Elections Have Consequences: The Future of US Energy

President Obama's powerful interlocking network of campaign support organisations has succeeded in making sure that the US President can sit in the White House for another four years. This feat opens the door for a great deal of new regulation which has been held back until after the US elections.

President Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more,” Senator Inhofe said. “From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don’t want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election. But President Obama’s former climate czar Carol Browner was very clear about what’s in store for next year: she told several green groups not to worry because President Obama has a big green ‘to-do’ list for 2013—so they’ll get what they want. As a result, hard working Americans will lose their jobs and be subjected to skyrocketing energy prices

This report also importantly puts the spotlight back on an Obama-EPA that has, as the Washington Post said, earned a ‘reputation for abuse.’ It serves as a stark reminder that President Obama has presided over a green team administration that works every day to ‘crucify’ oil and gas companies and make sure that ‘if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem.’ _Independent.org

Not just the EPA, but the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and a number of other US federal agencies, have prepared regulations which will work to strangulate US energy industries:

... the proposed BLM rule would drive oil and gas developers off federal and tribal lands. Complying with the rules is too complicated and costly. Producers can realize a much faster and much better return on their capital investment by developing oil and gas reserves on adjoining private lands.

Federal and tribal lands hold large reserves of oil and natural gas. At a time when the United States desperately needs to move toward, not away from, energy independence, it makes no sense to let bureaucratic meddling effectively place these valuable domestic reserves out of reach. _Killing US Shale

Mr. Obama is certainly the president of the US, and probably will be for a number of years to come. He has the right to put his personal stamp on government policy.

In his first term, Mr. Obama largely kept his hands off the shale energy boom. That was fortunate for him, because without the shale boom, the US economy would have been in much worse condition. He "confined" his executive meddling on energy to a stonewalling of offshore oil, a slow regulatory death of coal, and what is essentially a freeze on nuclear.

But now, elections have consequences, and Mr. Obama has no reason to fear the full implementation of his agenda of energy starvation. The greatest uncertainty remaining is: How is it to be done, and when? These things must be done delicately __attributed to the Wicked Witch of the West.

Obama's Energy Starvation: The Real Story

US President Obama has a tendency to claim credit for everything good, and to deny blame for anything bad that happens. But more intelligent people tend to look beneath a politician's public statements and claims, in order to detect the threads of reality hidden below.

One of the feats of President Obama's re-election campaign is its ability to describe his record in a way that bears little or no relation to the reality of the last four years.

...As we have learned, the plan was to subsidize dozens of companies with little commercial potential but that were often owned by Mr. Obama's green allies. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency would go on a regulatory binge like nothing in modern U.S. history against traditional carbon-based sources of energy, coal in particular. Mr. Romney went small bore in the debate, noting that the Administration has not in practice promoted the production of U.S. energy resources on federal lands and waters, in fact the opposite. Mr. Obama responded by flatly stating that "very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous Administration." He said he supported "an all-of-the-above strategy."

"But that's not what you've done in the last four years," Mr. Romney said. "That's the problem." Mr. Obama: "Sure it is." Mr. Romney: "In the last four years, you cut permits and licenses on federal land and federal waters in half." Mr. Obama: "Not true, Governor Romney."

Then there was this timeless bit: Mr. Obama: "The production is up."

Mr. Romney: "Production on government land of oil is down 14%."

Mr. Obama: "Governor—"

Mr. Romney: "And production of gas is down 9%."

Mr Obama: "What you're saying is just not true. It's just not true."

The problem for the President is that a government outfit called the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) compiles these statistics. That's where Mr. Romney got his accurate figures on oil and gas production on government land and permitting in Mr. Obama's first term. The EIA also reports that total fossil fuel production in public areas—oil, gas and coal—has plunged to a nine-year low, to 18.6 quadrillion BTUs from 21.2 quadrillion in 2003.

Mr. Obama is correct that overall domestic energy production is up, thanks largely to the shale boom in states like Pennsylvania and North Dakota. But he's trying to take credit for something he had nothing to do with, given that this surge is taking place on private property and the EPA is searching for an excuse to supplant state regulation and slow down drilling. Wait for the second term.

...In 2008 Mr. Obama declared that he wanted electricity rates for so-called dirty fuels to "necessarily skyrocket" and "if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can—it's just that it will bankrupt them."

That's one promise he's kept: For the first time, coal is in decline, with production falling 6.5% since 2008, according to the EIA. Part of the reason is a shock from cheap natural gas. But the major reason is a surge of EPA air and water rules, such as an unrealistic and pointless $9.6 billion rule for trace mercury emissions that the agency put out last year.

The EIA expects 8.5% of the coal-fired fleet to retire by 2016, and 17% by 2020, and those are very conservative estimates. Coal has fallen to 32% of U.S. net electric generation, according to preliminary EIA data for 2012. This share stood at about 48% when Mr. Obama took office.

All of this amounts to one of the fastest energy transitions in U.S. history. Even some regulators within the Administration oppose the EPA's force majeure, fearing blackouts and other reliability issues as plants are retired despite many remaining useful years. Amid mine closings and layoffs, the United Mine Workers of America declined to endorse Mr. Obama this year, though the union did in 2008. _WSJ

More at the link.

If Mr. Obama manages to lie and cheat his way into a second term as US President, Americans will discover to their deep regret how badly they needed the energy of which Obama will have starved them.

Much will depend upon the composition of the US Congress from 2013 through 2016. But the US president has control over the huge, bloated executive branch of US government, and possesses the power of executive order.

Expect turbulence ahead, regardless of the outcome of the US November elections. But if Obama is re-elected, expect the unexpected -- bigtime.

Will Obama's War on Coal Cost Obama his Job?

The“war on coal” is closing power plants and outraging miners whose livelihoods it threatens. More, it means price hikes for electricity — particularly in northern Ohio, a crucial state that broke for Obama in 2008.

Back then, union workers helped flip the state blue, reversing GOP wins in 2000 and 2004. This year, maybe not. Last November, the EPA adopted new regulations on emissions that sounded a death knell for many of our country’s older coal-fired power plants. Already struggling to compete with cheap natural gas, owners of some facilities decided against investing in the pollution-control equipment needed to comply with the new regs.

...Many [coal plant] closings will come in Ohio, where Akron-based FirstEnergy was first out of the box in announcing several planned shutdowns. It spent five years and $1.8 billion installing scrubbers on its largest plant located on the Ohio River; costly upgrades to the smaller units simply didn’t make sense.

The lost capacity will be replaced mainly by cheaper natural-gas plants, but the shift will require costly improvements to transmission facilities, expected to run more than a billion dollars in Ohio alone. Projected electric-rate hikesalarmed Ohio small businesses, which protested to the state’s Public Utility Commission...

...Nor was the November rule the EPA’s only assault on coal. The agency also recently imposed carbon-dioxide emission standards that could effectively prohibit any new coal-plant construction. That ruling almost guarantees the nation will continue to shift electricity production from coal to natural gas....

...This determination to kill coal is short-sighted. There’s no guarantee that natural-gas prices will stay at today’s 10-year low. The shale boom has pushed them down, but soaring demand could eventually push prices higher. The appetite for natural gas as a transportation fuel for large truck fleets or for export, for example, is just getting rolling.

And (surprise!), now that natural gas is cheap, the same environmental groups behind the “war on coal” are now suddenly finding all sorts of (scientifically dubious) reasons to block natural-gas production.

America has a 250-year reserve of inexpensive coal — in energy terms, roughly the equivalent of the Saudis’ oil reserves. With the nation seeking to reassert itself as a manufacturing powerhouse, why deny access to cheap power?

The assault on coal is also risky for Obama. Ohio is a must-win for the president. State GOP chairman Bob Bennett notes that, for Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the state, angry miners turned out spontaneously to protest the White House’s anti-coal policies — and “The GOP had nothing to do with that.”

With the EPA’s rulings likely to cost the state jobs and hike electric bills, he says, “Obama gives people more reasons to vote for [Mitt] Romney every day.”_NYP

Obama's war against coal, offshore and Arctic oil, Canadian oil sands, the Keystone pipeline, nuclear power, etc etc, is popularly known at the Al Fin Institute as Obama's agenda of energy starvation. The natural effects of this agenda are increased costs of doing business and increased uncertainties as to future costs of doing business -- which discourages new startups and new jobs formation.

It is no coincidence that Mr. Obama's policies on other fronts -- such as healthcare, taxes, regulations, growth of government . . . -- have the same depressing effects on the private sector's ability to grow the economy.

Most independent US voters have family members who are out of work or are looking for work and unable to find it. They may not understand the entire long chain of factors and hidden agendas that connect Obama to the US private sector's ongoing difficulties, but they know enough to blame Obama for not doing what he promised in regard to new jobs and new hope.

Obama Bureaucracies Poised to Pull Plug on Shale Boom

One of the few bright spots in the dismal Obama economy has been the shale oil & gas boom. Several US states have benefited from the rapid growth in energy drilling, and consequent boom in local manufacturing, housing, and service investment that has taken place.

Unfortunately, the unconventional energy boom has proved inconvenient to many of President Obama's key supporters, potential allies, and constituencies, including the foreign government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But given the enormous beneficial economic effect of the shale boom on large parts of the US economy, Mr. Obama cannot openly move against the industry. He must first provide himself with as much bureaucratic and faux environmental cover as possible.

