Obama Admn keeping Oil drilling ban ($6 a gallon gas here we come) - Told You So

[Soul Crusher]

Shocker: Domestic Oil Production Down, Foreign Imports Up
Hotair ^ | 03/11/2011 | Jazz Shaw



Fortunately for all of us, the wise energy policies of the Obama administration have us well on the way to a sustainable, secure energy future for our nation. After all, who could argue with a policy where we seek to import less oil from abroad, stifle the domestic production of such resources and do nothing to replace the shortfall?

With that in mind, surely nobody would expect a result like this.




The lack of effective leadership on this vital issue has drawn the ire of a group of conservative leaders who recently provided a summary of just what we can expect in the future if nothing happens. Brace yourselves, as I’m sure none of you could have called this one.

Issue-in-Brief: Continued instability in the Middle East, combined with unprecedented foreign demand for oil and an uncertain economic recovery at home, has left the United States at the mercy of foreign dictators and markets – issues that would be alleviated if the Administration lifted its self-imposed energy freeze and let domestic producers get back to work, particularly in the Gulf. There is an obvious lack of leadership from the Obama Administration.

Demand for Oil is Skyrocketing

•Since President Obama assumed office gas prices have risen 87%! (From $1.83 to $3.43 and even higher in some states!)
•Global demand for oil is rising, and the competition for foreign resources has intensified. By 2035, the United States, Japan, OECD Europe, China, and India are projected to need 25 percent more imported oil than in 2005, with China and India accounting for the major portion of that increase.
•Instead of reaping the economic and social benefits of developing our domestic resources, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), even despite the recent permit granted by the Department of Interior (DOI), remains closed for business. According to the Energy Information Agency, domestic offshore oil production will fall 13 percent in 2011, a loss of about 220,000 barrels/day, mainly due to the continued lack of permits for the GOM.
Shocking. That’s the only word for it. Who could have imagined that we would have to import more oil from unstable foreign sources if we don’t allow domestic producers to drill for it here? With this in mind, I would like to officially nominate the Obama administration for the Hot Air Capt. Louis Renault Award.

[kcballer]

Obama Administration's Increasing Reliance on unstable Foriegn Energy.

Nice spelling.  Hahaha really official.

[kcballer]

So i was having a read of the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook.  Here are some interesting things to ponder -

There are many reasons for market uncertainty that could push oil prices higher or lower than current expectations.  Among the uncertainties are: the continued unrest in producing countries and its potential impact on supply; decisions by key OPEC member countries regarding their production response to the global recovery in oil demand and recent supply losses; the rate of economic recovery, both domestically and globally; fiscal issues facing national and sub-national governments; and China';s efforts to address concerns regarding its growth and inflation rates.

World crude oil and liquid fuels consumption grew by an estimated 2.4 million bbl/d in 2010 to 86.7 million bbl/d, the second largest annual increase in at least 30 years.  This growth more than offset the reductions in demand during the prior two years and surpassed the 2007 consumption level of 86.3 million bbl/d.  EIA expects that world liquid fuels consumption will grow by 1.5 million bbl/d in 2011 and by an additional 1.7 million bbl/d in 2012 (World Liquid Fuels Consumption Chart).  Non-OECD countries will make up almost all of the growth in consumption over the next 2 years, with the largest demand increases coming from China, Brazil, and the Middle East.  EIA expects that, among the OECD regions, only North America will show growth in oil consumption over the next two years, offsetting declines in OECD Europe and Asia.

Hmmm and Exxon Mobil expects to replace .95 barrels of liquid crude for every 1 barrel it produces over the next 10 years.  Considering it is the largest refiner in the world, where do you think oil prices are going?  And why would drilling make little more than a dent in the price of oil over the next few years?

[240 is Back]

nuclear energy will take a hit if this in japan blows sky high.

[Fury]

nuclear energy will take a hit if this in japan blows sky high.

Haha, no it won't.

[240 is Back]

Haha, no it won't.

Suppose this thing shoots radiation all over japan and we hear a month straight stories of all the fallout misery. 

No politician will stand on tv and shout about his new nuclear plant bill at that point.  They'd hold off 6 months.

Same way people stopped grabbing their junk screaming "drill baby drill!" for 9 months after the BP Gulf mess.  It's cool to yell about drilling NOW.  But they had to wait a while.

[Fury]

Suppose this thing shoots radiation all over japan and we hear a month straight stories of all the fallout misery.  

No politician will stand on tv and shout about his new nuclear plant bill at that point.  They'd hold off 6 months.

Same way people stopped grabbing their junk screaming "drill baby drill!" for 9 months after the BP Gulf mess.  It's cool to yell about drilling NOW.  But they had to wait a while.

