Obama's Energy Theories

Last week President Obama made some astonishing moves concerning the nation's energy policies. First there was the revelation that Obama may be trying to take credit for the AGIA natural gas pipeline in Alaska. A deal that in reality was brokered by his perceived adversary, Governor Palin along with TransCanada and Exxon-Mobil to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states. The Alaska Gasline Inducement Act had taken thirty years and Governor Palin's leadership once in office, to get closer than it had ever been to a reality.

Personally, I think Obama would love to federalize this project because it's pretty obvious that the man loves big centralized government. It's also painfully obvious that Barack Obama has ZERO accomplishments since he took the oath of office and this would appear to those unfamiliar with AGIA, to be his success. It would also take away from Governor Palin something she worked so hard on, something I'm sure his political staff thinks would be a big score for them. Nevertheless, the nomination and subsequent confirmation of Larry Persily for the new "Pipeline Czar" position in the White House, along with Persily's former boss, Mike Hawker's defunding of AGIA from within the Alaska Legislature, sent a loud message. Things may not be going as planned with AGIA and the free market principles that accompanied the original plan may be taking a back seat to whatever Obama and Persily, a former journalist, have planned.

Another bit of hair-raising news in regards to Obama's energy policies was last Friday when Ken Salazar told reporters that the administration would be implementing a three-year total ban on all new offshore drilling leases in federal waters. According to the latest Rasmussen poll 68% of the American population supports offshore drilling. So once again, Obama chooses to go against the will of the people and adhere to his ultra left-wing ideology. He is also going back on what he told the American people just last January during the State of the Union address. He said:

"But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies"

What a liar... It's like when he told voters during the campaign that he wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class and would give 95% of all American's a tax cut. Obama's budget revealed that he intends on letting the Bush tax cuts, which affect all working people, to expire. So-called "backdoor tax hikes" will be implemented as of January 1st, 2011. A good breakdown of the numbers can be found here.

Last week was also "CERAWeek 2010," which was an energy industry conference held in Houston. Obama sent his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu to discus his administrations policies. Investor's Business Daily put out an editorial absolutely skewering Secretary Chu. It states:

Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide.

They continue:

With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under the ground and seabed. Instead, he supports 53% more funding for wind research and a 22% jump for solar research.

Subsidizing alternative energy fits the classic definition of insanity. Despite huge subsidies, it has proved to be neither cost-effective nor a reliable, significant contributor to our national power grid. Yet we keep subsidizing it, expecting a different result.

"Oil is an ideal transportation fuel, so it will be with us for decades," Chu conceded, even as the administration forbids us from getting more of it here, creating energy jobs, lowering energy costs and cutting our trade deficit. Instead we'll rely increasingly on foreign and often unfriendly suppliers.

Chu acknowledged the role cleaner-burning natural gas can play in electricity generation, but only as a "transition to other fuels" in coming years. And the administration continues to gobble up lands where it might be found and impose environmental regulations that curtail the use of new technologies such as fracking to get more oil and natural gas from America's vast shale deposits.

Equally unimpressed with Chu's presentation was another speaker. "Gas is more than a bridge fuel," said James Mulva, CEO of Houston-based ConocoPhillips, noting that huge gas discoveries in recent years in North America in shale and other unconventional rock formations could provide more than a century of supply. "It is part of the long-term energy solution."

"We must overcome the opposition of the 'hydrocarbon deniers,'" Mulva said, playing off Al Gore's term for climate-change skeptics. Hydrocarbon deniers, he said, are those who "believe that renewable energy will quickly and easily replace hydrocarbons and cure all that ails us."

The headline above a story in the New York Times read, "Oil Execs Chortle as Obama Admin Promotes Renewables." Except that it's not funny; it's tragic. To leave vast stores of domestic energy untapped while Americans are looking for cheap energy and jobs is irresponsible. Unfortunately, this administration has no long-term energy solution, other than hoping for a lot of cloudless and windy days.

You can read the rest here.

Secretary Chu was also the man that wanted to "paint the world white" to "fight global warming." He actually advocated building codes that would mandate painting all flat roofs white "visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool-colored” paints.

The president and his administration operate on theories, not proven solutions. Governor Palin worked tirelessly to get this nation a healthy supply of it's own natural gas as an avenue towards energy independence. The Obama administration appears not to be too concerned with energy independence, which might help the jobless rate by the way. Governor Palin just released a new Facebook statement on the topic of Obama's misguided energy policies. In it she addressed the jobs associated with domestic energy production. She states:

According to a study by the American Energy Alliance, opening the OCS to drilling could create as many as 1.2 million new jobs and add hundreds of billions of dollars annually to the US economy. Those are real American jobs – and great American opportunities – that can’t be outsourced. Offshore drilling would provide billions in revenue for our states, allowing them to reduce their budget deficits without raising taxes. It would help reduce our trade deficit, which spikes with each rise in the price of oil because we’re so reliant on foreign sources of energy. And because we have some of the best environmental standards in the world, we should be drilling for our own oil instead of buying it from countries with less stringent standards.

Instead of setting his administrations priorities on jobs and the economy, Obama focuses his policies towards growing federal regulations to meet the requirements set forth by questionable science. Then they throw large amounts of tax payer dollars to fund unproven methods of development and completely ignore, penalize, and shut down those that are proven.

Barack Obama has lied to the American people more than once. His administration is headed in the wrong direction in regards to energy and a host of other issues. Energy is actually tied to most issues. Governor Palin has stated that over and over again. That is the central reason I began to support her in the first place, back before she was a household name. This issue is too important to lend out to these theories. The economy and the state of the world are in no condition to be a test lab for Utopian principles. We need to apply the knowledge and resources we already have at our fingertips to save this country from an economic fall and raise it back up to where it belongs.