Via correspondent Poe Leggette, the Western Energy Alliance‘s analysis of oil and gas leasing in the RockY Mountain states under the last three administrations:

Bear in mind that the Federal government is the primary owner of much of the land in several western states. Combine that with the fact that the March 2010 Lease Sale was the last one we’ll see in the Gulf of Mexico for the foreseeable future, and you can begin to see how hostile the Obama administration is to domestic oil and gas exploration.

CHEYENNE — Environmental red tape has contributed to a 79 percent decrease in oil and gas leasing on public land in Rocky Mountain states, taking a toll on the region’s economy, a petroleum industry group says.

Members of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance are prepared to spend $3.9 billion to drill in the West, creating 16,000 jobs, said Kathleen Sgamma, the group’s government affairs director.

Bureaucratic uncertainty is causing them to look elsewhere to invest, she said.

“They simply can’t get the permits, they can’t get their projects approved,” Sgamma said Thursday.

We saw on Wednesday how quickly a cessation of rig activity can translate into a measurable loss of production – an alarming loss of 355,000 barrels per day of oil and 2.0 BCF of natural gas per day in six months (March-September) from the Gulf of Mexico alone.

Windmills aren’t picking up the slack. Production performance like this means one thing: increased imports.

Energy independence? More like energy servitude.

Cross-posted at VladEnBlog.