14 posts tagged “oil”

Human Events Online
Obama Gets Failing Grade on Three E's: Energy, Education, and Eastern Europe

"Senator n0bama has presented a variety of sound bites on many issues, but he has failed to provide any real solutions, or any hint of change," says David Freddoso, author of the new bestseller The Case Against Barack Obama.

Over the next few days, we will explore Senator n0bama's position on three issues dominating today's headlines—energy, education, and Eastern Europe. Today we delve into his energy agenda.

Helping Americans by Raising Gas Prices?
High gas prices continue to punish American consumers and businesses. Yet Senator n0bama's political track record clearly supports policies that would raise gas prices even higher, says author David Freddoso.

In his new bestseller, The Case Against Barack Obama, Freddoso points out that n0bama lamented in mid-June that high gasoline prices have hurt Americans. But n0bama supports carbon caps and carbon taxes—environmental controls that are designed to intentionally increase prices at the pump. The idea is to make gasoline more expensive so that people use less of it and emit less carbon. n0bama also eagerly embraces ethanol as a key solution to our energy crisis, adds Freddoso, but experts agree that ethanol will lead to much higher food prices, without providing real energy relief.

"n0bama supports an environmental policy that requires higher gas prices over the long run," says Freddoso. "Until he drops his environmental program, n0bama is only shedding crocodile tears when he talks about how high gas prices are hurting Americans. His real goal is $6 or $7 gasoline, as a matter of policy."

Americans need a leader who will offer real leadership and real solutions, not simply pay lip service to their concerns while pursuing policies that will hurt average Americans. For his energy policy, Barack Obama receives an "F."

I've got to sell more copies of my book so I don't look more stupid than I already do.

Human events Online Column by Rep.Jeb Hensarling TX-05

For weeks (since the House abruptly adjourned for the summer), Republicans have been in Washington demanding Speaker Pelosi to allow an up or down vote to free America’s own energy from the Democrats’ embargo and ease the pain that Americans currently face at the pump.

Rather than offer solutions, Speaker Pelosi continues to insult the intelligence of hardworking Americans struggling to pay historically high energy prices. Members of Congress ought to do the jobs they were sent to do and remain in Washington until a solution to the country’s energy crisis is passed. Instead, Speaker Pelosi adjourned the House of Representatives for five weeks. Though she might have made environmentalists proud by turning off the floor lights, CSPAN cameras, and microphones behind her, they could not have been thrilled to watch her hop into her gas tax-exempt government SUV (no doubt with its tires correctly inflated) and her Air Force jet to go on a five-week, nationwide book tour. Her actions seem a little too far removed from the pain that hardworking Americans are feeling from high energy costs for comfort.

Perhaps Speaker Pelosi didn’t realize that House Republicans hear the American people loud and clear, and she certainly didn’t expect us to make clear that we have had enough of the Democrats’ embargo against the production of American-owned domestic energy. Over a hundred of Republican members have already opted to protest the Speaker’s vacation and have returned to Washington to demand that she call an emergency special session of Congress to vote on our “all of the above” American Energy Act. Surely $4 per gallon gasoline is more important to the American people than promoting a book. Since the protest began, thousands of Americans visiting Washington have come to the House floor to listen to common-sense Republican solutions that would increase American made energy.

Rather than offer solutions, Speaker Pelosi continues to insult the intelligence of hardworking Americans struggling to pay historically high energy prices. Members of Congress ought to do the jobs they were sent to do and remain in Washington until a solution to the country’s energy crisis is passed. Instead, Speaker Pelosi adjourned the House of Representatives for five weeks. Though she might have made environmentalists proud by turning off the floor lights, CSPAN cameras, and microphones behind her, they could not have been thrilled to watch her hop into her gas tax-exempt government SUV (no doubt with its tires correctly inflated) and her Air Force jet to go on a five-week, nationwide book tour. Her actions seem a little too far removed from the pain that hardworking Americans are feeling from high energy costs for comfort.

Finally, last weekend, Speaker Pelosi broke her silence: her response was to ignore the pleas of the American people by offering more of the same failed policies that do nothing to increase production of American energy. Instead, both the Speaker and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid remain worshippers of a radical environmental ideology and seem to be incapable of relating to the pain felt by working people.

