Tag Archives: Gas Prices

News

Environmental Protection Agency blocks oil drilling in Alaska

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Gas Prices under Obama and Bush
Gas Prices under Obama and Bush

John Hawkins of Right Wing News and Doug Ross of Director Blue have started a new conservative news site called Trending Right.

Trending Right shows the most linked conservative stories on Twitter for EACH HOUR.

If you guys want to suggest me as a source for their feed (I don’t see any real conservative/Christian blogs there now) then that would be great. Just send Doug an e-mail. The link to e-mail is at the bottom of their page.

I went there just now, and found this popular story from the Heritage Foundation right away. Apparently, the Environmental Protection Agency is blocking oil drilling in Alaska. This must be part of the reason why gas prices have more than doubled since Obama took office.

Excerpt:

There are an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil waiting to be tapped in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Alaska. But after spending five years and nearly $4 billion, Shell Oil Company has been forced to abandon its efforts to drill for oil in the region.

With gas at $4 per gallon and higher, one might think that more oil would be a good thing. So what’s the road block? The Environmental Protection Agency. Fox News reports that the EPA is withholding necessary air permits because of a one square mile village of 245 people, 70 miles from the off-shore drilling site. From Fox News’ Dan Springer:

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling.

“What the modeling showed was in communities like Kaktovik, Shell’s drilling would increase air pollution levels close to air quality standards,” said Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case.

Who at the EPA made the decision? Springer writes:

The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. Members are appointed by the EPA administrator.

[…]Aside for the EPA’s decision on Shell, the Obama administration has imposed a months-long moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling that curtailed domestic production and sent some seven drilling rigs elsewhere.

That story was liked by 2208 people on Facebook! Something tells me that my blogging has just gotten a lot easier.

News

Government report: US has world’s largest supply of oil, natural gas and coal

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Here’s the press release. (H/T Canada Free Press)

Abstract:

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, today released an updated government report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) showing America’s combined recoverable oil, natural gas, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth. America’s recoverable resources are far larger than those of Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada (6th) combined.  And that’s not including America’s immense oil shale and methane hydrates deposits.

Details:

Oil

CRS offers a more accurate reflection of America’s substantial oil resources.  While America is often depicted as possessing just 2 or 3 percent of the world’s oil – a figure which narrowly relies on America’s proven reserves of just 28 billion barrels – CRS has compiled US government estimates which show that America, the world’s third-largest oil producer, is endowed with 163 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That’s enough oil to maintain America’s current rates of production and replace imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years.

Natural Gas

Further, CRS notes the 2009 assessment from the Potential Gas Committee, which estimates America’s future supply of natural gas is 2,047 trillion cubic feet (TCF) – an increase of more than 25 percent just since the Committee’s 2006 estimate.  At today’s rate of use, this is enough natural gas to meet American demand for 90 years.

Coal

The report also shows that America is number one in coal resources, accounting for more than 28 percent of the world’s coal. Russia, China, and India are in a distant 2nd, 3rd, and 5th, respectively. In fact, CRS cites America’s recoverable coal reserves to be 262 billion short tons. For perspective, the US consumes just 1.2 billion short tons of coal per year.  And though portions of this resource may not be accessible or economically recoverable today, these estimates could ultimately prove to be conservative.  As CRS states: “…U.S. coal resource estimates do not include some potentially massive deposits of coal that exist in northwestern Alaska.  These currently inaccessible coal deposits have been estimated to be more than 3,200 billion short tons of coal.”

Oil Shale

While several pilot projects are underway to prove oil shale’s future commercial viability, the Green River Formation located within Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah contains the equivalent of 6 trillion barrels of oil.  The Department of Energy estimates that, of this 6 trillion, approximately 1.38 trillion barrels are potentially recoverable.  That’s equivalent to more than five times the conventional oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Methane Hydrates

Although not yet commercially feasible, methane hydrates, according to the Department of Energy, possess energy content that is “immense … possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels.” While estimates vary significantly, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) recently testified that: “the mean in-place gas hydrate resource for the entire United States is estimated to be 320,000 TCF of gas.” For perspective, if just 3% of this resource can be commercialized in the years ahead, at current rates of consumption, that level of supply would be enough to provide America’s natural gas for more than 400 years.

The press release has lots of informative graphs.

The PDF of the full report is here.

Obama keeps blocking energy production at home, and sending taxpayer money (and jobs) to countries in the Middle East, some of who don’t like us very much. What would possess a president to undermine the national security and economy of his own country that way? Why does he want to raise the cost of living for his fellow citizens and send jobs overseas to the Middle East?

News

Is Obama causing gas prices to rise by restricting oil drilling?

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Here are some graphs from the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Graph 1:

Domestic oil production down since Obama took office
Domestic oil production down since Obama took office

Graph 2:

More reliance on foreign oil since Obama took office
More reliance on foreign oil since Obama took office

Quote:

“The numbers don’t lie—it’s clear that this Administration is taking U.S. energy policy in exactly in the wrong direction. Gas prices are closing in on $4 per gallon and thousands of people are out of work in the Gulf because of the de facto moratorium on drilling permits,” said Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings. “Unemployment is only going to get worse as this Administration’s policies continue to increase the cost of gasoline, which trickles down to every sector of our economy. We need to use our resources to produce American made energy, create good jobs, and insulate ourselves from uncontrollable energy prices spikes.”

That’s a government web site.

Fox News explains that this doesn’t just cause higher gas prices, but also increases unemployment.

Excerpt:

The Chamber of Commerce released a report Thursday that found 351 energy projects around the country were in regulatory limbo last year because of regulations, environmental protests, or lawsuits.

None of them include drilling for oil or gas and remarkably, almost half of the delayed projects involved renewable energy.

“There are hundreds of laws with thousands of provisions, all of which can stop a project,” said William Kovacs of the Chamber’s Environment, Technology & Regulatory Affairs Division.

Steve Pociask of TeleNomic Research, one of the authors of the study, found those delays are costing the economy dearly. The report says the stalled projects cost the economy $1.1 trillion in economic activity last year and would have provided 1.9 million jobs in each year of construction.

The report said that once constructed, the projects would have supplied some 791,000 jobs per year over 20 years and added $3.4 trillion to the GDP, and that’s without taking into account lower energy prices that could result from the completed projects.

[…]A partial list from the report shows the stalled or delayed proposals included 22 nuclear projects, 1 nuclear disposal site, 21 transmission projects, 38 gas and platform projects and 111 coal projects.

Here’s a story from the Louisiana Times-Picayune. It shows that Obama is lying to the public about these facts.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama said Friday that oil production out of the Gulf of Mexico is at a record high and that a rush to new drilling is not a long-term solution for a nation that consumes more than a quarter of the world’s oil.

But Louisiana lawmakers lambasted the president’s remarks on rising energy prices, made at his second news conference of the year, suggesting that he failed to confront the fact that his administration’s slow-go on permitting threatens future supplies, and that renewed drilling is an essential response to the rise in gas prices.

“The gap continues to widen between what President Obama claims to be true about domestic energy production and what Louisianans know is true,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-La.

“This administration still doesn’t seem to understand that the best way to combat rising gasoline prices is to encourage new domestic development and production of oil,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. With gas prices rising amid increased international demand and chaos in oil-rich Libya, Obama sought to debunk the notion that his administration was impeding domestic energy production.

[…]”Someone should tell the President that April Fool’s Day is still weeks away,” said Rep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia. Like other members of the delegation, Landry complained that the president’s assertions about Gulf oil production failed to credit the aggressive permitting policies of past administrations that enabled oil to flow at record levels, or to acknowledge that his administration’s slow-down on permitting in the aftermath of the BP oil spill is leading to a drop in production that will become painfully obvious in the months and years to come.

[…]Landry said he agreed the president should “focus on responsible and affordable alternative energy sources like nuclear, natural gas and clean coal.” But he said tax subsidies for wind, solar and experiments like the electric car made no sense.

“We’ve got enough natural gas and coal for the next 200 years. Why do we require the American people to continue to pour tax dollars down the toilet?” asked Landry.

And what it shows is that we are bidding on foreign oil, which China, India and everyone else is also bidding on. Do you know what happens when lots of people want to buy the same thing? The price of that thing goes up. And that’s exactly what we are seeing. The only way to make gas prices go down is by increasing our own supply.