Posts
[This is a post that originated January, 2010. I periodically update it to keep a running list of outrages by our Thug In Chief and his radical administration]
Somebody explain to me why the Obama regime should not be counted among the most lawless and corrupt we have seen in this country. Here are some examples:
21. As noted in #17 below, Obama committed our military to combat in Libya without consulting Congress. Sixty days have passed since, and Obama has not asked Congress for an authorization for this use of force in violation of the War Powers Act. Obama, in a transparent dodge, claims that the WPA does not apply because NATO is now in overall command of the combat operations targeting Libya. This makes a travesty of the War Powers Act and is, at best, unlawful.
20. Under Obama, the National Labor Relations Board, ostensibly a neutral organization, has become radically pro-Union. They have outrageously brought suit against Boeing to force the company to keep all production in unionized Washington. This is an Orwellian assault on capitalism, and indeed, it is an act that ignores both law and seven decades of precedent interpreting that law.
19. Obama's newly radicalized NLRB has also brought suit against Arizona because that state passed a law requiring secret ballots for unionizaiton. A secret ballot is the single most basic procedure guaranteeing fair and free elections in any democracy. The only reason to allow any other procedure is to make room for thuggery and intimidation by unions.
18. In perhaps his most thuggish act to date, Obama has proposed to sign an Executive Order that would require "all companies (and their officers) . . . to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts." What that means is that "[c]ompanies can bid and lose out for the sin of donating to Republicans. Or they can protect their livelihoods by halting donations to the GOP altogether—which is the White House's real aim." This is not just thuggery taken to a new level, it seems a clear violation of the First Amendment.
17. Obama has taken our nation into war a kinetic military action against Libya, after consulting, not Congress, but the U.N. And the left calls the war in Iraq illegal?
16. Obama betrayed our closest ally, the UK, in his single minded quest to get a START Treaty done at all costs with Russia. Despite the UK's refusal to allow the US to release their nuclear information to Russia, Obama agreed to do it in secret anyway. That comes on top of Obama potentially lying to Congress about the nature and effect of a provision in START tying our missle defense program to the START offensive nuclear weapons treaty.
15. Immediately after a Federal Court declared Obamacare unconstitutional in toto, the Obama regime announced their intent to ignore the decision and continue implementing Obamacare.
14. A federal judge today ruled that the Obama regime acted with “determined disregard” for the law "by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling" after the policy was struck down by the court.
13. The regime is now stonewalling Congress, refusing to respond to document requests from the House Oversight Committee. This should be viewed in conjunction with the Obama Justice Dept. refusal to respond lawful subpoenas from the Civil Rights Commission.
12. Obama is deeply involved in crony capitalism, picking the winners and losers in our economy. Now we learn that the Obama EPA, which started enforcing draconian new regulations on our energy sector in January, has issued the first waiver to those regulations. The recipient - the biggest of Obama's cronies, GE.
11. The number of entities now given waivers from Obamacare is in excess of 700, with over 40% of these waivers going to unions and other entities, such as AARP, that lent their strong support to passing Obamacare. Update 5/14/11: Make that number 1372, with HHS refusing to make public their criteria for granting or refusing waivers.
10. Obama is conducting a jihad against our coal industry. The most outrageous example of that jihad occurred recently when the EPA acted, for the first time in its history, to withdraw a permit properly issued three years ago to the largest coal mining operation in WV.
9. The HHS, acting with all the subtlety of the old Soviet politburo, threatened insurers with destruction of their business if they publicly point out that their rate increases are being caused by Obamacare. If that doesn't violate the First Amendment, then nothing does.
8. The Obama regime has turned to regulatory agencies to impose his deeply ideological agenda. The only body with legislative authority under our Constitution is Congress. Moreover, it is clear neither the 111th or 112th Congress would approve the power grabs that Obama's regulators have made. Yet today we have the EPA regulating plant food and the FCC claiming the power to regulate the Internet. It may be Constitutional, but it is a complete distortion of the government our Founders envisioned.
7. Don't forget Obama's extortion of GM & Chrysler bond holders to pay off the UAW. Who cares about the 5th Amendment and property rights.
6. Obama fired Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General of AmeriCorps, after he caught an Obama crony involved in corruption.
5. Obama is in the midst of unilateral, massive land and ocean grabs specifically aimed at shutting off new mining or drilling as part of his jihad on our energy sector. It is Constitutional according to black letter precedent, but yet again Obama is shutting Congress out of the decision making loop.
4. Obama paid off teacher's unions by infusing them with billions in cash while restricting states' ability to renegotiate union contracts, all as a part of the unnamed XXXX Act of XXXX.
3. Obama's DOJ is engaging in race-based unequal enforcement of civil rights laws and has lied about it under oath.
2. Obama decided to make recess appointments without even submitting individuals for Congressional confirmation - and at the same time justified his acts as necessary because of Republican obstructionism.
1. The Obama administration committed fraud in support of GM.
If Bush had done even one of the things above, our nation, from sea to shining sea, would have gone deaf from the din and decibel level of the left's primal screams. And do note that the above is just off the top of my head. It is hardly a complete list. Bottom line, the next time someone on the left screams in your ear that the right stands athwart the rule of law (or that a court decision they don't like is, ipse dixit, judicial activism), take aim at their crotch and kick them with all the force you can muster. Repeat as necessary until they experience an epiphany.
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Showing posts with label offshore drilling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label offshore drilling. Show all posts
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Obama's Lawless Thugocracy (Update 2)
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Obama's Lawless Thugocracy (Update 2)
Somebody explain to me why the Obama regime should not be counted among the most lawless and corrupt we have seen in this country. Here are some examples:
20. Under Obama, the National Labor Relations Board, ostensibly a neutral organization, has become radically pro-Union. They have outrageously brought suit against Boeing to force the company to keep all production in unionized Washington. This is an Orwellian assault on capitalism, and indeed, it is an act that ignores both law and seven decades of precedent interpreting that law.
19. Obama's newly radicalized NLRB has also brought suit against Arizona because that state passed a law requiring secret ballots for unionizaiton. A secret ballot is the single most basic procedure guaranteeing fair and free elections in any democracy. The only reason to allow any other procedure is to make room for thuggery and intimidation by unions.
18. In perhaps his most thuggish act to date, Obama has proposed to sign an Executive Order that would require "all companies (and their officers) . . . to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts." What that means is that "[c]ompanies can bid and lose out for the sin of donating to Republicans. Or they can protect their livelihoods by halting donations to the GOP altogether—which is the White House's real aim." This is not just thuggery taken to a new level, it seems a clear violation of the First Amendment.
17. Obama has taken our nation into war a kinetic military action against Libya, after consulting, not Congress, but the U.N. And the left calls the war in Iraq illegal?
