Free Republic

Since day one of the Obama administration, I’ve chronicled Loathsome Cowboy Ken Salazar’s War on the West, War on Jobs, and War on Science/ Rule of Law as head of the Interior Department. His eco-radical sidekick Carol Browner is gone, yet Salazar remains in place. Federal judge after federal judge has spanked Salazar and Obama’s job-destroying eco-nitwits for lawlessly and fraudulently imposing their junk-science drilling ban . Salazar spearheaded the pulling of scores of oil leases by invoking bogus eco-claims and has presided over an expansive land grab through administrative fiat. Yesterday, yet another federal judge smacked Obama/Salazar and the...

Energy: As the House passes a bill to open up offshore drilling, the Senate holds another show trial of oil executives showing why people blame them, not the administration, for high gas prices. Last week they fought back. Summoned for what Sen. Orrin Hatch labeled a dog-and-pony show, executives of Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP America and Chevron appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and, in often-heated exchanges, indicated their days as whipping boys are over. The hearing was called ostensibly to support the Democrats' Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, a bill with no chance of passage....

Energy Policy: While we sit on abundant oil and natural gas reserves, prices at both the wellhead and the pump are rising on fears of spreading Mideast turmoil and short domestic supply. But then, maybe that's the plan. The silver lining for this administration in the gathering storm over the Middle East may be what it's doing and may yet do to energy prices. The average price for gasoline jumped nearly 12 cents a gallon last week to $3.287, according to AAA. But at the White House, that's not necessarily bad news. Oil has surged to 2 1/2-year highs as...

On top of tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs when Obama imposed a drilling moratorium by executive order (and fudging what scientists and experts believed in order to justify his moratorium) now comes news that Seahawk Drilling, a major publicly-held drilling services company, has declared bankruptcy due to the sharp decline in Gulf drilling work.From USA Today: Seahawk Drilling Inc. said it has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to sell its fleet of offshore drilling rigs to a competitor for $105 million.Seahawk, which announced the deal with Hercules Offshore Inc. Friday, has been hurt by a slowdown...

Energy Policy: An administration that has no respect for Congress, the courts or the Constitution has been found in contempt for reissuing a drilling moratorium that a U.S. district judge found overly broad. The Obama administration's trouble with the courts has continued with a judge's ruling last week that the Interior Department's reinstating of a drilling moratorium followed by a de facto moratorium via an overly restrictive permitting process constituted contempt. The administration had issued a drilling moratorium in May in waters deeper than 500 feet after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana that...

Not Since President Andrew Jackson defied the Supreme Court has a president of the United states ignored a judicial ruling. Federal Judge Vinson ruled this week that the entire Obamacare law was unconstitutional, yet the Obama Administration is continuing to implement the law. Unless Obama applies for and is granted a stay, Obama is in contempt of court, and we have a dictatorship in America. If this were not bad enough, today another federal court found the Obama Administration in contempt for its continuing ban on offshore drilling in the Gulf:

Republican Florida governor-elect Rick Scott slammed President Obama’s ban on offshore drilling near the coast of Florida. Mr. Scott issued a statement saying Wednesday’s decision is another example of the government regulation impeding economic growth. Mr. Scott said drilling could be conducted safely if proper regulations were implemented. Offshore drilling does not currently occur near the coast of Florida. The Obama administration announced a ban on offshore drilling, shelving plans to open offshore waters near Florida to oil and gas drilling. Officials said the decision was due, in part, to the BP oil disaster earlier this year. The western coast...

Three Republican senators demanded Friday that the White House explain last-minute editing changes to an Interior Department report on the BP oil spill that falsely implied that a group of independent experts had endorsed a political decision to temporarily halt all deepwater oil drilling. The senators, members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called for hearings into the matter, contending that the White House had manipulated science for political ends, a claim Democrats frequently made about the George W. Bush administration. The Interior Department’s inspector general issued a report this week asserting that officials in the office of Carol...

