Saturday, March 12, 2011
Quietly, the Obama administration approves more offshore drilling
The suspension of Japanese nuclear power will increase demand for oil and therefore its price, just as the Arab "street" books up its calendar with "days of rage." Coincidentally or not, the Obama administration has started clearing more deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after months of a de jure and then de facto suspension that drove big rigs to more hospitable climes. One is forced to wonder whether the decision to resume drilling is any more based in "science" than the decision to suspend it was. Which, for those of you keeping track at home, was not at all.
The Obama White House is a candle in the political wind.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Mar 12, 07:46:00 PM:
I suspect it was a political calculation. It's politically safe for him to approve drilling because he knows that it won't actually happen, due to the rigs having left and thus being unavailable. He will try to score political points with both the enviro-kook left for having shut down oil drilling and with centrist and right voters who wanted drilling restored.
By 
Stephen, at
Sat Mar 12, 09:00:00 PM:
Why waste time wondering. Obama is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an empty suit.
By , at
Sun Mar 13, 01:09:00 AM:
I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! The Kenyan's objective is to destroy the U.S. He must bleed the wealth of our nation and that means buying oil not, producing it. What looks positive on this hand will be strangled by administrative regulation and BS on the other.
To Obama, only the power produced by the breeze of fairy wings is acceptable, certainly not domestic fuel, coal, oil or gas.
By Georg Felis, at
Sun Mar 13, 09:52:00 AM:
When Obama was bragging on the "increases" in domestic production that supposedly took effect on his watch, I kept expecting a reporter to stand up and say "Since it takes about five years to go from exploration to production, would that mean your predecessor is actually the one responsible for this good news, and won't this mean in about five years your restrictions on exploration will be strangling domestic production?"
But that would require a reporter, instead of a Democratic flack.
By PD Quig, at
Sun Mar 13, 07:38:00 PM:
I'm at the point of my life where I don't want to miss any of what has to offer...but I'd gladly take a pill that put me under until Jan 22, 2013. It is not possible to express in mere words the depth of my disgust for the mendacious, ignorant, arrogant, foolhardy, vain, thugish POS renting the White House. While it is completely un-Christian and uncharitable, I have to admit that I wish him ill. He is the worst thing to happen to this country in my lifetime.
By JPMcT, at
Sun Mar 13, 07:39:00 PM:
Drilling is up primarily due to Bush era policies that increased output up through May of last year.
We than had our "greatest oil spill in history". The one that would take generations to clean up.
Over the next few months that it actually took to clean it up, oil production has declined by a huge percentage and the number of functional rigs has dropped to a fraction of our baseline.
Potential new rigs are mired in beaurocracy. This will certainly cause more human misery than a pelican mired in oil.
Even as Obama prevaricated his way through the news conference, he HAD to have done the math and realized that by the time of the election, gas would be around $5 a gallon and drilling down by 50% at the current level of decline.
Thus the attempts to pick up the pace.
Two predictions:
1. His plan will not work.
2. He will lie about the results, USSR style, and depend on the cult of personality to carry the misinformation...jsut as he did at his recent press conference.
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Mar 14, 12:40:00 AM:
Hm, since when does "started clearing more deepwater drilling in the Gulf" work out to "Two permits. One of which is already being drilled, got stopped, and could take a month to get restarted."
I sense the fierce urgency of Change.