16. Obama betrayed our closest ally, the UK, in his single minded quest to get a START Treaty done at all costs with Russia. Despite the UK's refusal to allow the US to release their nuclear information to Russia, Obama agreed to do it in secret anyway. That comes on top of Obama potentially lying to Congress about the nature and effect of a provision in START tying our missle defense program to the START offensive nuclear weapons treaty.
15. Immediately after a Federal Court declared Obamacare unconstitutional in toto, the Obama regime announced their intent to ignore the decision and continue implementing Obamacare.
14. A federal judge today ruled that the Obama regime acted with “determined disregard” for the law "by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling" after the policy was struck down by the court.
13. The regime is now stonewalling Congress, refusing to respond to document requests from the House Oversight Committee. This should be viewed in conjunction with the Obama Justice Dept. refusal to respond lawful subpoenas from the Civil Rights Commission.
12. Obama is deeply involved in crony capitalism, picking the winners and losers in our economy. Now we learn that the Obama EPA, which started enforcing draconian new regulations on our energy sector in January, has issued the first waiver to those regulations. The recipient - the biggest of Obama's cronies, GE.
11. The number of entities now given waivers from Obamacare is in excess of 700, with over 40% of these waivers going to unions and other entities, such as AARP, that lent their strong support to passing Obamacare.
10. Obama is conducting a jihad against our coal industry. The most outrageous example of that jihad occurred recently when the EPA acted, for the first time in its history, to withdraw a permit properly issued three years ago to the largest coal mining operation in WV.
9. The HHS, acting with all the subtlety of the old Soviet politburo, threatened insurers with destruction of their business if they publicly point out that their rate increases are being caused by Obamacare. If that doesn't violate the First Amendment, then nothing does.
8. The Obama regime has turned to regulatory agencies to impose his deeply ideological agenda. The only body with legislative authority under our Constitution is Congress. Moreover, it is clear neither the 111th or 112th Congress would approve the power grabs that Obama's regulators have made. Yet today we have the EPA regulating plant food and the FCC claiming the power to regulate the Internet. It may be Constitutional, but it is a complete distortion of the government our Founders envisioned.
7. Don't forget Obama's extortion of GM & Chrysler bond holders to pay off the UAW. Who cares about the 5th Amendment and property rights.
6. Obama fired Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General of AmeriCorps, after he caught an Obama crony involved in corruption.
5. Obama is in the midst of unilateral, massive land and ocean grabs specifically aimed at shutting off new mining or drilling as part of his jihad on our energy sector. It is Constitutional according to black letter precedent, but yet again Obama is shutting Congress out of the decision making loop.
4. Obama paid off teacher's unions by infusing them with billions in cash while restricting states' ability to renegotiate union contracts, all as a part of the unnamed XXXX Act of XXXX.
3. Obama's DOJ is engaging in race-based unequal enforcement of civil rights laws and has lied about it under oath.
2. Obama decided to make recess appointments without even submitting individuals for Congressional confirmation - and at the same time justified his acts as necessary because of Republican obstructionism.
1. The Obama administration committed fraud in support of GM.
If Bush had done even one of the things above, our nation, from sea to shining sea, would have gone deaf from the din and decibel level of the left's primal screams. And do note that the above is just off the top of my head. It is hardly a complete list. Bottom line, the next time someone on the left screams in your ear that the right stands athwart the rule of law (or that a court decision they don't like is, ipse dixit, judicial activism), take aim at their crotch and kick them with all the force you can muster. Repeat as necessary until they experience an epiphany.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Mr. President, About You're Energy Policy . . .?
It's not that Obama and his administration doesn't have an energy policy, its that what inchoate policy he does have is designed to drive us back to the days of horse and buggies for transport and campfires for heat. Obama's energy policy is concerned with making energy vastly more expensive for Americans and, indeed, to drive coal, our primary source of electricity generation, from the market.
Gas prices have skyrocketed 55% under the first two years of the Obama administration, yet that is nowhere near the goal of Obama's Energy Secretary, which is to:
. . . “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” At the time he made the statement, gas cost $7 – $8 a gallon in Europe.
Such prices would destroy America, where people and commerce normally traverse far greater distances daily than their typical European counterpart. Indeed, such prices would have deep ramifications for all aspects of our economy since virtually everything we do is dependent on energy. Moreover, the rise in gas and energy prices falls hardest on the poorest in our country. But that is a left wing goal that the Obama administration seems determined to achieve, in part at least by destroying our domestic oil production. This from the Heritage Foundation, describing acts by the Obama administration:
•Immediately after taking office in 2009, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah.
•The EPA announced new rules mandating the use of 36 billion gallons worth of renewable fuels (like ethanol) by 2020. [Note that ethanol actually increases green house gas emissions, increases food prices (which are now at world record highs, driving millions below the poverty line), and is a less efficient fuel than gasoline. In a word, it is the penultimate boondoggle.]
•This summer President Obama needlessly instituted, not one, but two outright drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico.
•After rescinding his outright offshore drilling ban, President Obama has refused to issue any new drilling permits in the Gulf, a policy that the Energy Information Administration estimates will cut domestic offshore oil production by 13% this year.
•Interior Secretary Salazar announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast will not be developed, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years;
•The Environmental Protection Agency has announced new global warming regulations for oil refineries;
•Interior Secretary Salazar announced new rules making it more difficult to develop energy resources on federal land.
Of course, that is not all for this administration. They are also conducting a war on coal. Coal provides nearly 50% of all the electricity generation in the U.S.:
The headline news for the coal industry in 2010 was what didn't happen: Construction did not begin on a single new coal-fired power plant in the United States for the second straight year.
This in a nation where a fleet of coal-fired plants generates nearly half the electricity used.
But a combination of low natural gas prices, shale gas discoveries, the economic slowdown and litigation by environmental groups has stopped - at least for now - groundbreaking on new ones.
"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work." . . .
Central to the left's war on coal and oil are the countless green organizations to whom we have turned over the keys to the courthouse, and with it, our energy and environmental policy. So at any rate, we aren't using our massive deposits of coal to provide affordable electricity for our citizens - ostensibly because doing so would contribute to greenhouse gasses. Instead, we are exporting ever increasing amounts of our coal to China so they can enjoy affordable electricity and contribute to greenhouse gasses. And then there is the EU, the entity that has done the most to promote the canard of global warming, is seeing a big increase in the building of new coal fired power plants, primarily in Germany.
The reality is that this destruction of our energy infrastructure will be felt for years to come, as energy prices continuously rise. It is insanity. The American Petroleum Institute recently pointed out, in an plea to alter Obama's destructive policies:
Obama's destruction of our economy is far from over, and indeed, his "energy policy" may, in the long run, may prove, in the near and mid-term, more destructive than Obamacare.Increased access to domestic oil and natural gas—rather than increased taxes on the U.S. oil and natural gas industry—is the best strategy for increasing government revenue, jobs and energy production, a new study by Wood Mackenzie concludes.
