Posted on 10/21/2012 8:37:18 PM PDT by LtKerst
Town Crier: Obama holds energy development hostage
By Steve Wampler, October 12, 2012
Earlier this summer, with almost no media coverage, President Barack Obama quietly locked down tens of billions of barrels of oil and immense reserves of natural gas from development for the next five years.
As the nation was focused on the U.S. Supreme Court’s health care decision, Obama reinstituted a moratorium on offshore oil drilling that shuts down about 85 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf from exploration or drilling. Currently, the federal government only allows searching for energy on 2 percent of the OCS.
The Obama decision, which overrides a previous decision by a Democratic Congress and President George W. Bush in 2008, blocks the exploration and development of an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the OCS.
The July decision is only one of dozens of occasions during the past four years when the Obama administration has stymied, blocked and done almost everything possible to hinder domestic oil, gas and coal energy production.
His actions have reduced America’s energy supplies, cost hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs for U.S. workers and resulted in increased energy costs for American consumers.
Gas prices, which stood at $1.84 per gallon when Obama took office, had climbed to more than double that rate ($3.82) as of Monday, Oct. 8, and he has almost institutionalized $3 to $4 per-gallon gas.
Drilling permits issued, which rose by 58 percent during Bill Clinton’s years as president and by 116 percent during the George W. Bush era, have fallen by 36 percent under Obama.
While U.S. oil production has increased during Obama’s presidency, it has risen — despite his best efforts to stifle energy production — because it has climbed on non-government lands, such as the Bakken formation, where Obama has little power to curtail such production.
To some observers, it is as if Obama is waging a war against domestic oil and coal production, while he touts government subsidies to solar firms like Solyndra that reward his donors and then go bankrupt.
The Keystone XL pipeline: For months, Obama has blocked progress on the construction of the Keystone pipeline that would transport 700,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada.
Now in its fourth year of review, the pipeline would “have a degree of safety over any other” approach, according to government officials. It would produce 20,000 jobs now and 180,000 jobs by 2035.
The Gulf of Mexico: Obama’s deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico has been declared illegal by federal judges, and his administration’s drilling permit slowdown has been condemned in a judicial ruling. The administration’s policies have led to a decline in production of 300,000 barrels of oil per day.
Furthermore, last year ExxonMobil sued the federal government for canceling an oil-drilling lease in the gulf that held “billions of barrels of oil.”
Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska: After Shell Oil spent about $4 billion to develop shallow-water drilling on vast tracts already leased from the federal government in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas north of Alaska, the Obama administration rescinded the already-issued permits for drilling in the Chukchi sea.
That decision leaves an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil in the ground that could produce $2.7 trillion for the U.S. economy.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: By drilling for oil in a tiny patch — 2,000 acres of 19.6 million acres, the U.S. could open the door to another estimated 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil. Opening ANWR would create 736,000 new jobs and is expected to add $325 billion to the economy, according to Wharton Econometrics. Obama opposes this plan.
In conjunction with his fight against drilling for domestic oil and natural gas, Obama has battled against the U.S. coal industry, which provides 40 percent of America’s electricity.
His efforts there have reduced coal production from 1.2 billion tons to 800 million tons and helped close or lead to future closure of 175 power plants.
Obama is on record as supporting higher gas prices — his Secretary of the Interior has said he would oppose offshore oil drilling even if gas prices hit $10 per gallon, and another Obama cabinet member is supportive of gas prices at Europe’s levels (about $8 per gallon).
The president and his team are doing a first-class job helping gas prices rise and hindering the development of jobs in the energy sector.
• Steve Wampler is a Tracy native who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. He is among a select group of local residents with a rotating column in the Tracy Press.
Sorry, Here is the link to the story......
He’s been pretty effective at KILLING AMERICA but I still think he’s following orders.. The same people or group that manufactured his fake ID and past.
Anything he did by himself can be undone by Romney himself.
That’s what I wanted to know. Can Romney undo these executive orders and keep then from taking effect?
The Great and Magnificent O doesn’t believe in getting energy from oil, gas, coal — all that dirty stuff.
He dreams of the day the US runs on Fairy Energy, it comes from the same place his Unicorn Skittles do.
All kidding aside - you’d have to think that stifling our domestic energy production helps his rag-head friends and other characters on the world scene like $oro$ and his Petrobras outfit in Brazil...ya think??
The fact that it kills a huge amount of jobs so more people may have to turn to Gumbint Assistance — well thats just icing on the cake to the America haters.
Starting with energy and continuing with NASA.
President Obama’s failure to identify the economic opportunities these resources offer is mystifying. In our 2008 endorsement we cautioned the president against demonizing the energy sector – good advice that he has never heeded (see Keystone XL Pipeline). By contrast, Gov. Romney has listed energy atop his five-point plan to rejuvenate the economy.
It can. Let us count the ways:......................................
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Sept 8, 2012: Texas spends big bucks suing federal government "The slogan goes, "Don't Mess With Texas." But with President Barack Obama in the White House a more appropriate cry might be: "Try it and we'll sue."
The Texas attorney general's office has filed 24 lawsuits against the federal government since Obama took office — litigation that has cost the state $2.58 million and more than 14,113 hours spent by staff and state lawyers working those cases.
....Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the costs are worth it, calling the litigation "a fight against the unprecedented ideology coming from the Obama administration." In an interview, he said the legal battles he wages are meant to promote industry and protect Texas jobs.
Abbott took office in 2002 and sued the federal government three times between 2004 and 2007 while fellow Republican George W. Bush was president. But the floodgates opened under Obama, with Texas suing two dozen times since 2010. Sixteen of Abbott's lawsuits challenged environmental regulations.
....Texas has won five of Abbott's 27 cases, lost eight and had two others dismissed because the regulations or laws being challenged were lifted or repealed by Congress. The other 12 are pending....."
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The Pigs At Obama’s Green Energy Trough "............Earlier today I posted on the layoffs announced by wind turbine manufacturer Vestas and the electric car battery manufacturer A123.
These two companies are only the tip of the iceberg. What they represent is one of byproducts of cargo cult economics, that is, when venture Marxists set industrial policy to the benefit of rent-seekers and corporate cronyists.
.......The root cause of this mess is the Obama regime. It has waded into a marketplace it neither understands nor likes and has tried to develop a new industry out of whole cloth. The language boggles at attempting to describe the hubris necessary to undertake this endeavor. To add insult to injury, in a large number of these cases, over 71% of the cases if one want’s to put a number on it, the winners just happened to be major Obama donors and supporters.................."
Sept 27, 2012: “...........NASA’s temperature record is, indeed, a living document.
My piece was also picked up by “Watts Up With That?” WUWT argues that NASA is in violation of the Data Quality Act.
This is the data that the American public pays for. It is one of only two or three such records of global temperatures going back more than a century. It is what all claims of global warming are based on. And about one third of that data changes every month! Without warning, notice or explanation.
In my opinion, this is a scandal. There is no way for the public to inform itself reliably on an issue that could cost us trillions of dollars. We have no way of knowing how much of global warming is real and how much is simply due to unexplained adjustments to the data - data that is under the control of zealots like James Hansen.”
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/nasas_rubber_ruler_scandal.html#ixzz2A0t4xRAE
We need to get the word out that Barack Obama is destroying energy production efforts.
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