Update: Obama a threat to low cost natural gas

GCC
While Mr. Obama has the Department of Interior (Ken Salazar) and the EPA (Lisa Jackson) well in hand, the Department of Energy has been a bit too eager to help the energy industry to expand and develop, for Mr. Obama's taste. When one has devoted so much of his time to taming the private sector economy in order to establish the uncontested dominance of the public sector, one cannot easily allow any industry to "break out" of the pack -- particularly an industry as politically incorrect as the oil & gas industry.

The US Departments of Energy (DOE) and of the Interior (DOI), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a formal partnership to coordinate and align all research associated with development of the US’ unconventional natural gas and oil resources such as shale gas and oil. The partnership exemplifies the cross-government coordination required under President Obama’s executive order released earlier today, which mandated a new Interagency Working Group to Support Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources. (Earlier post.)

The new partnership will help coordinate current and future research and scientific studies undertaken by the three federal agencies. A primary goal of this effort will be to identify research topics where collaboration among the three agencies can be most effectively and efficiently conducted to provide results and technologies that support sound policy decisions by the agencies responsible for ensuring the prudent development of energy sources while promoting safe practices and human health. A broader set of activities will be coordinated under the newly ordered Interagency Working Group. _GCC

More at GCC, with links to public documents and announcements.

One must read between the lines in order to interpret the underlying intent of bureaucratic coordination of this type. While the announcement is worded to suggest that the Obama administration is promoting new energy sources such as unconventional oil & gas, the sad reality is that Mr. Obama is using two ideologically subjugated bureaucracies to subdue a third, which has failed to submit itself totally to getting its ideological mind right.

In an election year, the president cannot be too careful in covering his donkey. Particularly when his planned policies are likely to hurt the US economy by attacking crucially important energy supplies and economic activity.

The Jobs and Economic Future of the US Are Tied Up In the Energy Boom

The US economy has been kept afloat -- despite the best efforts of the Obama administration to sink it -- by the oil & gas boom. Obama's EPA continues to try to find ways to shut down the shale energy boom -- just as it has shut down coal plants, offshore drilling, and stonewalled clean new advanced nuclear reactor designs.

But given the central role of the shale oil & gas boom in preventing an all out US economic recession, it is inconceivable that Obama would publicly try to shut it down -- at least, not until after the November elections.

... the oil and gas boom could make America a major player again in the world energy market and help spur the entire U.S. economy. Already, both Texas and Louisiana have unemployment rates significantly below the national average, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the West South Central region -- which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas -- has the second-lowest overall unemployment rate in the country, at 7.1%. The lowest? West North Central, which includes North Dakota (with a 3% unemployment rate), where gas producers in the supergiant Bakken formation can't find enough workers to fill their shifts...

...On the East Coast, abundant natural gas flowing from the Marcellus Shale formation, which runs through New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, is enriching farmers who lease their lands to production companies and is estimated to have created 60,000 jobs in the region, with another 200,000 possible by 2015.

Cheap domestic energy is also good news for the manufacturing sector. "The discovery and development of North America's shale resources has the potential to be the most remarkable source of economic growth and prosperity that any of us are likely to encounter in our lifetimes," U.S. Steel CEO John Surma told the Congressional Steel Caucus in a late March hearing. It's a virtuous cycle: More drilling requires more steel, and lower energy costs give U.S. steel producers a cost edge. This at a time when the Department of Energy reports that the energy intensity of U.S. steel companies is now among the lowest in the world.

In St. James Parish near Baton Rouge, ground was broken last year for a $3.4 billion steel plant being built by Nucor Steel (NUE), the first major facility built in the U.S. in decades. U.S. Steel is investing in a new facility in Lorain, Ohio, and V&M Star Steel (the North American subsidiary of the French pipemaker Vallourec) plans to spend $650 million on a small-diameter rolling mill in Youngstown, Ohio.

It's not just Big Steel that will benefit. Feedstock made from cheap natural gas is a boon for the petrochemical industry. Citing "the improved outlook for U.S. natural-gas supply from shale," Dow Chemical (DOW) says it will build an ethylene plant in Louisiana for startup in 2017. (Ethylene is used to make things like plastic bottles and toys.) Dow will also restart its ethylene plant near Hahnville, La. Shell, which is building a new petrochemical refinery in Pennsylvania, is also considering a $10 billion Louisiana plant to convert natural gas to diesel. "Low-cost natural gas is the elixir, the sweetness, the juice, the Viagra," says Don Logan, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. "What it's doing is changing the U.S. back into the industrial power of the day."