“U.S. oil and natural gas companies are a major force in our economy and, with the right policies in place, could drive even greater economic benefits,” said API President and CEO Jack Gerard, during a “State of American Energy” address in Washington today. “These companies produce most of the nation’s energy, put millions of people to work and deliver billions in taxes and royalties to our government. The study shows increased access to areas currently off-limits would create jobs, grow the economy and dramatically increase revenues to the Treasury, at a time when the U.S. deficit is of national concern.
“We urge the Congress and the administration to promote energy policies that will aid our economic recovery and reduce our debt. This study shows increased taxes would take us backwards.”
Increased access could (by 2025) create 530,000 jobs, deliver $150 billion more in tax, royalty and other revenue to the government, and boost domestic production by four million barrels of oil equivalent a day, according to the Wood Mackenzie study, “Energy Policy at a Crossroads: An Assessment of the Impacts of Increased Access versus Higher Taxes on U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Production, Government Revenue and Employment.” Raising taxes on the industry with no increase in access could reduce domestic production by 700,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day (in 2020), sacrifice as many as 170,000 jobs (in 2014), and reduce revenue to the government by billions of dollars annually. An additional 1.7 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in potential production that is currently of marginal economic feasibility would be at greater risk of not being developed under the modeled tax increase. . . .
Monday, May 10, 2010
Right & Wrong Responses To The Gulf Spill
The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was the Titanic of oil spills. It will certainly be one of the largest in size - and, like the "unsinkable" Titanic's own failure, it is one that few thought possible. Nearly two years ago, Fred Barnes wrote in the Weekly Standard:
Advances in technology . . . make serious offshore oil spills a thing of the past. One hundred eight platforms were destroyed and hundreds more damaged in the Gulf of Mexico by hurricanes Rita and Katrina without a single major spill. Californians may remember the damaging spill off Santa Barbara, but that was 40 years ago and was the result of ancient technology.
New technology also means the coastlines would not be marred by unsightly oil platforms. Drilling now goes miles deeper to capture oil once out of reach--and much farther offshore. . . .
While we can look on what Mr. Barnes wrote as a bit of a Pollyanna, the plain fact is what he was saying was accurate. Modern technology for offshore drilling comes with an impressive array of redundant safety features that have worked over the past several decades to make offshore drilling so free from spills that the most hazardous part of the oil production process came to be transporting the oil by tanker to the mainland. Some of those safety systems were discussed in a recent article on the spill in the Gulf:
Blowouts are infrequent, because well holes are blocked by piping and pumped-in materials like synthetic mud, cement and even sea water. The pipes are plugged with cement, so fluid and gas can’t typically push up inside the pipes.
Instead, a typical blowout surges up a channel around the piping. The narrow space between the well walls and the piping is usually filled with cement, so there is no pathway for a blowout. But if the cement or broken piping leaves enough space, a surge can rise to the surface.
There, at the wellhead of exploratory wells, sits the massive steel contraption known as a blowout preventer. It can snuff a blowout by squeezing rubber seals tightly around the pipes with up to 1 million pounds of force. If the seals fail, the blowout preventer deploys a last line of defense: a set of rams that can slice right through the pipes and cap the blowout.
Deepwater Horizon was also equipped with an automated backup system called a Deadman. It should have activated the blowout preventer even if workers could not.
So what happened at the Deepwater Horizon site, where the well head sits one mile below the surface of the water, in a perpetual night? The pressure at that depth is about 2,367 psi, far beyond the ability of any human to withstand. Indeed, only specialized submersibles can work at that depth.
The Deepwater site was in the process of being changed from an exploratory well head to a working well, with concrete poured 20 hours before the explosion and safety devices in the process of being emplaced. Somehow, some methane, which exists on and in the sea floor in the form of a slush like semi-solid, methane clathrate, was released into the pipe. This from ABC News:
As the workers removed pressure from the drilling column and introduced heat to set the cement seal around the wellhead, the chemical reaction created heat, destabilizing the seal and allowing a [methane] gas bubble to form inside the pipe.
. . . [A]s the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, the interviews said.
“A small bubble becomes a really big bubble,” Bea said. “So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face.”
It is not completely clear whether all of redundant safety systems were fully in place at the time of the blowout, and if not why not, though it is clear that what was in place suffered a cascade failure. Obviously it will be of great importance to identify how this accident managed to occur and insure that another like it is reasonably guarded against. Indeed, those who recognize the need for us to exploit our natural resources, including drilling for oil offshore, should be the loudest voices in demanding that we identify the precise causes of this Deepwater Horizon spill and in demanding that solutions be identified and tested before resumption of new drilling in the Gulf.
As an aside, we should likewise vociferously demand a thorough evaluation of the response to this Titanic of oil spills. Clearly, when Department of the Interior chief of staff Tom Strickland, responsible for coordinating the response to an oil spill, is on vacation and sees no need to return to work, there is an obvious problem. And that is only one small part of what appears to be the lack of any sort of robust response to the oil spill from the Obama administration.
But for many, this is an excuse to demand that the U.S. stop offshore drilling. If we give into that call, we will be foolish indeed. Phil Weingart at Plumb Bob Blog puts this accident, terrible though it might be, in context:
Incidents like the Exxon Valdez and this one give us reason periodically to consider the cost of maintaining an industrialized society.
The technological explosion and economic growth of the 19th and 20th centuries raised billions of people out of abject poverty and provided the great mass of ordinary people around the globe with basic sanitation, antibiotics, inexpensive clothing and food, transportation, communication, and other advantages in a lifestyle that was unavailable to kings in earlier eras. The West has nothing for which to apologize when we consider the advances conferred by technology. And yet, the price of that technology includes occasional accidents of a magnitude previously only produced by random acts of God, like volcanoes or earthquakes.
The question is, can we face those, work sensibly to minimize and contain them, and yet not succumb to the temptation to abandon technology? Victims and governments will initiate a head-hunt soon, looking to find a scapegoat on which to pin the blame. Gulf coast fishermen are grousing about how they were misled by BP, and some have already filed suit. Environmentalists are already using photos of waterfowl endangered by the oil slick to obstruct public support for the issuing of new offshore drilling leases. Can we competently assign responsibility without succumbing to the urge to create demons?
Accidents happen. So do stupid humans. And so long as those things are true, the advance of technology will be accompanied by the periodic accident.
Like accidents, politicians and governments also happen. Wherever they do, the self-righteous posture and puff to use the events to enhance their own images, and the gullible are taken in by the display. “At least they’re doing something.” Sure thing.
The important things that need to be done are procedures for minimizing the occurrence of accidents and improving the response to them. This almost never requires new regulation; BP is already, under existing law, going to pay the cost of the cleanup, not to mention the exorbitant public relations cost of having owned the platform that caused the incident. The incentives to avoid future accidents of this sort far exceed anything that can be accomplished by new regulations, and none of the techniques currently being used to prevent or clean up spills are the result of regulation. But new regulations will be written, because politicians need to appear to be doing something in order to impress gullible constituents.
