With tens of thousands of Americans out of work, Barack Obama continues in his attempts to divert his critics’ attention with cheap PR stunts and empty promises. His announcement this week that his administration will lift exploration restrictions off small portions of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico, is another stall tactic designed for nothing more than show.
Meantime, Russia, China and Venezuela are preparing to drill 90 miles off our coast in Cuban waters.
The coastal waters of the United States are perhaps the most exhaustively explored regions in the world for petroleum deposits. The state of California is bankrupt, and it is practically drowning in black gold, the result of nearly 60 years of bans on coastal drilling by Democratic legislators. There is presently more untapped oil in the US than in all of the Middle East.
And if Iran alone cuts off oil exports in the Middle East, the impact will be crippling. Think what would happen if Saudi shipments were curtailed for some reason.
T. Boone Pickens recently said that if the President would lift bans and introduce a program to convert much of the country’s transportation to natural gas, we could literally cut OPEC in half in 10-years time. Mr. Pickens – whom we can assume knows something about petroleum and gas – is still waiting for the government to call.
For decades the Democrats have stifled energy production and refinement with environmental scares while accusing Republican administrations of fight wars for foreign oil. It is time the American people wake up. We are behind France – every liberal’s dream nation – in nuclear energy, and the EPA Department of Interior are leveling impossible restrictions on drilling and coal mining.
And still, Barack Obama is about to make another end run on his economy-wrecking energy policy. He will, if Americans don’t speak out, ram yet another multi-trillion-dollar program that the country doesn’t want through Congress.
Environmental impact reports at this late date are nonsense. Oil companies long ago perfected safe drilling technology. There will certainly always be some risk, but delay is not worth the stability of our economy. ANWR is virtually untapped and oil rich; the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota as well as other areas of the country have untapped fields, and natural gas in abundance. http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/resources.asp
Instability in the Middle East makes an immediate and aggressive petroleum and gas policy imperative to the future of the nation’s economy and security. Our large transportation vehicle will not run on corn syrup and electrical outlets.
President Obama’s environmental impact stalls will find us in peril if he doesn’t get off his liberal rear and act now.
