US Tips Global Power Scales with Fracking

[W.G.Ewald]

Evidence mounts Obama admin. blocking oil and gas production | Washington Free Beacon

Delays in federal permitting for oil and gas exploration on public land is likely reducing national energy production and depriving the federal government of revenue, according to a federal report released Friday.

The report is the latest addition to a mounting body of evidence undercutting the administration's claims that it has fostered increased oil and gas production, critics say. Production on lands the federal government controls has plummeted during Barack Obama's presidency.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

This is the report referred to in the previous post.

[PDF]http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/08601-0001-21.pdf[/PDF]

 

[asianobserve]

Evidence mounts Obama admin. blocking oil and gas production | Washington Free Beacon

When it comes to Obama you'd never know when you're hit by a train... How come there's be an oil boom when the US Federal Government is blocking it? Maybe its true that reality does not apply to Obama haters.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

When it comes to Obama you'd never know when you're hit by a train... How come there's be an oil boom when the US Federal Government is blocking it? Maybe its true that reality does not apply to Obama haters.

Oil boom? Please. Gasoline prices continue to rise. That's reality for us.

And why is dissent called hate? Because you worship Obama? You certainly want to kiss his arse at every opportunity.

I read an article recently about Malaysia in an airline magazine. I can't imagine you are really Malaysian; you parrot the DNC talking points too readily. Why did you choose Malaysia's flag?

Obama would destroy Malaysia's economy.

 

[asianobserve]

Oil boom? Please. Gasoline prices continue to rise. That's reality for us.

Oil prices everywhere, the US included, is dictated by the World market.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Oil prices everywhere, the US included, is dictated by the World market.

Your argument is evasive.

From the article above:

The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) inspector general examined 1,881 applications for drilling permits on public land. Fewer than 4 percent of those applications were "recent," or filed in the last 180 days. The rest had experienced prolonged delays.

"By not processing these nominations as expeditiously as possible," the Forest Service, a division of the USDA, "may be causing the federal government to forego revenue or prevent or delay the efforts of the private sector to provide energy to the public."

The report is the second analysis by a federal body this month to support claims by administration critics that its energy policies have restricted domestic oil and gas production.

"On every front, when it comes to oil and gas production, [Obama's] agencies have been doing less and less and making it harder and harder" to extract fossil fuels from federal land, said Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research.

The administration continues to tout increases in total U.S. oil and gas production as evidence that its energy policies are furnishing increased domestic energy resources.

But production decreases on federal land have some members of Congress crying foul.

Obama is "trying to use some kind of Jedi mind trick to say, 'there is no problem here, move along,'" said Rep. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.).

Would-be oil and gas producers "run into nothing but roadblocks and delays" in the federal permit application process, Gardner said.

Gardner is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which held a hearing last year on those delays.

Chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) said at the hearing that the administration had offered "one excuse after another for preventing energy production entirely or subjecting it to years of unnecessary delays."

The president continues to tout total production numbers while avoiding any mention of the decline in production on federal land.

"We produce more oil than we have in 15 years. We import less oil than we have in 20 years," Obama said at a March 15 speech on energy policy. The White House website cites similar statistics.

Obama used his speech this month to push for a plan to use federal oil and gas revenues to pay for renewable energy projects. However, the report made available Friday suggests that his policies are restricting those revenues by delaying approval of oil and gas projects on federal land.

The report came on the heels of a Congressional Research Service report showing that oil and gas production on federal land is currently below fiscal year 2007 levels.

"All of the increase [in crude oil production] from FY2007 to FY2012 took place on non-federal land," the report stated. Natural gas production on federal land fell by about 23 percent during the same time.

CRS found that from 2006 to 2011 the average processing time for an oil or gas drilling permit application on federal land increased from 218 days to 307 days.

As USDA's IG noted, those delays can reduce energy production and federal lease revenue.

They can also damage communities that depend on small oil and gas producers to power their local economies, according to Dan Naatz, vice president of federal resources for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Delays in federal permit applications can have "a devastating impact on communities" in western states such as Nevada where 83 percent of the land is federally owned, Naatz said.

Gardner said his constituents have complained about their inability to secure oil and gas leases on federal land in Colorado. More than a third of the state's land is federally owned.

One Colorado oil and gas producer recently told the Energy and Commerce Committee that delays in federal permitting for oil and gas production were forcing the company to reconsider activities on federal land.

"While public lands projects almost always take longer than comparable private and state projects, the delays I've seen in the last few years make me question for the first time whether I want to undertake new oil and gas business with the federal government," Reed Williams, president of WillSource Enterprise, a small oil and gas drilling company, told the committee last year.