Those who argue now that, as a result of the spill, we should forgo further exploitation of our resources are the same people who have been yelling for decades against any new drilling and further, that we need to ween ourselves off of dependency on fossil fuels. The reality is that we have made very significant advances in energy efficiency over the past few decades, but there is no realistic chance that, even with these advances, we can be weened off of oil at any point in the foreseeable future. This from Stephen Hayward at the Weekly Standard:
One remarkable fact is that American oil consumption has remained virtually flat over the last 30 years. Today, we use only slightly more oil than we did in 1978, even though the economy has more than doubled in real terms. This is testimony to the steady improvement in energy efficiency over the last generation, including—yes—our cars and trucks. Since 1975, energy consumption per dollar of economic output has fallen 50 percent. Though efficiency and conservation measures are beloved of environmentalists, it is doubtful any of the government’s manifold mandates, tax incentives, or direct subsidies have made a significant difference in the overall trend of energy efficiency in the United States. The basic market drivers—higher energy prices and expanding profits through resource efficiency—account for most of the improvement. So when we hear the handwringing about our growing dependence on foreign oil, now over 60 percent of our total oil consumption, we should be clear that this trend is entirely the result of declining domestic production and not any soaring demand for oil. Domestic oil production has fallen by more than 1 million barrels a day over the last 10 years. The United States now produces less oil than it did in 1947. This is pathetic. And unnecessary.
As Mr. Hayward makes clear in his thorough analysis, our energy policy is a morass where "cliché, wishful thinking, and wince-inducing ignorance dominate the discourse." The one thing that is clear is that, of all the possible responses to the oil spill, the one that we should not pursue is an end to drilling, whether on-shore or off.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Energy, Fusion and Obama
While I am an anthropogenic global warming skeptic and think that the "green energy" being pushed down our throats is a disaster waiting to happen, I do believe that in a few decades, we will see a revolution in energy arising out of the experiments now being conducted in fusion. Check out some of these links:
National Ignition Facility from today's NYT.
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France.
And follow the links at Power and Control, a great site for following the advances in energy and fusion in particular.
The danger between now and then is that Obama and the left do irreparable harm to our economy by one, cap and trade, and two, refusing to allow us to exploit our domestic energy resources. Do recall that during the campaign, Obama promised to allow additional off-shore drilling as gas prices topped $4 a gallon. Is anyone surprised that this was pure bull, and that Obama, now in power, is pursuing the opposite course. This is setting us up for a true disaster as we will be ever more dependant on foreign oil - and oil will continue to rise.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bastard
While the U.S. has turned its attention to getting this fiscal crisis sorted out, the utterly worthless Senate Majority Leader has used this opportunity to try and slip in a ban on shale oil exploration and mining by attaching to one of the bills about to pass through Congress.
Our fiscal problems are multi-fold. Clearly one of the problems is the exploding cost of energy. Our largest reserve of oil is in an estimated 2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil from oil shale. That is more oil than Saudi Arabia has reserves. Harry Reid is now trying to make sure America never has the chance to touch it.
The left is bound and determined to take power and remake America in accordance with their highly unrealistic, utopian paradigm. They do not care if they have to destroy Middle America in the process. As we see today, people like Harry Reid, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank who created this subprime mess and defended it against all attempts at reform, will, when the excrement hits the fan, blame the resulting perfect shit storm on the right. They are clear and present danger to our way of life. They are craven, hypocritical, and beyond shameless.
Tarring and feathering is too mild a response to all of this.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Round 1 Is In The Books, Score - America 1, Democrats 0
Democrats have conceded the drilling issue for the moment and will allow the Congressionally imposed moratorium on OCS drilling to expire on October 1. This does not mean that drilling will commence immense as there are still numerous other issues, including fed and state issuing of permits, royalty sharing agreements, the inevitable lawsuits, etc. That said, the Democrat strategy is to concede the issue for the moment to defuse it for the election. Their hope is to win in the next election and reimpose the restrictions then. This is only round 1, and while it is a victory of sorts for America, there is a long way to go before the insane Democratic refusal to allow exploitation of our resources is finally defeated.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Oil & Pelosi's Swamp
Oil prices have finally fallen below the $100 a barrel mark and look to be dropping in the near future as commodity markets worry less about supply of oil than about lessening demand brought about by crumbling financial markets. Even in the face disruption of supplies by Hurricane Ike, oil prices fell over $4 to $96.27 a barrel. In the face Ike, that is a measure of how supremely weak the market is at the moment.
The key word in that last sentence is "moment." As financial markets shake out, the same problems of limited supply and rising world demand will reassert their upward push on oil prices. Not even the Nancy Pelosi - who suspended the House in August without bring up an energy bill for fear of it being hijacked to force a vote on drilling - believes that she can possibly allow the matter to slide any longer.
Thus Pelosi has finally given up the ghost on no drilling for oil - or at least that is the line she is putting out for public consumption. Once promising to "drain the swamp" and conduct the most open and fair Congress in history, Pelosi has turned Congress into her own Politburo, refusing to allow votes that she might lose and shutting out the Republican members from input into laws she crafts. The latest - an energy package written completely by the left and designed to limit drilling through the back door.
________________________________________________________
To give some background, the only place offshore were oil drilling is allowed is in the the Gulf of Mexico. The states bordering the Gulf have both a say in allowing the driling and an economic incentive to allow it. They keep 1/3 of the royalties on the oil revenue. They collected some $9 billion for their state coffers last year.
With that in mind, Democrats have huddled for the past few weeks trying to figure a way around the conundrum off-shore drilling. The partisan result - the Pelosi Plan. The plan lifts the ban on offshore drilling with one hand but with the other gives states a right to veto drilling within 100 miles of their coastline and insures that they will do so by taking away the royalty sharing agreement. A state would be hard pressed to allow exploitation of natural resources until they have a deal to actually get paid for those resources.
Pelosi's disingenuous reason for killing the royalty sharing agreement is ostensibly because it would require a reworking of the budget because of "pay as you go rules." As applied to off-shore drilling, "Congressional Budget Office forecasts now include revenue from drilling going to the treasury. If money is diverted to states, it would have to be offset with tax hikes or spending cuts under “pay-go” rules." Siting that as an obstacle is an obvious canard. One, these rules are easilly waved - they just were for the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac. Two, the House has yet to submit any budgets for the next fiscal year. Three, the amount the CBO has budgeted in its projections for off-shore royalties is less than $1 billion a year over the next ten years. That would not require anything like the significant budget reworking that Pelosi is claiming. This is just another partisan hack job from the Queen of the Swamp.
(H/T Hot Air)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Nancy & The Hand Maidens
Funny, none of them seem to be employed by Big Oil, just guys who can't afford $4 a gallon gas. And unfortunately, none of them seem to have the wherewithall like Biden to get the nation to subsidize their chosen means of transport . . . .
One has to be unimpressed with Pelosi's rejoinders.
