Tag Archives: Oil Drilling

News

Obama continues to block oil drilling as gas prices rise

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From left-wing Politico.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration late Friday appealed a judge’s orders directing the Interior Department to act on several Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits.

The appeal is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight over the speed with which Interior is – or isn’t – letting oil drillers get back to work after last year’s BP oil spill.

Gulf state lawmakers and the oil industry have accused the department of enacting a “de facto” moratorium against new drilling, while Interior says it needs to ensure safety and environmental protections are in place.

Friday’s appeal challenges rulings by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, who on Feb. 17 gave Interior 30 days to make a verdict on five pending deepwater drilling permits applications. He later added two additional permits to that order.

The Washington Times re-caps Obama’s record on energy policy.

Excerpt:

President Obama has intentionally hamstrung domestic energy production under the delusional theory that the U.S. economy can thrive on so-called green power. As Mideast turmoil threatens the oil supply, the price of domestic crude has jumped above $100 a barrel and gas at the pump now exceeds $3.46 a gallon. This shows just how dangerous the Obama administration’s economic and energy policies can be to our wallets.

There can be no doubt that the president took deliberate action to block access to the nation’s energy resources. A federal judge recently found the Interior Department in contempt for ignoring his order overturning the oil-drilling moratorium the administration imposed following the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On Feb. 22, Judge Martin Feldman upped the pressure by insisting that the department act on five pending permits within 30 days. Permits that would, under normal circumstances, be processed in two weeks have been ignored for four to nine months. “Not acting at all is not a lawful option,” Judge Feldman wrote. The department had no choice but to issue the first permit since the spill on Feb. 28.

Interior pinned the blame for delays on technical problems. Yet, as the department dithered, oil companies atrophied and employees lost work. According to a study released in January by the business alliance Greater New Orleans, Inc., the moratorium cost Louisiana about 25,000 jobs. Houston-based Seahawk Drilling, the most recent victim of the drilling ban, announced Feb. 18 that it had filed for bankruptcy and agreed to a buyout from a competitor. The jobs of the company’s 494 employees are in jeopardy, according to USA Today.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal calls for imposing a $4 per acre fine on oil and gas companies for land on which they currently hold leases but are not drilling. This gimmick helps the O Force imply that the industry is holding off on drilling in the hope that shortages will drive up prices.

Gas prices are up near $5 in parts of the United States.

When you reduce the supply of a commodity without a decrease in demand, prices go up. This is economics 101. But Obama doesn’t know economics 101, and that’s why we have a 14 trillion dollar national debt, and a 1.65 trillion dollar budget deficit.

Make no mistake – this is a tax on business and individual consumption. We are losing jobs because of Obama’s refusal to allow companies to increase the supply and reduce the prices that Americans pay for energy.

News

“Clean energy” plant closes after receiving 58 million in subsidies

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From CNS News. (H/T ECM)

Full text:

A clean energy company is closing its factory in Massachusetts, just two years after it opened the solar plant with about $58-million in taxpayer subsidies, the Boston Globe reported. Evergreen Solar calls itself a victim of weak demand and competition from cheaper suppliers in China.

The newspaper describes Evergreen Solar’s closing a major hit to Democratic Governor Deval Patrick’s efforts to make Massachusetts a hub of the emerging clean-energy industry.

“The administration persuaded Evergreen to build at Devens with a package of grants, land, loans, and other aid originally valued at $76 million. The company ended up taking about $58 million, one of the largest aid packages Massachusetts has provided to a private company,” the newspaper reported.

Gov. Patrick, a VIP at Evergreen’s 2008 ribbon cutting, was heavily criticized by his rivals in 2010 for providing so much public aid to a company during tight fiscal times.

The Evergreen closing will eliminate 800 jobs in the commonwealth, the Globe reported.

This reminds me of the Liberal government in Ontario, Canada – they wasted tons of money on green energy as well, and since the province owns the electricity company (Ontario Hydro), all the people have to pay double what they were paying before the green energy initiatives.

Obama raises gas prices by choking oil supply

Meanwhile, at the federal level, Obama is raising gas prices to appease his environmentalist faction. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For the past nine months, Pres. Barack Obama has unilaterally taken steps that will lead to higher gas prices for struggling consumers, and fewer jobs and economic growth for our nation. Now Obama’s handpicked oil-spill commission (made up of environmentalists and political allies) has recommended more steps that will take us farther down that path of needless economic chaos — and, unsurprisingly, President Obama has responded to this report by looking into additional unilateral actions he can take outside the oversight of Congress.