The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report. In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG...

Energy Policy: The administration lifts the Gulf drilling moratorium in time for the election, but it's not as good as it sounds. Meanwhile, China buys up Texas oil land to develop the energy reserves we won't. The lifting of the Gulf drilling ban imposed after the explosion of British Petroleum's Macondo well came as welcome news. But like anything this administration does, one must read the fine print. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the ban was being lifted before its Nov. 30 target because of the "the higher standards we have set" for drillers applying for new permits.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is vowing to block a Senate vote to confirm President Obama’s choice to head the White House Office of Management and Budget unless a temporary ban on offshore oil-and-gas drilling is removed. Her pledge to hold up the nomination of Jack Lew represents a dramatic political escalation of Landrieu’s fight against the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling and the slowdown in permits for shallow water projects. RELATED ARTICLES Budget nominee Lew easily clears Senate panel “Due to the Administration’s unwillingness to reverse or modify its policies that have halted all deepwater and nearly all shallow-water...

The Gulf oil spill should not recede from the headlines without further attention to how President Obama continues to punish the victims. His moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is unreasonable and unconscionable. Mr. Obama says the six-month ban on drilling is needed to buy time to investigate what caused the blowout, strengthen oversight and issue new regulations. This is nonsense. Copious investigation already has shown that a series of specific decisions and errors combined to cause the BP well to explode. Few details remain unanswered. Few if any new regulations are needed; the problem was in...

President Barack Obama's "reckless" moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is suffocating small businesses and destroying livelihoods, lawmakers and residents said Tuesday. "The decision to stop energy exploration in the Gulf of Mexico appears to have been made in an uninformed manner that borders recklessness," Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu told the small business committee, which she chairs. "It has increased our risk to the environment, it has increased our national security risk, it has increased the risks to job security. It must be reversed now." A study by Louisiana State University finance professor Joseph Mason estimates the...

Energy Policy: As the job-killing deepwater drilling ban continues offshore, our interior secretary defends an onshore ban imposed in Utah. If we could drill in places like that, maybe oil wouldn't be gushing a mile under the Gulf of Mexico. The 64-million-gallon question in the Gulf oil spill is why we were drilling 5,000 feet down in the first place. The administration line, as expressed by the president in his recent Oval Office speech, is that oil resources on land and just offshore are running out. The falsity of that claim can be seen in the battle over 77 oil...

Govt: Obama Drilling Ban to Cut Supply Sharply Thursday, 08 Jul 2010 09:42 AM The Obama administration's contested moratorium on deepwater drilling will take a larger portion out of U.S. oil production next year than previously thought, the government's energy forecasting agency said on Wednesday. Oil production next year is expected to be cut by 82,000 barrels per day, or almost 30 million barrels total, due to delayed or canceled drilling caused by the moratorium, the Energy Information Administration said. That is 17 percent more from the 70,000 bpd in lost output the agency predicted just last month. Monthly production...

From WDSU NBC 6 New Orleans LA today: Gov. Bobby Jindal is growing weary of federal efforts in the oil spill cleanup process, and in an interview with WDSU anchor Norman Robinson, he took the gloves off saying: "Cut through the red tape and get it done"! The problem is not communication, it's the red tape and bureaucracy courtesy of our Government!

The Interior Department is on the cusp of issuing a revised moratorium on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling to replace an earlier ban that a federal judge blocked last week, according to the White House and the Interior Department. Interior in late May issued the six-month ban on exploratory drilling in waters over 500 feet deep in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quickly pledged to impose a revised ban after the judge’s ruling. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that he expects the revised Interior Department drilling freeze to be issued...

A leading House Republican is pressuring Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to release documents related to the Obama administration’s a six-month deepwater drilling moratorium. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, claims that the administration is “pursuing policies inconsistent with its commitment to protect the Gulf region” by insisting on the drilling moratorium. Issa writes in the letter, obtained by POLITICO, that he is concerned about the administration’s decision to appeal a Louisiana court ruling that lifted the moratorium – the Californian claims that experts advised against the ban. Issa is seeking...