"That's a strange thing to say since WillSource now believes the project could produce $3 billion worth of natural gas; generating significant job and economic growth," Williams added.

"The bottom line is: If we could access more of our public and private lands, we would be creating more jobs," Gardner said.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

President Obama's EPA Pick Threatens Market Stability - Tom Borelli - Page 1

President Obama has made it clear, both in word and action, that climate-change regulation is a top priority for his second term. Putting aside the legitimate questions about the science behind climate-change alarmism, the nomination of Gina McCarthy as EPA administrator is just the latest sign that the president is determined to push a market-subverting, economy-handcuffing energy agenda on the American people.

Obama wasted no time in selecting climate change as a top priority. During his inauguration speech, he played to our emotions with the liberal talking point that failing to address climate change "would betray our children and future generations."

Obama then went on to escalate his commitment to climate change by delivering an ultimatum that, "If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."

Climate-change regulation is the foundation of President Obama's command-and-control energy policy, which will fundamentally transform our electricity market and put greater pressure on the wider economy.

Regulations targeting greenhouse-gas emissions (such as the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels) result in higher prices for coal, oil and natural gas. Coal is by design the biggest loser with climate-change regulations, because it emits twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas - its primary competitor for generating electricity. By raising the cost of coal through climate change regulations, Obama is forcing utilities to use natural gas and renewable energy.

With Gina McCarthy at the EPA's helm, President Obama will have a trusted lieutenant eager to execute his command-and-control energy policy through the executive branch. McCarthy has a long history as an enforcer for climate-change regulatory strategy. Serving under then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, she formulated the state's Climate Protection Action Plan and headed Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection. She headed the state's participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – a cap-and-trade system for a group of Northeastern states.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

COLUMN-Obama's Sphinx-like energy policy: John Kemp | Reuters

President Barack Obama's policy on energy and climate change remains inscrutable, full of strategic ambiguity, which probably suits him just fine.


The soaring rhetoric in his State of the Union address - "for the sake of children and our future we must do more to combat climate change" - masks a more complicated, some would say pragmatic, approach to the role of clean technology and fossil fuels in meeting future energy demands while curbing greenhouse gases.

The administration's commitment to tackling climate change by cutting emissions is not in any doubt. White House advisers are genuinely enthusiastic about the transformational potential of energy efficiency and zero-carbon technologies like wind and solar to meet future demand while sparking a new investment boom to fire up economic growth.

By contrast, the administration remains hostile to coal, and unsympathetic about gas and oil, even though hydraulic fracturing promises to bring more jobs and growth if some manufacturing is brought back to the United States to benefit from cheap gas prices, and free the country from dependence on oil imports from outside North America.

Advisers from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and other bureaus within the Executive Office of the President (EOP) have repeatedly briefed environmental activists to reassure them of the president's commitment to aggressive steps to promote clean technology and penalise polluting businesses.

The latest volley of green briefings came ahead of the State of the Union, where White House staff appeared to provide strong steering to environmental lobbying organisations about how to interpret the contents of the address, which gave it a stronger green gloss than the president's words alone might warrant.

In practice, the administration appears to be trying to find a middle way, one that keeps activists onside while not risking a complete breakdown in relations with the petroleum industry or being blamed for a new rise in energy prices.

SEEKING AN EQUILIBRIUM

Keystone XL is the most notable example of trying to keep all sides happy. Unwilling to anger activists by approving the pipeline, but also wary of the backlash from industry, the Canadian government, and the Washington establishment if the pipeline is blocked, the administration has played for time, postponing a decision again by insisting it needs more time to study the impact.

Some outside observers think that the administration will eventually approve the pipeline, but only after securing significant concessions, perhaps on an unrelated issue, like tougher emissions regulations for coal-fired power plants.

The same attempt to split differences is apparent with senior appointments. The three cabinet-level positions of most interest to climate activists and the energy industry are the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy, and the Department of Interior (which oversees oil and gas development on public lands).

All three have become vacant at the start of the second term. The president's nomination for secretary of interior, Sally Jewel, combines a background as an energy engineer and in business as well as strong conservation credentials, drawing support from both environmentalists and organisations lobbying on behalf of more development on public lands in the western states.

The White House has not yet announced new chiefs for the EPA and the Energy Department. The suspicion is they are being treated as a package, with staffers trying to find a balanced and complementary set of nominations.

DRILLING, FAST AND SLOW

On the controversial topic of fracking, the president has welcomed the potential contribution to domestic energy production and energy security while promising tough safeguards.

