Tag Archives: Gulf

News

Obama imposes 5-year oil drilling moratorium on Atlantic coast

Leave a comment

From Breitbart.

Excerpt:

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 area to drilling on his watch and cheats Virginians out of thousands of jobs,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. The announcement “continues the president’s election-year political ploy of giving speeches and talking about drilling after having spent the first three years in office blocking, delaying and driving up the cost of producing energy in America,” he said.

This is in addition to the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf that Obama imposed before.

Excerpt:

A moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill plus a longer offshore oil and natural gas permitting processes will cost the U.S. more than $24 billion in lost oil and natural gas investment over the next several years, according to a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute.

The study by the energy industry trade group also found that, because of the moratorium and longer permitting process, capital and operating expenditures fell over the last two years by $18.3 billion.

The region saw $8.9 billion and $146 billion in investments in crude oil and natural gas, respectively — about 6 percent of global investment dollars. But that figure would have been closer to 12 percent for 2011 had the drilling moratorium not been put in place, the report said.

“As a result of decreases in investment due to the moratorium, total U.S. employment is estimated to have been reduced by 72,000 jobs in 2010 and approximately 90,000 jobs in 2011,” the report said.

In addition to closing an entire new area to drilling, Obama is also using environmental regulations to destroy jobs and raise energy prices.

Excerpt:

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the Obama administration is poised to deal a major blow to U.S. oil and natural gas, a leading industry group charged Thursday.

Domestic production of both fuels could plummet if proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations, designed to limit emissions from well sites, go into effect later this year, according to an extensive new study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute.

The natural gas extraction technique known as “fracking” would be hardest hit, and fuel extracted via the popular process would drop by about 52 percent, according to a new study commissioned by API. Total gas production would decrease by about 11 percent, while domestic oil production could fall by as much as 37 percent, the report says.

Make no mistake – this Democrat administration is opposed to job creation in the energy sector and opposed to lowering gas prices.

News

Canadian Conservative MP Joe Oliver declares war on green radicals

2 Comments
Canada 2011 Federal Election Seats
Canada 2011 Federal Election Seats

Terence Corcoran writes in the Financial Post about the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver.

Excerpt:

Through most of 2011, Canadian energy officials in politics and industry watched with bewildered helplessness and some shock as Washington allowed environmentalists to seize control of TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline issue. They stood by aghast as President Barack Obama, a captive of U.S. green activists and Hollywood movie stars, caved in to political pressure and postponed a decision to approve the project, a potential economic bonanza that promised to deliver thousands of jobs to Americans and billions of barrels of Canadian oil sands production to Texas.

No such green hijacking is going to take place in Canada, at least not without an official fight. On the eve of hearings, which begin Tuesday in Kitimat, B.C., into the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline — to carry the same oil sands production from Alberta to the West Coast and on to China — the Harper government clearly aims to do what Barack Obama cannot or will not do in America, namely stand up to the growth-killing professional green movement.

It is a cliché in journalism to declare metaphorical wars at the drop of a news release. In this case, it looks like war is exactly what Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver launched Monday in an unprecedented open letter warning that Canada will not allow “environmental and other radical groups” to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

What a welcome war this is. Never before has a Canadian politician challenged the hitherto saintly protectors of the environment in such direct language. More importantly, Mr. Oliver took straight aim at a troubling trend in Canadian environmentalism — the foreign funding of Canadian green activist groups with the express purpose of shutting down Canadian resource development — first documented in the National Post by Vancouver investigative writer Vivian Krause.

“These groups,” said Mr. Oliver, “seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interests to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”

That’s one reason why the Canadian economy is booming.

We elected a President who gave $535 million to Solyndra, blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, placed a moratorium on Gulf oil drilling and subsidized the Chevy Volt to by $250,000 PER VEHICLE. Note that all of the Chevy Volts sold have now been recalled for repairs. We could have been like Canada, if only we had not elected environmentalists and socialists.

News

LSU Professor: Repeal of oil industry tax credits will cost 150,000 jobs

3 Comments

From Marathon Pundit.

Excerpt:

Two days ago I participated in a blogger conference call with Dr. Joseph Mason, a professor of finance and the Hermann Moyse Jr./Louisiana Bankers Association Endowed Chair of Banking at Louisiana State University’s E. J. Ourso College of Business.

Since the Deepwater Horizon blowout began spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Mason has been a consistent voice in support of energy industry jobs. A moratorium on drilling in the Gulf could would have devastating results on employment, Mason warns. But that’s not the only threat to energy industry jobs. On Monday Mason released his latest study on tax policy, “Regional and National Economic Impact of Repealing the Section 199 Tax Deduction and Dual-capacity Tax Credit for Oil and Gas Producers.”

Dual-capacity allows oil companies to deduct taxes it pays abroad, something I was able to do when I owned a mutual fund comprised exclusively of foreign stocks. Section 199 allows companies to deduct up to nine percent of their net income derived from domestic oil production.

Okay…so what if the oil industry pays more tax? Well, that puts our nation’s energy industry at a disadvantage. Specifically, Mason argues, “Without it US-based [energy] firms compete on an uneven global playing field against Russian and Chinese firms that receive substantial state support.”

“The higher energy taxes would cost by my estimates,” Mason added, “some $341 billion in lost economic activity and $68 billion in wages.”

Wages means jobs…Just in the next year our economy will lose 150,000 jobs in the next year if President Obama and the Democrats have their way on dual-capacity and Section 199. And they might. Yesterday the Senate struck down an amendment by Florida Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat who sees the light, to keep Section 199 in place.

As for job losses, where will they come from? Obviously in the Gulf states, but in others too. Texas will lose 38,000 jobs and Louisiana 13,500. But in other states–such as California, the painful effects will be felt as well: 23,000 lost jobs there, as well as 4,000 more in Ohio, Indiana will suffer 3,000 layoffs, and my own Illinois, which is not a big oil producer, will lose 4,500 positions. And that is just in year following the repeal of Section 199 and the dual capacity credit.

I’ll conclude with a quote from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), “You can’t love jobs while hating the people who create them.”

I stole his whole post! I hope John doesn’t mind.

As for job losses, where will they come from? Obviously in the Gulf states, but in others too. Texas will lose 38,000 jobs and Louisiana 13,500. But in other states–such as California, the painful effects will be felt as well: 23,000 lost jobs there, as well as 4,000 more in Ohio, Indiana will suffer 3,000 layoffs, and my own Illinois, which is not a big oil producer, will lose 4,500 positions. And that is just in year following the repeal of Section 199 and the dual capacity credit.

I’ll conclude with a quote from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), “You can’t love jobs while hating the people who create them.”