SNIP SNIP "The decision to impose a moratorium on deep-water drilling was and is the right decision," Salazar said, even after he was caught rewording a report so a team of experts he assembled would look like they supported the moratorium, when in fact, they adamantly opposed it and thought it would do more harm than the Deepwater Horizon spill itself. "If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are?" Feldman asked in his ruling. "Are all airplanes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? "That sort...

Drilling companies and others who won an order from a federal judge Tuesday lifting the Obama Administration's moratorium on deepwater oil drilling are accusing the administration of defying the court's order by announcing plans to reimpose the moratorium.Moratorium opponents filed papers in a New Orleans federal court this afternoon requesting an emergency hearing before Judge Martin Feldman, who entered the order blocking the moratorium. Since that time, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar indicated both in a statement and Congressional testimony that he plans to re-impose the moratorium soon based on information that wasn't fully developed when the six-month drilling ban was imposed in late May.From the...

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration imposed after the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The White House swiftly vowed to appeal the ruling.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one. Salazar said in a statement Tuesday evening that the new order will contain additional information making clear why the six-month drilling pause was necessary in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

Via Houston Chronicle: "Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one. Salazar said in a statement Tuesday evening that the new order will contain additional information making clear why the six-month drilling pause was necessary in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. The judge in New Orleans who struck down the moratorium earlier in the day complained there wasn't enough justification for it"....More

"I told you so" June 22 (Bloomberg) -- A New Orleans federal judge lifted the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by President Barack Obama following the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Yep. No surprise on this one: U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman today granted a preliminary injunction, halting the moratorium. He also “immediately prohibited” the U.S. from enforcing the ban. Government lawyers told Feldman the ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April. Government lawyers lied? What else is new? Specifically, experts cited...

After enjoying a brief reprieve from the barrage of criticism over his response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama was dealt a significant blow Tuesday that may refresh perceptions that his administration’s handling of the crisis has been improvised and haphazard. A federal judge in New Orleans blocked Obama’s six-month moratorium on new deep-water offshore oil drilling and mocked the decision to impose it as sloppy and illogical. White House officials said they planned to appeal the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman. It went into effect immediately, but Justice Department lawyers...

The Obama administration used the names of drilling experts to justify a ban on deep water drilling - despite the fact that 8 of these experts who were listed in the Interior Department report used as a basis for the moratorium say that their names had been used to justify a political decision: When President Obama last month announced his six-month deepwater moratorium, he pointed to an Interior Department report of new "safety" recommendations. That report prominently noted that the recommendations it contained-including the six-month drilling ban-had been "peer-reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." It also...

Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs. Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign...

Leadership: FDR said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. JFK asked what we could do for our country. Now we can add Obama's whine about the disaster in the Gulf: "I can't suck it up with a straw." 'Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless," the president told Grand Isle, La., locals in a video released Friday. "So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw. All I can do is make sure that I put honest, hardworking, smart people in place ....

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...

The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling. When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling...

Energy: An administration never enthusiastic about offshore drilling is using the Gulf oil spill as an excuse to suspend Arctic exploration. Who could've seen that coming? Now we'll be more dependent on foreign oil. Suspicions in some quarters that the administration was being deliberately lax in its response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in order to pursue a larger, anti-domestic energy agenda were met with derision. But if not deliberate, the effect is the same as the administration prepares to shut down our search for new oil. President Obama on Thursday announced a suspension...

President Obama will announce on Thursday a suspension of all applications for offshore oil drilling in the Arctic through the remainder of the year, an Alaska senator said late Wednesday. The decision essentially extends an informal moratorium that Mr. Obama had set shortly after the BP accident on April 20 that led to the spewing of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The new restrictions would suspend new offshore drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico and off the North Slope Alaska until the cause of the accident is determined and stricter safety and environmental safeguards...