...Companies that built import terminals to bring in LNG in the early 2000s are now spending billions to remake them into export facilities. Cheniere Energy plans to break ground on the first new LNG processing unit at its Sabine Pass Terminal on the Louisiana coast this year and be exporting natural gas by 2015. Cheniere has signed contracts with four overseas customers including Spanish utility Gas Natural Fenosa. Besides Sabine Pass, at least three other LNG terminals, built as intake ports, have applied for export licenses. Essentially the infrastructure of the Gulf Coast oil and gas industry is being spun around to serve the new realities of the great petro-revival. _Fortune.cnn

Something Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have in common: They are both afraid of the success of North American shale gas & oil. Perhaps now President Putin could slip green dieoff.orgy activists a bit more funding under the table?

Obama's EPA Busy Shutting Down Energy Industry

Over just the past six months, three refineries supplying about half the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to the East Coast have closed, including two owned by Sunoco Inc. They say they simply cannot make money anymore.

Philadelphia-based Sunoco's refinery business in the Northeast has lost almost $1 billion over the past three years as U.S. demand for gas fell and the cost of foreign crude soared.

But over the same period, it had to shell out "significant expenditures for environmental projects and compliance activities" to satisfy onerous EPA mandates, according to the company's latest 10-K report.

In fact, it's spent more than $1.3 billion just to comply with stricter EPA rules, which carry stiff fines or penalties for violations. Sunoco fretted that these regulatory costs would grow exponentially under the Obama administration, which has hit some of its refineries with fines.

"During 2009, the EPA indicated that it intends to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, (which) could result in increases in costs to operate and maintain the company's facilities, as well as capital outlays for new emission control equipment at these facilities," the company warned investors in its 2011 report filed with the SEC.

"Compliance with current and future environmental laws and regulations likely will require us to make significant expenditures, increasing the overall cost of operating our businesses, including capital costs to construct, maintain and upgrade equipment and facilities," Sunoco added.

"To the extent these expenditures are not ultimately reflected in the prices of our products or services, our operating results would be adversely affected."

In the end, the company could not weather market crosscurrents long enough to recover the government-induced costs. It bled so much money that it decided to exit the refining business entirely.

A Sunoco spokesman confirmed in an interview with IBD that "the cost of complying with environmental requirements" was one of the factors that led it to decide to exit refining. _Investors

Candidate Obama promised to cause energy prices to skyrocket, and expressed a desire to see US gasoline prices rise much higher. That is one promise that he is keeping.

In many ways Obama's EPA -- and his entire administration -- is a huge governmental wrecking ball set loose in the US economy on a path of destruction. The US constitutional system of checks and balances on governmental abuses is being strained to its limit. It is a tribute to the caliber of persons who wrote the original US constitution that the republic is able to continue under a government grown so oppressively large and corrupt.

A look at some of the early congressional pushback against US EPA abuse of power and ideological caprice. Expect to see an increasing amount of scrutiny and opposition to malicious EPA counterproductiveness over the next several months.

Pennsylvania Opts for Abundant, Clean, Inexpensive Energy

Obama's great green jobs initiative has fallen flat on its face. The only thing holding up Obama's shaky economy at this time is shale fracking -- a technology that Obama's energy starvationist regime has been trying to kill for years now (despite Obama's belated double-talk "in praise of" natural gas recently). What is it about energy suicide that Obama's regime in Washington DC finds so appealing?

Whatever it is, Pennsylvania legislators have rejected Obamaesque energy-starvationism, and are choosing the clean, abundant, inexpensive energy locked beneath their feet in shale and other rock formations. That was a smart choice. Particularly with elections coming up in November.

Green complaints about fracking reached a fever pitch over the past year, but Pennsylvania apparently wasn’t listening to them. The Wall Street Journal reports that the state legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that will make state laws more favorable to fracking, culminating a debate that has been raging ever since massive quantities of shale gas were discovered in the state in 2008.

The vote was close, and fell roughly along party lines. Republicans supported the bill because it promises cheaper energy and job creation in an economically depressed state; Democrats opposed it because of the potential for environmental damage and safety hazards.
Don’t doubt for a minute that legislators in other states in the region—many of which may also have shale gas deposits—are reading the tea leaves in this bill’s passage. The industrial states of the Rust Belt desperately need jobs, and judging by the rapid recovery of energy-rich states like North Dakota and Texas, fracking is beginning to look like their best bet for getting them. The historically warm relationship between the greens and local Democrats could grow downright chilly.

And the Big Chill may come sooner rather than later. With election season drawing near, the Rust Belt and its abundance of swing states will increasingly become the central battlefield of Red vs. Blue—and brown vs. green. _Walter Russell Mead

President Obama Declares Energy Starvation for America

President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.

“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines. _TheHill

Meanwhile, US President Obama defies the job council and rejects one of the greatest potential provider of US jobs and prosperity -- the Keystone pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Nat Jnl

In a decision sure to re-ignite a fierce energy debate, the Obama administration was announcing on Wednesday its rejection of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline...