Yeah man, there are tons of nuclear plants sitting in areas where a 9.0 earthquake and a 50 foot tall wall of water can hit them.  

The plant handled this pretty damn impressively. 3 of the 4 reactors were shut down without a problem and the other one has a minor leak after being hit by one of the worst natural disasters in history. Thumbs up for nuclear energy!

[240 is Back]

Yeah man, there are tons of nuclear plants sitting in areas where a 9.0 earthquake and a 50 foot tall wall of water can hit them. 

The plant handled this pretty damn impressively. 3 of the 4 reactors were shut down without a problem and the other one has a minor leak after being hit by one of the worst natural disasters in history. Thumbs up for nuclear energy!

Doesn't matter man. 

Ask any soccer mom if she wants a nuke power plant in her city, 5 minutes after she's watching some heartbreak news story on mutated japanese kids.

Hell, "drill baby drill" sure as hell wouldn't affect 95% of americans with anything like a BP spill.  But everyone STFU for a while about it.  It's jsut what politicians do - let things cool off.

[Soul Crusher]

Doesn't matter man. 

Ask any soccer mom if she wants a nuke power plant in her city, 5 minutes after she's watching some heartbreak news story on mutated japanese kids.

Hell, "drill baby drill" sure as hell wouldn't affect 95% of americans with anything like a BP spill.  But everyone STFU for a while about it.  It's jsut what politicians do - let things cool off.

How do you think that soccer slut will react with rolling blakouts in 90 degrees in July and her house smells like shit, her kids are crying for AC, every day is a bad hair day, she is sitting in a pool of sweat daily,  etc?

[Fury]

Doesn't matter man. 

Ask any soccer mom if she wants a nuke power plant in her city, 5 minutes after she's watching some heartbreak news story on mutated japanese kids.

Hell, "drill baby drill" sure as hell wouldn't affect 95% of americans with anything like a BP spill.  But everyone STFU for a while about it.  It's jsut what politicians do - let things cool off.

Mutated Japanese kids. You're making some amazing assumptions here, what with the fact that everyone in the area of that nuke plant was evacuated hours ago.

The half dozen or so refineries burning right now says a lot, though.

[240 is Back]

How do you think that soccer slut will react with rolling blakouts in 90 degrees in July and her house smells like shit, her kids are crying for AC, every day is a bad hair day, she is sitting in a pool of sweat daily,  etc?

hey, i didn't say there was any common sense element to it.  Same with drilling - it's safe and I could give a shit if we trash some wilderness if it means we get off the saudi teet.

I'm just telling ya the reality of things is that following any well publicized tragedy/event involving drilling, nuke energy, guns, whatever... politicians know to keep their heads down for a little bit until the masses forget about it and the stigma is gone.

Unless you think it's a coincidence that palin dropped "drill baby drill" suddenly after BP?  And another coincidence that she stopped her nonstop "reload" rhetoric 5 seconds after the Giffords shooting?  Palin was 100% in the clear on both of these - her domestic drilling policy has zero to do with BP, and her reload comments had nothing to do with Gifford shooting.

But she's media saavy, and knows to STFU on hot topics for a few months to let people forget, right or wrong, related or not.

[240 is Back]

You're making some amazing assumptions here, what with the fact that everyone in the area of that nuke plant was evacuated hours ago.

really?  I used the word IF.   

nuclear energy will take a hit if this in japan blows sky high.

So I didn't assume anything.  IF it blows up, you bet your collar poppin' ass that US politicians (obama included) will STFU about nuclear energy for a few months.

Really, we're just arguing hypothetical political strategy here.  Sounds like they'll get it under control.

[240 is Back]

How do you think that soccer slut will react with rolling blakouts in 90 degrees in July and her house smells like shit, her kids are crying for AC, every day is a bad hair day, she is sitting in a pool of sweat daily,  etc?

Thread saved.

[Soul Crusher]

Thread saved.

lol  THAT'S NOT THE TYPE i AM TALKING ABOUT.

I'm talking about that yupie pofs with perfect nails, drives a expedition or yukon or X5, has the perfect highlights in herhair, the Louie Vuitton bag, has kids dressed with only LL Bean, slaps the shit out of her pussified husband every night, etc.     

[240 is Back]

lol  THAT'S NOT THE TYPE i AM TALKING ABOUT.

I'm talking about that yupie pofs with perfect nails, drives a expedition or yukon or X5, has the perfect highlights in herhair, the Louie Vuitton bag, has kids dressed with only LL Bean, slaps the shit out of her pussified husband every night, etc.     

again, being right factually - and being right in the media perception sense - are two different things.  Period.

