Obama Unveils Offshore Oil Drilling Plans, Auto Regulation on the Horizon

March 31st, 2010

FOXNews

 Obama combines a flip on drilling, with a costly new auto regulation scheme

President Obama, reversing a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, on Wednesday unveiled a plan to allow oil drilling off the Eastern seaboard and potentially the western coast of Florida.

The president, stressing he did not come to the decision “lightly,” said domestic oil production will not solve the country’s energy problems but that “homegrown fuels” are needed to move away from foreign oil and help “transition” to more clean-energy sources.

“The bottom line is this — given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy,” Obama said.

Though the plan is sure to rile environmentalists who have long opposed more oil platforms off the U.S. coastline, the announcement also comes a day before the Obama administration is set to firm up sweeping regulations on U.S. auto manufacturers.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation on Thursday are expected to sign the final rule establishing emissions and fuel economy standards for the U.S. auto fleet. Those standards call for new vehicles to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. It will cover model years 2012 through 2016, and is estimated to cost up to $1,300 per new vehicle.

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Obama’s Offshore Oil Feint

March 31st, 2010

By Nancy Thorner, American Thinker

 Obama is trying to distract people with a diversion

What is behind Obama’s announcement of today to support off-shore oil drilling?   

Later on this morning President Obama will be announcing his support off-shore oil drilling.  His announcement will open a door to expanded off-shore oil-drilling on the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.  In his announcement Obama will propose further investigations of possible oil rich areas.  

Obama’s reason to drill after he vehemently opposed drilling in the past seems fraught with cynicism.  The stated reason of the Obama administration is to “lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil.”

Might the real reason for Obama’s change of heart be related to the uproar the White House is anticipating when in a few days the EPA announces a controversial ruling that will declare CO2 as a toxic and which will finalize the emission standards of light trucks, etc.   What a devious way to divert the public’s attention from what is to come by announcing a policy that the general public is generally in favor of!

The Obama administration is fully aware and is confident that environmentalists will stop in their tracks for years to come through court action any investigative studies into oil exploration.

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Obama to allow oil drilling off Virginia coast but wait Boehner: Obama Administration’s Decision Keeps Vast Majority of America’s Offshore Energy Resources Off Limits

Obama to allow oil drilling off Virginia coast

Mar 31, 5:18 AM (ET)

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

WASHINGTON (AP) – In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Barack Obama is allowing oil drilling 50 miles off Virginia’s shorelines. At the same time, he is rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.

Obama’s plan offers few concessions to environmentalists, who have been strident in their opposition to more oil platforms off the nation’s shores. Hinted at for months, the plan modifies a ban that for more than 20 years has limited drilling along coastal areas other than the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama was set to announce the new drilling policy Wednesday at Andrews air base in Maryland. White House officials pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs – both politically popular ideas – but the president’s decisions also could help secure support for a climate change bill languishing in Congress.

The president, joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, also was set to announce that proposed leases in Alaska’s Bristol Bay would be canceled. The Interior Department also planned to reverse last year’s decision to open up parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Instead, scientists would study the sites to see if they’re suitable to future leases.

Obama is allowing an expansion in Alaska’s Cook Inlet to go forward. The plan also would leave in place the moratorium on drilling off the West Coast.

In addition, the Interior Department has prepared a plan to add drilling platforms in the eastern Gulf of Mexico if Congress allows that moratorium to expire. Lawmakers in 2008 allowed a similar moratorium to expire; at the time President George W. Bush lifted the ban, which opened the door to Obama’s change in policy.

Under Obama’s plan, drilling could take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline if lawmakers allow the moratorium to expire. Drilling already takes place in western and central areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The president’s team has been busy on energy policy and Obama talked about it in his State of the Union address. During that speech, he said he wanted the United States to build a new generation of nuclear power plans and invest in biofuel and coal technologies.

“It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” he warned.

Obama also urged Congress to complete work on a climate change and energy bill, which has remained elusive. The president met with lawmakers earlier this month at the White House about a bill cutting emissions of pollution-causing greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.

White House officials hope Wednesday’s announcement will attract support from Republicans, who adopted a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” during 2008′s presidential campaign.

The president’s Wednesday remarks would be paired with other energy proposals that were more likely to find praise from environmental groups. The White House planned to announce it had ordered 5,000 hybrid vehicles for the government fleet. And on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are to sign a final rule that requires increased fuel efficiency standards for new cars

Boehner: Obama Administration’s Decision Keeps Vast Majority of America’s Offshore Energy Resources Off Limits
GOP Leader: “Keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today criticized the Obama Administration for refusing to listen to the American people and keeping the vast majority of America’s offshore energy resources off limits at a time when Americans want an “all of the above” strategy for promoting American energy production and creating American jobs:

            “The Obama Administration continues to defy the will of the American people who strongly supported the bipartisan decision of Congress in 2008 to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling not just off the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, but off the Pacific Coast and Alaskan shores as well. Opening up areas off the Virginia coast to offshore production is a positive step, but keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’

            “It’s long past time for this Administration to stop delaying American energy production off all our shores and start listening to the American people who want an “all of the above” strategy to produce more American energy and create more jobs.  Republicans are listening to the American people and have proposed a better solution – the American Energy Act – which will lower gas prices, increase American energy production, promote new clean and renewable sources of energy, and encourage greater efficiency and conservation.

            “At the same time the White House makes today’s announcement, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is plotting a new massive job-killer that the American people can’t afford: a cascade of new EPA regulations that will punish every American who dares to flip on a light switch, drive a car, or buy an American product.  Americans simply don’t want this backdoor national energy tax that will drive up energy and manufacturing costs and destroy jobs in our states and local communities.”

 

Endless oil–Russian research has shown that the Earth doesn’t need dinosaurs to produce oil.

Endless oilCreated 09/14/2009 – 13:13

Lawrence Solomon

12 Sep 2009

Financial Post

Russian research has shown that the Earth doesn’t need dinosaurs to produce oil.

Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars? The assumption that they do, along with other dead matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. Our geologists are taught fossil fuel theory in our schools; our energy companies search for fossil fuels by divining where the dinosaurs lay down and died. Sooner or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels, virtually everyone believes.

Except in Russia and Ukraine. What is to us a matter of scientific certainty is by no means accepted there. Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth’s 25-mile deep crust. This theory — first espoused in 1877 by Dmitri Mendeleev, who also developed the periodic table — was rejected by geologists of the day because he postulated that the Earth’s crust had deep faults, an idea then considered absurd. Mendeleev wouldn’t be vindicated by his countrymen until after the Second World War when the then-Soviet Union, shut out of the Middle East and with scant petroleum reserves of its own, embarked on a crash program to develop a petroleum industry that would allow it to fend off the military and economic challenges posed by the West.

Today, Russians laugh at our peak oil theories as they explore, and find, the bounty in the bowels of the Earth. Russia’s reserves have been climbing steadily — according to BP’s annual survey, they stood at 45 billion barrels in 2001, 69 billion barrels in 2004, and 80 billion barrels of late, making Russia an oil superpower that this year produced more oil than Saudi Arabia. Some oil auditing firms estimate Russia’s reserves at up to 200 billion barrels. Despite Russia’s success in exploration, most of those in the west who have known about the Russian-Ukrainian theories have dismissed them as beyond the Pale. This week, the Russian Pale can be found awfully close to home.

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington joined colleagues at the Lomonosov Moscow State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in publishing evidence that hydrocarbons can be produced 40 to 95 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. At these depths — in what’s known as Earth’s Upper Mantle — high temperatures and intense pressures combine to generate hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons then migrate toward the surface of the Earth through fissures in the Earth’s crust, sometimes feeding existing pools of oil, sometimes creating entirely new ones. According to Sweden’s Royal Institute, “fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.”

The Institute’s lead author, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology, is even more brash at the implications of his findings: “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” he delights. Kutcherov’s technique involves dividing the world into a fine-meshed grid that maps cracks (or migration channels) under the Earth’s crust, through which the hydrocarbons can bubble up to the surface. His advice: Drill where the cracks meet. Doing this, he predicts, will dramatically reduce the likelihood of dry wells. Kutcherov expects the success rate of drillers to more than triple, from 20% to 70%, saving billions in exploration costs while opening up vast new areas of the planet — most of which has never been deemed to have promise — to exploration.

The Nature study follows Kutcherov’s previous work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that created hydrocarbons out of water, calcium carbonate and iron — products in the Earth’s mantle. By superheating his ingredients in a pressure chamber at 30,000 times atmospheric pressure, simulating the conditions in the Earth’s mantle, Kutcherov’s alchemy converted 1.5% of his concoction into hydrocarbons — gases such as methane as well as components of heavier oils. The implication of this research, which suggests that hydrocarbons are continuously generated through natural processes? Petroleum is a sustainable resource that will last as long as Planet Earth.

lawrencesolomon@nextcity.com

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming [1] hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

Read the sources for this column.  [2]

Is there an endless supply of oil?

Russ Vaughn

In doing some research on my modest energy investments, I came across a link that led me to a website called Energy Probe where I discovered a very interesting article entitled Endless Oil by Canadian environmentalist, Lawrence Solomon, which if true, could cause anti-fossil fuel Greens to turn hotly red.

