Biden Doing Everything Possible to Drive Up the Price of Oil, Some of It’s Illegal – Mish Talk

March 23, 2022

SEC accused of doing Elizabeth Warren's dirty work. Image from a Tweet. — SEC accused of doing Elizabeth Warren’s dirty work. Image from a Tweet.

SEC Mandate Idiocy

President Biden does not have the votes to pass his energy policy, so instead he tries to bully the Fed and the SEC.

Consider the SEC’s Energy Proposal now open for comments (guaranteed to be ignored).

The Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) is proposing for public comment amendments to its rules under the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) and Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) that would require registrants to provide certain climate-related information in their registration statements and annual reports.
The proposed rules would require information about a registrant’s climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on its business, results of operations, or financial condition.
The required information about climate-related risks would also include disclosure of a registrant’s greenhouse gas emissions, which have become a commonly used metric to assess a registrant’s exposure to such risks. In addition, under the proposed rules, certain climate-related financial metrics would be required in a registrant’s audited financial statements.

SEC Act of 1934

The purpose of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is to prevent fraud, prevent securities theft, ensure fairness, halt insider trading, and prevent companies from distributing false financial information.

Nowhere does the Securities Act of 1933 or 1934 grant the SEC to promote Green policies at its whim.

The SEC is not, or at least should not be, in the business of implementing let alone creating climate change policy.

Yet that is precisely the intent.

Climate Change Coup

The Wall Street Journal comments on the SEC’s Climate Coup

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is redefining materiality as whatever BlackRock and progressive investors want to know. The 510-page proposal will require the public disclosure of risks to physical assets from climate change as well as from government anti-carbon policies.

Companies will have to report greenhouse-gas emissions generated directly by their operations (e.g., refining oil) as well as from their energy consumption. Companies will also have to report what are called Scope 3 emissions from their supply chains and customers if they are material, which will be in the eyes of progressive investors.

For example, Exxon Mobil would have to report its direct emissions as well as any from fossil fuels burned to generate the electricity it uses. It may have to quantify emissions from the combustion of its products, the tankers that deliver them, and the manufacturing of its rigs and plastic products when they degrade.

Scope 3 emissions have no clear definition. The agency says it has “not proposed a bright-line quantitative threshold for the materiality determination” for Scope 3 emissions because this “would depend on the particular facts and circumstances, making it difficult to establish a ‘one size fits all’ standard.”