Free Republic

Energy Policy: The Interior Department announces a five-year environmental study of offshore oil sites along the Atlantic coast with possible drilling off the Old Dominion in 2018 — only seven years after a promised lease sale. Despite taking credit for rising oil production on private and state lands he has nothing to do with, and claiming he supports opening up areas for domestic exploration as part of his "all-of-the-above" energy policy, President Obama in fact despises domestic fossil fuel production and moves to block it at every opportunity. During a visit to Norfolk, Va., last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar...

Many Americans believe that whenever a politician opens his mouth, something pops out other than the truth. But on the issue of energy, this President has really stepped into an issue and now seems able to maintain his political credibility solely with more lies and obfuscation. We live in an age in which America and the rest of the world has a huge need for electrical power – with no evidence of reduced demand on the horizon. Even though our automobiles, appliances, and tools have become more energy-efficient, we have more devices than ever like smartphones and tablets and...

Yesterday the Obama administration announced a delaying tactic which will put off the possibility of new offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast for at least five years: The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur.

Yesterday the Obama administration announced a delaying tactic which will put off the possibility of new offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast for at least five years: The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell notes that a planned lease sale, which the administration cancelled last year, will now be put off until at least 2018. As you might expect, Republicans were not impressed with the decision: "The president's actions have closed an entire new...

President Obama supports job creation, economic growth and revenue generation – except when he doesn’t. Official announcements from his Labor Department reported that the nation’s February unemployment rate is still 8.3 percent. That’s a decent decline from previous months. But the reality is far worse. Most of that job growth was in business and professional services, and half was temporary. Millions of Americans are working part-time or multiple low-wage jobs to make ends meet. Overall, 23.5 million are out of work or underemployed. Factor all that in, and the real unemployment rate is 14.9%, according to University of Maryland...

Soaring gas prices pose a major electoral vulnerability to a President so damaged he refused to celebrate the two year anniversary of his marquee domestic accomplishment. That is why, for the past several weeks, President Obama and his administration have been in damage control mode. At stops around the country, he sought to deflect blame for the pain Americans are experiencing at the pump. President Obama’s basic defense goes something like this: presidents cannot control the price of gasoline, but I have increased domestic oil production and decreased our reliance on foreign oil, so really, when you think about...

Offshore drilling has been pushed further onto Virginia's horizon. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced the oil and gas leasing plan for 2012-2017, and Virginia did not make the list. The proposed program includes 15 potential lease sales, with 12 in the Gulf of Mexico and three off Alaska. Virginia's lease sale was scheduled for 2011, but the federal government delayed it until at least 2017 after the April-July 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore spill in U.S. history. Gov. Bob McDonnell, who wanted to use the millions that...

The Department of Agriculture is considering requiring an extensive environmental review before issuing mortgages to people who have leased their land for oil and gas drilling.

When you include oil shale, the U.S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research, enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years, without any imports.

Oil spill commission reuniting to press for drilling reformsBy Andrew Restuccia - 03/14/12 10:47 AM ET Members of the national oil spill commission are reuniting to monitor the federal government’s progress in implementing a series of drilling safety recommendations put forward by the panel last year. The seven-member commission, which was tasked by President Obama with investigating the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, is forming what it calls “Oil Spill Commission Action.” The new group will issue a report in April assessing government and industry efforts to enhance safety and environmental standards in the aftermath of the spill, which...

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump. "Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said. "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves." Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices....But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the...

WASHINGTON _ The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday's vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably.

Energy: At a plant that makes natural-gas-powered trucks, the president proposes still more alternative-energy subsidies. The privately developed technology that lowered the price of natural gas can lower gasoline prices too. It was a tad surreal to see President Obama, champion of green energy and unions, visiting a foreign-owned manufacturer of natural gas-powered trucks in a right-to-work state. But there he was Wednesday, at the Daimler Trucks North America truck factory in Mount Holly, N.C., touting vehicles powered by a fossil fuel produced by drilling. The president, who recently touted pond scum as an energy source of the future, embraced...

Well the economy is ‘moving in the right direction’ at least temporarily as Obama says, and oil and gas prices prices are on the rise again moving in the 'wrong' direction. After killing the Canadian Oil pipeline Obama and his Democrat lackeys are claiming that Obama is the oil production president, claiming that domestic oil production is way higher now under Obama than when Bush was in office. In fact they claim that domestic oil production is SO high under Obama that they and Obama and Pelosi are once again calling for raising taxes specifically on domestic oil production (code...

Energy: Industry leaders gathered in Houston say rising fuel output comes in spite of, not because of, the president's policies and the pain at the pump will soon be excruciating. Energy executives and other industry players gathered for the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE) in Houston shredded administration assertions that it is opening up areas for oil and gas exploration and that its policies are responsible for increased oil and gas production on President Obama's watch. "These have been the most difficult three years from a policy standpoint that I've ever seen in my career," Bruce Vincent, president of Houston...

President Barack Obama on Thursday assailed Republicans for what he described as a flawed and dishonest strategy for reducing gas prices, predicting his rivals would offer nothing but more drilling and political promises of $2-a-gallon gas. Said the president: "The American people aren't stupid." "That's not a plan, especially since we're already drilling. That's a bumper sticker," Obama said in a stop at the University of Miami. "It's not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. That's a strategy to get politicians through an election. You know there are no quick fixes to this problem." Obama spoke as gas has...

The United States’ rapidly declining crude oil supply has made a stunning about-face, shredding federal oil projections and putting energy independence in sight of some analyst forecasts. After declining to levels not seen since the 1940s, U.S. crude production began rising again in 2009. Drilling rigs have rushed into the nation’s oil fields, suggesting a surge in domestic crude is on the horizon. The number of rigs in U.S. oil fields has more than quad­rupled in the past three years to 1,272, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Including those in natural gas fields, the United States now has...

Gasoline prices are on their way up again. So too is the ire of gasoline purchasers who skipped Econ 101 in school...

[Thirty] years after a vicious winter storm ripped across the Atlantic Ocean and helped sink the world's largest and most advanced oil rig, memories of the Ocean Ranger tragedy are still painful and fresh. All 84 crew members died when the Ocean Ranger toppled and then sank on the Grand Banks in the early hours of Feb. 15, 1982. "It's still — the way it happened, there's no closure. It doesn't feel like there's any," said Connie Foley, who was 19 when her father Ron and his colleagues died at sea...

A huge oil-drilling rig reportedly sank in a storm off the coast of Newfoundland Monday morning, and all 84 men aboard were said to be missing in 50-foot seas and feared dead... (Page A8.)