Monday, June 30, 2014

Obama Continues his Attack on U.S. Energy


By Alan Caruba

The delay of the Keystone XL pipeline is a perfect example of the way President Obama and his administration has engaged in, not just a war on coal, but on all forms of energy the nation has and needs. Even his State Department admits there is no reason to refuse its construction and, as turmoil affects the Middle East, there is an increased need to tap our own oil and welcome Canada’s.

The latest news, however, is that Canada has just approved the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, a major pipeline to ship Canadian oil—to Asia.

The pure evil of the delay is compounded by the loss of the many jobs the pipeline—that will not require taxpayer funding—represents to help reduce the nation’s obscene rate of unemployment and to generate new revenue for the nation. That’s what oil, coal, and natural gas does.

Less visible has been the out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency that has, since Obama took office on January 20, 2009, issued 2,827 new final regulations totally 24,915,000 words to fill 24,915 pages of the Federal Register. As a CNSnews article reported, “The Obama EPA regulations have 22 times as many words as the entire Harry Potter series which includes seven books with 1,084,170 words.” Every one of the EPA regulations affects some aspect of life in America, crushing economic development in every conceivable way.

The worst part of the EPA regulation orgy is the fact that virtually all of it is based on a hoax. As reported by James Delingpole, a British journalist, “19 million jobs lost plus $4,335 trillion spent equals a global mean temperature of 0.018 degrees Celsius. Yes, horrible but true. These are the costs to the U.S. economy, by 2100, of the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory war on carbon dioxide, whereby all states must reduce emissions from coal-fired electricity generating plants by 30% before 2005 levels.” 

Citing a study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Delingpole reported that the new regulations will cost the economy another $51 billion annually, result in the 224,000 more lost jobs every year, and cost every American household $3,400 per year in higher prices for energy, food, and other necessities.”
 
This is an all-out attack on industry, business, and the use of electricity by all Americans.

There is absolutely no reason, nor need to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas on which all life on Earth depends because it is to vegetation what oxygen is to all living creatures. It is the “food” on which every blade of grass depends. More CO2 means more crops and healthier forests.


Disastrously, even the Supreme Court—the same one that signed off on Obamacare as a tax—has not ruled against the EPA’s false assertions about CO2. In late June, however, it did place limits on the EPA’s effort to limit power plant and factory emissions blamed for a global warming that does not exist. The Earth has been cooling for seventeen years, but the Court ruled that the EPA lacked authority in some cases to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce CO2 emissions.

As Craig Rucker, the Executive Director of the free market think tank, CFACT, points out, “The Court served notice that the Executive Branch cannot unilaterally write its own laws. This is an important principle. However, the United States still remains fated to suffer most of the economic damage EPA’s regulations will cause. True reform will require congressional action.”

Thanks to the lies that have been taught about “global warming”, now called “climate change”, in the nation’s schools to a generation of Americans, and the deluge of lies about the environment that have been repeated in the nation’s media, too many Americans still do not make the connection between the use of the nation’s vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, and their personal lifestyles and the nation’s economic growth.

The attacks on the energy industries by environmental organizations have been attacks on all Americans who turn on the lights or drive anywhere. Their mantra has been “dirty coal” and “dirty oil” along with lies about the way energy industries contribute billions to the nation’s revenue in taxes.

An example of these attacks have been those directed against “fracking”, the short term for hydraulic fracturing, a technology that has been in use for more than a half century and whose development has generated a boom in natural gas these days. Claims about fracking pollution have no basis in fact.

A new book, “The Fracking Truth—America’s Energy Revolution: The Inside, Untold Story”, by Chris Faulkner is well worth reading for the extraordinary way he explains fracking and the facts he provides about energy in America. It is published by Platform Press.

America has huge reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. “This phenomenon of energy abundance and efficiency,” says Faulkner, “makes it almost a certainty that the cost of powering our nation—already a bargain by international standards—is going to become even less of a burden for our economy for many decades to come.” But not if the EPA and other Obama government agencies such as the Department of the Interior have their way.

