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Because They Need to Help Their Green Friends
March 10, 2010 Corporatism

This WSJ Editorial talks about how the Obama Administration, for all its yacking about domestic energy production, has tightened the screws on oil and nuclear here in the US:

Congress’s ban on offshore drilling expired in September 2008, and a Bush Administration plan for leasing the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf was due to begin this year. Yet within a month of taking office, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar halted leasing by extending the public comment period by six months. When that period ended last September, Interior said it would take “several weeks” to analyze the results. It has yet to release a summary.

Mr. Salazar last week informed Congress he was scrapping the Bush plan and that leasing will not begin for at least another two years. (despite public support for leasing running at 2-1 in favor)

in January, Mr. Salazar rebuffed Virginia’s request—endorsed by its governor and legislature—to allow drilling offshore.

Interior canceled oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land in Utah

a leaked Interior Department memo disclosed plans to have Mr. Obama use executive power—under the Antiquities Act—to designate 10 million acres of western land as “monuments,” putting them off-limits to energy development as well as current timber or mining work.

As for nuclear power, … while loan guarantees were a “nice thing,” they were meaningless in the absence of regulatory certainty

Of course, what else would we expect to the chief of promises kept and the age of transparency. What the editorial forgot to highlight that these Chavez-like maneuvers should come to be expected given the doubling down that the Administration has committed to on green energy. I am sure there are no under the table deals from Green energy lobbyists. I am sure there are not any political reasons at all to stifle nuclear and oil. I am sure that the energy planners in DC are just carefully weighing lots of options and coolly deciding for America what is best for them. I am sure of it. Wanna bet?

"1" Comment
  1. Have you read about the natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation in the northeast? Just yesterday I read it spreads all the way to Rochester and north to Ontario, like Belleville and beyond.

    The formations are deep, and involve a technology called fracking, and also utilize techniques not available when I worked (consulting? not the same thing as manhandling pipe on a rig!) in the oil patch in the late ’70s and early ’80’s, when it was economic to drill deeper than 5,000 feet.

    Fracking requires water, and thus there are some environmental concerns — in my opinion, some may be legitimate and some are the same objections we always hear from the folks who wish every hydrocarbon to stay in the ground forever.

    In Pennsylvania, our governor has gotten excited about levying a severance tax on property owners who thought they owned all their land, down to the Earth’s core, when they sell their drilling rights to an evil company, the principle being the same as what any Philadelphia lawyer thinks, which is that some of your property should be his, because he wants it.

    I know of several –I can’t say many — people who have relatives or acquaintances who have hit the jackpot by owning a piece of ground that either has gas under it or has a pipeline right-of-way, and have found themselves temporarily out of the clutches of our socialist masters. As I said, temporarily, because Ed Rendell is licking his chops in anticipation of a big slice of the pie; he almost drools when on the nightly news camera, as he does about the prospect of table games in state-sponsored casinos.

    To answer your question, I bet that the Administration thinks they are the best ones to decide for us because it is their pleasure. Someone else will pay their heating bill.

    By the way, I read another article in the Journal about how noisy wind turbines are, as in don’t live 300 yards from one if you want to sleep, even with turning the television on all night as white noise. (I assume white noise means late-night Ron Popeil rotisserie and pocket fisherman ads.)

    But then this is all about carbon, right? [Looking forward to your graphs of inflation-adjusted coal prices and inflation-adjusted labor cost of coal prices.]

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