"The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence," the president said in the State of the Union. "We need to encourage that."

He promised to speed up new oil and gas drilling permits and reiterated that natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal, is part of his "all of the above" approach to energy policy.

But the president was silent on fracking for oil, which has similar if not greater potential to transform the U.S. economy, but is far more controversial with his environmental supporters.

He spoke about the potential for producing oil and gas from public lands and offshore areas "we, the public, own together" and called for using some of the royalties to fund an Energy Security Trust Fund.

The trust fund idea has received a cautious welcome from Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and one of the party's leaders on energy policy.

But it was twinned with a rhetorical commitment to use the trust fund to "drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good".

The president has promised environmental activists that drilling on public lands will only be done with enhanced safety regulations.

The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been trying to draft new regulations governing hydraulic fracturing on public lands, but has withdrawn the rulemaking after receiving 170,000 comments and plans to issue new proposals later this year.

The EPA is developing its own guidance on the use of diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing, which has drawn over 97,000 public comments.

Both rulemakings have been strongly opposed by the North Dakota state government as likely to add significantly to delays in obtaining drilling permits.

North Dakota's Department of Mineral Resources identified the BLM and EPA regulations as two of four big threats to sustained development of the Bakken shale oil fields in a presentation to the state House of Representatives last month. The EPA's guidance on diesel "could triple drilling permit approval time or worse," the department told lawmakers.

Like the other governments in the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, North Dakota argues it has successfully regulated fracking under state law, so there is no need for the federal government to become involved. North Dakota has also complained about the slow speed of federal drilling approvals where they are already needed and fears that new regulations will make the backlog worse.

CONTRADICTORY IMPULSES

The administration is struggling with all the contradictions that have bedevilled U.S. energy policy since the 1970s.

The president's commitment to tackling global warming and transforming the energy system into a cleaner one is sincere. But it wants the benefits from cheap energy, especially natural gas, too.

Senior officials still talk about the potential for creating millions of green jobs. But there is now a painful awareness of the potential benefits of many not-so-green ones as well, in oil, gas and energy-intensive industries like chemicals, fertilisers and heavy manufacturing that depend on cheap gas.

"All of the above" is an attempt to embrace the contradictions without being engulfed by them. The president is trying to persuade all sides (environmentalists and the clean technology industry, petroleum producers and manufacturers) that there is something in his policies for everyone.

The State of the Union was a classic example. It stuck to fairly broad phrases that committed Obama to very little specifically, but allowed everyone to project their own ideas and priorities on to the president.

Environmental activists are among the president's most wholehearted supporters, and he cannot afford to disappoint them. Fossil fuel industries contain some of his bitterest foes, but he must still find a way to work with them.

It is a tricky balancing act. Energy and climate has become one of the most polarising issues in U.S. politics. The administration's heart lies with clean tech, but its head says fossil fuels are too important to ignore.

 

[asianobserve]

Drivers endure high gas prices despite US oil boom, low demand; price could approach $4 by May - Washington Post

U.S. oil output rose 14 percent to 6.5 million barrels per day last year — a record increase. By 2020, the nation is forecast to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest crude oil producer. At the same time, U.S. gasoline demand has fallen to 8.7 million barrels a day, its lowest level since 2001, as people switch to more fuel-efficient cars.

So is the high price of gasoline a signal that markets aren't working properly?

Not at all, experts say. The laws of supply and demand are working, just not in the way U.S. drivers want them to.

U.S. drivers are competing with drivers worldwide for every gallon of gasoline. As the developing economies of Asia and Latin America expand, their energy consumption is rising, which puts pressure on fuel supplies and prices everywhere else.

The U.S. still consumes more oil than any other country, but demand is weak and imports are falling. That leaves China, which overtook the U.S. late last year as the world's largest oil importer, as the single biggest influence on global demand for fuels. China's consumption has risen 28 percent in five years, to 10.2 million barrels per day last year.

"There's an 800-pound gorilla in the picture now — the Chinese economy," says Patrick DeHaan, chief petroleum analyst at the price-tracking service GasBuddy.com.

U.S. refiners are free to sell gasoline and diesel to the highest bidder around the world. In 2011, the U.S. became a net exporter of fuels for the first time in 60 years. Mexico and Canada are the two biggest destinations for U.S. fuels, followed by Brazil and the Netherlands.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

The Washington Post is just another Obama lapdog. I am not impressed with anything they publish about Obama policy.