... A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, decried the news. “President Obama is about to destroy tens of thousands of American jobs and sell American energy security to the Chinese,” said Brendan Buck. “The president won’t stand up to his political base even to create American jobs. This is not the end of this fight.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also jumped on the news. "The president's focused more on the next election than on the next generation."_NatJnl

The unutterably stupid decision by the former junior Senator from Illinois is in keeping with his overall policy agenda of "energy starvation." Mr. Obama's ruling clique has sandbagged offshore oil drilling, coal mining, safe new nuclear energy reactors, oil shales, arctic drilling, various reliable methods of electrical power generation, and is in the process of putting pressure on shale oil & gas -- the one bright spot in his entire economic reign.

Mr. Obama's championing of bankrupt and unreliable green energy -- such as big wind and big solar -- exposed him as an inept and incompetent venture capitalist who likes to play with taxpayer's money for the benefit of political cronies.

Advanced economies need a huge amount of reliable and affordable energy to prosper. Mr. Obama has chosen to choke off energy supplies and starve the US private sector of its vital needs, and to harry it with ruinous regulation, taxation, mandates, and competition from tax-funded cronies.

US voters had best wise up to this president's agenda before they are all collecting government relief checks, paid in increasingly worthless Obama dollars.

Previously posted on Al Fin blog

Is Obama the Venture Capitalist of Doom?

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

Others are also struggling with potential problems. Nevada Geothermal -- a home state project personally endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- warns of multiple potential defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. It was already having trouble paying the bills when it received $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees. _CBS News

It is a matter of judgment. The marketplace will test your judgment like nothing else can do. If you have never been tested in the fires of competitive business venture, you will be at a loss when trying to select potential winners and losers. And if you are paying with hard-earned tax dollars in the middle of an extended recession -- sooner or later the spotlight is going to hit you in the eyes like a dart.

The Obama administration’s track record with taxpayer-funded, green-tech subsidies is severely flawed, and according to new documents obtained by CBS News, its failures were all too predictable. The Energy Department's $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra is, at least publicly, its most illustrious investment blunder, as the company went bankrupt last year leaving taxpayers with a hefty bill and putting more than 1,000 employees out of work.

All in all, 12 green energy companies are in financial disorder after collectively receiving more than $6.5 billion in government assistance, five of which have already filed for bankruptcy, including Solyndra, Beacon Power, SpectraWatt, Evergreen Solar, and AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy. According to CBS News, these green-tech ventures were junk-bond-rated companies with red flags planted all over them.

...Other green-tech investments the Obama administration has championed are currently facing severe financial challenges. Nevada Geothermal, which develops "clean" electrical power from high temperature geothermal resources, displays warnings of multiple defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. In fact, the company was already struggling to pay its bills when it harvested $98.5 million in federal loan guarantees.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), one of the Obama administration’s most trusted congressional assets, was instrumental in securing the Energy Department’s financing for Nevada Geothermal. "Mr. Reid has taken the nascent geothermal industry under his wing," the New York Times reported last October, "pressuring the Department of Interior to move more quickly on applications to build clean energy projects on federally owned land and urging other member of Congress to expand federal tax incentives to help build geothermal plants, benefits that Nevada Geothermal has taken advantage of."

The Times pointed out that Nevada Geothermal’s financial misfortunes are all too reminiscent of Solyndra’s collapse, and that such trends have debunked the myth that government can effectively prop up enterprises which private investors avoid altogether _NewAmerican

Surviving Obama Will Not Be as Easy as it Sounds

The EPA  

The Obama administration had staffed the agency with reliable green cadres who were sure to come out with such aggressive regulations that fundamental changes in environmental policy would be made without the inconvenience of an actual congressional vote. This administration’s extraordinarily active EPA delivered..._WalterRussellMead

The EPA's rules are playing hell with US energy and jobs creation. The Obama energy starvation devastation has just begun, and much of the pain it causes will last for decades after Obama is finally ejected from the White House.

With concern over a slowing U.S. economy and 13.9 million unemployed, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is promulgating new rules that will threaten the economic recovery.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff estimates that as much as 81 gigawatts of coal-generated electricity, which is about 8 percent of the entire U.S. electricity capacity, would be eliminated from the power grid by new EPA regulations on power plant emissions. Such a drastic effect will raise the costs of production, reduce the reliability of the power grid and result in a substantial drag on economic growth and employment. _GaryWolfram

Obama's de facto offshore oil moratorium is another aspect to this administrations overall energy starvation agenda. And the energy starvation agenda is just one aspect to the regime's anti-private sector campaign. Destroying private sector jobs is not necessarily considered a downside to Obama's policies, within his close circle of advisors.