(H/T Hot Air)
The Democratic Convention Night 2
Bill Kristol calls in from the Pepsi Center. . . . Mark Warner was originally scheduled to speak in the 10 o'clock hour in primetime before Hillary Clinton, but Warner was moved to the less desireable pre-primetime bloc because he apparently refused to turn his speech into an attack on John McCain. . . . Hillary Rodham Clinton's most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a 20-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn't erase their frustrations.
It was the second night of the Democratic Convention with all eyes on Hillary and all thoughts on party unity. Beyond that, the speakers tonight spent an inordinate amount of time on the reoccuring theme that drilling for oil and exploiting our resources is all just an evil plot. Lastly, the keynote speaker, Gov. Warner, got demoted from his time slot for refusing to attack John McCain.
Whenever I hear Hillary speak in her incredibly grating tones, it effects me just like fingernails down a chalkboard. At any rate, her speech was the big event of the evening. It seemed a very carefully couched monologue with an eye towards 2012.
You can find the text of Ms. Clinton’s speech here. Her speech was as much if not more centered on herself than on Obama. She used her speech to paint herself into the feminist Hall of Fame. Beyond that, she listed her many policy positions, noting that Obama has the same positions.
I was listening for her to endorse Obama as having the experience necessary to be Commander in Chief and the judgment necessary to deal with our foreign policy challenges. Those are the gaping holes in Obama's resume that she so effectively exploited during the final primaries. And there is no question that those are the weaknesses hurting Obama’s campaign at the moment. But I heard none of that from her tonight. Seemingly her only message beyond self promotion was vote for Obama as better than the alternative. She said just enough to innoculate herself from any charges that she undercut Obama.
Even though Hillary mouthed the words "party unity" and stated that she now supports Obama for President, she did Obama no great favors this evening. It is an open question just how much of an impact this will have on the polls and, more particularly, on the PUMA wing of the party. My gut feeling is that it will not have a substantial impact on either.
Various other speakers spent a lot of time talking about energy policy and the futility of drilling for oil. I was amazed that they are still pushing that at this point. I hope the RNC is smart enough to make one night of the Republican convention nothing but a primer on oil and the utter fantasy being spun by the left on both supply and demand and the current cost and viability of alternative energy. We are at crunch time on energy. Failure to start the process to exploit our resources now will have potentially devestating effects on our economy years into the future.
The only other thing of note was the decision to bump Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, out of the prime slot just before the Hillary speech. Indeed, Gov. Warner was named as the Democrat’s "keynote speaker," not simply for his oratory, but because Virginia is a key state in play this campaign. The reason for the bump – apparently Gov. Warner has some ethics. This from the blog at the Weekly Standard:
Recall that Warner was given the primetime spot because the Obama campaign expected Virginia to be in play. Now apparently they think attacking McCain is more important. A touch of panic?
Read the entire post.
And so ends Day 2. The real fun is tomorrow when former President Clinton takes the stand. I really hope he loosens up with a few martinis before that one. I really do want to hear him repeat the words "Chicago thug."
Update: According to the Washington Post, many of the PUMA's remain unconvinced:
Despite Clinton's plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.
There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech's predictability. "It's a tactic," he said. "Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I'm still bitter." . . .
Monday, August 25, 2008
What Does Joe Biden Offer To Obama?
Biden’s ranking from the left-lib site TheMiddleClass.org: 95%. . . . Biden is fully invested in the progressive message on global warming. Biden cosponsored the Clean Power Act of 2005, to establish a cap-and-trade system. He has proposed two Senate resolutions on climate change, the 2006 Lugar-Biden Climate Change Resolution (PDF), and Senate Resolution 30, which calls for the United States to comply with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. . . . you have to begin here in the United States by capping emissions, increasing renewable fuels, establishing a national renewable portfolio standard [RPS], requiring better fuel economy for automobiles. I would cap emissions at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and set a national RPS of 20 percent. I would announce an executive order that the federal government would not purchase one single automobile for its fleet that gets less than 40 miles to the gallon. And I would not build a single solitary federal project without it being a green project. In the same interview, he spoke against clean coal, coal to liquid, and creating new nuclear plants. I could find no indication that he had ever been asked to put economic figures to his plans and his anti-oil agenda. Biden’s plan to segregate the government into a loose confederation is sophomoric and based on a highly flawed analysis. Imposing a loose confederation will do nothing to stem the violence. It will not provide for a "time out." As to the local Sunni insurgents, they are not fighting just so they can have a Sunni only government in Anbar province. To the contrary, they are fighting to reassert Sunni ascendancy over the entirety of Iraq. . . . Read the entire post. Iraqis themselves have recently voiced similar opposition to Biden’s plan. . . . [Biden's] record on the Islamic Republic of Iran -- perhaps the chief national security threat facing the next president -- suggests a persistent and dangerous judgment deficit. Biden's unyielding pursuit of "engagement" with Iran for more than a decade has made it easier for Tehran to pursue its nuclear program, while his partisan obsession with thwarting the Bush administration has led him to oppose tough sanctions against hard-liners in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Read the entire article.
Obama's choice of Biden as a running mate is understandable, superficially at least. Obama lacks the years of political experience and foreign policy experience that Biden can claim. But take more than a cursory look at Biden and you are left wondering at Obama's decision. Biden, like Obama, is a doctranaire progressive. And Biden's actions within the realm of "foreign policy" have been driven far more by partisan political considerations than analysis and sound judgment. Beyond the bare checking of a box, there seems little that Biden can do to help Obama.
By all accounts, Biden is both affable and glib. Most of those who know Joe Biden personally, regardless of their political leanings, like him.
Beyond personality, Biden is the purist of political animals. He has no military experience. He has no experience working in the private sector. He has no executive or managerial experience. Virtually his entire adult life after finishing law school has been spent campaigning for public office and serving in the Senate. Indeed, when he first entered the Senate, Obama was an 8 year old child in Indonesia and John McCain was enduring his fifth year as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. In terms of seniority, Biden is the second longest serving Senator – and I suspect that, after the wheels of our judicial system stop turning in the frozen north, he will be the most senior member of the Senate.
Domestic Issues, Energy & Trade
On most social and economic issues, Biden and Obama are both on the far left of the Democratic spectrum. As Laer at Cheat Seeking Missles explained:
Biden voted to keep the death tax in place, for the 2008 phony stimulus package, for expanding the Child’s Health Insurance Program, for more no strings attached funding for education, for giving citizen’s rights to the children of illegals. He voted for every global warming cash cow . . .
And, like Obama, Biden has been strongly opposed to the U.S. exploiting its own energy resources. He has long pushed for a large scale movement towards biofuels and other alternative energy, seemingly irrespective of their viability or the economic consequence. In 2006, he voted against the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, an act to allow for new drilling for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico that eventually passed.
