Category Archives: Energy

Economy, Energy

New Drilling Technique Has Promise

A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude. This is good news where crude oil is concerned. And even better news for natural gas.

This is a twofer. An opportunity to get to and use more of the energy resources we have while reducing the amount of money we are currently shipping overseas for same.

And as an added bonus, it will give the energy deniers a wedgie to fret over.

Link: New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US

Economy, Egypt, Energy, Media, Middle East, Politics

Should The President Resign?

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Why did tens of thousands of Egyptians take to the streets and demand regime change? High food and energy prices, high unemployment, economic stagnation, and a government un-responsive to the people. That’s why they, and President Obama, are demanding and asking for President Mubarak to resign. So when we see hundreds of thousands, cumulatively millions, of people take to the streets in America for much the same reason, and then some, shouldn’t we (the media included) be asking the same question?

While our nation languishes amidst record food and energy prices, unprecedented underemployment (including those excluded from the workforce) and economic stagnation, crippling regulations, and an administration in contempt of two court decisions, . . . . there is one salient question that we should excogitate from Obama’s handling of the Egyptian insurgency. If Obama is willing to listen to the protesters of a foreign country due to their grievances from high food and energy prices and an unresponsive government, shouldn’t he accede to the similar demands of his own citizens and resign immediately?

I’m just saying.

Link: Hey Barack, Resign Now, and Now Means Yesterday

Economy, Egypt, Energy, Media, Middle East, Organized Labor, Politics, United Nations

Fed Policy, Govt. Policy, Egypt Burns

Here’s a little ditty that the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole. That’s because the Obama administration, environmentists, and the Federal Reserve are not insignificant players in the rioting and unrest we are seeing in the Middle East, and in the rise in prices of foodstuffs around the world. WHAT you say?

For years now, the United Nations has been complaining that they can’t continue to feed all they need to for a lack of money caused by the rising food cost. This is a direct consequence of bio-fuel nonsense where the United States is using food (corn) to put in our gas tank. This causes all kinds of food to be more expensive. Not just for foodstuffs made from corn, but meat and poultry products because it is also food for the livestock.

Compounding that is the enormous spending of the Federal Reserve. The effect of that has contributed to the increase in food prices not only here but everywhere else in the world.

Chriss W. Street at Big Government writes . . .

QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

When you consider how lucky we are to live in the United States, where 10% of our income goes for food for three meals a day,  a rise in food prices is not as much of an issue as it is in other parts of the world like Egypt, where food consumes 50% of their income for two meals a day. Couple that with outrageously high unemployment while the ruling class lives the high life, and you have a powder keg in the making.

UPDATE 06:50:

As if there isn’t enough evidence of how government policies were accomplices in Egypt’s revolution, new evidence points to the role of labor unions and the American Left in orchestrating it:

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

Egypt, Energy, Media, Politics

Axelrod, ABC, Cover For President Obama On Egypt

ABC, part of the propaganda wing of the West Wing, is getting out in front of the questions like this one. Where in the world did this political upheaval in Egypt come from, and why was it kept from the American people?

If we are to believe presidential advisor David Axelrod, and who believes Axelrod anyway, this is something that the president has been working on for the last 2 years. Oh really? This seems to have worked out about as good as the ‘I will not rest’ line he’s used for the past two years to give the illusion that he is creating jobs.

Which begs the question that Jake Tapper certainly will not ask. If Egypt was at the brink of some sort of revolution, why didn’t you talk about it? Why didn’t the State Department talk about it? Why would you keep the American people in the dark about something this big?

Would it have anything to do with oil? Since you apparently are so on top of what is going on in the Middle East, what is the state of affairs of the rest of our ‘allies’ in the Muslim world? Would hiding the threat of a radical Islamic takeover under the prayer rug work to our advantage, or to the advantage of the Islamic extremists? And one more. Does keeping this under the prayer rug have anything to do with our dependency on oil and your unwillingness to get our own?

It wasn’t Naziophobia to be against Hitler. It isn’t Islamophobia to know what radical Islamists are up to either.

If not Jake Tapper, who will ask President Obama or Sec. of State Clinton these questions?

Link: ABC News’ Political Punch, the Tapper-Axelrod show

Energy, Politics

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Turns 50

After checking out The White House blog’s piece about ANWR’s 50th anniversary, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful picture they put up at the boundary of the coastal plain.

So it seems  it is time to resurrect my ANWR Refuge 101 post again. Just so you won’t be mis-informed on the subject of oil exploration in ANWR and exactly where it would occur.