There are many rational approaches to reversing the current ongoing Obama economic recession. But Mr. Obama is unlikely to seriously consider any of these logical actions, since many of them would have the effect of strengthening the private sector. In Mr. Obama's mind, the strength of the private sector and the ability of the private sector to act independently of the government, must be curtailed at all costs.

A good example of Mr. Obama's energy policy, is the Solyndra debacle. The corrupt alliance between a top Obama fundraiser, and a $500 million loan to a solar cell company now floundering in bankruptcy, makes for a classic tale -- if any of the mainstream media were brave enough to bring the dirty tale to light.

To see a prototype of Mr. Obama's vision for America, one might wish to visit Detroit. Nothing can happen in Detroit without the permission of mob-connected public sector unions, and the corrupt town bosses. Very much like Chicago, except a bit further down the road.

It is easy for doomers to blame this long term economic recession on energy scarcity, peak oil, climate change, outsourcing, and any number of other causes. But when a government works so hard to create energy starvation and to kill private sector jobs, one does not need to look too much further.

Obama's Great Bankrupt Solar Power Debacle

First Evergreen Solar decided to close up shop. Now Solyndra has announced that it can't compete in solar panels and is declaring bankruptcy. What gives? Wasn't this supposed to be the era of renewable energy? Weren't we headed for a green energy renaissance that would end America's dependence on foreign oil? _iStockAnalyst

Strangely enough, Solyndra's billionaire majority stockholder, George Kaiser, was a big campaign fundraiser for Obama. Interestingly, Mr. Obama has been quite vocal in his praise of Solyndra, and helped ease over $500 million in government loans to Solyndra -- which taxpayers are now liable for.

Solyndra's relationship with the White House came under special scrutiny because of Solyndra backer and Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser's history as an Obama fundraiser. In a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in February, the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised concerns about the loan, noting that the company had suffered "financial setbacks," and asking for information about "whether Solyndra was the right candidate" for the loan guarantee....The Department of Energy marched on anyway _WSJ

Where did all the money go? Perhaps not surprisingly, Obama's White House is now stonewalling an investigation into the administration's financial connections with the failed solar company.

The solar industry is environmentally dirty, responsible for dumping millions of tons of lead across the Indian and Chinese countryside. In one sense, the bankruptcies of US solar companies are considered a boon for Chinese manufacturers. But in an environmental sense, Chinese production of photovoltaic panels is proving to be a great curse.

In many circles, Obama is being described as the "jobs destroyer in chief." Not only has Mr. Obama's "green jobs revolution" backfired badly, but his entire agenda of energy starvation is creating massive secondary and tertiary downstream destructive effects on job formation.

Keystone XL Pipeline Fights Faux Environmentalist Energy Starvation

The Keystone XL pipeline is meant to carry oil sands crude all the way from Canada to the US Gulf of Mexico coast refineries and terminals. This pipeline will provide deepwater access to Canada's oilsands, as it ramps up in production.

The US State Department has issued a final environmental impact statement, finding no significant environmental impacts from the pipeline. The bureaucratic process for approval of the pipeline is far from exhausted, however. The Obama agenda of energy starvation has barely begun to sink its fangs into Canada's oilsands, US coal, US offshore oil, US kerogens, US nuclear etc. -- despite the risk to the US economy of shutting down virtually all reliable forms of energy.

As for the Keystone XL and other oilsands pipelines -- Most analysts believe that it is the price differential (about $25) between North American oil prices and global oil prices which is driving various pipeline routes to the sea.

Will the pipeline connection to the Gulf Coast simply be a conduit for Canadian oil to be trans-shipped to foreign markets and capture more favorable world pricing? If so, how does that help America?

Or will the flow of 500,000 to 900,000 barrels a day through the Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf Coast be sufficient to bring down bulging inventories of stranded, land-locked oil in Cushing, Oklahoma and eliminate, or at least substantially reduce the huge price spread between Brent and West Texas Intermediate?

If it doesn’t, and the over $25-per-barrel spread between U.S. domestic oil prices and world oil prices persists, new pipelines will be built in Canada to provide a more direct connection to global oil markets.

One way or another, it is oil price differentials, not James Hansen’s concerns, which will ultimately determine the flow and direction of oil from Canada’s tar sands. _Globe&Mail

Faux environmentalism is little more than a primal desire to return to a pre-industrial global state. Since such a return would inevitably result in the dieoff of several billion human beings, faux environmentalism is a thinly veiled yearning for a massive reduction of the human population to less than 10% of current levels.

Energy starvation of the developed world is the quickest route to this dieoff. By shifting from reliable forms of energy such as nuclear, coal, gas, etc. in favour of unreliable forms of energy such as big solar and big wind, faux environmentalism is apparently trying to bring about massive poverty, hunger, hardship, disease, and death. Think of that the next time you are solicited by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, or World Wildlife Fund.