Emergencies: As frustration with the federal response grows, Louisiana's governor lashes out at the feds for doing little except blame BP for the Gulf oil spill. Meanwhile, Congress sees a chance to raise your gas taxes. While the Obama administration continues on its quest to fundamentally transform America, the largely unabated Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to fundamentally transform the ecosystems and economy of Louisiana and the Gulf region. The federal government's response so far has consisted largely of scapegoating BP and ignoring its own responsibilities and lack of preparation, railing against Big Oil, while Congress...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two –thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll. Sixty percent also believe that gas and oil prices will drop if the government allows offshore drilling, opening up an estimate 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas On July 14,...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

A top House Democrat on Tuesday said his party will not push to reinstate a ban on offshore oil and natural-gas drilling next year. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland said there will be serious discussion as to the "parameters" to which offshore drilling will be pursued, but Democrats will not try to backtrack after grudgingly giving in to Republican demands to allow the 26-year ban to expire this fall. "I don't think there is any intent at this point in time ... to return to the same position we were in" before the ban was lifted, Mr....

Senate Republicans are resisting calls to shut down the government if Democrats try to keep a longstanding offshore drilling ban intact. Despite the party’s election-year rallying cry that expanding offshore drilling would lower high gas prices and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, several GOP senators said holding up a must-pass continuing resolution (CR), which may include an extension of the drilling ban, is not yet in the calculus. “Obviously, there will be an interest for getting a vote on drilling in the CR, but it’s not going to lead to any dramatic event,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), an...

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US imported 3,661,404,000 barrels of crude oil in 2007. That’s royalties the US Treasury didn’t collect, directly added to the annual budget deficit and ultimately the national debt. So how much money did the Democrats with their drilling ban cost the US Treasury last year? The bigger question is how much would the price of oil drop to if the US Congress had gotten it’s act together and stopped playing politics as our friends at CORE are so upset about? According to Representative John Peterson (R) of Pennsylvania’s 5th District, the current...

House Democratic leaders and protesters waving McCain signs had a war of words Tuesday at a press event outside an old train station. The demonstrators interrupted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with chants of “Drill here! Drill now!” Pelosi paused and asked the group, “Right here?” Seeming to enjoy the back and forth, she followed with another question: “Can we drill your brains?” She went on to refer to the protesters, who continued to chant sporadically, as “handmaidens of Big Oil.” Arguing that increased offshore drilling would reduce gas prices by only a couple of pennies a decade from now, she...

The domed ones on Capitol Hill have insisted that loosening up on those bans to drill offshore wouldn't make any difference for years and years and years. So how come the price of crude (futures) went down $10 the very day that Bush signed an executive order repealing the ban that his father had put in place when he was in the White House. Just imagine what the price of crude would fall to if congress did its part in repealing the ban that they put into place to appease the environmentalists! And further, I heard somewhere yesterday that the...

WASHINGTON The House voted Thursday to end a quarter-century offshore drilling ban and allow energy companies to tap natural gas and oil beneath waters from New England to Alaska. Opponents of the federal ban argued that the nation needed to move closer to energy independence and insisted the gas and oil could be taken without threatening the environment and coastal beaches. They said a state choosing to keep the moratorium could do so. The measure was approved 232-187. But the bill's prospects in the Senate were uncertain. Florida's two senators have vowed to filibuster any legislation that would allow drilling...

Facing rising energy prices and political pressure to act, the House Appropriations Committee voted Wednesday to end a 23-year-old ban on natural gas exploration in federal coastal waters, the first step in what would represent a major change in how the nation treats its coast. By a vote of 37 to 25, with all four Floridians voting no, the committee passed an amendment to exempt natural gas drilling from a congressional ban on offshore energy exploration first inserted into the Interior Department appropriations bill by Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, in 1983. If the amendment, which faces a tough...