 

[asianobserve]

The Washington Post is just another Obama lapdog. I am not impressed with anything they publish about Obama policy.

And what about "Washington Free Beacon?"

The Washington Free Beacon is an American web site that publishes associated content from a U.S. conservative perspective.[1][2]
It was founded in February 7, 2012 by Matthew Continetti.[3][4]

The Washington Free Beacon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh, I see.

 

[asianobserve]

BTW, the article I quoted on why US gas prices remain high despite its oil boom originated from the Associated Press. not from Washington Post.

Here's the citation:

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

And FYI about the Associated Press or AP:

The Associated Press is an American news agency organized as a New York not-for-profit corporation. The AP is a nonprofit cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, all of which contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative.

Associated Press - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[W.G.Ewald]

And what about "Washington Free Beacon?"



Oh, I see.

Exactly. Dissent from conservatives is not allowed? The overwhelming US news media loves Obama. Opposing views are not allowed. He must be totally and universally worshipped.

And you follow me around the forum to counteract every instance where I post anything critical of your Master. Are you a member of DNC's 50-cent army?

In any case, you certainly are xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xx from who knows where, with an unexplained obsession with US politics.

Again, why did you choose Malaysia flag?

 

[asianobserve]

Exactly. Dissent from conservatives is not allowed? The overwhelming US news media loves Obama. Opposing views are not allowed. He must be totally and universally worshipped.

And you follow me around the forum to counteract every instance where I post anything critical of your Master. Are you a member of DNC's 50-cent army?

In any case, you certainly are xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xx from who knows where, with an unexplained obsession with US politics.

Again, why did you choose Malaysia flag?

I'm following you? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! (I know my laugh is very long) You were the one who inserted that Tea Party article dissing Obama after I posted an article on how the oil boom is already benefiting America. I felt I have to straighten out the record.

And why the Malaysian flag? How about you why the American flag?

 

[W.G.Ewald]

I'm following you? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! (I know my laugh is very long) You were the one who inserted that Tea Party article dissing Obama after I posted an article on how the oil boom is already benefiting America. I felt I have to straighten out the record.

And why the Malaysian flag? How about you why the American flag?

xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx I posted an article from a legitimate newspaper that people buy and read. I do not see "Tea Party" on its masthead. The article did not "diss" Obama (and what if it did?) but raised an issue from a US Government report which it cited and which I also posted.

You responded with a personal attack:

When it comes to Obama you'd never know when you're hit by a train... How come there's be an oil boom when the US Federal Government is blocking it? Maybe its true that reality does not apply to Obama haters.

In no way did you "straighten out the record" by calling me an "Obama hater." There is no "oil boom" for which Obama deserves credit. He has consistently, until very recently, opposed fracking and the Keystone pipeline (which would provide jobs). Unemployment is still high in the US, but the slavish press avoids that issue.

You avoid my question. Why "your" Malaysian flag?

 

[asianobserve]

I should learn that I don't need to respond to a faceless, anonymous coward and a false flagger, but... I posted an article from a legitimate newspaper that people buy and read. I do not see "Tea Party" on its masthead. The article did not "diss" Obama (and what if it did?) but raised an issue from a US Government report which it cited and which I also posted.

Just read the title. If this is not dissing then I don't know what is it.

Evidence mounts Obama admin. blocking oil and gas production | Washington Free Beacon

Besides, you will not quote an article that praises Obama.

You responded with a personal attack:

Maybe I got carried away by the hate spewed by your quoted article...

You avoid my question. Why "your" Malaysian flag?

Saya anak Malaysia.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Just read the title. If this is not dissing then I don't know what is it.

Besides, you will not quote an article that praises Obama.

Maybe I got carried away by the hate spewed by your quoted article...

Saya anak Malaysia.

1.Here is the title: "Evidence mounts Obama admin. blocking oil and gas production." You are hypersensitive to anything which does not bow down to Obama.

2. There are too many articles praising Obama to quote. Why must I quote them anyway. I believe he is a fraud.

3. Learn to control yourself.

4. Does your allegiance to "your" country allow you to worship foreign idols?

xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxx You cannot bear to see any disagreement with Obama so you are compelled to try and silence it.

Obama will never be a leader or actually govern as president. He will continue to posture and make political speeches as long as he is in office.

 

[asianobserve]

4. Does your allegiance to "your" country allow you to worship foreign idols?

We are not North Korea.

xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx. You cannot bear to see any disagreement with Obama so you are compelled to try and silence it.

xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx You cannot bear to see any article that shows America might be improving which indirectly might show Obama in a good light.