Obama Uses EPA to Shut Down More Energy and Jobs

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, announced last month, will affect coal-fired electric plants in at least 27 midwestern and eastern states. Set to take effect next year, the rule could shutter up to a fifth of the nation’s generating capacity. _NYP

New EPA rules define carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This erroneous definition allows the US government agency to adopt drastic and economically damaging new emission rules. The destructive new rules are driven by high-level carbon hysteria -- the fear of carbon dioxide. They are also driven by the antipathy of Mr. Obama and his administration toward coal, and toward large scale energy consumption of US society in general.

Mr. Obama has always intended to bankrupt coal plants and coal mines, forcing them to shut down and fire workers. The short video above is from a campaign appearance in San Francisco, appealing for funding from wealthy backers with faux environmentalist tnedencies.

If these regulations were actually about coal-caused pollution, many of the plants which are due to be shut down could be converted to burning torrefied biomass -- as opposed to conventional biomass -- at minimal or no cost of conversion.

“If you have a 500-MW plant, to retrofit it to also use wood pellets would cost about $300 million,” Morihara says. “If you use torrefied biomass, there is no retrofitting cost. For its Btu content, torrefied biomass may cost 20 percent more, but it has 20 percent more energy so the cost is actually very similar.” _Biomass

A large number of coal plants in Europe are beginning to use torrefied biomass, as well as cofiring conventional biomass with coal. US plants are ramping up experience to do the same. But the impetuous plant closings by the EPA, with the consequent energy shortages, price increases, and economic slowdowns which will result, will make it more difficult to transition to biomass and torrefied biomass. How much easier if the EPA had cooperated with industry to facilitate a smooth transition?

In other words, if the EPA rules and regulations were about cleaning the environment and reducing coal burning, the EPA could have scheduled the rules to allow the biomass and torrefaction industries to scale up to displace coal consumption.

Obama's Energy Starvation Agenda: Still Killing Jobs

... the most activist Department of the Interior in our nation's history is trying to change the rules and seize from Exxon Mobil one of the largest oil finds ever in the Gulf of Mexico. I thought that we were a better country than that. The Department of the Interior under the Obama administration has cost this country hundreds of thousands of jobs with their regulatory overreach. Not only has their ban on offshore drilling cost us thousands of jobs, it now appears that they are trying to take back leases from Exxon Mobil on a never before used technicality that will steal billions of dollars of profits from this US corporation that has acted in good faith. _FXStreet

Mr. Obama's agenda of national energy starvation continues to generate an economic recession without end. The Obama regime's relentless attacks against coal, oil sands, shale gas and oil, offshore oil, nuclear, oil shale kerogens, and every conceivable form of energy which is reliable and affordable are helping to destroy the US economy, bit by bit.

The ongoing battle between the Obama - Salazar US Department of the Interior, and Exxon Mobile, over billions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico Julia field, is a prime example:

ExxonMobil, and its Norwegian partner Statoil made the biggest discovery of all — a field worth a billion barrels of oil — 7,000 feet below sea level in its "Julia" field in 2007.

Exxon tried to keep its discovery secret to keep marauders away. Sadly, the pirates in this instance are U.S. regulators — and their aim is to stop them.

That's right: Instead of marvel at the continuing treasures of the New World, or hail the human ingenuity that made retrieval of so much oil possible, or simply quantify how this discovery will boost U.S. energy security, Interior Department bureaucrats moved instead to snatch Exxon's permits and shut the whole thing down.

...in the Obama era, which demonizes oil production in American waters by American companies, the bureaucrats came up with this permit technicality to effectively expropriate the entire operation.

Exxon is now fighting the permit action in a federal court in Lake Charles, La., calling it "arbitrary," "capricious" and "an abuse of law." It's also a textbook case of the anti-business climate fostered by the Obama administration which should be bending over backward to help Exxon create jobs and profits. _IBD

Obama should be helping Exxon to create new, lucrative US jobs, to help boost the depressed Gulf of Mexico and national economies. Instead, the regime is pursuing -- energy starvation.

Exxon has been keeping this huge oil find a secret, and is only coming out in the open due to the need to sue the Obama regime in court, in order to maintain its right to develop the Julia field.

... the fact that Exxon had made perhaps the largest discovery ever in the Gulf, and one of the largest in the company’s century-long history, wasn’t revealed until it sued the Interior Department in a Lake Charles, La., federal court last week over leases for the oil.

The find was made in 2007, and Exxon and Statoil did disclose it in January 2008, calling it significant. But the possibility of one billion barrels wasn’t spelled out.