According to Solomon, there is new evidence to support Russian and Ukranian geological scientists who are convinced that the time-honored and universally-taught belief that petroleum deposits are derived exclusively from long-dead plants and dinosaurs is about as scientifically sound as the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Rather, they say, hydrocarbons may be developed in an abiotic process by the high temperatures and huge pressures existing far below the earth’s 25 mile deep mantle, some 40 to 95 miles beneath our feet. This theory, first proposed in 1877 by Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table (which should vouch for his scientific credentials) has been widely accepted by Russian/Ukranian earth scientists since the early 1950′s. According to this abiogenic theory, existing pools of petroleum are being continually replenished and new ones being created as newly-formed hydrocarbons migrate upward through cracks in the mantle.

While the concept has had little past support in the West, an article published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience, co-authored by the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, the  Lomonosov State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in Moscow and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, reports research that indicates this process is scientifically viable.

In other words, the world itself may be the world’s largest oil producer in an ongoing natural process. If these scientists are right, rather than running out of oil as the doomsayers loudly proclaim, we may have an endless supply.

Russ Vaughn

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/is_there_an_endless_supply_of.html at December 02, 2009 – 10:39:05 AM EST

Petrol Procrastination

Petrol Procrastination

By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | 7/17/2008

 

The old saw we often heard from our parents about “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today,” has never been more applicable. Since September 11 Americans have procrastinated about serious national security issues; now they have reached crisis level. High on the list – but by no means exhausting it – are energy, military strength levels, threat identification, and proliferation issues. As are most things in life, these are intertwined, so that delaying decisive action in one adversely affects the others.

It has taken a sharp spike in gasoline prices to convince most Americans that a business as usual approach to petroleum products has not worked. Many now perceive the dangers of reliance on offshore oil producers – several of which have interests inimical to the U.S. One would think that this key lesson had been learned in the 1970s oil crisis, but sometimes it takes more than one hit on the head with a 2×4 to get the point home.

For decades – perhaps dating from popular acceptance of the flawed science in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – Americans have permitted energy policy to be driven by agenda-driven environmental interest groups. While a series of hysteric predictions of disaster have proven wrong over the past decades (e.g., utter depletion of the Earth’s resources by 1980, mass starvation due to overpopulation by 1987, and a return of the ice age at any moment in the 1970s, to name but a few) the proponents of such bizarre theories are rarely held accountable.

To the contrary, their influence has grown with each new dire prediction. Books predicting impending disaster sell well, but with an erroneous track record ought to be reclassified to the fiction category. Hysterical forecasts have been lucratively promoted by gullible media and compliant Hollywood actors and film makers. As a consequence, rational decision making on key components of energy independence such as increased oil exploration and extraction from known reservoirs off-shore and in Colorado or ANWR have been stymied.

The repeated arguments that such resources would have limited value or would not be available for decades have been refuted. In simple point of fact, had oil extraction begun in ANWR, to cite a single example, when the original Congressional release was killed by President Clinton, that oil would be flowing today. While not in itself a long-term solution it would certainly contribute to the overall energy independence of America and would buy time for longer-horizon R&D to provide improved alternatives.

Furthermore, despite a litany of warnings about the ultimate depletion of petroleum sources we continue to learn of new discoveries like the recently disclosed enormous pools in the deep Gulf of Mexico and offshore Brazil. More exist and could be successfully tapped.

Reliance on free market initiatives – rather than self-perpetuating government projects – would be sufficient to encourage auto manufacturers and alternative energy developers to become decisively engaged in solving this issue. Already we see the rapid emergence of alternatives in many fields. This trend will accelerate.

But at present America has lost precious time. While the country has 104 active nuclear plants producing electricity the need is far greater and the technology increasingly safe. Countries like France and Japan – ironically the only country to suffer actual nuclear attack – rely almost exclusively upon nuclear produced electricity for their needs. Yet Americans, still befuddled by the old anti-nuclear film The China Syndrome, approach the subject as if every nuclear plant is a potential Chernobyl.

In Frank Gaffney’s excellent book, War Footing, an entire section is devoted to means to make America energy-independent. Newt Gingrich has a large part of his organization devoted to similar efforts. We have watched a failed policy of reliance on outside energy sources gut our economy and shake our force projection capabilities. Americans need to get educated quickly on these issues so that we can direct our elected leadership – unduly influenced by far too long by extreme environmental special interest groups – to make the necessary changes to policy.

With an economy weakened by the price of imported oil, our military capabilities have diminished. At the moment we are engaged in global war. Two fronts on that war – Iraq and Afghanistan – draw most attention, but the conflict is indeed global, with definite domestic implications. That our military, boots-on-the-ground capability has been stretched thin is no longer debatable.

America desperately needs military reform that produces more of what this type of warfare demands: light infantry, special operations units, and units that can operate in the civil-military plane such as military police and engineers. Instead, we continue to pour billions into showy but unnecessary, high-ticket, high-tech weapons systems that are useful for Cold War applications but lack utility to defeat today’s enemies.

