Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Real Life Proof We CAN Drill Our Way Out

Complete and utter Election Time BS.

Hey folks,

Happy Tuesday to ya. Since it's Tuesday, time to check in at the Energy Front. Someone just asked me why I call it "The Energy Front." I call it the "Energy Front" because this Administration is at WAR with every form of Energy that makes the World work. From the Moratorium, to the De-Facto Moratorium, to the Oppressive Taxation and Regulations, to the OUTRIGHT Denial of anything that WILL actually work to: Create Jobs, Reduce Dependency, Increase Revenue and bring Costs Down.

They are in trouble folks. It really is that simple. We learned before that $4.00 Gas is a tipping point. Once the price hits $4.00 a gallon, people get angry. People start calling for action by Government. People start changing their Lifestyles. It gets loud out there. When it hit $4.00 a gallon, Obama attacked Bush saying he should do something. The Liberals attacked Bush saying he should do something. He did. He said we will use our own. He said we would Drill more and use more of our own resources. The Price of a Barrel of Oil dropped, overnight, like a rock.

So now, Oil is $108 a Barrel. Gas is near and in some places over, $4.00 a gallon again. This President is NOW saying there is nothing he can do. This President is NOW talking about it and completely LYING about it. He is coming out and attempting to get you to believe we are Drilling more and it's not working. {Sigh} Complete and utter Election Time BS.

It was Barack Obama who said he likes $4.00 a gallon Gas. It was HIS Administration that said they want to find a way to get American Gas Prices up to that of Europe. It is Barack Obama who said he would bankrupt the Coal industry, and your Energy Costs would "Necessarily Skyrocket."It is Barack Obama who imposed a Drilling Moratorium. Rigs all over packed up and took Tens of Thousands of American Jobs with them. It is Barack Obama who put into place a De-Facto Moratorium. Slowing and blocking the Permitting Process. It is Barack Obama who is attacking Natural Gas, it's too cheap. It is Barack Obama who is attacking Hydrofracking.

All this at the same time he is out there saying we are Drilling more and it's not working. Saying we can't Drill our way out of all this. Again folks. Complete and utter Election Time BS. What we CAN'T do Mr. President, is continue to throw hundreds of Billions of Dollars into Companies that line the pockets of Executives, while firing Employees, producing NOTHING, and going out of business.

What we can't do is get off Oil and flick a switch and go Green. There is NOTHING Green to switch to. NOTHING. I love this piece by Erick Erickson of Red State.

On Friday, the President of the United States accused his Republican opponents of being members of the Flat Earth Society because of their demands that the nation increase drilling.

In no small bit of irony, the President who bitterly lamented the rise of ATM’s and Internet travel options accused the GOP of wanting to bitterly cling to the past.

But what of Barack Obama’s energy policy? He likes to tout wind and solar technologies and batteries, but it seems while he accuses the GOP of being flat earthers, the reality is that the President is himself anti-science when it comes to the reality of domestic energy needs.

His solution to fueling our cars amounts to using unicorn farts as gas — which has just as much a chance of happening as the mythic battery powered cross country run.
{Laughing} "Unicorn Farts." Very funny. However, Farts are CO2 and that's a pollutant. Can't use that. {laughing}

So we can't Drill Our Way out? Look at North Dakota. Here is the entire Article. According to Personal Liberty Digest - The North Dakota Oil Boom March 16, 2012 by Chip Wood Yup. That's his name. Chip Wood.

The average prices of a gallon of gas and a barrel of oil are near 150-year highs. Most pundits expect them to go higher. Are you ready for $5-per-gallon gasoline?

In a recent speech, President Barack Obama said: “We’re not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices.” Actually, to a large extent, we can. For proof, let’s compare what’s been happening in California to the extraordinary accomplishments in North Dakota.

According to the Fraser Institute’s 2011 Global Petroleum Survey, California is the worst State in the Nation for its hostility to drilling. In fact, measured against the rest of the world, California ranks 91st.

Thanks to years of placating environmental extremists, California’s anti-drilling regulations make it almost impossible to drill for new oil anywhere in the State, onshore or off. As a result, its production of oil has fallen by nearly one-third in the past 20 years. As oil production has declined, so has tax revenue. Even with several gigantic tax increases during that period, oil revenues in the State are down.

That’s too bad, because California needs every penny of income it can get. It has one of the highest State sales taxes and personal income taxes in the country. Still, it’s not enough. The budget deficit for the coming fiscal year will top $9 billion — the fifth year in a row of billion-dollar deficits. Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed solution? Raise taxes even higher.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that wealthy Californians are fleeing the State as fast as they can. According to census data, almost one-third of its wealthiest residents — those earning $500,000 a year or more — fled the State between 2007 and 2009. On our Left Coast, they won’t drill for oil. And pretty soon, they won’t be able to drill many millionaires, either.

