High gas prices=Mormon President

[_Droopy]

Ford C. O'Connell is a Republican strategist and a moron.

Nuff said.

I have yet to hear a single idea coming from the Republicans that would effectively reduce gas prices. Anything the President could do would be interpreted as Socialism. For instance, if he were to take measures to crack down on excessive speculation, which is the primary cause of the price spike, then he would be attacked as a Socialist who hates the free market.

The only thing the idiots on the Right have argued is to drill more on American soil, which we already know won't do anything to ease prices at the pump.

Sigh...


Now that Graham has revoked the law of supply and demand (you'd think Podesta, Chu, Browner, or WWF were feeding him this stuff personally, wouldn't you?) to clear the way for his ideological predilections, basic economic education would doubtless be futile, at this point.

However, it should be pointed out that the law of supply and demand (as well as the other laws of economics) are, in fact, still in force in the real world, and if American petroleum markets began to be inundated over time with large new supplies of oil, prices at the pump would indeed decease as supply rose to meet demand and then exceeded demand as new entrepreneurs entered the market. Competition for market share between retailers would also exert downward pressure on price over time.

Indeed, if the Keystone Pipeline were built, and every drop of that new oil were exported outside the country, never making it physically to American pumps, domestic prices would in time decrease as world markets reflected the increased supply. If Saudi Arabia, Russia, or China flooded world markets with new oil, world prices, and American prices, would eventually fall.

The fact that oil prices are, to a substantial extent, determined on world oil commodities markets does not in any way obviate domestic price dynamics, including domestic supply. The idea that if the United States flooded itself with new oil from domestic production, domestic prices would not fall, is non-rational and indicative of fantastic economic illiteracy.

If tonight as you slept, all over the United States, it rained diamonds, and in the morning when you woke up, everywhere you looked, were shiny, new, cut diamonds, in copious quantities, as common as rocks and pine cones, the price of diamonds would plummet, both domestically and on international markets (as Americans exited the world market and began exporting their free diamonds in copious quantities).

If Barbie Dolls were traded on world commodities markets, and American producers substantially increased domestic production and distribution of Barbie dolls, domestic prices would fall as supply increased, irrespective of world market prices. At some point, supply would be fully satisfying demand and the price representing what the "market will bear" at a fully adequate supply relative to demand would emerge. Any foreign manufacturers would then have to compete with American Barbie Dolls for market share here, but the increased supply here must drive prices downwards as supply increases in the same way that foreign flooding of the American market with a commodity would drive prices down just the same.

The idea that substantially increasing domestic oil supply would have no effect on price is just what Graham needs to believe (regardless of its quite obvious economic irrationality) to sustain his personal psychological and emotional fixations (i.e., his political ideology).

Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil available for domestic use on a continual basis would not lower domestic prices, according to Graham. But of course, the laws of economics do not respond to deep fat fried charts or graphs, nor to ideological nostrums that feed bloated intellectual egos. Of course, any such increase of world oil supply from any source would decrease both the world and domestic price of oil, and any domestic increases in supply would also decrease domestic price according to the very same law of supply and demand. Even if we drilled in every state in the Union, and exported every drop of oil outside the United States, domestic prices in America would fall as a result.

This entire argument stands basic economic literacy and the most rudimentary logical thought on its proverbial head. No one in their right mind would believe it.

And, well, I'll leave it at that.

[_Droopy]

One other thing of note: as Kevin shills for the Democratic party like Snowball for Napoleon, he forgets that the vast majority of government lands are presently off limits to drilling, as are shallow offshore regions on our coasts. Most of the increase in present drilling is being done of private property that Obama cannot restrict (yet).

Further, Graham is not telling you that under Obama, new drilling permits are down 36% over his predecessor. The amount of land onshore in the U.S. not being tapped for its petroleum resources is really astounding.





Further, high oil prices here have a plethora of causes, almost all of them being artificial restraints imposed by government and its unofficial political gestapo, the environmental movement. No new petroleum refining infrastructure has been brought online in well over thirty years. Drilling has been severely prohibited since the late seventies onshore and offshore in shallow waters. Over half of every gallon of gasoline one buys at the pump is pure tax. Nonsense political overhead that has no rational basis, like the ethanol mandate and numerous chemicals mandated in various "blends" of gasoline that can very from state to state and region to region and which have vague environmental motives, have driven prices into the stratosphere along with other longer term trends.

The fundamental reason, in other words, prices have so increased, is primarily a function of government interference in and destruction of market forces and market disciplines. The one caveat here is the fast rise of demand in some strongly emerging nations, in particular China and India, but this is only one aspect of a more complex picture.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Further, high oil prices here have a plethora of causes, almost all of them being artificial restraints imposed by government and its unofficial political gestapo, the environmental movement.

If that were actually the case, we should be able to see some kind of a correlation between the price fluctuations that Kevin posted above, and the kinds of "artificial restraints" that you're alluding to here. So can you chart them out, Droopy? E.g., there is a steep decline on that graph between 10/25 and 12/15. What happened to cause that? How and in what ways did "government interference" lessen so as to affect the drop in price?

[_ldsfaqs]

Liberals, anti-mormons, all perversion of the truth, a little truth to tell great lies always makes me laugh and sad at the same time.

