Posted on 03/31/2010 6:51:06 AM PDT by tobyhill
After dispensing with a health-reform bill that mostly pleased liberals and alienated nearly all conservatives, President Obama heads back to the ideological middle Wednesday with a dramatic -- and controversial -- new plan for domestic oil exploration.
"The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday," the New York Times reports, adding: "The proposal -- a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations -- would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean. Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border." The Associated Press notes that "Obama was set to announce the new drilling policy Wednesday at Andrews air base in Maryland. White House officials pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs -- both politically popular ideas -- but the president's decisions also could help secure support for a climate change bill languishing in Congress."
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com ...
Obama is learning how to triangulate without triangulating much. So he’s learned Clinton’s lessons and we’re in the soup.
I think Bummer is doing this to try to escape the energy-shortage backlash that would come from his efforts to shut down the coal mines.
Could it be that he perceives that Bummercare has rendered his political capital almost bankrupt?
If anyone actually believed this, oil prices would be falling. They’re rising, therefore, no one believes it.
BO/BS doesn’t want to move to the middle. He wants to make drilling part of a socialist cap and tax bill.
Remember the democrat mantra from a while back, “this won’t help us for 10 years”. I expect Obama will make sure of it if he’s even telling the truth at all.
I’m convinced these are payoffs for votes on the health care bill.
It’s not a drilling plan. Opens up the area for exploration as I understand.
Head fake.
He will let companies use their monies to begin drilling...only to hold a piece of climate capandtax legislation over their heads. Once they’re in good and deep, he will own them. I don’t trust this commie for an instant nor do I have any illusions about his greater plan.
He has a hidden nefarious agenda that will benefit his crooked friends and himself. At the same time, he also may be out to screw the Israelis since they just found their own oil.
Don’t fall for it.
A sop to a Republican area?
Unless Bummer has a crystal ball and sees unexpected amounts of oil in that region, enough to make a significant dent in world oil prices, this can’t possibly hurt Israeli oil. Much better positioned to hurt Israeli oil is OPEC with its Arab states that pay $5 or less a barrel in actual extraction costs.
Democrats don’t care if the capitalists explore for oil, they can sell leases for exploration and prevent them from actually producing oil at the stroke of a pen.
Its a trick.
Enviro and bureaucratic regulations will keep this bogged down for years or even forever. I doubt we will ever see any actual drilling.
Its a trick for Nov.
Bingo!
Stuart Varney was warning on FBC this morning that this is a feint by the Administration that is intended to divert attention from the impending ruling by EPA that CO2 is now a major pollutant. That ruling could come as early as today, or possibly tomorrow.
The strategery is to make themselves look good with this drilling legislation, even though environmentalist wackos will keep this “new drilling” tied up in court for years, if not forever. Same goes with the recent moves that appear to support nuclear power. It’s all a smokescreen to give EPA cover for what is widely believed to be the biggest job killer of them all: cap and trade, or whatever they are going to call it now...
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