Doesn't matter if it's related.  IF IF IF that thing blows, then politicians will walk on eggshells for the next 6 months about the topic.  You can argue it's bullshit, and it is, but it's the reality of how things work.

[240 is Back]

I'm talking about that yupie pofs with perfect nails, drives a expedition or yukon or X5, has the perfect highlights in herhair, the Louie Vuitton bag, has kids dressed with only LL Bean, slaps the shit out of her pussified husband every night, etc.     

Oh god, not another palin thread, PLEASE.

[Soul Crusher]

again, being right factually - and being right in the media perception sense - are two different things.  Period.

Doesn't matter if it's related.  IF IF IF that thing blows, then politicians will walk on eggshells for the next 6 months about the topic.  You can argue it's bullshit, and it is, but it's the reality of how things work.

Ha ha ha ha - I just know how theas yuppie broads act.   In 90 degree swealtering heat, the last place you or anyone else wants to be is within 50 miles of one of these beasts if there are rolling blackouts    

[Soul Crusher]

Oh god, not another palin thread, PLEASE.

[240 is Back]

The great thing about her show was seeing just how incompetent this hunter - who claimed SHE killed animals for food - was when handling weapons.

Levi was right when he said she didn't know shit about guns, they were props.  She showed us herself by acting like she had never touched a gun before, 5 minutes after bragging about the moose meat she ate from the moose SHE killed personally.  Not someone on her expedition - her. 

but back to the thread.  What were we talking about again?

[Soul Crusher]

Oh god, not another palin thread, PLEASE.

[GigantorX]

Yeah, the plant worked just fine in the face of one of the biggest earthquakes/tremors in history. 3 of the 4 reactors were shut down and the 4th may leak because the coolant system is only getting on and off amounts of energy to power it.

If anything it shows that it can take the absolute worst of what mother nature can throw at it and come out in pretty good shape.

But just imagine if this happened to a plant in China or, good for fucking bid, Russia.

[Soul Crusher]

Bill Clinton: Drilling delays 'ridiculous'
Politico ^


Bill Clinton: Drilling delays 'ridiculous' By: Darren Goode March 11, 2011 04:55 PM EST

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference.

Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was closed to the media. Video of their moderated talk with IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin was also prohibited.

But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.

“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.

Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.

“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.

The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...


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[Soul Crusher]

Hugh Hewitt: Obama's oil production protest fails fact-checking test
Comments (0) Share Print By: Hugh Hewitt 03/13/11 8:05 PM
Examiner Columnist

."So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn't match up with reality." So declared President Obama Friday with the practiced firmness of voice and direct look into the teleprompter that signals to veterans of the Obama watch that the chief executive has strayed far from the truth.

In May of 2010, Obama's secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, issued a six-month moratorium order for drilling on the outer continental shelf. When the courts struck down that illegal order, Team Obama switched to a slow-roll strategy, demanding new permits for exploration, and accomplished the same thing as a moratorium.

Jonathan Tilove, the New Orleans' Times-Picayune's Washington correspondent, set a standard that few met national reporters met when he collected the statements of Louisiana legislators in response to the president's whopper:

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

"With prices at the pump climbing toward $4 per gallon, the president is asking us to believe that his administration supports expanded drilling off the Gulf Coast," Vitter continued. "I guess that's true only if you don't actually need a permit."

"Someone should tell the president that April Fool's Day is still weeks away," said Rep. Jeff Landry, R-La., told Tilove. "Today's news conference is another example of the president misleading the American people regarding his energy policy.

Tilove got similar quotes from Louisiana Republican Reps. Charles Boustany (the "president's remarks ... are wholly untrue"), Rodney Alexander, Bill Cassidy and Steve Scalise. They all provide variations on the same theme: The president isn't telling the truth about oil production and his administration's war on new supplies.

Of course, we don't have new wells off East or West Coast, and, of course, the president hasn't done anything to expand production in Alaska either. It is absurd for the president to claim anything other than that for which he deserves complete credit: Bringing new exploration to a halt in a vain and destructive attempt to force America to stop consuming the oil that in his mind and the mind of his political allies is imperiling the planet.

Far more remarkable than the president's brazenness with the truth, which has become a routine feature of Obama's "preside-but-don't-lead" tenure in the Oval Office, is the liberal mainstream media's willingness to indulge it.

The president preaches fiscal restraint but advanced a reckless budget and refuses to suggest any entitlement reform. The MSM is silent.

The president imposed Obamacare on an unwilling country and then issues more than a thousand waivers to the friends of Obama and the politically connected. The MSM is silent.