Since Obama has been in office he's implemented multiple policy's to inhibit oil, and as a natural result, the gas prices have doubled since he took office. That's not an accident, that is design. Even his Energy Secretary directly states it, and has stated it. So, it's not like they are entirely hiding that fact.

Yes, we live in a world wide market. But what liberals don't get is that what occurs in America directly effects the world market. Many of our products, especially oil are intimately tied into that market. Thus, when Obama and his crony's plays tiddly-winks with oil permits, offshore drilling, onshore drilling, etc. etc., prices go up for everyone.

All one has to do is look to Reagan. He had to fix Carter's boondoggler by opening up permits, drilling, etc., and as a result prices went down.

Oh and Kevin and the rest of you.... You should start reading BOTH sides, rather than liberal lying propaganda which omit's important facts in order to make your stupid "charts" etc. above. Like your "oil rigs" chart..... You clearly haven't read the conservative rebuttal to that liberal misrepresentation of the facts, a half truth used to tell a great lie.

[_ldsfaqs]

The whole truth....

With gas prices heading toward $4 per gallon and beyond, President Obama repeatedly declares that "there are no silver bullets" to make the numbers on service station pumps go back down and that it is impossible "to drill our way" out of trouble. In fact, a look at rig counts in the natural gas industry during recent years points to a different conclusion. According to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count, between March 2007 and May 2008, the number of rigs drilling for natural gas soared to more than 1,600. As the accompanying chart shows, during the same period, the spot price of natural gas rose steadily from $255.96 per thousand cubic meters to $405.63. The next month, June 2008, saw natural gas hit its recent high at $456.57. But then, as supplies grew as a result of the increased number of rigs in action, the price of natural gas plummeted and has continued doing so ever since, falling below $100 in January this year. America has gone from having too little natural gas to a historic surplus. Most of the increased natural gas production took place on private or state-controlled lands, not on federal lands.

There is no reason not to expect a similar pattern on oil prices -- if the federal government would allow the free market to work. The price per barrel of the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil has steadily risen from below $80 in January 2010 to above $100 at present, even as the number of rigs at work drilling for oil has gone from under 400 to more than 1,200. To be sure, rig counts are far from the only factor determining the market price of natural gas and oil at any given time. But because the federal government issues permits for federal lands and offshore areas, the pace at which Washington approves drilling applications has a direct bearing on supplies and therefore prices. The current uptick in oil rig counts primarily reflects permits issued before the beginning of the Obama administration.

The number of approvals for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico -- which accounts for a third of all U.S. oil production -- under Obama has plunged from more than seven per month to only three. Measured in terms of how long is required for the government to consider a permit application, the average for the five years before Obama was 60.6 days. The average is now almost 110 days, according to the Institute for Energy Research. Viewed in terms of the percentage of all permits sought that are approved, the five-year average before Obama was 73 percent. Today under Obama, it is 23 percent and falling. In other words, it is almost certain that the oil-drilling rig count will head back down in coming months, but it will be in response to government interference rather than as a result of price fluctuations. And the price of gas at the pump will continue to go higher.

In other words..... Oil rig increases were due to Bush policy's, however during Obama's admin, oil permits being denied and delayed and the stopping of drilling has only occurred. In other words, Obama and liberal policy's directly interfering in the free market in relation to gas and oil has driven up the prices.

It's the same for housing..... Liberal interference in the housing market has caused housing prices to go much lower than they would have and for the recovery to take much longer. I moved from Vegas last year. I've known many home owners and real estate investors, and they've told me many Obama policy's which has directly caused them to loose their homes and investment property's. One policy for example wouldn't allow people to get loans for a particular kind of house or homeowner, which directly resulted and results in them loosing their home or investment property. And that is just one policy..... There were something like 10 others implemented which do the exact same thing, actually causing people to loose their homes and money. Liberals caused the housing crash forcing banks to give out bad loans, and then they make it worse rubbing salt in the wound.

See, what you liberals don't understand is there are facts "under" and "around" the simpleton childish facts such as your chart. These are important facts you people ignore, and thus causes you to make false judgments. Same with Mormonism. You see the idiot child obvious rather than knowing the entire truth which creates a different conclusion than yours.

[_Drifting]

See, what you Mormons don't understand is there are facts "under" and "around" the simpleton childish facts such as your chart. These are important facts you people ignore, and thus causes you to make false judgments. Same with Mormonism. You see the idiot child obvious rather than knowing the entire truth which creates a different conclusion than yours.

FIFY

[_Kevin Graham]

If that were actually the case, we should be able to see some kind of a correlation between the price fluctuations that Kevin posted above, and the kinds of "artificial restraints" that you're alluding to here. So can you chart them out, Droopy? E.g., there is a steep decline on that graph between 10/25 and 12/15. What happened to cause that? How and in what ways did "government interference" lessen so as to affect the drop in price?

No Scratch, he can't. As always, Loran likes to argue via assertion and he never backs up his claims with anything other than his say so. I've provided tons of references, even some from his own authorities like Cato. The fact is he is sold on the myth propagated only by the Right Wing media and he does so because he is a blind idealogue. He doesn't like the reality about oil speculation because it means he can't blame Obama. The fact is oil speculation has quadrupled since 2008 and even Goldman Sachs admitted it is out of control and responsible for the spike in gas prices.