Along with Senator Barack Obama, they propose a windfall profits tax on oil sold at or above $80 per barrel. It boggles my mind why, during an energy crisis, they would revert back to the failed policies of the Carter Administration that brought us two-hour waiting lines to fill our cars with gas to get to work. In fact, the Congressional Research Service found that domestic production of energy actually decreased because of the lame-brained tax.

The solution is quite simple: If we want gas prices to go down, then more oil needs to enter the market. If we want to lessen our dependency on foreign oil, then a windfall profits tax is the last thing America needs. Guess what? The American people know this.

Recent polling reveals that more than 70 percent of Americans favor increasing energy exploration and production at home. The good news is that for the foreseeable future, we have plenty of energy to produce in America.

Unfortunately -- thanks to the Democrats and radical environmentalists -- it is illegal to produce it. Congress has taken 75 percent of our onshore energy resources off the table, making them off limits to energy exploration and production. To put it simply, the only thing preventing them from getting it are Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. In the House, the Speaker continues to block Members of both parties from voting on the comprehensive American Energy Act, which would increase the supply of American-made energy, improve energy conservation and efficiency, and promote renewable and alternative energy technologies. Would parents tolerate being told that we had enough classrooms for our kids, but we can’t use 75 percent of them? Surely not, nor will they tolerate being told so on producing American energy.

Why? The Speaker seems content to push a radical agenda that would increase regulation instead of exploration and taxation instead of production. She’s even told vulnerable members of her own party to express their independence from her radical ideas if it helps them get elected. Shame on them for not demanding a vote for their constituents, and shame on her for continuing to deny them what is right.

For months, Republicans have made clear that we need conservation, but not just conservation. We need renewable energy, but not just renewable. We need alternatives, but not just alternatives. We need to produce energy in America for Americans to drive down the cost of gas and increase our energy independence. Congress has both a duty and a historic opportunity to help free generations of Americans from the grip of foreign oil. Despite this, Democrat leaders have their heads in the sand avoiding options to increase American-made energy supplies. Conversely, Republicans have their hands in the sand looking for energy sources.

I haven’t found many people saying that they are paying too little at the pump, and people want Congress to be pro-active for once. So I hope that Blue Dog Democrats -- for that matter, any Democrats -- who understand this will work with us simply to allow a vote. Once we can have a vote on a real energy plan, we’ll get real American energy.

Republicans will continue to fight for a comprehensive, common sense energy plan that includes all of those goals. People across the country are begging Congress to act, and the time has come for the Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader and Democrats across Capitol Hill to either work with us to develop more American energy or get out of the way and stop blocking us from providing the help sought by the American people.

I’m sure that the Speaker will continue her book tour straight into the Democrat convention in Denver. So it’s hard to take her comments on energy seriously as she jet-sets around. She has every right to vote against the comprehensive American Energy Act offered by House Republicans -- should she ever allow the House to vote on it. She does not, however, have the right to prevent a comprehensive, common-sense policy that nearly three-fourths of Americans demand.

If Speaker Pelosi were at all serious about helping the working people across our country, she’d cut her book tour short, stop flying across the country on her taxpayer funded jet, and get back to work with Republicans to alleviate the pain that Americans currently face at the pump.
 

T. Boone Pickens says we're spending $700 billion a year to import oil, about the same as the entire cost of the Iraq war, every year. But the Nancy Pelosi Congress obstructs drilling for American oil and goes on vacation, doing nothing about it for another five weeks while Nancy Pelosi goes on a book tour.

Meanwhile, 2007 disclosure forms indicate that SanFranNan has invested in T-Bones company. Schedule III lists “assets and ‘unearned income’” of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. - Public Common Stock.” Clean Energy Fuels Corp. is a natural gas provider founded by T. Boone Pickens. Yep, that T. Boone Pickens– former oilman-turned-wind power evangelist whose ads touting a national wind campaign are now as ubiquitous as Viagra promos.

At $50,000 a job, that $700 billion means 14,000,000 American jobs are being exported to OPEC and other countries we're buying oil from. If we produced all our own oil, that would mean $700 billion a year re-invested in the U.S., a pretty good stimulus package, and 14 million more American jobs for Americans.

That's enough new jobs to slash our unemployment rate to zero, slash our trade deficit to zero, and eliminate the strategic threat of oil embargos from OPEC, Iran, or Russia.