Biden has proposed a far left green agenda that includes the same continuing subsidies for ethanol that are hurting the environment and driving food prices through the roof. In a Salon interview last year, Biden proposed a series of radical, unilateral actions by the U.S. to combat global warming:
When it comes to trade and Big Labor, Joe Biden also hews to the progressive line. In the 1990’s, with Clinton at the helm, he supported NAFTA. Since then, he has opposed all new free trade agreements on the grounds that they do not have sufficient protections for labor and the environment. Not surprisingly, Biden’s voting record was rated 100% by the AFL-CIO last year.
As described by ABC’s Political Punch, Biden is "exceedingly well-connected to the lobbying industry" and has benefited greatly from their largesse. Politico reports that "Biden has accepted $5,133,072 in contributions from lawyers and lobbyists since 2003." The same article notes that Biden has been most closely tied to MBNA. Until MBNA was bought out in 2005, its employees were the single largest group of contributors to Biden's campaigns. In one of the few instances when Biden has broken ranks with progressives, it was in 2005 when he supported Bankruptcy Reform bill that MBNA was strongly pushing. Biden also has a son who owns a lobbying firm with two other named partners.
I had to laugh the other day when I saw Democrats touting Biden as "a common man" because he rides to work each day from Delaware to D.C. by Amtrak. The reality is that the common man is paying $4 a gallon for gas and contemplating which variety of Little Friskies to have for supper while Biden is picking the poor bastard's pocket to fund the tens of billions of dollars going to subsidize Biden's personal transport. I can't wait to see the McCain ad on this one.
Biden rides to and from work every day on the taxpayers dime. Amtrak has been losing money since its inception. It is a huge boondogle that Congress should have privatized decades ago. It has not - and Amtrak has only remained afloat because of - the efforts of Sen. Biden and a few others who protect Amtrak and keep subsidizing it. Indeed, Biden even got his son placed on the Amtrak board of directors.
Perhaps Biden finds Amtrak an economic necessity. After all, Biden, by his own admission, does not "have Barack Obama money." In any event, Amtrak does not symbolize Biden’s closeness to Joe Sixpack, it symbolizes just how much Biden is putting the screws to Joe Sixpack.
Judiciary
Since 1987, at least when the Democrats have been in the majority, Biden has been the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been horrendous.
Biden is ideologically committed to the Living Constitution theory - the theory that has done so much damage of late to our written Constitution. He is personally responsible for politicizing the judicial confirmation process. He, along with Ted Kennedy, was responsible for turning the name of Robert Bork into a verb. And it was Biden who turned the nominating process for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas into a three ring partisan circus. Lastly, who among us that has actually sat through a nomination hearing presided over by Chairman Biden has not pondered chewing through an artery rather than spend another minute listening to Biden prattle on endlessly in an incoherent stream of consciousness monologue.
Foreign Policy
Obama chose Biden as his running mate for Biden's long experience with foreign policy. Obama has no foreign policy credentials and he has been getting savaged in the polls over it. Thus, he is looking to Biden to shore him up. Biden is, on the surface, the perfect choice. He is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Much like Forest Gump, Biden has found himself standing near the epicenter of many important events going on around him. In that sense at least, he has loads of experience. Judgment and wisdom are another matter.
Redstate notes that "Biden was in favor of the Nuclear Freeze movement of which large parts were subsidized by the KGB" and that he voted against the development and deployment of MX and Trident ICBMs. They also note that Biden was in favor of sustaining the communist dictatorship in Nicaragua and against supporting a nascent democracy in El Salvador.
When it comes to how we handle the war on terror and the spectrum of activities related thereto, Biden has been, at times, off the charts. He has long been calling for shutting down the prison camp at Guantanamo on the grounds that it was Guantanamo’s existence rather than the doctrine of Salafism that was driving Muslims world-wide to flock to terrorist banners. That displays a truly fundamental and naive misunderstanding of what motivates Islamic terrorism. Biden voted against the Military Commissions Act and he proposed legislation that would release all Guantanamo prisoners who have not been charged with a war crime. This would mean releasing nearly all the prisoners. In what war has any nation ever released combatants prior to the end of hostilities? Obviously its not Biden's kids on the front lines of the war on terror.
Biden has been called a "liberal internationalist" by the LA Times, though they did not define the term. I am unsure of precisely what it means, but it would seem to be a curious philosophy holding that we can and should use force only so long as we have no strategic interests at stake. Once our own strategic interests are implicated, then force is no longer an option. Thus we see Biden the hawk, advocating for the use of force in the Balkans and the deployment of U.S. troops to Darfur on humanitarian grounds - something for which Obama long ago also called. In neither locale were or are our strategic interests in play. Those also happen to be two areas where the left, in an effort to show their bona fides as strong leaders, used or have proposed using our military.
That in mind, Biden's vote in favor of using military force against Iraq might seem an anamoly. It is not. Our nation was not long from the 9-11 attacks when the vote came up for use of force on Iraq. It was a time when even the majority of Democrats were willing to sign up for use of force in the face of what all believed at the time was a WMD threat from a brutal dictator. And that really is the key to understanding the anamoly and Biden's seemingly contradictory positions on Iraq over the years. Biden regularly votes whatever the party line of the moment may be.
Biden was solidly in his party majority as one of 45 Democrats who voted against the use of force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991. He was again with the majority of his party in voting to authorize the use of military force against Iraq in 2002.
Through 2005, like virtually all Congressional Democrats, Biden was a hawk on Iraq. In mid-2005, he was calling for more troops to mount a full counterinsurgency. He, like Obama in 2005, was strongly against any sort of time line for withdraw of our troops. Biden stated at the time: "A deadline for pulling out … will only encourage our enemies to wait us out" … it would be "a Lebanon in 1985. And God knows where it goes from there."
But when it became apparent that there was partisan gain to be had in opposing the Iraq War, Biden jettisoned concerns of our national security in a heart beat. He, along with his other Democratic colleagues, began doing all they could to oppose the surge and legislate defeat. Biden spent a good part of March, 2007 attempting to get the authorization for use of military force in Iraq rescinded. He also joined in with Murtha in slandering the U.S. military over the Haditha "massacre."
There is no question that 30+ years in the Senate have given Biden experience. What they have not done is given him judgment or imbued in him a belief in any particular principle or set of principles that trump his partisan political calculus. And for all of his experience and all of his supposed intelligence, some of the proposals he has come up with are just mind-numbing. That is true domestically, with his embrace of green policies that would harm our economy, and it is equally true in the foreign policy area – his supposed strength.
In April, 2007, Biden claimed that the surge would not work. He completely misjudged the strength of the Sadr movement, ignored the larger goals of al Qaeda, he ignored the threat posed to Iraq by Iran, and either did not understand the capabilities of our military or he deliberately chose to disregard that consideration for political gain. On those bases, he proposed the worst alternative imaginable - the withdraw of all U.S. forces and the separation of Iraq into three independent states. I wrote on it at the time:
And it is the same for al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that has proved so deadly. There is a reason Al Qaeda in Iraq is so named and not called Al Qaeda in Anbar. . . .
