By Alan
Caruba
There is no reason for the U.S. to be
in such a slow recovery from the financial crisis of 2008. If President Obama
would get out of the way, our national debt could be dramatically reduced and
hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created in the nation’s energy sector,
leading to the expansion of its manufacturing sector and still more
jobs.
As Daniel Simmons, the Director of
Regulatory and State Affairs for the Institute of Energy Research told the House
Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Healthcare and
Entitlements in February 2013:
“The federal estate contains vast
energy resources, but the federal government allows energy production on a very
small percentage of taxpayer-owned federal lands. The Interior Department has
leased just two percent (2%) of federal offshore areas and less than six percent
(6%) of federal onshore lands for oil and gas
development.”
“These technically recoverable
resources total 1,194 billion barrels of oil and 2,150 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas that is owned by the federal taxpayer…the value of the estimated oil
resources is $119.4 trillion and the value of the estimated natural gas
resources is $8.6 trillion for a grand total of $128
trillion.”
As 2014 began, Mark D. Green, editor
and lead contributor to Energy Tomorrow, a project of the American Petroleum
Institute, noted that “Oil and natural gas are the energies of our lives.” They
heat and cool our homes and apartment dwellings. They fuel our vehicles and
aircraft. They are components of products we use every day. “Every day 143 U.S.
refineries convert an average of 15 million barrels of crude oil for these uses
and more.”
Green also noted the important role
the energy industries play in our economy, citing the “5.6 percent (5.6%) of
total U.S. employment. “With the right policies in place—pro-development
policies that increase access to domestic reserves—the industry could add
another 1.4 million jobs by 2030.”
Jobs for younger workers would
increase because 50 percent (50%) of the oil and natural gas industry’s skilled
workers could be retiring within a decade. Pro-development policies would fuel a
renaissance in manufacturing as lower energy prices would reduce out-sourcing
and attract manufacturers to build and expand facilities in the U.S.
One factor stands in the way of this
brighter economic future and that is President Obama and those who direct the
work of the Environmental Protection Agency—an enemy of the coal industry—and
the Department of the Interior which has slowed the provision of leases to
energy companies to expand the discovery and extraction of energy
resources.
Instead, Obama has delayed the
construction of Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would generate
jobs to build it and jobs resulting from it. Green says that “As unimaginable as
it might have been just five years ago, the right policy decisions could see the
U.S. meet 100 percent (100%) of its liquid fuel needs domestically or from
Canada by 2014.”
Energy industries already send $85
million a day to the U.S. Treasury in
income taxes, royalty payments, and other fees. Obama, though, wants to raise
the nation’s borrowing limits after having added six trillion dollars in debt in
his first term.
It was Obama who wasted a trillion
dollars on a failed “stimulus”, discovering belatedly that there were few
“shovel-ready” jobs while at the same time wasting billions in loans to wind and
solar companies that went into bankruptcy shortly after receiving
them.
As Simmons points out, “In 2011, wind
power produced 1.2 percent (1.2%) of the energy used in the United States, solar
power produce 0.1 percent (0.1%) and hydroelectric power contributed 3.3 percent
(3.3%) of the total energy used. Solar and wind energy is unpredictable and
require back-up from traditional electrical energy plants. “Today, there are 104
nuclear reactors in the United States and construction began for all of these
reactors prior to 1974.”
Thanks to the EPA 153 coal-fired
plants have been shut down!
What the public is not told is that
the coal-fueled electric sector has invested $110 billion in a variety of clean
coal technologies that reduced emissions by 90% and intends, over the next
decade, to spend $100 billion more. Even so, the EPA continues to issue
rules—New Source Performance Standard—that make operating coal-fired plants too
costly to operate.
The Obama administration’s
justification for its policies is the bogus claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) is
responsible for “global warming” or “climate change” when it plays NO role
whatever regarding the Earth’s climate.
The same lies the Obama and Democrats
in Congress, as well as the Health and Human Services department told Americans
about the Affordable Health Act are reflected in their lies about the nation’s
energy sector.
Obama has been waging a war on
America’s energy needs and the benefits that would result from its
expansion.
Until Obama leaves office and voters
remove the opponents of the nation’s energy sector, the enormous benefits to
Americans in jobs and debt reduction will not occur.
© Alan Caruba,
2014
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens
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