We aren't "addicted to oil," we're "addicted to energy," just as we're "addicted" to food and water. Without food, we die. Without water, we die. Food and water are energy for people. Oil is energy for transportation and industry. Without energy, economies die. If you want to use less coal and oil, then why don't you support nuclear power with zero CO2 emissions?

Why did Bill Clinton and Al Gore and John Kerry collude to shut down the Integral Fast Reactor project in 1993 (Argonne National Laboratory, led by physicist Charles Tell Ph.D.), that would have produced 100 times as much nuclear energy from a pound of uranium as the old reactors do, and by reprocessing spent fuel, would have produced no high level nuclear "waste?" Why don't you ask Bill, Al, and John, and let us know?

When you took office as Speaker you promised to have a National Energy Policy in 100 days. Well, it's been almost two years, and what do we have?

A national "no-energy non-policy." Why is the Nancy Pelosi Congress stuck on stupid?

Raymond S Kraft
Loomis,

Placer County
California

P.S. - The Nancy Pelosi Book is now up to # 1,850 on the Amazon best seller list. Buy it by Christmas at Dollar Tree for a buck.

From HumanEventsOnline:

Despite his conditional, latter-day support for limited offshore drilling, Obama is the sole sponsor of legislation that would block geological research to locate offshore oil.

In 2005, Congress mandated new, quintennial inventories, then gave Interior six months and $0.00 to assess how much oil and natural gas undergird the 1.76 billion-acre Outer Continental Shelf -- a laughably impossible task.

Obama’s “Oil SENSE Act” would repeal the 2005 Energy Policy Act’s authorization of these inventories. S.115 would leave decision makers with Carter Administration maps drawn with pre-PC technology. This is like engineering a Space Shuttle mission with slide rules.

From FrontPageMagazine:

.....Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About Because They Helped Cause Them, provides a framework for a detailed examination of the effects of sacred-cow environmental projects such as the ban on DDT and the promotion of ethanol. He also explores the cover-up of the polluting effect of contraceptives and abortion drugs, the failure of ill-advised forestry management policies and the bankruptcy of the endangered species act.

...environmentalists tout the benefits of bio-fuels, but in reality bio-fuel production pulls land out of food crop production, increases food prices, threatens wildlife and ultimately increases greenhouse gas emissions. Bio-fuels do not offer any of the purported benefits touted by environmentalists, he says, who, at bottom, have contempt for the internal combustion engine itself

.....ethanol provides only two-thirds the energy content of gasoline, is expensive to produce and releases more harmful emission amounts than gasoline. Its real costs are hidden by government support, including $5 billion in subsidies, a federal excise forgiveness tax of $.51 per gallon, and an ethanol tariff protection from imports of 2.5%, plus $.54 per gallon. The government requires gasoline producers to buy four billion gallons of ethanol yearly, purchasing support that will increase to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Further, ethanol emissions are actually double those of gasoline when its emissions are counted and combined with emissions arising from its transportation via truck rather than pipeline systems and its intensive production requirements – planting, growing, weeding, reaping, fermentation and distribution.
Further, diverting corn production from food production increases the acreage devoted to corn; squeezes out cultivation of soybeans, cotton and barley; and causes upward price pressures on other grains, dairy products, poultry and meat. Ethanol production incentives could also prompt farmers to clear forests which could eliminate animal habitats and lessen air quality with fewer trees to absorb carbon dioxide.

• Cutting gas taxes and banning earmarks that drive up costs
• Supporting Congressman Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" HR 6110 is a good first step.
• Increase American oil production by allowing drilling in ANWR and increasing exploration in the OCS.
• Authorizing the construction of new refineries and expansion of existing ones.
• Ending the moratorium on oil shale production in he US

America Deserves a Sound and Responsible Energy Policy

• The best way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and keep our money here, is to utilize the resources we currently have at our disposal while we wait on a viable market source of alternative energy.
• The free market, if allowed to work, will encourage the necessary innovation that will yield clean and cheap sources of energy.
• The United States is the most environmentally responsible and successful nation in the known universe, but current climate regulations proposed by the enviro-nazi wacko lobby would put a stop to this prosperity and ultimately do more harm than than good to the cause of energy independence and financial (and national) security.