Furthermore, we as a nation lack realistic threat identification. We are still shy about naming our foe. Historically we began to see a reluctance to name the real enemy emerge in Korea. While fighting Chinese forces we hesitated to call the Peoples Republic our enemy. In Vietnam the legend persists to present day that we fought “ragged guerrilla” forces when in fact the unnamed enemy of North Vietnam send tanks, infantry divisions, and sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons to fight in the South.

Today we continue to dither, hamstrung by political correctness, moral equivalency, and cultural relativism. Unless we ultimately face the reality that we are engaged in a confrontation with elements of radical Islam, we will be unable to prevail. Instead, we have so convoluted the debate that we are at the point that we castigate anyone who actually points this out and tie our courts in knots fighting for civil rights for enemy combatants.

In addition, we treat enemies, such as Saudi Arabia, as allies, and ignore or excuse aberrant dictators like Hugo Chavez, Bashar Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong Il. We issue platitudes about the sanctity of “peace processes” and bless rigged elections and reassure ourselves that notorious terrorist organizations are in fact changing their spots.

Meanwhile, we ignore the ominous gathering storm of America’s enemies banding together against us. We overlook the deadly connections that link North Korean scientists and engineers to missile proliferation in rogue states like Syria, Iran, and Venezuela. Major research programs in these countries float under the collective radar while we watch fatalistically as incremental improvements continue unchecked in their biological, nuclear, and chemical warfare capabilities.

Perhaps it will take something as mundane yet impactful as the price of a gallon of gasoline to be the catalyst that will provoke America’s wake-up call. Certainly energy reform – and concomitant energy independence – will be a good first start to correcting the imbalance. Nevertheless, ignoring the ever-ticking clock allows our enemies time to aggregate and build strength.

At some point very soon an awakening must occur. We must recognize collective threats and identify responses necessary to deal with them. Otherwise we will – as we have been warned from youth – pay the high price of endless procrastination.

 

---

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu has been an Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel, as well as a writer, popular speaker, business executive and farmer. His most recent book is Separated at Birth, about North and South Korea.

Pelosi Puts The Country In ‘Harms Way’ With Her Energy Idiocy

http://patdollard.com/2008/07/pelosi-puts-the-country-in-harms-way-with-her-energy-idiocy/

McCain Calls U.S. Dependence On Foreign Oil Dangerous

http://patdollard.com/2008/06/mccain-calls-us-dependence-on-foreign-oil-dangerous/

GOP conservatives: Democrats’ record is one of blocking U.S. energy supply

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/ss_oil0158_05_20.asp

Are 32,000 Scientists Enough to Question Global Warming ‘Consensus?’

Marc Sheppard
The National Press Club in Washington will today release the names of as many as 32,000 American Scientists who reject not only Kyoto-style greenhouse gas limits, but the very premise of manmade global warming itself.

On Saturday, Lawrence Solomon wrote a great piece in the National Post (h/t Benny Peiser) which begged the question:

 

“How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?”

 

How many, indeed?

 

Solomon, author of The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so, reminds us that 32,000 scientists have now signed the “Oregon petition,” which states that

 

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

 

How might anyone of clear mind consider these words from these numbers and still accept claims of scientific consensus?  Or calls for any — let alone immediate — action?

 

Solomon also points out that these dissenting scientists – over 9,000 of whom hold Ph.Ds — now outnumber the environmentalists that attended the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio that actually kicked off the global warming craze.  And, I might add, far exceed the count of UN IPCC “scientists” whose calamitous predictions lie at the very heart of climate hysteria and what Solomon calls “the Kyoto Protocol’s corruption of science.”

 

But will their sheer numbers nullify the “settled science” argument?

 

Not if the alarmists have any say it won’t.  Solomon offers a brief history of attempts to bury all such previous accords. First by mocking the limited number of signatures on earlier appeals, and then — when the original Oregon petition boasted 17,800 signatories — claiming duplicate or fraudulent names.  And even when all names were ultimately verified as authentic (save one actually planted by agents of Greenpeace), the MSM still ignored their consequence.

 

Sixteen years ago, the Rio event attracted over 7,000 journalists who dutifully spread the word of man’s inhumanity to his habitat to an appreciative world.  Will today’s official announcement of 32,000 men and women of science who, by their physical signature, reject mankind’s guilt capture any media attention at all?

 

Or, for that matter, that of climate experts Gore, Boxer, Lieberman, Warner, Clinton, Obama, or, most despicably — McCain?

 

As the science no longer appears to concern any of them — don’t hold your CO₂ polluted breath. 

 

Yet their denials change nothing – the wheels continue to fall off the warmist dungwagon.

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