The White House Blog, in a post entitled “Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production”, lays out the case for the Obama Administration as a long-time supporter of domestic oil and gas:

One area where we have focused our efforts since the start of the administration – long before this current spike – is increasing responsible domestic energy production – including oil and gas. In fact, oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003. From 2008 to 2010, oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf increased more than a third – from 446 million barrels in 2008 to an more than 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.

Have these people no shame? (Note: Rhetorical question.)

“One area where we have focused our efforts since the start of the administration – long before this current spike – is increasing responsible domestic energy production – including oil and gas.”

Oh, my gosh. I have been paying attention, guys. It was very clear from day one that the Adminstration’s focus was on renewables, not oil and gas. The political appointees in the Minerals Management Service, from erstwhile Director Liz Birnbaum down, had no previous oil and gas background. They were environmental lawyers, and their job was to promote the President’s green agenda.

I saw Interior Secretary Salazar speak in New Orleans, early on in 2009. He had just cancelled the Five Year Leasing Plan for the Offshore that his Republican predecessor had only recently approved. That Five Year Plan is still in limbo.

No, two things stick with me from Secretary Salazar’s meeting: he was interested in increasing the Federal Government’s revenue by increasing oil and gas royalties, and he was interested in advancing offshore wind energy.

The President’s first budget proposal in 2009 proposed increasing the tax burden on the domestic oil and gas producer.

“In fact, oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003. From 2008 to 2010, oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf increased more than a third – from 446 million barrels in 2008 to an more than 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.”

It is categorically true that, while the numbers may be factual, Obama Administration policies had nothing whatever to do with the production buildup in late ’09 into early 2010.

That production growth is due almost entirely to a handful of large deepwater fields, notably BP’s Thunder Horse, which came on production during that time frame.

…”First oil” came on June 14, 2008. Since then, Thunder Horse has steadily ramped up its production by bringing on new wells. In March 2009, Thunder Horse produced close to 250,000 barrels per day (40,000 m³/d) oil equivalent in oil and natural gas from seven wells.

So Thunder Horse by itself accounts for almost all of that abrupt ramp-up in oil production.

Does Obama deserve credit?

Thunder Horse sits in 6,200 feet of water. The leases date from 1988 (Reagan) and 1994 (Clinton). The discovery well was drilled in 1999, and the platform was set in 2005, during the George W. Bush Administration.

Due to the Deepwater Moratorium/Permitorium and the shutdown of the Offshore Leasing Program, we have essentially stopped looking for the next Thunder Horse.

Instead, half the available rig fleet sits idle due to a lack of permits. The BOEMRE’s current permitting backlog is comprised of 270 shallow-water and 52 deepwater wells. The Obama Adminstration threatens to reject seven of the outstanding deepwater permits rather than comply with Judge Feldman’s order to approve them or show cause within 30 days.

Production elsewhere in the U.S. has also increased, but no thanks to Obama’s policies. It is industry ingenuity and competitiveness that has led the production growth, in the Bakken Shale of North Dakota, the Eagleford Shale of South Texas and in the Permian Basin of West Texas. This increase is driven by technology (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) and by product prices. None of these areas are primarily on Federal lands; they have excelled in spite of hostile Federal policies, not because of them.

In any case, the oil and gas industry actually delivers innovation via the free market. The Obama Administration’s promised Hope and Change, by contrast, depends on a central planning model which is a proven failure. Government policies cannot keep up with, much less predict, the quality and the potential impact of the creativity of private capital.

It is especially outrageous that The White House tries to glom the credit for private success.

Cross-posted to VladEnBlog.

The White House Blog, in a post entitled “Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production”, lays out the case for the Obama Administration as a long-time supporter of domestic oil and gas:

One area where we have focused our efforts since the start of the administration – long before this current spike – is increasing responsible domestic energy production – including oil and gas. In fact, oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003. From 2008 to 2010, oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf increased more than a third – from 446 million barrels in 2008 to an more than 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.

Have these people no shame? (Note: Rhetorical question.)

“One area where we have focused our efforts since the start of the administration – long before this current spike – is increasing responsible domestic energy production – including oil and gas.”

Oh, my gosh. I have been paying attention, guys. It was very clear from day one that the Adminstration’s focus was on renewables, not oil and gas. The political appointees in the Minerals Management Service, from erstwhile Director Liz Birnbaum down, had no previous oil and gas background. They were environmental lawyers, and their job was to promote the President’s green agenda.

I saw Interior Secretary Salazar speak in New Orleans, early on in 2009. He had just cancelled the Five Year Leasing Plan for the Offshore that his Republican predecessor had only recently approved. That Five Year Plan is still in limbo.

No, two things stick with me from Secretary Salazar’s meeting: he was interested in increasing the Federal Government’s revenue by increasing oil and gas royalties, and he was interested in advancing offshore wind energy.

The President’s first budget proposal in 2009 proposed increasing the tax burden on the domestic oil and gas producer.

“In fact, oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003. From 2008 to 2010, oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf increased more than a third – from 446 million barrels in 2008 to an more than 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.”