One example: “According to the American Petroleum Institute, at least 87% of our federal offshore acreage is off-limits to drilling. API commissioned the consultancy Wood Mackenzie to assess the foregone offshore opportunity in specific terms. The upshot: Increased access to oil and gas reserves underlying federal waters could, by 2025, generate an additional 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, add $150 billion to government revenues, and create 530,00 jobs.”

“In fact, since 2007, about 96% of the increase in America’s oil and gas production occurred on private lands in the United States. Meanwhile, oil and gas production on federal lands declined to a ten-year low in fiscal years 2011-2012.”

Who is forcing coal-fired electricity plants to close? The Obama administration. Who is denying access to vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas on federal lands? The Obama administration. Who continues to lie about “climate change” pegged to carbon dioxide emissions? The Obama administration. And this is happening as China and India cannot build new coal-fired plants fast enough and Europe abandons wind and solar energy.

Who is the enemy of energy, current and future, in the United States? Barack Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Coal is dying a natural death. Gas is cheaper now : King Coal Is Dying a Slow Death in America http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-04-14/king-coal-is-dying-a-slow-death-in-america

And US air quality is up..To a large degree due to the lesser use of coal: NASA Pictures Shows Major Improvement in Air Quality in US - OzarksFirst.com http://www.ozarksfirst.com/story/d/story/nasa-pictures-show-improvement-in-air-quality/22436/_LjUK24EGUaKGKosebewdA

And that's fine with me. Industries come and go as taime marches on. Big deal.

Alan Caruba said...

Coal is far from dead. China and India are building many new plants to use it and it may make a return after Obama leaves office and the EPA is restricted from its baseless regulations. The US air is cleaner than it has ever been.

Will Harmon said...

Alan, as usual, your essay is built on logic and common sense. For whatever reason, the Obama regime denies and flat out rejects logic and common sense especially when it comes to energy. It begs the question ‘Why’? What is in it and what is the game about for depriving Americans abundant and cheap energy that is literally right beneath their feet? The only plausible explanation is greed. By artificially jacking up the price of oil, gasoline, and electricity, all those who are betting heavily on the green come line are going to become extremely wealthy. I remember reading somewhere that once gasoline reaches the $6-$7 per gallon mark all of a sudden the electric cars look like a real bargain to the average American; ditto for electricity. By essentially outlawing coal fired electrical generation, the price of electricity in the US will skyrocket making the justification for wind turbines and solar farms look like a no brainer. When logic and common sense are ignored, denied, and suppressed, there is an agenda of greed and corruption. We only need follow the money to see what’s behind it all.

Alan Caruba said...

Wlll, you are right on all counts.

Unknown said...

As Alan Caruba notes, coal is not dead in China or India. In fact we are shipping a lot of coal to both places..But coal in the US is still on a decline and has been for decades. This is as natural as getting old an dieing.

However, you'd have to be locked in a closet for the last 2 years to not read that China's pollution can be seen from the Space Station and India has the worst air pollution in the world.

Thanks, but no thanks. I lived in the LA basin for 3 weeks in teh late 60's... I like to be able to see more than 3 feet and not have my eyes go red within the 1st hour of waking up.

The slow death of the coal industry is not a major catastrophe. There's nothing wrong with kissing a dirty old business goodbye and replacing it with a newer technology like natural gas, wind or solar.. For example:

Reports say there are more solar workers than coal miners in the U.S. - The Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/06/reports-say-there-are-more-solar-workers-than-coal-miners-in-the-u-s.html

TexasFred said...

Have you ever heard of the Bakken Formation?

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April (’08) that only scientists and oilmen/women knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn’t been updated since ’95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana … check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable… at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

‘When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.’ says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature’s financial analyst.

‘This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,’ reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It’s a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the ‘Bakken.’ And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the ‘Big Oil’ companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken’s massive reserves… and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That’s enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.