Let’s contrast the near-bankruptcy of the People’s Republic of California with what’s been happening in one of the most independent and entrepreneurial States in the union: North Dakota.

In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there were 150 million “technically recoverable barrels of oil” in an area of North Dakota known as the Bakken Shale. In 2008, the number had climbed to 4 billion barrels. Two years later, it had doubled to 8 billion barrels.

Today, thanks to vast improvements in recovery technology as well as the discovery of vast new oceans of underground oil, estimates of “recoverable” oil in the Bakken Shale have tripled to 24 billion barrels. That is more oil than is being produced anywhere else in the United States, including Alaska’s famed Prudhoe Bay. But it’s a small fraction of what is possible.

Experts say that current technology can extract only about 6 percent of the oil they know is underground in North Dakota. Total estimated oil reserves are thus around 500 billion barrels. And new discoveries are happening all of the time.

Let me include an interesting footnote on the subject of “reserves.” In 1980, the oil reserves in the United States were estimated at 30 billion barrels. Yet in the intervening 32 years, this country actually produced 77 billion barrels of oil. In other words, we produced more than 2.5 times more oil than the leading experts said there was 32 years earlier.

Today, the numbers are even more staggering. The amount of “technically recoverable” oil in the United States is estimated at 1.4 trillion barrels. (Please note that is “trillion,” with a “T.”) Unfortunately for us, most of that oil is located in areas Obama says we can’t search for it: in portions of Alaska and in waters off our shores.

Combined with known resources in Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels. How much is that? Let me put it in perspective: It is more than all the oil the world has used since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Penn., 150 years ago.

So far, all I’ve discussed is oil. When natural gas and coal are added to the total, the numbers are clear: We have enough energy reserves in the United States to fuel all of our needs for 100 years, even if we never made another discovery.

Back to North Dakota for a moment. The effect of the bonanza there has been extraordinary. Stephen Moore, my favorite Wall Street Journal writer, says that what is happening in Williston, N.D., “is what the Gold Rush might have looked like had it happened in the time of McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Home Depot.”

The State has the lowest unemployment rate in the Nation, at just 3.3 percent. California’s, by contrast, is 11.1 percent. That doesn’t even count the unemployed people who have simply stopped looking for work. The true unemployment number is probably closer to 20 percent.

According to the Census Bureau, North Dakota led the Nation in job and income growth in 2011. While California is losing millionaires every day, North Dakota is creating them faster than anyplace else in the country. But even entry-level positions are benefiting. For example, a job flipping burgers at McDonald’s pays $18 an hour plus a “signing bonus” for new employees.

And while the State of California can’t begin to pay all of its bills — it even issued IOUs last year in place of tax refunds — the biggest argument in North Dakota’s State Capitol is how to spend all of the money that’s pouring in. Legislators in Bismarck have approved hundreds of “shovel ready” infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, railroads and pipelines. But even while spending more on worthwhile projects, legislators also agreed to cut the State income tax.

What’s happening in North Dakota is a classic example of the one thing that would solve our energy problems everywhere — and most other problems in the economy, too. Unfortunately, it’s the one thing Obama and his team won’t even consider.

The solution is simple: Let the market work.

In his State of the Union address in January, Obama declared that “This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.”

Like so much that comes out of our President’s mouth, the sentence was as misleading as his skilled staff of speechwriters could make it. What he meant was that his Administration would continue pouring billions of dollars into every wasteful alternative energy pipe dream they could think up, while continuing to slap higher taxes and more regulatory handcuffs on the businesses that can actually solve our energy needs and make money (and pay taxes) doing it.

Rather than foster energy independence, Obama wants to make us all dependent. Dependent on government, that is.

Want to reduce unemployment? Increase tax revenues? Get the economy humming again? Truly foster energy independence?

The answer to all of them is the same: Get government off our backs. Let the market work. The results will be amazing. Maybe next year we’ll have a government that’s willing to give it a try.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

–ChipWood
It really is not hard to understand. To fix a problem cause by the attack on Oil, is to FREE Oil and let those that do, do what they do, and we will all benefit from it. Decreased dependency. Increase Revenue. Increase National Security. Increased Jobs. Lower Costs on EVERYTHING. Drill our way out of this Mr. President? Yes we can.
Peter

Sources:
Red State - Barack Obama’s Energy Policy: Unicorn Farts as the Fuel of Tomorrow Posted by Erick Erickson (Diary) Monday, March 19th at 4:46AM EDT
Personal Liberty Digest - The North Dakota Oil Boom

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