Posts Tagged ‘Gas Prices’

by Rory Cooper

The average price of a gallon of regular gas is now $3.66, and has been decreasing for eight straight weeks. This is causing some of the President Obama’s advisors to declare energy prices an irrelevant issue. Political advisor David Axelrod recently tweeted: “Gas prices have been going down for the past six weeks. You think the GOP will blame the President?”
In those six weeks, the only significant energy policy change at the White House was to make new coal production nearly impossible and thus vastly increase the cost of electricity. So, it is hard to assign this slight dip to the president after a record 75 straight weeks of prices exceeding $3.00. However, it is true that the president is not entirely responsible for gas prices.
Market and economic conditions play a large role. With unemployment creeping back up, new global turmoil and summer travel on the wane due to a sagging economy, demand is surely dropping. But that does not mean, and has never meant, that the president’s policies or Congressional action does not play any role in gas prices.
After three years of adding regulatory hurdles and blocking exploratory access and development, President Obama’s policies are helping keep prices higher than necessary. Having only three percent of federal land available for oil exploration is not a “market condition.”
But we are in luck. There are several steps Congress can immediately take, and President Obama can immediately support, that will help alleviate the pain felt at the pump by American families and would create economic growth, and importantly, jobs.
In a new paper, Heritage’s Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow, Nick Loris lists ten actions Congress could immediately take that would help improve gas prices in the short term and the long term:
1. Lift offshore and onshore exploration and drilling bans: We remain the only nation in the world that has placed the majority of its territorial waters off limits to exploration. Congress should lift the ban on exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and conduct more lease sales off Alaska’s coasts.
2. Approve Keystone XL: The Keystone pipeline has bipartisan support and continues to be consistently popular, polling at 60 percent in November 2011 and 57 percent in late March. 69 Democrats joined House Republicans on a vote of support in April with Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) saying: “I think the president has made a very serious mistake here.”
Yet, President Obama continues to block it and the jobs that come with it. Had Obama not delayed approval, up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day would have come from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries by as early as 2013. That’s more than we bring in from Venezuela, our fourth largest importer.
3. Require timely environmental review: Environmental review requirements for oil and gas projects to commence on federal lands under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) take too long. Congress should place a reasonable 270-day time limit on NEPA reviews.
4. Permitting process: The processing time for an Application for Permit to Drill (APD) extends well past the 30-day time limit. Loris recommends: “Congress should require the Department of the Interior to honor the law’s deadline unless the Interior finds fault with the application…[and] should ultimately transition the permitting process to state regulators, who are best able to balance economic growth and environmental well-being.”
5. Issue leases on time: Rather than implementing an efficient leasing process, the Department of the Interior keeps adding administrative regulations to make the process more burdensome and bureaucratic. Congress should remove unnecessary red tape and if Interior fails to issue a lease within 60 days, it should be considered issued by default.
6. Allow development of oil shale: Oil shale production in the U.S. could be a global game changer since we hold the largest known reserves in the world. However, 70 percent of those reserves lie beneath federal lands. The Obama Administration has introduced new regulations, time frames, and significantly reduced the land available for leases. Congress should make permanent the 2008 guidelines for oil shale development in order to provide regulatory certainty.
7. Stop the land grab: Through Secretarial Order No. 3310, the Department of Interior is unilaterally and arbitrarily classifying federal land areas as “Wilderness” or “Wild Lands” restricting access to new drilling areas, preventing production on existing leases and halting economic growth. Congress should permanently block Secretarial Order No. 3310 and any similar designation should require congressional approval.
8. Implement 50/50 revenue sharing: States receive 50 percent of the revenues generated by onshore oil and natural gas production on federal lands and Congress should apply this allocation offshore as well. This would encourage more state involvement in drilling decisions and help state economies, whether by closing a deficit or aiding coastal restoration and conservation.
9. Prohibit greenhouse gas and Tier 3 gas regulations: In 2010, Interior suspended 61 leases in Montana alone because environmental groups charged that the energy production would contribute to climate change, demonstrating the need to permanently prohibit any federal agency from unilaterally regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the proposed Tier 3 gas regulations to lower the amount of sulfur in gasoline are costly with no measurable benefits. Congress should prohibit the implementation of these regulations. Unelected bureaucrats should not hold such power over the economy.
10. Repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): Soon, refiners will be fined when the amount of ethanol mandated exceeds the amount that can be refined for use but the mandate requires production of cellulosic ethanol, which no companies have been able to viably produce commercially. As a result, refiners paid more than $6 million in waiver credits or surcharges in 2011. It is an economic and environmental disaster and must be repealed.
President Obama is keen to accept credit for the windfall of oil production in North Dakota and in other private areas outside federal control, where jobs are plentiful and unemployment has plummeted. Meanwhile, production on federal land is decreasing and regulatory conditions are worsening. It would be to the president’s benefit to embrace some or all of these reforms that could immediately help American families filling up the minivan. Another 75 weeks with gas prices over $3.00, and household goods and food costing more as a result, will not help an already anemic recovery.

Under President Obama, gas prices have more than doubled — from an average of $1.85 on Inauguration Day 2009 to $3.92 this past week. 

That means the average American family is paying $2,200 more per year in gas today than when Obama came into office. And that is only the increased spending on gas. As gas prices increase, the cost of just about every other product increases as well.

 And Obama is to blame…
 
That’s because instead of taking action to dramatically expand American energy production, Obama has resisted new offshore drilling, rejected the Keystone pipeline that would give America access to Canada’s vast oil reserves, and kept much of our known domestic oil reserves off limits.
 
Obama is so opposed to significant increases in domestic oil production that he goes so far as to claim that “increased [domestic] production doesn’t lower gas prices.” Instead, the President has once again “doubled down” on his so-called Green Energy agenda — an agenda that already is over-funded by our tax dollars with little return in actual energy production.


 
+ + How Obama’s “Green” Agenda Hurts Families
 


The fact is, Obama’s energy policies have damaged our economy by putting a stranglehold on American energy – - driving up gas prices, taking away American jobs and worsening our dependence on foreign oil.

The key to our energy independence is not more wind farms or taxpayer-funded Solyndra boondoggles or crazy EPA “work at home” guidelines. It’s much simpler

– AMERICA MUST PRODUCE MORE OF OUR OWN OIL AND NATURAL GAS!

And the Left’s claim that we lack the natural resources is simply not true. Analysts say Canada and the U.S. together have 400-800 YEARS of recoverable oil resources!

Plus, domestic oil production creates jobs and strengthens our economy.

A former Chief Economist at the U.S. Trade Commission says that doubling our domestic oil production would add 2.5 million jobs and $250 billion to our economy – and cut our dependency on foreign oil and the terrorist-laden oil producing nations in half.
 

In the past week, Obama once again blocked increased domestic production by requiring another “environmental study” that could take 3-5 years. We must break the Obama stranglehold on American oil. Our economy is suffering and our families are paying a high price because Obama and the Left are pushing their radical green agenda over the interests of the American people. 
 


