Obama Administration's Energy Policy A Boon To Petrotyrants

Ibd Editorials ^ | April 23, 2012

[Kaslin]

Oil & Gas/Fact & Fiction Series

Strategy: Wittingly or not, President Obama has contributed to high oil prices by stymieing U.S. production. But if that's the idea, it makes sense to secure energy abroad. He hasn't.

In fact, Obama's stated policy, in his March 30, 2011, energy speech has been a crude central planner's diktat of reducing oil imports by a third over the next 10 years and replacing them with increased production of biofuels and other unproven "green" energies yet to be developed.

Net result: high oil prices and reduced U.S. access to overseas suppliers. A shrewder strategy would have been to secure energy supplies from local sources in the hemisphere while giving the green light to energy development back home.

Scroll back to 1992 and the first Summit of the Americas. The strategy endorsed by the U.S. under the first Bush administration was to "develop the energy industry within the hemisphere" through free markets.

By the second Summit in 1998, then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson proposed a strategy of ramped-up production from Venezuela, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, Mexico and Colombia.

The biggest producer, Venezuela, would be the main player, and Venezuelan officials in that pre-Hugo Chavez era were already ramping up production in what was known as its "apertura" or "opening."

This amounted to a global shift to encourage private investment in state-owned enterprises. The Venezuela plan was to raise oil production from 3 million barrels a day to 6 million by 2010. In exchange, Venezuela would get technical upgrades, investment and guaranteed markets for its heavier crude.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Not only a boon to petrotyrants — it will likely also be a boon to China. As a natural reaction to Obama nixing the Enbridge pipeline, Canada is planning a pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to a new oil port on the west coast. China is the likely customer. As a result, Canada will make about $150 billion more than it would have selling the oil to the U.S. Conversely, the U.S. will lose a reliable source of cheap oil (to say nothing of the construction jobs, and Texas refinery jobs).

[xp38]

They got what they paid for.

[bestintxas]

I have been a petroleum engineer for 39 years.

Right now, we have the resources and the technology to make America energy independent.

What are we doing instead? Throwing away good money after nonsensical schemes on wind solar and biomass. We could be putting to rest any dependence on the Middle East, period.

God gave us the most natural of energy resources, oil and gas.

Everyone one of us needs to place on each gasoline pump we fill up with a sticky-note that says “Had enough with these high gas prices yet? If yes, get rid of those who want to keep them high, the Democrats.”