In light of these goals, Biden’s plan to somehow end the violence by imposing a decentralized government with Sunni’s in control only over Anbar and with a piece of the oil revenues seems nonsensical. Moreover, it completely ignores another critical fact. It is only through a reasonably strong central government with Kurd and Sunni involvement that the Khomeinist influence of Iran’s theocracy will be minimized in Iraq. Neither Kurd nor Sunni have any love for their neighbor. But in a decentralized government, the Khomeinist theocracy will have an opportunity to significantly influence if not dominate politics of the Shia government in the south. It is the worst of all possible outcomes for the United States.
Update: Michael Rubin, in an opinion piece at the Washington Post, makes the case that Biden has exercised similarly poor judgment in regards to Iran:
. . . Biden's political games have made him Tehran's favorite senator. As Gen. David Petraeus struggled to unite Iraqis across the ethnic and sectarian divide, Iran's Press TV seized on Biden's plan for partitioning Iraq and featured his statements with the headline "US plans to disintegrate Iraq." Biden's attack-dog statements about U.S. policy failures emboldened Iranian hard-liners to defy diplomacy. In the Dec. 7, 2007, official sermon, Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani speaking on behalf of Iran's supreme leader, declared, "This Senator [Biden] correctly says Israel could not suppress Hizbullah in Lebanon, so how can the U.S. stand face-to-face with a nation of 70 million? This is the blessing of the Guardianship of the Jurists [the theocracy] . . . which plants such thoughts in the hearts of U.S. senators and forces them to make such confessions." The crowd met his statement with refrains of "Death to America."
Obama picked Biden for experience, but he might also have considered judgment. When it comes to Iran, Biden could stare down dictators; too bad he blinks.
Now in fairness to Biden, while he hews to the far left on many of his positions, he is also a bit of a wildcard. His gut reaction to things is intellectually honest - though partisan political consideration oft drives him elsewhere in the long run. Gateway Pundit has posted a video from last year with Biden discussing the reasons we invaded Iraq, and to his credit, Biden does not rewrite history nor gild the lilly.
Conclusion:
I just don’t see why Obama chose Biden as his running mate. Biden is at the same very far end of the spectrum ideologically as Obama, so he is no help in balancing out the ticket. Biden is not going to appeal to centrists and independents. True, Biden can lay claim to "foreign policy experience," but Biden provides a target rich environment as to just what that experience has been and the lack of judgment Biden has displayed. I have not even touched on the fact that Biden is a walking gaffe machine with a ton of baggage, much of it at complete odds with the One’s message of hope and change. Indeed, as No Oil For Pacifists points out, to the extent Biden represents change, its 360 degrees of it.
Further, Obama's choice of Biden is a giant neon sign of an admission by Obama that he is perceived as weak on foreign policy and national defense and is in need of adult supervision. Victor Davis Hanson recently commented on the choice of Biden, saying "as the old stag, he can advise Bambi on the ways of the forest." It is an open question whether voters will see the presence of Biden as a salve for their concerns about Obambi's weaknesses.
So far, the answer to that question is no. The polls show no bump whatsoever from the addition of Biden to the ticket. I wonder how long it will be before Obama starts to feel the same buyer’s remorse for choosing Biden that many on the left today are apparently feeling about having chosen Obama?
Update: The polls are actually showing a drop after the Biden announcement. "Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama’s Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, . . . This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking." How much of that is due to Hillary supports frothing over the Biden selection is not clear.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Bipartisan Support For The Pickens Plan
I blogged three weeks ago on Democrats and the Pickens Plan - a plan that includes everything from offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR to exploiting oil shale and natural gas. Its a kitchen sink plan with all of the above being in addition to pursuing development of alternative energy - something the left apparently hasn't yet grasped from their endorsements above. Unfortunately, all of the video was from Red Lasso which has now been shut down by law suits from the MSM. This you tube video from the Republicans via Hot Air makes the points just as well.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Washington Post Editorial Board versus The National Resources Defense Counsel
THE NATURAL Resources Defense Council Action Fund . . . calls on supporters "to stop the giveaway of our coasts." It is urging visitors to its Web site to send a pre-written letter to their members of Congress that says, "I am not buying the lie . . . that sacrificing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and America's coastal waters to oil drilling would make a real difference in gas prices -- either today or twenty years from today!" And the missive adds, "With just three percent of the world's oil reserves, our nation simply doesn't have enough oil to impact the global market or drill our way to lower prices at the pump." Read the entire article. Private industry has long been pursuing alternative energy forms. They are simply not yet ready to substitute for oil. To be satisfied with high oil prices while awaiting the mastering of alternative sources seems a sure way to undercut our economy on a grand scale. 
There is an interesting editorial in WaPo today taking to task one of the many nature worshiping eco-nut groups, in this case the National Resources Defense Council, who want to insure that the U.S. does not exploit its natural resources. The NRDC took out full page ads in newspapers across the country charging that "Bush's plan" to drill for oil off-shore and to pursue oil shale development is "pure snake oil." WaPo responded, noting that the NRDC was not being honest about at least three points: We probably have much more than simply 3% of the world's oil reserves, but are simply unable to even explore under current regulations; the oil companies are in fact using their current leases; and drilling offshore does not present the environmental dangers it did decades ago.
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This from the editorial board of the Washington Post:
The NRDC's arguments above neatly encapsulate the position taken by environmentalists and other opponents of offshore drilling. . . . [T]here are three "truths" masquerading as fact among drilling opponents that need to be challenged:
· Drilling is pointless because the United States has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. This is a misleading because it refers only to known oil reserves. According to the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), while there are an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil in the off-limits portions of the OCS, those estimates were made using old data from now-outdated seismic equipment. In the case of the Atlantic Ocean, the data were collected before Congress imposed a moratorium on offshore drilling in 1981. In 1987, the MMS estimated that there were 9 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. By 2006, after major advances in seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion barrels. In short, there could be much more oil under the sea than previously known. The demand for energy is going up, not down. And for a long time, even as alternative sources of energy are developed, more oil will be needed.
· The oil companies aren't using the leases they already have. According to the MMS, there were 7,457 active leases as of June 8. Of those, only 1,877 were classified as "producing." As we pointed out in a previous editorial, the five leases that have made up the Shell Perdido project off Galveston since 1996 are not classified as producing. Only when it starts pumping the equivalent of an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day at the end of the decade will it be deemed "active." Since 1996, Shell has paid rent on the leases; filed and had approved numerous reports with the MMS, including an environmentally sensitive resource development plan and an oil spill recovery plan that is subject to unannounced practice runs by the MMS; drilled several wells to explore the area at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; and started constructing the necessary infrastructure to bring the oil to market. The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that charge never made sense.