He wants to think I have ignored the fundamentals of supply and demand, but this comment only demonstrates Loran's ignorance regarding oil speculation. It is about supply and demand! He doesn't even understand what it is. When people speculate on crude oil, they're essentially buying large quantities of it, betting that the price will go up in the near future, at which point they will turn around and sell for huge profits. He wants to blame Obama but he cannot point to a single "policy" that he has initiated that has caused a spike in gas prices. Not a single one. All he can do is keep mimicking the FOX News BS about the Keystone pipeline, completely ignoring the fact that at best, this would only have a slight positive effect on prices many years down the road.

The problem now is speculation. Every energy expert in the know understands this. Keystone wouldn't even come close to producing enough oil to effect the global price on crude. And that is what needs to happen on the supply side before we'll see gas prices drop substantially. Loran and FOX News simply do not understand how the price of crude directly corresponds to the price at the gas pump. Unless crude goes down, there is no hope of gas prices going down. Now there are two ways we can tilt the scales of supply and demand. We can try to increase supply, or reduce demand. Obviously Obama prefers the latter, while Republicans prefer the former. They attack every measure taken by the administration, which tries to invest in energy efficiency. They mock hybrid cars, they most wind power, solar power, etc. All they want to do is drill more and they think this will cure all our woes. How naïve and ignorant. Increased drilling has never, ever resulted in a positive effect on gas prices. It is a myth without a shred of evidence to support it. So while the left is constantly relying on energy experts to argue these things, the Right keeps interviewing politicians who assert the opposite. Gee, who should we trust here?

According to the Energy Information Administration, the cost of crude oil, which is set on the world market, determines [url]http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Ftools%2Ffaqs%2Ffaq.cfm%3Fid%3D22%26t%3D6]76 percent[/url] of the price of gasoline. Energy experts agree that the way to reduce our vulnerability to gas price spikes is to decrease our dependence on oil, regardless of where the oil comes from.

Michael Levi, Council on Foreign Relations: "Since oil is traded on a global market, the effects of volatility are reflected in the price of every barrel of oil regardless of its origin. This problem can be addressed only by making the U.S. economy more resilient to oil price swings, which includes -- most significantly -- lowering total U.S. oil consumption."

Economist Severin Borenstein: "To fix the problem, we just need to use less oil."

Energy analyst Chris Nelder: "Increasing efficiency is going to be a far more productive policy tool than increasing supply."

Moody's Chris Lafakis: Higher average fuel economy, "be it through electric vehicles or improved efficiency on conventional vehicles," lowers "the percentage of consumers' incomes that they spend on gasoline."

Energy economist Severin Borenstein, a professor at U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business, explained: "Oil prices drive gasoline prices and current oil prices are high. But $125 per barrel oil today is no more the fault of President Obama than $147 oil was President Bush's fault in June 2008. There is very little the U.S. president can do to change oil prices over months or a few years. U.S. oil production was up 13 percent in 2011 over 2008, but still remains less than one-tenth of the world oil market." [U.S. News & World Report, 3/2/12]

In a U.S. News & World Report column, Cato Institute fellows Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor wrote: "President Obama is no more responsible for production increases than other presidents were responsible for production declines. Unfortunately, presidents get blamed for world market changes that occur during their time in office ... but generally, they do not cause them." [U.S. News & World Report, 3/2/12]

Tom Kloza, chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, told USA Today: "We'll continue to see plenty of blame attributed to both parties if we see prices go higher. But there is very little a president can do to impact gas or crude oil prices over the short term." [USA Today, 3/8/12]

But Loran understands none of this, and he isn't interested in what these people have to say because it disrupts his way of thinking and creates more dissonance than his ego can handle.

And here is a newsflash for you. Contrary to Loran's rants, the fact is Obama is not against Keystone. He maintains an "all of the above" approach, including expanded drilling. What Loran doesn't tell you is the fact that the Republicans in Congress were playing fast and loose with the proposal, because they knew he'd not abide by their ridiculous timeline that would have prevented them from taking safety/environmental measures, and this was probably by design so then they could start attacking him for being against expanded drilling:

CUSHING, Okla. (AP) — President Barack Obama firmly defended his record on oil drilling Thursday, ordering the government to fast-track an Oklahoma pipeline while accusing Congress of playing politics with a larger Canada-to-Gulf Coast project.

Deep in Republican oil country, Obama said lawmakers refused to give his administration enough time review the controversial 1,170-mile Keystone XL pipeline in order to ensure that it wouldn't compromise the health and safety of people living in surrounding areas.

"Unfortunately, Congress decided they wanted their own timeline," Obama said. "Not the company, not the experts, but members of Congress who decided this might be a fun political issue decided to try to intervene and make it impossible for us to make an informed decision."

Facing fresh criticism from Republicans who blame him for gas prices near $4 a gallon, Obama announced Thursday that he was directing federal agencies to expedite the southern segment of the Keystone line. The 485-mile line will run from Cushing, Okla., to refineries on Texas' Gulf Coast, removing a critical bottleneck in the country's oil transportation system. The directive would also apply to other pipelines that alleviate choke points.

