Gas Prices Too High? Shell Cancels Drilling After Denied Permits

The EPA is at it again. So, where is a sensible approach to our energy needs?

From: YID With LID

Obama Continues War Against Oil. EPA Rules Force Shell to Abandon Drilling Plans in Alaska

The Obama administration continued war against oil drilling as the Shell Oil company threw its hands up in the air and scraped efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The reason? EPA regulations.

The needed air permits were approved, but after a challenge by an environmental group, the board changed it's mind. Here's the "fun" part. The reason the EPA refused to grant the permit was the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. This is a very remote section of Alaska, the town of Kaktovik is the nearest community to the drilling site, its 70 miles away, occupies one square mile and has a population of 245. There is very little chance for Kaktovik to be affected by the drilling.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

YID With LID: Barack Obama's Oil Lease LIES!

"Yid With Lid", consistently one of the best blogs on the internet exposes Barack Obama's "energy" policy.

From:YID With LID

Barack Obama's Oil Lease LIES!

How do you know which parts of Obama's energy speech were either lies or misleading? Only the parts where his mouth was moving. This morning President Obama once again tried to pull the energy policy wool over America's eyes.

Once again he wants to present "incentives" for the energy industry to drill on existing leases. You see, his feeling about the oil executives is the same as his feeling about the American people, they are complete and total idiots,paying for leases but not bothering to take the product out of the ground so they can make money.

All of those stupid executives (according to the POTUS) run their companies by paying fees instead of collecting revenue. getting the product out of the ground so they can make money. This is nothing but Presidential subterfuge.


What the President is not telling you is that these oil leases purchased by oil companies is for exploration and drilling, not just drilling. Oil is not equally distributed across the each potential drilling location, there are unlucky oil companies that get stuck with a lease for a parcel that doesn't hold any oil. What make those companies really unlucky is that the parcel right next to them might be the new Saudi Arabia.

Even if the leased location is a bonanza of black gold, that oil company still might not be drilling. This may be surprising (not), but there is a lot of red tape to get through once you find oil on a site before you start drilling. This red tape has gotten even more complicated during the Obama administration. Even if everything runs smoothly, it can take years for companies who own a lease to complete their exploration activities, and more years to move from exploration to drilling.

The Case for Increasing Domestic Oil Production

From: Reason.com

Why America can and must produce more oil

Jon Basil Utley | March 30, 2011

Oil is the world’s most critical and scarce energy resource. Only oil is easily divisible, transportable, and vital for most transportation. Japan’s shuttered nuclear plants mean new demand for more millions of barrels of fuel oil to generate electricity for its cities and factories. Libyan oil production will now be shut down for months or years.  There is almost no spare capacity in world production.

Here’s a tough fact to face: World prosperity is critically dependent upon the stability of a single decrepit, corrupt dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. While the regime there has been quick to put down calls for expanded rights, the protests for political, civil, and economic rights continue. Chaos in Saudi Arabia, which produces about 12 percent of the world’s oil, would cause such shortages of oil in Asia and Europe that the whole world could be thrust into major economic crisis. Closed factories in China, Japan, and Korea would crash commodity prices and world trade. Banks would again be tottering and calling in loans. Russia with its supplies would have a stranglehold over a dependent Europe. And Americans might be lined up for hours at gasoline stations, maybe with ration cards.