The president has blocked offshore oil and gas production and made it more difficult to produce energy onshore.
After the explosion in the Gulf over a year ago, the administration shut down permitting for nearly a year. While the administration finally began issuing offshore permits again, it’s at a much slower
rate. The results are troubling. Oil production in the Gulf of
Mexico is estimated to drop 20 percent in 2012 from 2010 levels.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) refuses to issue permits for offshore energy exploration in Alaska. This alone could provide an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil. Companies have invested billions of dollars and spent more than 5 years trying to develop these American energy resources. I have cosponsored legislation to fix the EPA’s flawed process for issuing offshore permits.
The administration has aggressively opposed exploration for oil and natural gas on federal lands in the West. In 2009, one of the administration’s first energy-related actions was to cancel 77 existing oil and gas leases in Utah. It has built on its anti-energy stance by throwing up additional regulatory hurdles to onshore production.
The White House has also stifled energy innovation in America – specifically on oil shale development. According to conservative estimates, the U.S. has 800 billion recoverable barrels of oil from oil shale in portions of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. The administration undercut this valuable resource by pulling back the commercial leasing rules that are crucial for this valuable resource coming to market.
Read more:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011...ergy-problems-worse-not-better/#ixzz1Qa1Vu32O