"Anyone who says that we're somehow suppressing domestic oil production isn't paying attention," Obama said, speaking at the site of the new Oklahoma project.

Loran just doesn't want to come to grips with reality. Nothing we can do will substantially increase supply, and even if we could, there is nothing stopping the speculators from hoarding crude, as the Koch brothers do right now. They lease giant oil tankers and let them sit at sea and they do this because they can. There is nothing illegal about it.

Likewise, if I was a billionaire I could buy all the lettuce in Arizona and then sit back and watch the rest of the country pay $10 for a head of lettuce. Because despite the fact that Arizona produces an adequate supply for the country, that supply means nothing if it is inaccessible to the end users. Speculators like the Kochs want to make money on the backs of the working people as usual and we should be focusing our frustration at them instead of these myths created by the same people who helped cause this problem. Some of us are smart enough to see through the BS. But the Kochs are willing to bet, not only on crude, but also that people like Loran will buy into their nonsense uncritically. All they have to do is pay one of their hired hacks, like Thomas Stowell, to write up some piece for his favorite "think tank", and then all Loran's thinking has been done.

[_Droopy]

Oh and Kevin and the rest of you.... You should start reading BOTH sides, rather than liberal lying propaganda which omit's important facts in order to make your stupid "charts" etc. above. Like your "oil rigs" chart..... You clearly haven't read the conservative rebuttal to that liberal misrepresentation of the facts, a half truth used to tell a great lie.

Look a Kevin's post below. This is a typical Kevin Graham cut-and-paste fest as he ranges far and wide across the left-wing Internet spinsphere seeking the arguments he can't formulate and articulate himself from his own background of knowledge and education.

Obama telegraphed his intentions in this area long before he became President. Those intentions are to thoroughly degrade and, in some cases (coal, for example) all but destroy the entire fossil fuel based energy infrastructure of the Untied States economy. The coterie of ideological fanatics he has tapped to assist him in this endeavor - people like socialist Carol Browner and eco-fascist Steven Chu - are similarly dedicated to the achieving the same goals and in the same fundamental manner - coercive statist command and control of the economy and human behavior.

Again, gas prices are skyrocketing for a number of reasons. Emerging demand in China and India are one. Speculation is one aspect as well. The primary factor, however, is an over thirty year moratorium on the construction of new petroleum infrastructure, severe restrictions on drilling within the continental United States and in its shallow waters offshore, environmentalist red tape and ceaseless litigation that makes in impossible to bring new infrastructure online (as well as with nuclear), and some specific measures of recent date, such as Obama's illegal moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that has cost thousands of jobs, taken a massive quantity of oil out of domestic American markets, and pushed one drilling company into bankruptcy.

This is all of a piece, folks, and all part of an ideological and political vision for the nation as a whole.

[_Kevin Graham]

Notice that Loran's last ditch effort to salvage his argument is in fact a retreat and move the goal posts. Now he blames 30 years of government, failing to mention that this includes three Republican administrations. All he can do now complain that I've cut and pasted the data. Well, of course I did. I like to back up my claims with references. That he would call Cato a leftist organization is almost as funny as his earlier claim that an article written by the Heritage foundation was nothing but leftist tripe. Of course he didn't know it was written by Heritage until after I let him embarrass himself further.

Loran isn't upset that I cut and paste for convenience. He is upset that he cannot deal with these refutations. he projects his methods onto me, as he merely parrots Heritage and Cato. Not a single original idea or argument comes from his mind. Not one. He operates in abject ignorance.

Here is another one, coming straight from the White House, which responds directly to a number of idiotic claims propagated by the Right Wing:

FACT CHECK: All-of-the-Above Approach to American Energy

Lately, there have been a lot of misleading claims about gas prices. As middle class families are struggling with high prices at the pump, a result of increased global oil prices, politicians have renewed their promises for $2 gas and their misleading claims about who is to blame. One thing is clear, cheap political points and false debates won’t bring down the price of gasoline.

The fact is, oil is bought and sold in a world market. And just like last year, the biggest thing that’s causing the price of oil to rise right now is instability in the Middle East.

The truth is that there is no silver bullet to address rising gas prices in the short term, but there are steps we can take to ensure the American people don’t fall victim to skyrocketing gas prices over the long term. That’s why since taking office the President has been focused on a sustained, “all-of-the-above” approach to developing new domestic energy sources, expanding oil and gas production, and reducing our reliance on foreign oil, most notably through the historic fuel economy standards the President has established, which will nearly double the efficiency of the vehicles we drive and save families $1.7 trillion at the pump. It’s true that in the near term, the U.S. will continue to rely on responsibly produced oil and gas, but over the long term, the Obama administration is committed to a policy that allows us to transition from oil towards cleaner alternatives and energy efficiency. This strategy is a win-win scenario. A win for the economy. A win for energy security. And a win for the environment. Despite the facts, Republicans have continued to ratchet up the rhetoric, distorting facts and in some cases pushing complete falsehoods for short term political gains.

Here are some of the claims that have been made recently, and the reality that the politicians making those claims fail to acknowledge.

“Over the last three years, your administration has blocked, slowed, and discouraged the production of critical American energy sources.”

False. The numbers speak for themselves. Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased each year, while imports of foreign oil have decreased.

In 2011, U.S. crude oil production reached its highest level in 8 years, increasing by an estimated 110,000 barrels per day over 2010 levels to 5.59 million barrels per day.
U.S. natural gas production grew in 2011 – the largest year-over-year volumetric increase in history – and easily eclipsed the previous all-time production record set in 1973.

Even if you fail to give the Obama Administration the credit it deserves in helping to expand this production, any notion that production has been blocked or slowed, doesn’t square with the facts.

“This President continues to limit offshore areas to energy production and is granting fewer leases on public land for oil drilling.”

False. In the wake of the largest oil spill in U.S. history the Obama Administration put in place important new standards that ensured that drilling continued, but that the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were recognized, and guided future production. Today drilling and production continues, but in line with these important new standards. In fact, since new standards were put into place last year, the administration has approved hundreds of permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including:

308 permits for deep water drilling activities for 94 unique wells in the Gulf of Mexico and;

113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

In fact, we are now permitting at levels seen before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, all while meeting these important new standards.

Additionally, we believe an all-of-the-above approach doesn’t need to come at-any-cost. That is why just as we make available more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources, the Obama Administration continues to study the feasibility of exploration, development, and production in other areas. We will move forward, but in a manner that is safe and sensible. We need to protect sensitive ecosystems, and we don’t have to indulge the false choice between our energy security and the environment.

“President Barack Obama likes to take credit for this energy boom, but in reality, recent U.S. energy growth is largely a result of private-sector investment and policies put in place by his predecessors. The energy policies this president has adopted are jeopardizing the progress we have made, and if he continues them, the U.S. energy boom could soon be over.”

Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased each year, while imports of foreign oil have decreased. Much of that production is on private lands, and the President believes that we want to be expanding responsible production across the country not just on public lands.

We have taken steps to extend existing leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. In addition, in December the administration held a lease sale that covered over 20 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, and last month the President announced an additional sale that will cover 38 million acres and produce up to 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Lastly and most importantly, we have put in place new rules to ensure that oil and gas companies are using the leases they have, and not just sitting on them. A report released last year by the Department of the Interior found that about 57 percent of leased onshore acres and over 70 percent of leased offshore acres were not being developed by the oil and gas companies that own them. And in 2010, of the nearly 37 million offshore acres offered for lease by the Federal government, only 2.4 million acres were leased by companies.

And EIA has projected that this trend of increased production will continue for the foreseeable future.

“On federal land, energy production fell 11 percent last year, and your draft five-year plan for off shore exploration projects a decline in federal leasing and permitting.”

On federal lands, we are taking steps to encourage increased production. Of course, public lands do not tell the whole story. Overall, since 2008, U.S. oil and gas production is up, and last year more oil was produced in this country than at any time since 2003. And despite a shift of industry interest away from producing on public lands, we continue to offer and permit more public land for development and production. Today, the U.S. has more oil and rigs at work in the field than the entire rest of the world. And, for federal waters, the Administration has announced the 2012-2017 Offshore Oil and Gas Development Program, which will make available more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.

As you can see, the claims and the facts just don’t add up.

But our production record doesn’t end there.

Earlier this month the Obama Administration announced the next steps towards further energy exploration in the Arctic. And last week, we joined Mexico in an agreement that will make more than 1.5 million acres in the Gulf available for exploration and production, which contains an estimated 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Administration has proposed an Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017, which makes available more than 75 percent of estimated undiscovered oil and gas resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. The proposed program schedules 15 potential lease sales, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico and three off the coast of Alaska, advancing safe and responsible domestic energy exploration and production by offering substantial acreage for lease in regions with known potential for oil and gas development.

We are encouraging development of mineral resources in the Rocky Mountain West. For example, in February, we made more than half a million acres available for research and development of oil shale and other unconventional oil resources.

Last year, the President established an interagency Alaska working group, which has been working to improve the efforts of Federal agencies responsible for overseeing the safe and responsible development of onshore and offshore energy in Alaska. The group has been coordinating review of Shell’s proposed exploration activities in the Arctic, where we have not only extended leases, but are on track to approve exploratory development this summer.

Onshore in Alaska, this Administration committed to holding annual lease sales. In December 2011 we held a lease sale that covered over 140,000 acres and generated $3.6 million in total bids.

We have made enormous progress on renewable permitting for federal lands. In all the years leading up to 2009, the federal government permitted a total 1,530 megawatts of clean energy – including zero megawatts of solar. But in the last three years, we have approved 29 onshore renewable energy projects to reach approximately 6,600 additional megawatts – including 16 solar projects, 5 wind farms, and 8 geothermal facilities. In this State of the Union address, the President set a goal to reach 10,000 megawatts by the end of this year – enough to power 3 million homes. That’s a strong record.

Lastly, as part of the promises for quick fixes, politicians have turned the Keystone pipeline into some sort of panacea to high prices at the pump. The irony is that it was Congressional Republicans who stopped this project from going forward by inserting it into the December payroll tax cut legislation and trying to score political points, despite knowing that it could not be approved before their arbitrary deadline. Regardless, even if the pipeline had been approved, the oil from this pipeline does not start flowing immediately; first, the pipeline needs to be built. In fact it would take the Keystone pipeline more than 45 years to carry the amount of oil we will save through the historic fuel economy standards established by President Obama.

That said, the January denial of the permit was not a judgment on the merits of the project. Dozens of pipelines have been built under this administration, and just this week TransCanada stated the company will move forward with a separate pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. As the President stated in January, we support TransCanada’s interest in proceeding with the Cushing project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production. Moving oil from the Midwest to the state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will not only modernize our infrastructure, but it will create jobs and encourage American energy production. We look forward to working with TransCanada to ensure that it is built in a safe, responsible and timely manner. We’ll also take every step possible to expedite the necessary Federal permits.

Separately, TransCanada gave the State Department advance notice of its intention to submit a new application for the cross-border segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, from Canada to Steele City, Nebraska, once a route through Nebraska has been identified. By not allowing sufficient time for important review or the identification of a complete pipeline route, Republicans in the House forced a rejection of the company’s earlier application in January. And as we made clear, the President’s decision in January in no way prejudged future applications. We will ensure any project receives the important assessment it deserves, and will base a decision to provide a permit on the completion of that review.

You'll notice a number of popular assertions from Loran's posts, mentioned in the refutation piece above. The simple fact is that Loran's literature is limited to anything those corporate funded think tanks are ordered to put out. Heritage and the like are funded by the Oil industry for a reason.

Loran also does not understand what oil speculation is. He maintains his iignorant by reasserting refuted theories, while presenting them as facts. Never mind the fact that increased US oil production has never led to dropped gasoline prices. For Loran, history doesn't matter. He has this myth so deeply ingrained into his psyche that there is no letting go of it. So he treats all evidence to the contrary the only way he knows how, with contempt.

If we are going to be able to drive down gasoline prices the only way to do that is to reduce our demand, and that is precisely what the Obama administration has been trying to do. Idiots like Loran just parrot the talking points put out by the Oil industry, whose only interest is maintaining the status quo. They want their monopoly on the energy market so they will do whatever it takes to keep it. Lately they've been scaring the older, more ignorant generation like Loran, into thinking regulation of irresponsible oil companies is something akin to Socialism! They demonize regulation of any kind as their only true weapon against Obama's policies.

[Guest]

Notice that Loran's last ditch effort to salvage his argument is in fact a retreat and move the goal posts. Now he blames 30 years of government, failing to mention that this includes three Republican administrations.

Now? Uh...actually I've been making this argument (because its factually accurate) for many years now. And yes, it began in the Carter years and transverses both Democratic and Republican administrations (but since when, as a rule, have I defended Republicans around here?)

All he can do now complain that I've cut and pasted the data. Well, of course I did. I like to back up my claims with references.

So do I, but the difference is that you are very limited when it comes to doing your own thinking, and need the references, not so much to "back up" what your saying, but to make the case for you.

That he would call Cato a leftist organization

CFR (Cato is libertarian...obviously, a fact I've known for about, oh, 25 years).

is almost as funny as his earlier claim that an article written by the Heritage foundation was nothing but leftist tripe. Of course he didn't know it was written by Heritage until after I let him embarrass himself further.

While I don't recall that particular incident, or the issue at hand in any detail, its also true I don't support each and every claim made at Heritage by each and every scholar there. Nor do I feel the need to.

Loran isn't upset that I cut and paste for convenience. He is upset that he cannot deal with these refutations. he projects his methods onto me, as he merely parrots Heritage and Cato. Not a single original idea or argument comes from his mind. Not one. He operates in abject ignorance.

Our problem is that some people actually have a substantive understanding of economics and a good working knowledge of social and political history, while you are here primarily to pose as an intellectual and score debating points in any way you can, no matter the personal debasement involved. Huge, huge difference.

Here is another one, coming straight from the White House, which responds directly to a number of idiotic claims propagated by the Right Wing:


FACT CHECK: All-of-the-Above Approach to American Energy

Wow! "Straight from the White House?" Now there's a source for you! Yup, that's critical thinking and intellectually serious sourcing of arguments, straight from the fountain of truth that is the Obama White House in the ocean of veracity that is the Federal government to the dean of critical philosophical discourse, Kevin Graham.

Jolly good show.

The fact is, oil is bought and sold in a world market.

Yes, grounded in the laws of supply and demand that operate just as rigorously and invariably in domestic markets as in world markets.

The truth is that there is no silver bullet to address rising gas prices in the short term, but there are steps we can take to ensure the American people don’t fall victim to skyrocketing gas prices over the long term. That’s why since taking office the President has been focused on a sustained, “all-of-the-above” approach to developing new domestic energy sources, expanding oil and gas production,

Lie number one: Obama's licensing of new oil development and drilling is down some 36% from his predecessor and well below Clinton's. Virtually all of the new oil being produced is coming off private lands, which Obama and the green gestapo cannot (as of yet) restrict.

and reducing our reliance on foreign oil, most notably through the historic fuel economy standards the President has established, which will nearly double the efficiency of the vehicles we drive and save families $1.7 trillion at the pump.

Pure political twaddle. Fuel economy standards are nothing more than a red raw bone thrown yet again to a major part of his base, the environmental movement, that has nothing whatsoever to do with our energy problems (well, in a sense the environmental movement is our central energy problem) and everything to do with political control of individual choice and economic life (and let's all remember to inflate our tires properly).

Secondly, doubling the fuel efficiency of present automobiles will result in several things, the first being tiny, lightly built cracker-box cars posing extreme safety hazards, especially for children, in collisions even at relatively very low speeds, and and economic unviablilty in the marketplace, resulting in the automotive industries producing such boutique ideological status vehicles being dependent on taxpayer subsidies or government debt to remain viable, as with everything else in the "green" technology sector. Driving in cars made of tin foil paying European prices for gas is a recipe for a severe and long term contraction of the economy into a state of mediocrity marked by sky high prices for everything (as everything requires energy to produce, use, or get to), high unemployment, severely limited economic opportunity, and dreary economic performance. Just what Obama and the anti-American, America-must-be-just-like-everyone-else socialist day care center state political culture he represents has so long desired and fought for.

Conservation is a wonderful thing, for the individual and at the family economic level. On a national level, its a recipe for economic decrepitude. The answer to the price of oil is in increased supply, and the answer to increased supply is massive expansion of drilling, refining, and delivery of oil to domestic consumers. The national answer, in other words, is not conservation, proper inflation of tires, and driving Tonka Toys, but production, production, production.

It’s true that in the near term, the U.S. will continue to rely on responsibly produced oil and gas, but over the long term, the Obama administration is committed to a policy that allows us to transition from oil towards cleaner alternatives and energy efficiency. This strategy is a win-win scenario. A win for the economy. A win for energy security. And a win for the environment. Despite the facts, Republicans have continued to ratchet up the rhetoric, distorting facts and in some cases pushing complete falsehoods for short term political gains.

Wind power - economically unviable and overloaded with negatives, economic and social.

Solar - economically unviable at the present time, and, like wind, intermittent, unreliable, and completely dependent upon the vagaries of nature for its utility.

Geothermal - great idea, but limited because of limited locations and availability.

Nuclear - great technology, but a religious taboo to the Left and the environmental movement.

“Over the last three years, your administration has blocked, slowed, and discouraged the production of critical American energy sources.”

False. The numbers speak for themselves. Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased each year, while imports of foreign oil have decreased.

This bald lie has been blasted to bits all across the landscape. Virtually all of this is on private land, over which Obama has, as yet, no control. Permitting under Obama for drilling on government owned land is down substantially over his predecessors.

Even if you fail to give the Obama Administration the credit it deserves in helping to expand this production, any notion that production has been blocked or slowed, doesn’t square with the facts.

But you don't know what the facts are, and don't care to know, which is part of what makes debating you on anything such a masochistic experience.

“This President continues to limit offshore areas to energy production and is granting fewer leases on public land for oil drilling.”

False. In the wake of the largest oil spill in U.S. history the Obama Administration put in place important new standards that ensured that drilling continued, but that the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were recognized, and guided future production. Today drilling and production continues, but in line with these important new standards. In fact, since new standards were put into place last year, the administration has approved hundreds of permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including:

308 permits for deep water drilling activities for 94 unique wells in the Gulf of Mexico and;

113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

In fact, we are now permitting at levels seen before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, all while meeting these important new standards.

Nice if true, especially considering that, as of January of this year, deep water permits were down 88% since Obama lifted his illegal moratorium on deep water drilling. Something smells in these claims, and as Gregory Rusovich, chairman of the Business Council of Greater New Orleans and the River Region said back in January:

it’s a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough:

What was the step? Not over 400 deep and shallow water permits, but just two permits since October of last year.

“We’re pleased that BOEMRE has stated that it is doing away with unnecessary hindrances. But we still are not seeing improvements in the number of deep-water permits being approved on a monthly basis. Without changes to the permitting process, we still face an uphill battle. And we will continue to track BOEMRE’s actions as opposed to its words.”

In fact, as the government website gives no dates, its impossible to ascertain the time frame of the alleged permitting, or its size relative to the destruction of jobs and drilling (one company was forced into bankruptcy by the moratorium).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... d=yahoo_hs

Investors Business Daily published an excellent analysis of the situation as of the beginning of the year:

http://news.investors.com/article/55887 ... il-war.htm

Some other factual tidbits in this article are worth looking at here:

Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the price of oil has rocketed 117% to $90.41 a barrel and gasoline has jumped 67% to $3.07 a gallon. In the 34 industrialized nations, oil imports have surged 34% in the last year to $790 billion. The U.S. alone has seen a $72 billion jump.

All this imperils a fragile recovery from the financial crisis. "Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy," says Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency.

Given the clear threat, it's economically irrational to sit on our hands and fail to develop our own energy resources. At least 130 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas lie offshore, and hundreds of billions of barrels more are locked in shale deposits in the Northeast and West. Yet our policy remains leaving this wealth alone.

More than mere incompetence is at work here. It's becoming more and more obvious that Obama's energy policy is meant to raise prices by making fossil fuels harder to produce and use. Indeed, the White House has followed a deliberate policy of attacking Americans' use of energy, turning it into something of a moral crusade.

In just two years, as Steve Everley of the American Solutions blog has noted, the Obama administration has:

• Virtually shut down oil drilling in the Gulf. Yes, the six-month moratorium announced during the BP oil spill ended in November. But regulators have made it nearly impossible for oil firms to restart operations and have slapped strict new rules on drilling even in shallow waters.

• Put hundreds of billions of barrels of offshore oil and gas off-limits to exploration and production. By executive order, the administration has taken much of the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf out of play. This, according to the Energy Information Administration, will cut this year's output by 220,000 barrels a day.

• Canceled 77 existing drilling leases in Utah, one of Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's first actions and a move that set the tone for the Obama administration's war on energy.

• Proposed new taxes on energy, including the cap-and-trade fiasco, that have had a chilling effect on new investment in energy. Steven Chu, Obama's energy secretary, has already let the cat out of the bag by saying he wants to see pump prices in the U.S. as high as they are in Europe. Last we checked, that was $7 a gallon.

Well, anyway, as far as the adminstration's claims of "308 permits for deep water drilling activities for 94 unique wells in the Gulf of Mexico and; 113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico," That cat's out of the bag too:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/01 ... t-20110301

http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/ ... deepw.html

I see only a total of 4 permits issued here since the moratorium began.

What is the time frame for these alleged new permits, and what is their relative size in relation to drilling and extraction prior to the moratorium and prior to the Obama presidency, because I can find no substantiation for the huge permit claims, nor whether they are relevant in a practical sense even if true on paper.

I snipped the remaining official state disinformatzia as the mendacious self serving propaganda it is.

You'll notice a number of popular assertions from Loran's posts, mentioned in the refutation piece above. The simple fact is that Loran's literature is limited to anything those corporate funded think tanks are ordered to put out. Heritage and the like are funded by the Oil industry for a reason.

Well, I'm about done here. As usual, absent critical thinking, logical argument, and anything resembling independent, corroborative evidence, Graham retreats to his favorite lair - conspiracy theory and baseless, feverish well poisoning - in an attempt to paper over the fact that, far from being the serious thinker he claims to be, he continues to look for all the world like nothing as much as an ideological toady.

Loran also does not understand what oil speculation is. He maintains his ignorant by reasserting refuted theories, while presenting them as facts. Never mind the fact that increased US oil production has never led to dropped gasoline prices. For Loran, history doesn't matter. He has this myth so deeply ingrained into his psyche that there is no letting go of it. So he treats all evidence to the contrary the only way he knows how, with contempt.

This is economically impossible, unless other factors, such as taxes, regulation, price controls, or other non-market factors intervened to drive prices higher as supply increased. Increased supply must decrease price in a competitive market with a given demand. Speculation may drive up oil prices to some marginal extent, but showing this to be the case is very problematic, as the oil that all of us buy at the pump is not purchased on world futures markets, but on the spot market, which responds to the laws of supply and demand, not futures speculation. Indeed, the only way futures speculators can really influence the market to any degree is to purchase oil and then hope that by the date the contract expires, that the price really has risen to the point a profit and not loss is possible. That's a risky business. Even worse is having to sell it back on the world market when his inflated speculatory contract expires for below what you bought if for and eating the difference, unless he inventories it and waits for prices to actually rise on the spot market - maybe. But holding onto it in an attempt to drive prices higher can only happen on a very short term basis, and against larger economic dynamics operating outside one's control. Artificial price hikes not justified by demand put the speculator in the position of either storing the oil or selling it back if prices don't actually rise and bring him a profit.

Sure, it can have a marginal effect, but hardly salient overall (as I understand the actual workings of this system, its the supply and demand driven spot market that actually effects the futures markets - and the economic fortunes of the speculators - not the other way around).

I found this essay to be a well explained intro to the subject:

http://www.forbes.com/2011/04/19/oil-fu ... print.html

Another excellent piece is here:

http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... oil-prices

In other words, all of this is just more of Graham's adopted Sesame Street Marxism and pious class war pandering to one of the basest of human characterological weaknesses, class envy.

If we are going to be able to drive down gasoline prices the only way to do that is to reduce our demand, and that is precisely what the Obama administration has been trying to do.

The only way to drive down energy prices, while still maintaining and increasing our standard of living and encouraging economic growth (and hence, job creation), and avoiding noticeable (if not severe) declines in economic well being, is through conformity to the laws of economics, which means ample supplies of oil to consumers and business in dynamic, competitive markets. Price must fall with greater supply and healthy competition between entrepreneurs in the petroleum business, and much increased domestic supply would not only reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but dampen the effects of the rising demand of China and India on world markets.

Idiots like Loran just parrot the talking points put out by the Oil industry, whose only interest is maintaining the status quo.

Yup, I get my marching orders from Exxon every morning, just like you get yours from Soros.

They want their monopoly on the energy market so they will do whatever it takes to keep it. Lately they've been scaring the older, more ignorant generation like Loran, into thinking regulation of irresponsible oil companies is something akin to Socialism! They demonize regulation of any kind as their only true weapon against Obama's policies.

Its demeaning and self abasing even speaking to this person any longer. I've always said I don't like having my intelligence insulted, and if this is true, then I probably shouldn't provoke the monkeys to through poop from the cage.