Election Gitters Cause Obama Administration to End Gulf Deep Water Drilling Moratorium

With the towering tsunami for Democrat office holders rapidly approaching, the Obama Administration ended the Gulf of Mexico ban on deep water drilling.  This is window dressing, a classical socialist Potemkin village, to divert the American voter's attention away from a jobs-killing and over-seas oil price boosting policy of the Obama administration. 

The Gulf of Mexico produces about 30% of American oil production.  The Obama administration has been very effectively reducing new American oil production since it took over by refusing permits to drill and by refusing leases on federally controlled onshore and offshore areas.  The huge tracts of Western federal land have seen a large reduction in oil and gas drilling due to Obama policy.  The shallow water (less than 500 foot depth) drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has been brought to a standstill since few platforms have been able to get their drilling permits approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a long time, despite no moratorium in place to prevent such shallow water drilling.  A study by Southern Methodist University shows that the low 10 to 15 permits a month approved prior to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion, has slowed to about a dozen total since then.  This is only about 2 per month and has left many shallow water platforms idle.  The Obama administration has halted the exploration for oil off the Alaskan coast as well.  In 2009, the federal government issued fewer leases for oil and gas than in any year under Clinton or Bush.  Leasing in 2010 appears to be occurring at a similarly abysmally low rate.

A report in the Wall Street Journal of 13 October 2010 says that the government estimates that the new deep water drilling regulations will cost oil and gas drillers an additional $183 million per year.  One always has to wonder what multiplier well above 1.00 should be used to estimate a more realistic cost.  The Interior Department is issuing a raft of new drilling requirements and plan to keep issuing more requirements.  The drilling companies have understand the new requirements and plan on how to comply.  They have to submit the compliance plans to the "over-worked" Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and wait for a yea or nay.  Then as each additional requirement comes along, they have to stop drilling and resubmit a new plan for a permit.  It is expected that many drillers will not be able to afford this and will leave the Gulf, as some have already.

Democrats are as interesting as their symbolic asses in their odd behavior.  They increasingly talk about wanting to cut back on our use of fossil fuels so we will not have to import so much oil.  They propose carbon taxes on this basis as well as in the name of the failed catastrophic man-made CO2 emissions global warming hypothesis.  As more and more people are becoming aware that man-made global warming is a myth, the socialists (Progressives) are using the false idea of energy independence or self-sufficiency as the justification for energy taxes and restrictive mandates.  Yet, at every turn, they oppose any effective attempt to generate more energy in America itself.  They oppose oil drilling and coal mining.  They oppose the development of shale oil deposits out West and they oppose the use of the new rock fracturing process to extract gas from large areas of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.  They even oppose the ineffective, but highly touted, wind and solar power generator plants on environmental grounds in a great many instances.  Of course, they also oppose nuclear power plants as well.  It is of little concern to them that this energy policy is highly self-contradictory.  Such is the way demagogues think, except that this is really a refusal to think.