The commission report took its cues from President Obama, calling for more regulation, more government control, and less drilling.

[…]But the Obama commission apparently failed to consider the impact of reforms on taxpayers and on our energy industry. While the commission correctly included a focus on risk-based assessment for all individual offshore activities and operations, they spent entirely too much time appeasing environmental activists with proposals for ways to slow the industry down, like expanding the time it takes for a lease application to be reviewed and recommending a vast amount of new industry-wide regulations.

This is exactly what President Obama aims to do: slow down or stop entirely the drilling of fossil fuels in the U.S., raise the price of existing and new supply wherever it comes from, and use unilateral executive-branch action to make gas so expensive that alternative energy sources will become viable dollar-to-dollar.

Do you see now why people shouldn’t vote for the best looking or youngest candidate? It actually matters who the President is – because the President’s decisions affect the prices of the things you use every day.

That is why making voting decisions based on emotions and happy-clappy talk about helping the poor and helping the environment is such a bad idea. It’s anti-marriage and anti-family. If the government is taking people’s money and wasting it, then people can’t afford marriage and children. The people who whine the most about men not wanting to marry fail to see that it is exactly these feel-good policies that made marriage and parenting UNAFFORDABLE. Either vote based on emotions, or vote for family. There is no third way.

Either the government spends the worker’s money, or the worker spends his own money. What is it going to be? Either policy is meant to make us congratulate ourselves on our moral superiority, or it is meant to enable us to afford to do what we ought to do – marry and raise children. What is it going to be?

News

Ezra Levant testifies to Parliamentary committee on ethical oil drilling

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Ezra Levant

Ezra Levant’s testimony to the Parliamentary Natural Resources committee is a nice summary of his thesis in his new book “Ethical Oil”. (H/T Andrew)

An excerpt from Ezra Levant’s testimony:

One day we might discover a fuel source with no environmental side-effects, that is affordable and practical. But until that day comes, we need oil.

Not just us, but the United States, to whom we sell 1.4 million barrels of oilsands oil every day. And last year, more cars were sold in China than in the U.S. And they all want to be two-car families too, and same for India and the rest of the developing world.

So the choice isn’t oilsands oil versus some fantasy fuel of the future. It’s oilsands oil versus oil from the other places where oil comes from – mainly OPEC countries. I don’t know what God was thinking when he was handing out oil, but he gave it to the world’s bastards – places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria. Out of the top ten countries ranked by oil reserves, Canada is the only western, liberal democracy on the list.

That doesn’t matter if all you care about is driving your car. It all burns the same. But what about the ethics of the oil?

In my book, Ethical Oil, I suggest four liberal values by which we should judge the morality of a barrel of oil: respect for the environment; peace; fair wages for workers; and human rights.

I compare oilsands oil to OPEC oil using these four measures.

I come to the conclusion that oilsands oil is the “fair trade coffee” of the world’s oil industry.

And a bit later, he explains why Canada needs to drill more, and sell more oil to other countries.

The leader of the opposition has said it’s important to increase trade with China and India. I agree. Right now, those countries are forced to buy terrorist oil, dictatorship oil, Darfur oil. Because we only let Americans buy our oil.

I love our American neighbours. But it’s dangerous to have just one customer for our product. We’re at the mercy of protectionism and taxes. And sometimes we’re taken for granted. That’s why the pipeline to the West Coast is so strategically important – it makes us an independent country, with options.

I find it very irritating that so many of the anti-oilsands and anti-pipeline activists in Canada take their funding from U.S. lobby groups like the Tides Foundation. Of course it’s in America’s interest that no other customers are allowed to buy Canadian ethical oil.

But it’s in Canada’s interests that we are able to sell to whomever we choose. And if you care about industrial ethics, it’s in the world’s interest, too.

A lot of people are watching how Canada handles the oilsands miracle. Not just Canadians. The American Ambassador is watching, too. He hopes the Gateway pipeline is strangled, so he can have our oil all for himself.

The Saudi Ambassador is watching too. He hopes the pipeline is killed also, so he doesn’t lose any market share in Asia.

The United States should buy things from other countries – but not if they cause more pollution than we would, and not if there are sponsors of terrorism. When we buy things from other countries, we should do it because they can do it better and cheaper than we can. We should not be restricting our own domestic energy production, which is what the Democrats want to do, so that we can enrich countries that pollute and sponsor terrorism against us and our democratic allies.