tremendous opportunity inside of Alaska. They have a many-hundred-mile transatlantic pipeline.
"There's now a push to build a pipeline right next to it. There is capacity to be able to double, quadruple the amount of oil that's getting put inside the transatlantic pipeline," Zeldin said.
Zeldin emphasized the importance of Congress' passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is now in the hands of the Senate after narrowly passing the House.
"While there's a lot of focus on tax cuts and securing the border and interior enforcement, there's a lot in the energy and environmental space, which includes refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, suspending a natural gas tax for 10 years, more oil and gas leases, including more coal leases on federal land and more. And permitting reform is part of that, too," he said.
"So there's a lot that can be done by agencies. There's also more that can be done by Congress. All of this helps fulfill the agenda."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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