Oil Policy Madness

            Madness. This is the only word that adequately describes the energy policy of this administration.

            With gas prices at the pump  going up daily, Obama's solution is to investigate oil companies for fraud. Is he really that clueless?

            Fraud is not the problem. It's a question of supply and demand. But President Obama doesn't understand that.

            In 1970 the United States was producing 9.6 million barrels of oil a day and importing 3.16 million barrels. Today it is still producing over 9 million barrels, but importing 11.3 million barrels a day.  

            It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we need to produce more. But our leader said in a recent speech, "Even if we increase domestic oil production, that is not going to be the long-term solution to our energy challenge." No? What is? Windmills and solar shingles? Can he be so totally uninformed? Or has he gone mad?

            President Obama has said that our country has only 21 billion barrels of oil, about 2% of the world's proven oil reserves. He's right. But his numbers don't include technically recoverable off shore reserves, ANWAR, and the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, all of which total some 134 billion barrels. Plus it doesn't include another 30 billion barrels in the Chukchi Sea off the west coast of Alaska.

            So what has the administration been doing about recovering all that oil? It has maintained a de facto moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico; it has denied oil leases for drilling off the east and west coasts; it has persisted in blocking production in ANWAR. And now comes the best of all.

            In 2008 the United States auctioned off leases to the Chukchi oil fields for $2.6 billion. Shell Oil alone spent another $2 billion during its pre-drill exploratory phase. That was under the Bush administration. But in 2010, with Obama running the country, environmental groups sued and a federal judge agreed to halt exploration pending a more complete environmental statement. Oil companies complied, but now the EPA has blocked the appeal, stating, among other things, that oil companies ignored--GET THIS--the potential effects of carbon dioxide emissions from ice breakers on nearby communities.

            The nearest inhabitants are 70 miles away in the village of Kaktovik, population 245.

             "Know Thine Enemy." We know it very well. It is not the oil companies: It is the EPA, and it is holding our president prisoner in the White House of Madness.