... Exxon had kept mum on two 2009 and 2010 discoveries in the Hadrian prospect until it could resume drilling in the area after the end of a months-long exploration moratorium. Last June, after it found a third prospect that confirmed the area contained 700 million barrels of recoverable oil and gas, it announced the finds with great fanfare.

But Exxon’s reluctance to talk openly about the huge 2007 find, known as the Julia field, was also a result of circumstances. The oilthat Exxon found there is in a deeply buried layer of rock known as the Lower Tertiary, which is far from shore and requires large investments in pipelines and remote platforms. So Exxon may not have known for a while how much oil it could get out of the ground, or whether it had the technology to do so, say analysts who have talked with the company _GCaptain

The Julia field likely holds the potential to produce far more than 1 billion barrels, due to the conservative nature of oil geologists when quantifying reserves, and due to the "long tail" phenomenon of oil field production over time.

There are undoubtedly many more "billion barrel fields" sitting around, waiting to be found by competent, ambitious, and "hungry" oil explorers and prospectors. Some of them will be far offshore, such as Julia. Others will be in shallower waters or on land, but perhaps lying deeper beneath the surface.

Over the next 20 years, proven global oil reserves are likely to continue growing. Most of this growth in proved reserves will come from improved drilling and recovery technologies, in previously discovered fields. But as oil exploration technologies continue to develop and improve, expect large new oil field discovery to ramp up once again.

Malthusian Illiteracy and Peak Oil

Global economy optimists however say that "Malthusian illiteracy" lurks behind remaining adherents of Peak Oil theory - which basically says conventional oil production will stagnate and fall but demand will go on growing. _MarketOracle

As knowledgeable analysts come to understand that oil demand, rather than oil supply, is currently in the driver's seat, some of the impetus behind the peak oil panic has subsided. And yet the "Malthusian Impulse" continues to drive many observers, against their more rational proclivities. Still, global hydrocarban reserves continue to grow, year after year, and oil demand is slated to decrease in time.

New sources for transport fuels are likely to come from many directions, including new gas-to-liquids (GTL) technologies. Oxford Catalyst's microchannel GTL technology is very much in demand, as are other new varieties of GTL technologies. The market for GTL fuels may be more than 20 million barrels per day! Imagine the impact of that huge new supply on the global oil market. (Note that approximately between 5 and 10 million barrels per day could be produced via GTL from currently flared gas alone. Stranded gas could double that number.) More information at this PDF white paper download from Velocys, creator of the Oxford Catalysts microchannel technology.

A more conventional source for GTL transport fuels is the large scale technology championed by Shell.

In 2011, Shell began shipments from its Pearl GTL project in Qatar...The project is able to produce 140,000 b/d of fuel and 120,000 b/d of ethane and condensates... _Petroleum Economist

And that is just the beginning. As long as the huge price spread between the cost of natural gas and the cost of crude oil remains, more and more projects will kick in to take advantage of this "easy money."

Second and third generation biofuels from biomass technologies are beginning to come on line, slowly. Advanced biofuels and microbial fuels technologies are not likely to take an appreciable bite out of crude oil demand for another 5 or 10 years. As long as natural gas prices stay low, only the most efficient biofuels projects will be able to compete in the liquid fuels markets without government subsidies. But by the year 2030 if the technology continues to develop, the writing will be on the wall. This is a biological world, after all.

Advanced nuclear power technologies are likely to aid the development of new fuels technologies of all kinds, supplying safe and abundant power and heat for a multitude of energy development projects from oil sands to oil shales to biomass and aquaculture projects in cold climates, irrigation and desalination of saltwater in arid climates etc etc.

Other factors leading to a decreased demand for crude oil includes the increasing use of both natural gas and biomass as feedstock for the vast chemicals industry -- an industrial sector previously dependent upon petroleum for feedstock. (see Al Fin Energy blog for much more)

The ongoing global economic downturn and demand destruction extends from Europe to Japan to the US, and is beginning to put stress on the Chinese and Indian economies -- despite all the rah! rah! hype about the coming age of the Chindian global economy. Many nations which have maintained hefty consumer subsidies for transport fuels are being forced to reduce the subisidies. More downward pressure on demand.

Malthusian theories are appealing in their simplicity, and for their false sense of predictive power. And yet the never-ending and never-fulfilled Malthusian predictions of doom ignore the most salient and disruptive human technology of all -- the goal-oriented innovativeness of the human mind.

Despite the best efforts of energy-starvationists in the Obama administration, in the EU bureaucracy, in national bureaucracies of EU nations and advanced nations around the globe -- the prospects for abundant energy and fuels in the future are quite good, as long as the clowns in power do not destroy the economies they oversee.

If you have abundant clean energy and fuels, everything else is doable.

Cross-posted from Al Fin blog