Steve Elliott, Grassfire Nation


By Jeffery Klein

Barack Obama is a miracle worker–he was able to have his staff quickly gather hundreds of women and throw together an “emergency” half-day “White House Conference on Women’s Issues,” with Obama scheduled to pop in and give them a “pep talk.”
Generally, President Obama’s schedule is so jam-packed with his countrywide campaign commitments, that he doesn’t even have time to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer while in Arizona, even though he is suing them for jumping the gun on locking down the U.S.-Mexico border, and flushing out illegal aliens–or “undocumented Democrats,” as coined by Mark Steyn.
Regardless, in stark contrast to the vacuous contentions of the White House, who suggest women are worried about their access to birth control pills, the economy, jobs and national debt continue to dominate the center stage of politics all over the nation–and the numbers from today are not going to provide them with a Happy Easter.
Barack Obama is a miracle worker–he was able to have his staff quickly gather hundreds of women and throw together an “emergency” half-day “White House Conference on Women’s Issues,” with Obama scheduled to pop in and give them a “pep talk.”
Generally, President Obama’s schedule is so jam-packed with his countrywide campaign commitments, that he doesn’t even have time to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer while in Arizona, even though he is suing them for jumping the gun on locking down the U.S.-Mexico border, and flushing out illegal aliens–or “undocumented Democrats,” as coined by Mark Steyn.
Regardless, in stark contrast to the vacuous contentions of the White House, who suggest women are worried about their access to birth control pills, the economy, jobs and national debt continue to dominate the center stage of politics all over the nation–and the numbers from today are not going to provide them with a Happy Easter.

After adding an average of 246,000 jobs per month over the past three months, hiring hit the skids with March plunging off a cliff, reporting just 120,000 jobs created–less than half of what the private sector of the economy had been producing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Report released today.
And, although the unemployment rate slipped a sliver to 8.2 percent, it was attributed to another hoard of discouraged job seekers leaving the labor pool. 
The really stark statistic that is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the mainstream media, is the “real” unemployment rate, which includes all of those people who have “given up looking for work, and those forced to settle for part-time jobs,” and now sits at 14.5 percent, according to an unusually objective Associated Press article today.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), weighed in, stating … “The level of growth we are seeing isn’t enough to make a difference for the millions of Americans still out of work, or families facing high gas prices and the uncertainty of a lagging economy.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stepped to the plate saying that … ‘the current hiring pace is unlikely to continue without more consumer spending.’
That’s not very good news, because consumer spending is being choked off by the truly unprecedented 66-cent run-up in gasoline prices (to a national average $3.94 a gallon) so far this year, and will continue to be a counter-force to our economic recovery.
Instead of focusing on important women’s issues, such as their right to join The Augusta Golf and Country Club, Barack Obama should remember that no incumbent president has been reelected while the unemployment rate was over 7.8 percent.
But, it seems like in the remote chance that the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent by November, as 99.999 percent of over-the-road vehicles in the United States cannot yet use “free” solar or wind power–the inflammatory price of gasoline will likely incinerate Barack Obama’s reelection hopes.
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Continue reading on Examiner.com Unemployment, gasoline or birth control–what will clobber Obama first? – National Political Buzz | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/unemployment-gasoline-or-birth-control-what-will-clobber-obama-first#ixzz1rXUyQTCQ

As Obama Moves Ahead with Oil Sanctions – Gas Prices Climb

Before Congress headed home for spring recess, the Senate, with a rate vote of 100, approved President Obama’s new round of sanctions designed to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The president’s decision was based on an analysis of current oil supply and the likely effect of further sanctions on prices. The Senate also shot down the president’s bid to reduce subsidies to oil producers.

Oil prices have climbed this year amid lingering tensions with Iran, with the price of gas now averaging around $3.92 a gallon—and experts are warning more increases are on the way. The U.S., France and other nations are considering the release of some emergency oil supplies to stop further rises in prices. Experts are skeptical about the impact tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have on prices. Reuters reports that with this decision, timing is everything.

Boehner uses jobs report to hit Obama on energy

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used Friday’s mixed jobs report as fuel for attacks on President Obama’s energy policies.
Boehner twice mentioned high gasoline prices in a statement on the jobs numbers and pushed GOP plans to authorize construction of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
“Republicans have a jobs plan — and a budget — that cuts spending, fixes our tax code, addresses excessive regulations and expands American energy production through projects like the Keystone XL pipeline,” Boehner said.
The BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of unions and environmentalists, said the weaker-than-expected jobs data shows the need to extend green energy tax breaks and approve transportation legislation.