USA Today: “As public angst grows over gas prices, President Obama hits the road today in hopes of reinvigorating his argument that the USA must embrace a broad strategy to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.The two-day trip, which will take him to the Copper Mountain Solar Facility 1 in Nevada, oil and gas drilling sites on federal land in New Mexico and a segment of the Keystone XL pipeline in Oklahoma, is an opportunity for the president to highlight his “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, which calls for investment in clean energy and expanding domestic oil and gas production.”
No, Obama doesn’t have an all-of-the-above energy strategy.
- The issuing of permits for both deep-water and shallow water drilling for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico has slowed to a crawl.
- Obama opposes drilling in ANWR.
- The administration continues to bar drilling off the East and West Coasts, and much of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, both support oil and natural gas exploration and production off of the Virginia coast.
- During this trip, Obama will apparently announce he supports building part of the Keystone XL Pipeline, just not the part that connects it to Canada. Apparently we can take care of the gap with buckets.
- The administration’s approach to hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is mixed at best, with many in the industry expecting serious limitations from the Department of the Interior or the EPA when its final report on the practice is finished in 2014.
- Obama’s plan to deal with high gas prices is to take away tax incentives for oil companies, tax provisions that permit them to deduct a portion of sales to cover capital investment, expense certain drilling and development costs, income tax credits for the costs of “qualified enhanced-oil-recovery” methods. In other words, all of these tax incentives make it easier and cheaper for oil companies to do their jobs – drill and refine oil. Obama wants to make activities like “drilling and development” more expensive… as a response to high gas prices.
- The United States has not built a new oil refinery since 1976. There is an effort to build a new one in South Dakota, but Obama’s green allies have held up the process in court for years. It will take four years to build and the hope is that construction can begin by 2013.
To Obama’s credit, under his watch, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license for two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. Of course, two new reactors are a drop in the bucket for our energy needs, as that was the first license issued since 1973.
Here in Virginia, the George Allen for Senate campaign is unveiling a gimmicky, but effective, web site that allows people to calculate how much more they have paid since Obama took office if gas had remained at the level of January 20, 2009, TooMuchAtThePump.com.
Then again, it just reminds me of this recent sight: