This editorial makes the point that drilling domestically is necessary to keep prices in check and that is the antithesis to this administration's policy:
[URL]http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=568526&p=1[/URL]
[quote] Speaking at such a plant in Fairless Hills, Pa., owned by the Spanish firm Gamesa, Obama said there was "not much we can do next week or two weeks from now" about gas prices. He didn't address his two-year war on domestic energy including a seven-year moratorium on oil drilling off both coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska.
He could lift that ban today, sending a powerful supply-and-demand signal to the market. He could unlock areas in the West where oil shale reserves are estimated to be triple the crude Saudi Arabia has underground. He could support the Keystone pipeline project to deliver oil from Canada's tar sands to the U.S. market. That project would build a 1,661-mile pipeline from Alberta to refineries near Houston, create 13,000 "shovel-ready" jobs and provide 500,000 more barrels of oil per day. But the president who wants to reduce oil imports by a third wants to increase them from Brazil.
Instead, the president says oil companies aren't using the leases they have. But an oil lease is only a license to explore, not a guarantee of finding oil. If there were oil in these areas that could be profitably extracted, oil companies would do so.
They're not the ones who are driving up prices by restricting supply. It's an Obama administration that includes a secretary of energy, Steven Chu, who has said "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." He was talking about $8 a gallon or higher.[/quote]Do you still think he's a genius, FL? It would be nice to ditch oil and dream of green but the reality of the situation is bearing down upon us, right now, as alternative energies are just not at efficient to implement. Natural gas vehicles would be the next best option since it's also plentiful here (I know, I know, fracking concerns). Ready to pay double and triple for groceries?
It's been a year since Deepwater Horizon. That should have been plenty of time to re-address safety concerns for deepwater drilling (though I myself am very reticent about such drilling after that event and can understand the hesitation). Is Brazi going to give us discount rates since our community organizer invested our monies there? I don't have that much faith.