It is categorically true that, while the numbers may be factual, Obama Administration policies had nothing whatever to do with the production buildup in late ’09 into early 2010.

That production growth is due almost entirely to a handful of large deepwater fields, notably BP’s Thunder Horse, which came on production during that time frame.

…”First oil” came on June 14, 2008. Since then, Thunder Horse has steadily ramped up its production by bringing on new wells. In March 2009, Thunder Horse produced close to 250,000 barrels per day (40,000 m³/d) oil equivalent in oil and natural gas from seven wells.

So Thunder Horse by itself accounts for almost all of that abrupt ramp-up in oil production.

Does Obama deserve credit?

Thunder Horse sits in 6,200 feet of water. The leases date from 1988 (Reagan) and 1994 (Clinton). The discovery well was drilled in 1999, and the platform was set in 2005, during the George W. Bush Administration.

Due to the Deepwater Moratorium/Permitorium and the shutdown of the Offshore Leasing Program, we have essentially stopped looking for the next Thunder Horse.

Instead, half the available rig fleet sits idle due to a lack of permits. The BOEMRE’s current permitting backlog is comprised of 270 shallow-water and 52 deepwater wells. The Obama Adminstration threatens to reject seven of the outstanding deepwater permits rather than comply with Judge Feldman’s order to approve them or show cause within 30 days.

Production elsewhere in the U.S. has also increased, but no thanks to Obama’s policies. It is industry ingenuity and competitiveness that has led the production growth, in the Bakken Shale of North Dakota, the Eagleford Shale of South Texas and in the Permian Basin of West Texas. This increase is driven by technology (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) and by product prices. None of these areas are primarily on Federal lands; they have excelled in spite of hostile Federal policies, not because of them.

In any case, the oil and gas industry actually delivers innovation via the free market. The Obama Administration’s promised Hope and Change, by contrast, depends on a central planning model which is a proven failure. Government policies cannot keep up with, much less predict, the quality and the potential impact of the creativity of private capital.

It is especially outrageous that The White House tries to glom the credit for private success.

Cross-posted to VladEnBlog.

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Gamecock apologizes for recent Colorado governor faux pas; has updated his contact lens Rx and learned yet another humility lesson, this time with respect to the “two sources rule.” If you are unaware of the reason for this aside, don’t worry. This blog stands on its own.]

Given the post-1978 Three Mile Island history of Democrats standing in the way of economic development via radical environmental restrictions, which includes the President-Elects’ “green” tendencies in spades, the whole Obama promise to save or create three million jobs is called into question, unless one means only to create jobs for lawyers.

[We are also disturbed by the inclusion of the word “save” after first promising only to “create” two million jobs in an earlier ideation of the “stimulus” bill. Given that 154 million Americans are now employed, a President Obama could keep latest promise even if 151 million lost their jobs, but I digress.]

Michael Barone had earlier expressed some confidence that Obama’s choice of Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary meant that Obama was serious about job creation.

I didn’t share the confidence, mainly due to the “d” after his name, and neither was environmental lawyer and conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt:

In his townhall.com column, Hugh Hewitt cites my recent blogpost on Interior Secretary-designate Ken Salazar and raises the question of how Salazar will deal with polar bears. Yes, polar bears. As Hewitt points out in this column and as he has written on his blog at hughhewitt.com, environmental restrictionists want to use the threat that supposed global warming poses to polar bears as the basis of legal suits to stop economic development not just in Alaska but throughout the United States. This sounds outlandish, but it’s true. No economic growth because it might raise temperatures in the Arctic, which might in turn reduce the number of ice floes that these attractive carnivores jump on.

As Hewitt has pointed out, polar bear populations have actually been increasing lately. The species is not endangered but thriving. In February 1998, I visited the oil fields in the North Slope of Alaska. It was 40-below zero (don’t ask which scale: It’s 40 below in both Fahrenheit and Centigrade), and I was being driven around in an all-terrain vehicle on ice roads. The vehicle had been warmed up for three hours, but I could still see my breath inside; the road conditions were such that we couldn’t go more than 30 miles an hour. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I said to the driver, “if we saw a polar bear.” “No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “A polar bear can run faster than this car can go and can punch through the windshield with his paw. And to him, you’re lunch.”

Democrats say they want major infrastructure projects. The usual argument against them—that they take too long to get up and running to stimulate a recessionary economy—is weak because the current recession threatens to linger and perhaps turn into long-running deflation. But we can’t have major infrastructure projects if environmental restrictionists sue and stop them in the name of the polar bear. This is something Democrats, especially Ken Salazar, might want to think about.

The GOP will have an increasingly unemployed captive audience of non-lawyers this year that expect Obama to keep his jobs promise. Moreover, there is no greater threat to the short and long term economic health of America that Obama’s love for teaching us lessons with high energy costs and bankrupting the coal industry.

President Bush already paved the way with the prospective ban on Edison’s light bulb and inclusion of the polar bear as an endangered species.

If we don’t stop such fundamental changes sure to be disguised as “stimulus”, then the polar bear will no doubt outlive an extinct American prosperity.

Energy is what makes prosperity possible.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson