…and there is:
…as a result of the Obama decision, the Interior Department will spend several years conducting geologic and environmental studies along the rest of the southern and central Atlantic Seaboard. If a tract is deemed suitable for development, it is listed for sale in a competitive bidding system. The next lease sales — if any are authorized by the Interior Department — would not be held before 2012.
Emphasis mine. And the entire west coast remains off limits. Which is too bad, because the Santa Barbara platforms could be producing oil within a year. For the refineries that the California government refuses to allow to be built. At least until we change it out this fall.
This looks more like lip service to pretend to compromise, than a serious energy production proposal.
Are there actual legislative and gubernatorial candidates with a real chance of willing a quorum in the state government who will actually allow refineries to be built?
Meg Whitman would, I think. Whether or not it’s possible to get enough support in the legislature, I have no idea.
Remember, Arnold started out with some good ideas…..Then apparently, when he couldn’t beat them he joined them.
Of course there is a catch.
It will never happen. We will just play around a bit then the environmentalists will shut the thing down.
This is just a photo op to take out minds of the health care bill.
Then we will have to shut the environmentalists down. I think there soon may be enough anger out there to do that. Or we can generate enough anger to get it done.
I’m mad as hell and I’m NOT going to take it anymore! My Howard Beale moment.
In a reasonable world, the Republicans would call Obama, and they’d have a conversation something like this:
R: “What can we do to expedite actually drilling in these areas?”
O: “How about a vote for solar energy credits (or some other Obama desire).”
R: “Okay.” Or, “Can’t do that, but what about wind? (or some other benefit they want).”
There would be a bit more back-and-forth along these lines, and then a bipartisan energy bill would be forthcoming. This is because, in a reasonable world, nobody gets everything they want, especially not a minority political party.
Since we don’t live anywhere near reasonable, we get Boehner screaming that because Obama hasn’t opened up every millimeter of the coastline for drilling RIGHT NOW, Obama is “defying the will of the American people”.
It’s called compromise, and it’s as American as apple pie.
Nice try Chris, but no sale…
Obama has not even bothered to negotiate, and has dealt in bad faith at just about every step along the way. The ‘I won’ mentality is going to have to be beaten out of him (and I use that metaphor quite deliberately) before any honest deals can be made.
How about drilling with NO hidden gotchas, and a firm commitment (no weasel words) to oppose greenie obstructionism? Then, and ONLY then (after real production comes online) I could see wasting a few billion dollars to satisfy the vanity of the green gentry
I doubt this is for show. The economic reality means it will be done. Just like Obama supports building new nuclear power plants in the US as well, contrary to the wishes of a lot of people in his side of the political spectrum. He is not going to win any votes by doing this.
If you want to see a disastrous energy policy in the US just look at California. No more nuclear power plants, solar photovoltaic subsidies, natural gas micro-generation subsidies. Their only good policy was building more HVDC capacity out of state. With energy generation like that, electricity is definitively going to need to come from somewhere else…
Zilla,
I am not sure that I agree that “Obama won’t win any votes for this”…after all, this does a fine job of creating the illusion of ‘moderate’ behavior without actually doing anything of substance…
With that said, I hope that I am wrong, but I rather doubt that I am…
So the bureaucracy gets to “study” the issue for a few years, probably until after the 2012 elections. Then, even if they say everything is fine, the environmental groups will file a series of lawsuits and tie it up in the courts for years. Peachy.
What happened in the futures markets after the announcement?
I wondered what the catch was when I first heard this story last night. Thanks for looking into the details.
This could be the first chink the armor that shows Obama’s attempts at perhaps moving back to the center. There is enough nuance in this though that if things don’t quite turn out as bad as anticipated this next election cycle then they can quickly return course. Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.
The easiest thing a President could do to expedite drilling and other energy production is to declare a state of emergency and partially or wholly, as is his or her wont, suspend the clean water and clean air acts.
There are provisions in both that allows their suspension in a state of emergency. They could temporaily be replaced with best management practices. And you would not need suspend the whole thing, just parts holding up construction of reifneries and power plants. I also suspect there are similar provisions in the endangered species act and others too.
If things get bad enough there are options available to a chief executive with enough spine to push back against the Lilliputians.
Thinking about it, it’s still a crack in the dike. If anyone is allowed to look for oil, then sooner or later they will find it. That changes the dynamic. The politicians would then be keeping possibly billions of dollars in the ground.
New govt regulations (Interior Dept? I don’t recall.) will require drillers to obtain a separate federal permit for each oil-well shaft they dig (on land, in areas where there is already drilling). IOW, there’s going to be less drilling, maybe a lot less. Is Obama’s “new policy” on offshore drilling going to be similar — a “reform” that creates so many hurdles to drilling as to be practically meaningless?
Perhaps this is the intention.
Personally, I think that any energy policy that keeps oil as a major energy source is a mistake, and the reason has nothing to do with AGW. Keep oil as a major energy source and the Islamists keep getting money. Remove it, and you cut off global Islamic jihad at the knees.
Nukes, sure. Also wave and tidal power, algae-based biodiesel, OTEC and Polywell/focus fusion. (Not tokamak – it’s fifty years off as it was fifty years ago.) With a source of energy, you can make liquid fuels.
Somehow, the idea of the King of Mordor (aka Saudi) in rags, carrying a begging bowl, has appeal.
The idea of importing all of the rest of the world’s oil before we even start tapping ours is appealing to me. If I thought our gummit was smart enough, I’d think that was actually the strategy.
I’ve seen the energy strategy of this Administration at a recent ARPA-E conference. It would be catastrophic…