First and foremost, the United States must increase it's domestic supply of oil and natural gas. Nearly 85% of the OCS is off-limits for drilling and exploration because of a dhimmicrat imposed Congressional mandate. Similarly, the vast supplies of oil contained in the northernmost portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) are impounded. These are two areas that are proven to contain vast reserves of oil and natural gas, that the government, (i.e. dhimmicrat and environmental lobbyists), has chosen to allow to sit idle. By opening these reserves for exploration and drilling, Congress could decrease the cost of fuel. According to recent pols, nearly three-fourths of Americans support drilling in these areas.

Seond, Congress must authorize the construction and expansion of oil refineries in the United States. There has not been a new refinery built in this nation for over 30 years. In 2007, the U.S. consumed nearly 21 million barrels of oil PER DAY, but produced only 5 million. By lifting burdensome regulations, we can dramatically increase the amount of oil produced in this country.

Finally, Congress should simply allow the free-market to work to meet the energy needs of the nation. Three things that Congress can do right now that would spur on the free market are cutting taxes, banning earmarks, and eliminating the wasteful spending that is rampant in Washington DC. If the free market is allowed to work with minimal intervention, then not only will we see a decrease in fuel prices because of increased domestic production, but we will also witness the emergence of viable alternative sources of energy.

The Congressional ban on offshore drilling expires on 30 September 2008. The best thing Congress can do is what has continually done, NOTHING. Let the ban expire. Free the market to run on it's own.

Let the American people do what they have always done, overcome adversity and show the world we are the greatest country in the known universe.

Cross posted at The Talon and United Conservatives

When Americans are canceling vacations because gasoline is over $4.00 per gallon, Democrats plan to adjourn work for a month-long vacation the first of August WITHOUT holding a vote to drill for American oil.
I know you’ll agree with me that there should be no recess without voting on legislation that can help lower gas prices.

No wonder the new Gallup Poll today that shows Congress’s approval rating has slipped to an all-time low of 14%. It’s not hard to figure out why.

The Democrat Majority in Congress is putting their extremist ideology, their hatred of the President, and the interests of the extreme left wing whack job enviro-nazis, ahead of common-sense solutions to make the United States a producer of petroleum rather than a purchaser, bring down the price of gas and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources in unstable regimes who would like nothing better than to see us (Western Civilization) vanish from the face of the planet without a trace.

While I'm not one to deliberately poke a hornets' nest, (trust me, been there done that, literally) this situation is fixable with enough prodding.

The NRCC has a petition and is asking us to do the following:

1. Send a strong message to Pelosi and the Democrat majority to vote now. Sign the online petition demanding Congress take immediate action to lower gas prices before taking their vacation. You can sign the petition by clicking on the following link --
   http://www.nrcc.org/actioncenter/default.asp?ID=288
   

2. Help us spread the word by forwarding this email to your email list!
   

I hope you join our efforts to force the Democrat leadership to vote and lower gas prices today!

The NRCC is going to ask you for a donation. You can give or not, I don't care. I help individual candidates, not organizations, at this particular point in the process. Just letting ya'll know I'm not shilling for the NRCC,

I'm shilling for America.

Bush Says Drill, Drill, Drill — and Oil Drops $9 

In a dramatic move Monday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Tuesday, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

Now isn’t this interesting?

Democrats keep saying that it will take 10 years or longer to produce oil from the offshore areas. And they say that oil prices won’t decline for at least that long. And they, along with Obama and McCain, bash so-called oil speculators. And today we had a real-world example as to why they are wrong. All of them. Reid, Pelosi, Obama, McCain — all of them.

Traders took a look at a feisty and aggressive George Bush and started selling the market well before a single new drop of oil has been lifted. What does this tell us? Well, if Congress moves to seal the deal, oil prices will probably keep on falling. That’s the way traders work. They discount the future. Psychology and expectations can turn on a dime.

The congressional ban on offshore drilling expires September 30, so that becomes a key date. A new report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratorium were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium. They’re talking about 10 billion barrels worth off the coast of California.

There’s also a “gang of 10” in the Senate, five Republicans and five Democrats, that is trying to work a compromise deal on lifting the moratorium. So it’s possible a lot of action on this front could occur much sooner than people seem to think.

So I repeat: Drill, drill, drill. Deregulate, decontrol, and unleash the American energy industry.

Those hated traders will then keep selling oil as the laws of supply and demand and free markets keep working.

Bravo for Bush. Bravo for the traders.

Maybe the do-nothing Congress will continue to be do-nothing and do nothing about the expiration.