And now with gas prices soaring and an angry population turning their political fury on the president, he runs from the responsibility which is surely his and claims childlike wonder at the idea that his no-growth/no-oil policies are to blame. And the MSM is silent.

A craven MSM continues to abet the president's enormous incompetence in all aspects of his job. The credibility gap that has grown and grown around the president since January 2009 has now reached the point where Obama no longer cares to pretend to the truth and the press no longer cares to report that fact.

The price at the pumps doesn't lie, however, and that is Obama's price, a price that flows from his policies, and which defines his politics. That price will also define his presidency from now until November 2012.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/03/hugh-hewitt-obamas-oil-production-protest-fails-fact-checking#ixzz1GZkUY6NU

[Soul Crusher]

Obama at Wheel of Father's Oldsmobile
By Debra Saunders
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/15/obama_at_wheel_of_fathers_oldsmobile_109219.html


At Friday's news conference, President Obama tried to connect with the common man coping with rising gasoline prices. Instead, the president left little doubt that he is clueless about cars.

"You may want to buy a fuel-efficient car," quoth Obama, "but you may not be able to afford it. And so you're stuck with the old clunker that's getting 8 or 10 miles a gallon."
 
Eight to 10 mpg? Which clunker would that be? I wondered. An old Hummer? Your father's father's Oldsmobile? A late-model Lamborghini? It takes a luxury brand, a boat-sized machine and/or a few decades to approach those dismal mileage numbers.

An 11-year-old Pontiac minivan, for example, gets 17 mpg in the city, 24 mpg on the highway.

You have to go back to the Carter administration years or earlier to find Obama's idea of a gas-guzzling family car -- and even that vehicle would have been a van, light truck/SUV or luxury model. And yet he is behind the wheel of Washington's energy policy.

Can you blame me for believing Team Obama was pushing the pedal to the metal in a rush for higher gas prices?

On March 11, Obamaland pushed back against the perception that its anti-drilling policies -- implemented in the wake of the April 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout -- have contributed to high prices at the pump. The cost of filling one's gas tank has risen uncomfortably close to $4 per gallon in the Bay Area of California.

The administration rightly notes that domestic oil and natural gas production have increased since 2008, while imports have decreased.

OK, but: Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute told Environment & Energy Publishing, "The increased production levels in 2010 are a credit to the vision of previous administrations." Milito credited the 1995 Deepwater Royalty Relief Act signed by Bill Clinton and passed by a GOP-controlled Congress.

To his credit, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had supported offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But after an oil platform explosion left 11 workers dead and coated beaches with oil, he reacted. Then Salazar overreacted.

Democrats like Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana saw their home states suffer first from the oil spill, and then the oil-job shutoff. Landrieu came to vigorously oppose what had evolved into a de facto moratorium on drilling permits.

Clinton himself lamented "ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn't need it." The administration didn't issue a permit since the blowout until last month -- and then only after a federal judge's prompting.

Not to mention the steady job-killing creep of climbing gasoline prices.

There always has been a corner of Obamaland that doesn't appreciate the job-creating properties of cheap fuel. Now-Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." Chu said that in September 2008 -- and still Obama picked him for the slot.

Then again, if you think there are a lot of Americans cruising Main Street in gas-guzzling monstrosities, you probably wouldn't even notice the high price of gasoline -- until your approval ratings started to approach, well, Jimmy Carter levels.

dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
Copyright 2011, Creators Syndicate Inc.

[Soul Crusher]

Pump prices may put Obama in peril
The Washington Times ^ | March 20, 2011 | Ralph Z. Hallow



Consumers’ pain at the gas pump will likely be shared by President Obama at the polls in 2012 and could cost him a second term unless energy prices take a drastic turn for the better in the next 18 months.

“Energy prices should be the Achilles’ heel for Obama,” said Scott Wheeler, executive director of a conservative political action committee.

The average gasoline pump price across the country is $3.621 per gallon, the Energy Information Administration reported. Prices in some parts of the country are already topping $4 a gallon.

And the uncertain global situation isn’t helping.

“Unrest in the Middle East and Japan’s loss of nuclear-powered electricity add pressure to oil prices that were already growing along with the world economy,” Heritage Foundation energy economist David W. Kreutzer told The Washington Times. “While the U.S. only generates 1 percent of its electricity from oil, Japan uses 9 percent and will need more to fuel standby generators and to replace lost nuclear production.”

Analysts see a perfect political storm hitting when it comes to energy supply and demand. China and India, with booming economies, are suddenly world-class consumers of oil and other energy sources. The unrest in the Middle East and the bad news out of Japan have unsettled the supply picture even more, a disruption being reflected in prices at the pump in Wichita and Altoona


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...