President Biden, who has championed a zero-carbon emissions future, on Tuesday acknowledged that the United States would need oil and natural gas for at least another decade. However, his silence on exploration and production permitting reform was deafening for some politicos and industry groups.

The comments were not part of the prepared remarks in the State of the Union address to Congress. The president did not back down from the climate change crisis, though, which he blamed for increasing global environmental disasters. And he said oil and gas producers were not doing enough.

“You may have noticed that Big Oil just reported record profits,” he said of the 2022 earnings reports. BP plc delivered its results earlier on Tuesday. Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil and Shell plc...