· Drilling is environmentally dangerous. Opposition to offshore drilling goes back to 1969, when 80,000 barrels of oil from an offshore oil well blowout washed up on the beaches of Santa Barbara. In 1971, the Interior Department instituted a host of reporting requirements (such as the resource development and oil spill recovery plans mentioned above) and stringent safety measures. Chief among them is a requirement for each well to have an automatic shut-off valve beneath the ocean floor that can also be operated manually. According to the MMS, between 1993 and 2007, there were 651 spills of all sizes at OCS facilities (in federal waters three miles or more offshore) that released 47,800 barrels of oil. With 7.5 billion barrels of oil produced in that time, that equates to 1 barrel of oil spilled per 156,900 barrels produced. That's not to minimize the danger. But no form of energy is perfect or without trade-offs. Besides, if it is acceptable to drill in the Caspian Sea and in developing countries such as Nigeria where environmental concerns are equally important, it's hard to explain why the United States should rule out drilling off its own coasts.
The strongest argument against drilling is that it could distract the country from a pursuit of alternative sources of energy. There's no question that the administration has been lax on that front. True leadership would emphasize both alternative sources and rational approaches to developing oil and natural gas. No, the United States cannot drill its way to energy independence. But with the roaring economies of China and India gobbling up oil in the two countries' latter-day industrial revolutions, the United States can no longer afford to turn its back on finding all the sources of fuel necessary to maintain its economy and its standard of living. What's required is a long-term, comprehensive plan that includes wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels and nuclear -- and that acknowledges that oil and gas will be instrumental to the U.S. economy for many years to come.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Part III: Why Exploit Our Domestic Oil Resources
Oil Shale – 800,000,000,000 – 2,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil How fast any of these assets could be brought on line is an issue. In some places, such as off the coast of California where drilling was halted three decades ago but some of the rigging is still in place, I have seen an estimate of one year though I can’t find the link now. As to ANWR, given that the drilling site has already been fully explored, most estimates show production becoming available in one to three years from start of drilling. The estimates of yield are 1,000,000 barrels of oil per day. As to the others, there still has to be exploration and ten years is probably a reasonable estimate. All of this assumes that drilling, even if approved, is not sidetracked by over-regulation and by private lawsuits brought under the EPA and ESA - all of which is discussed in Part II, above. Explanation: Methodology: Retail gasoline prices are the result of literally hundreds of factors including crude oil supply, global demand, refinery capacity, regulation, taxes, weather, the value of the dollar, etc. Therefore it is impossible to say with certainty what one individual action will do to the overall price. However, based on what we know about the impact of crude oil supply and prices it is possible to develop some potential ranges of impact on gasoline prices for certain policy changes. For example, using the methodology employed by Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats that suspending shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (between 40-77,000 barrels of oil a day) would reduce gas prices by at least 5 cents, bringing ANWR online (at least one million barrels of oil a day) could impact gasoline prices by between 70 cents and $1.60. On the Democratic side, there are two sets of figures to look at. The first comes from Charles Schumer. On the floor of the Senate, he stated a month ago that an increase in world supply of 1,000,000 barrels per day would immediately drop the price of oil by fifty cents. That was part of his call to somehow force Saudi Arabia to begin pumping an extra million barrels of oil per day. The second set of figures also comes from Senator Shumer. Apparently it is only if that oil is produced in Saudi Arabia would it impact the price of gas under the well worn rules of supply and demand. A million barrels of additional production from domestic sources would, according to Senator Schumer and essentially all of his Democratic colleagues, have nominal, if any impact on gas prices.
How does $300 a barrel oil in a decade strike you? That is the prediction of T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire octogenarian oil man, unless things change. His prior prognostications on the oil market have proven accurate over the years.
It does not take a PhD in economics to recognize that supply and demand is at the heart of the rising cost of oil – although if you wish to rely on an economist Thomas Sowell would be a good one to consult. [As an aside, the exchange rate of the dollar adds between 15% to 20% to the cost of a barrel of oil today over the exchange rate in 2000, but that is beyond the scope of this post.]. Because supply has stagnated while demand has risen, we are getting hit from two sides. One, the base price of oil is going to continuously rise with rising demand. Further, demand looks to trend ever upward for the forseeable future. Two, because the market is tight with demand at or exceeding supply, it will remain volatile, subject to high fluctuations, if there is any significant threat to supply, whether it be a threat from God, Gaia or man.
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Note: This is the third in a series of posts looking at our energy alternatives.
Part I – The Economics of Alternative Energy - an examination of the viability and cost effectiveness of wind, solar, geo-thermal, bio-mass, bio-fuel, and nuclear.
Part II - Oil & The Hostile Domestic Regulatory Environment - a look at the regulatory scheme put in place since 1970 that prohibits or otherwise limits our ability to exploit our domestic oil and natural gas.
As to demand, it has exploded. The rise in demand has varied from country to country, but worldwide it increased 15% in the 1990’s and has already increased 10% from 2000 to 2005. Much of that comes from China which is now importing about 4 million barrels of oil per day. That is 60% of its oil supplies and over four times the oil it was importing just 8 years ago. India’s figures, though lower, are growing at a similar percentage rate. And these economies are just starting to expand. World wide demand is going to grow.
Supply was able to roughly match demand through 2004. World oil production stagnated in 2005 and has not kept pace with this explosion in demand since. Thus, we get what some cynically call the Pelosi premium as markets adjusted post-2005 to the new supply and demand equation:
(From Freep via Gateway Pundit)
New sources of oil need to be found, but as the major oil fields play out, these are expected to be more expensive to exploit. That said, they do exist to be exploited, particularly in the U.S. where we are sitting on possibly trillions of barrels of reserves between ANWR, coastal sites and oil shale.
So what is our supply and what effect would that have on demand and the price of gas at the pump?
Estimates of recoverable oil from our domestic resources currently off-limits to exploration or drilling include the following:
Continental Shelf (East & West Coast) – 115,000,000,000 barrels of oil
ANWR – 10,000,000,000 barrels of oil
What would this increase in supply mean to oil and gas prices?
Using Republican figures, this would at least bring the cost of gas down to about $2.00 per gallon. Here was the basis for their assessment.
Here is the explanation of the above chart from Congressman Roy Blunt:
Someone is being less than honest with America. And given that two thirds of voters now favor expanded domestic drilling, I’d say the jury has reached a verdict on who is telling the truth.
Eventually, and the sooner the better, we need to move off of oil. The writing is on the wall, and unlike the 70’s and 80’s when the impetus to find cost effective alternative energy was overcome by the Saudis flooding the markets with cheap oil, I can’t see this one going away. The Saudis are producing near capacity already and demand is going to continue to rise. Even fully exploiting our own resources is only going to buy us time to develop alternatives. But, as I explained in detail in Part I linked above, alternative energy simply is not yet developed to the point that they can be substituted for oil and gas. Thus, not exploiting our oil resources in the absence of viable and cost effective alternatives is a recipe for economic disaster. While Obama may welcome high gas prices, Middle America is just beginning to suffer and our economic figures will eventually begin to show the pain.
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