If stupid were painful, Reid, Pelosi, Durbin, Waters, et al, would make the doctor shopping Rush was accused of look like a walk through a five & dime. There'd be a shortage of "hillbilly heroin", oxycontin, the stock price of drug manufacturers would sky rocket, addicts would marching in the streets demanding that the dhimmicrat Congress share.

Stupid should also be ugly. That way, we wouldn't have to wait for the soundbites to determine who was stupid and who wasn't. Oh wait a minute, have you seen Reid lately?

Family Security Matters writer Raymond Kraft has piece up this morning about Reid's YouTube performance. He puts the facts about life expectancy in our time up against the life expectancy of just 80 years ago, before we really became an oil-consuming nation. It's interesting to say the least.

Nevada Senator Harry Reid gave a June 30 interview, now famous on YouTube, in which he somberly intones, "Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. And this global warming is ruining our country. It's ruining the world." Oil and coal, of course, are all natural and organic, created deep in the womb of Mother Earth by Gaia herself, a point largely lost on the Enviromentalists and other Democrats infatuated with all things natural and organic.

Then there is another inconvenient truth Harry Reid hasn't noticed.

In the last hundred years, while we have been getting sicker and sicker from oil and coal, life expectancy in the world and in the US has doubled. Life expectancies in the world "before coal, before oil," were much shorter than now. In the age of Classical Greece and Rome, 1,500 to 2,500 years ago, and in Medieval Britain, 500 to 1,000 years ago, life expectancy was just 20-30 years.By 1900 life expectancy had risen to 30-40 years, and global life expectancy today is 78 years, three times as long as just two hundred years ago.In the US, life expectancy for men was 38 years in 1900, and 75 years in 2004. For women, life expectancy was 40 yearsin 1900, 80 years in 2004.

The malevolent Internal Combustion Engine, which Al Gore in his first book,"Earth in the Balance", declares must be abolished, and electric power plants burning coal and natural gas, and the gravest of all possible dangers, uranium and nuclear power, have freed man from the brutal physical labor that was once the common lot. There is an irrefutable correlation between the burning of more coal and more oil, and the doubling of global life expectancy in just 100 years.

In the last century, as we have been dying like flies from the evils of oil, coal, asbestos, lead paint and lead fillings, pesticides on our food, nuclear waste, carbon dioxide, Alar on apples, salmonella on tomatoes,asthma, rising sea levels, global cooling, global warming, climate change,electrical fields from power lines that cause leukemia, radiation from cell phones causing cancer in our brains, sugar, Nutrasweet,transfatty acids,vaccines, antibiotics, mad cow disease, the bird flu virus, fast food,and all the other horrors the media keep breathlessly warning us of, our life expectancy has doubled.

And our global temperature today is about 0.2 degrees warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period, a thousand years ago, and at least a full degree cooler than during the Holocene Optimum, eight thousand years ago. For a beautiful illustration of this, see http://www.globalwarmingart.com/. Harry Reid is plainly and conspicuously, openly and obviously ignorant of long-term climate trends, as the long-term climate trend for the last 8,000 years has been slowly cooling.

So Harry, once again, you are way off base in your doomsday prognostications. At least you provide us with some comic relief, and for that, you have the thanks of a grateful nation. 

One thing about this article that may upset you, if you're a male of the species, is that women are still gonna outlive us.

There's one other thing about "stupid" you should know: We live in the greatest country that ever existed on this planet in recorded history. We have medical miracles performed every day in this country. You can walk into a plastic surgeons' office and order a custom set of tits, but you can't fix stupid.

In May of this year the Senate Judiciary Committee summoned top executives from the petroleum industry for what Chairman Pat Leahy thought would be a politically profitable inquisition. Leahy and his comrades showed up ready to blame American oil companies for the high price of gasoline, but the event wasn't as satisfactory as the Democrats had hoped.

The industry lineup was formidable:
. Robert Malone, Chairman and President of BP America, Inc.; . John Hofmeister, President, Shell Oil Company; . Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of the Board, Chevron Corporation; . John Lowe, Executive Vice President,
Conoco Philips Company; and . Stephen Simon, Senior Vice President, Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Not surprisingly, the petroleum executives stole the show, as they were far smarter, infinitely better informed, and much more public-spirited than the Senate Democrats.

One theme that emerged from the hearing was the surprisingly small role played by American oil companies in the global petroleum market.