Picture from The White House Blog:

Caribou in the Arctic Refuge coastal plain, with the Brooks Range mountains in the background to the south. (by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)


This is the coastal plain, the place designated for oil exploration. ANWR Coastal Plain

And this is the coastal plain in the spring.

Coastal Plain in ANWR

Link: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Turns 50 | The White House.

China, Economy, Energy, Florida, Media, Pensacola, Politics

Florida’s No-Energy Policy Is No Energy Policy

It’s not surprising that the St. Petersburg Times would come out with an editorial supporting the President’s about face on opening up 25 million acres of land off of Florida’s coast to oil exploration. They also thought that shutting down ALL oil drilling in the entire Gulf of Mexico by ALL oil companies was a good idea too! It reflects the knee-jerk reaction to pressure from the environmentalist lobby who, last I checked, does not produce energy.

Critics of the plan, like State Senate President Mike Haridopolos, are right to say that the Florida ban will cost jobs. It is preventing jobs from being created. Forget that ‘saved or created’ nonsense. This, like the rest of Obama’s economic policies are preventing jobs from being created and the economy from recovering.

Out of the lost wages and earnings, all of which BP is responsible for replacing, the Times did not give a number of jobs lost due to the leak. And didn’t BP put thousands of people to work (because of the leak) all over the Gulf coast to do the cleanup work? Sorry to say, but devastating hurricanes create jobs and work too! This is no more a justification for lax safety procedures than a hope for another accident. Point is, we can recover from accidents and disasters.

The jobs lost by extending this Florida waters moratorium another 12 years is real. Likewise, the jobs lost from our president and Ken Salazar putting the drilling moratorium in effect for all drilling in the Gulf in the wake of the 4/20 BP rig explosion was ignored by the St. Pete Times. But, that is to be expected of them.

It’s been 15 years since the Clinton administration put the kibosh on ANWR development, which would have long been producing energy by now had that not happened. Now we’re to wait twelve more years for Florida and the Eastern U.S. to use its resources?

Time is long overdue for an energy policy that gets some. In every area. How many new nuclear generating plants have opened in the last 20 years? How many new refineries have been built in the last 20 years? Did you know that 57% (that’s more than half for those of you educated in government schools) of our electrical energy comes from coal? How many new coal-fired electrical generating plants have been built in the last 20 years? So President Clinton made our nation’s only low sulfur coal reserves (the largest in the world) off-limits, handing China a monopoly. And banning oil development off our East and Gulf coasts, leaves OPEC to profit. Buying coal from China and oil from OPEC is not good for national security, nor is it a good energy policy.

Long story short. Unless you expect the energy industry to make environmental guidelines, don’t expect the environmentalists to make energy policy.

Link:    Shelving expanded gulf oil drilling is responsible course |  Oil spills kill jobs

China, Economy, Energy, Politics, United Nations

Climate Change Conference ‘Going Backwards’

That’s the good news. Frustrated by the competition to play God, the big U.N. climate talks in Cancun are ‘going backwards.’

They are arguing over adjusting the imaginary global thermostat down 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees. While the world’s two biggest polluters, China and India, feel it is unfair that they be forced to participate, don’t want anything to do with it. They haven’t signed on to the Kyoto Protocol either.

Then there’s the rift as to who would manage the $100 billion per year fund that they say they need in order to meet their goal. The World Bank or the United Nations? No matter who it would be, you know it would be nothing more than a slush fund for dictators and despots around the world, helping them to play God while the United States mostly foots the bill for their folly.

Meanwhile, environment ministers began flying in Saturday, hoping to put new life in the U.N. talks. Don’t you wonder about ‘the cost’ that their carbon footprint places on our green earth?

Link:  Plodding climate talks stepping up to higher level

Economy, Energy, United Nations

Skeptic Or Denier?

The role of skeptic – the one who asks the questions, the one who demands answers – is generally a lauded role in modern society. At least .. as long as there’s a Republican on the hot seat. But in climate circles, they have another word, a pejorative term, for skeptics: deniers. The church of global warming has no tolerance for heresy, and even less for probing questions or investigations. And so it is that the journalist Phelim McAleer was denied press credentials for the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in sunny Cancun, Mexico this week.

Meanwhile Christina Figueres, the UN climate chief, launched the annual climate change meeting in Cancun in Mexico, asking negotiators to strike a “compromise” and weave together elements of a solid response to global warming by drawing inspiration from the Mayan goddess of “reason and creativity.”

And, more talk of the need to transfer money and technology under the belief that the United Nations can adjust an imaginary global thermostat by moving vast amounts of money from one side of the earth to the other, if only the other side of the earth will go along. Guess who from? Leaving the rest of us in the dark.

Link:  The Climate Conference Echo Chamber |  UN climate change conference opens in Mexico