John Lowe pointed out:

I cannot overemphasize the access issue. Access to resources is severely restricted in the United States and abroad, and the American oil industry must compete with national oil companies who are often much larger and have
the support of their governments.

We can only compete directly for 7 percent of the world's available reserves while about 75 percent is completely controlled by national oil companies and is not accessible.

Stephen Simon amplified:

Exxon Mobil is the largest U.S. oil and gas company, but we account for only 2 percent of global energy production, only 3 percent of global oil production, only 6 percent of global refining capacity, and only 1 percent of global petroleum reserves. With respect to petroleum reserves, we rank 14th. Government-owned national oil companies dominate the top spots. For an American company to succeed in this competitive landscape and go head to head with huge government-backed national oil companies, it needs financial strength and scale to execute massive complex energy projects requiring enormous long-term investments.

To simply maintain our current operations and make needed capital investments, Exxon Mobil spends nearly $1 billion each day.

Because foreign companies and governments control the overwhelming majority of the world's oil, most of the price you pay at the pump is the cost paid by the American oil company to acquire crude oil from someone else.

Last year, the average price in the United States of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was around $2.80. On average in 2007, approximately 58 percent of the price reflected the amount paid for crude oil. Consumers pay
for that crude oil, and so do we.

Of the 2 million barrels per day Exxon Mobil refined in 2007 here in the United States , 90 percent were purchased from others.

Another theme of the day's testimony was that, if anyone is 'gouging'consumers through the high price of gasoline, it is federal and state governments, not American oil companies. On the average, 15% percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits. These figures were repeated several times, but, strangely, not a single Democratic Senator proposed relieving consumers' anxieties about gas prices by reducing taxes.

The last theme that was sounded repeatedly was Congress's responsibility for the fact that American companies have access to so little petroleum.

Shell's John Hofmeister explained, eloquently:

While all oil-importing nations buy oil at global prices, some, notably India and China , subsidize the cost of oil products to their nation's consumers, feeding the demand for more oil despite record prices. They do this to speed economic growth and to ensure a competitive advantage relative to other nations.

Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.

Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to review it. It is a long list. If I may, I offer it today if you would like to include it in the record.

When many of these policies were implemented, oil was selling in the single digits, not the triple digits we see now. The cumulative effect of these policies has been to discourage U.S. investment and send U.S. companies outside the United States to produce new supplies.

As a result, U.S. production has declined so much that nearly 60 percent of daily consumption comes from foreign sources. The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chosen to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exploration and production of oil and gas.
Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.

Later in the hearing, Senator Orrin Hatch walked Hofmeister through the Democrats' latest efforts to block energy independence:

HATCH: I want to get into that. In other words, we're talking about Utah, Colorado and Wyoming . It's fair to say that they're not considered part of America 's $22 billion of proven reserves.

HOFMEISTER: Not at all.

HATCH: No, but experts agree that there's between 800 billion to almost 2 trillion barrels of oil that could be recoverable there, and that's good oil, isn't it?

HOFMEISTER: That's correct.

HATCH: It could be recovered at somewhere between $30 and $40 a barrel?

HOFMEISTER: I think those costs are probably a bit dated now, based upon what we've seen in the inflation...

HATCH: Well, somewhere in that area.

HOFMEISTER: I don't know what the exact cost would be, but, you know, if there is more supply, I think inflation in the oil industry would be cracked. And we are facing severe inflation because of the limited amount of supply against the demand.

HATCH: I guess what I'm saying, though, is that if we started to develop the oil shale in those three states we could do it within this framework of over $100 a barrel and make a profit.

HOFMEISTER: I believe we could.

HATCH: And we could help our country alleviate its oil pressures.

HOFMEISTER: Yes.

HATCH: But they're stopping us from doing that right here, as we sit here. We just had a hearing last week where Democrats had stopped the ability to do that, in at least Colorado.

HOFMEISTER: Well, as I said in my opening statement, I think the public policy constraints on the supply side in this country are a disservice to the American consumer.

The committee's Democrats attempted no response. They know that they are largely responsible for the current high price of gasoline, and they want the price to rise even further. Consequently, they have no intention of permitting the development of domestic oil and gas reserves that would both increase this country's energy independence and give consumers a break from constantly increasing energy costs.

Every once in a while, Congressional hearings turn out to be informative.

You be the judge as to why our gasoline prices are high.
What do you think? Is the government the solution ............ or is it the problem?