On Tuesday the US District Court Judge Martin Feldman issued an injunction against the Obama Administration, prohibiting it from enforcing its moratorium on all “deep water” drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The moratorium had stopped work on 33 wells currently being drilled by companies other than BP, even though none of those other wells or companies have had any safety or oil leak incidents. It had also suspended several pending permits for additional drilling projects.

Some relevant statistics cited by the Judge include:

• There are now 3,600 drilling structures in the Gulf.
• Oil from Gulf operations accounts for 31% of total domestic oil production
• The Gulf provides 11% of domestic natural gas production
• 64% of active leases are in deep water, over 1,000 feet.
• At least 19 other companies, aside from BP, operate deepwater drilling rigs in the gulf.

While the President has talked about a six month moratorium,  it could continue for years because it is based not on anything the drilling companies might be able to do, but upon completion of bureaucratic processes within the government.

Secretary of The Interior Ken Salazar had based the sweeping moratorium on a report by a commission that investigated the oil spill and recommended various regulatory changes.  But the bureaucracy has yet to act on any of those recommendations a process that could take months or even years

The moratorium is essentially a political action, designed to convince voters that Obama has taken some concrete action, and is not really based on the findings in the report.  Judge Feldman noted that:

…the report makes no effort to explicitly justify the moratorium:  it does not discuss any irreparable harm that would warrant a suspension of operations, it  does not explain how long it would take to implement the recommended safety measures.

The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium.  The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.

The Judge noted also that the report fraudulently claims that the moratorium was recommended by “seven experts identified by the National Academy of engineering.”  Those very experts have publicly protested that they do not agree with the blanket moratorium, a recommendation that was added to the report, without their knowledge, after their “final review.”  Some of the experts have gone so far as to say the moratorium actually increases the risk of another spill.

The Judge found that oil drilling operations in the gulf are supported by:

…a vast and complex network of technology, assets, human capital and experience.  Indeed, an estimated 150,000 jobs are directly related to offshore operations.

The all-inclusive moratorium puts all those jobs at risk and would likely permanently end many of them.

The law permits effected companies to sue a government agency on the grounds that a regulatory decision is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not otherwise in accordance with the law.” The court must determine if the agency demonstrated a rational connection between the facts and the decision to impose a moratorium.

The Judge found that the Obama Administration, in the person of Interior Secretary Salazar did act capriciously and did not demonstrate a rational connection between the facts and the decision to ban all deepwater drilling.  the only justification was am unsupported fear that there could be another blow out.

Judge Feldman commented on some test data provided by the government:

If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are? Are all airplanes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines?  That sort of thinking seems heavyhanded, and rather overbearing.

The Judge also commented on the government’s assertion that all deep water drilling must stop because its own regulatory agency is incompetent.

The Court recognizes that the compliance of the thirty-three affected rigs with current government regulations may be irrelevant if the regulations are insufficient or if MMS, the government’s own agent, itself is suspected of being corrupt or incompetent.  Nonetheless, the Secretary’s determination that a six-month moratorium on issuance of new permits and on drilling by the thirty-three rigs is necessary does not seem to be fact-specific and refuses to take into measure the safety records of those others in the Gulf.

UPDATE:  The Administration announced its intention to appeal this ruling.  Press Secretary Gibbs:

The president strongly believes, as the Department of Interior and the Department of Justice argued yesterday, that continuing to drill at these depths without knowing what happened is — does not make any sense.

The typical TV sitcom is a clash of disparate personalities, each pursuing his or her own agenda, unable to sincerely empathize with the others.  In Tuesday night’s oil spill speech President Obama was a narcissistic Raymond Barone paying lip service to the concerns of the American people while trying to use the oil crisis to maneuver them into unwitting acquiescence with his own priorities.

He began with dramatic phrases to persuade us that he understood the urgency and was on top of the “fight.”

• “I assembled a team of our nations best scientists and engineers…”
• “…we have directed BP to mobilize…”
• “…these efforts should capture up to 90% of the oil…”
• “…we will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.”
• “…our battle plan going forward…”

He tried to assure us he knew and sympathized with the victims:

• “I’ve talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don’t know how they’re going to support their families this year.”
• “I’ve seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers…”
• “I’ve talked to owners of shops and hotels…”

He castigated the Minerals Management Service for malfeasance “over the last decade.”  (It’s Bush’s fault.)

To calm our anxieties and prepare us to be more receptive to his agenda items, he promised:

1. yet another commission “to understand the causes of this disaster,” and
2. a new bureaucracy dedicated to a “long term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan.”

Finally he made the Raymond Barone-like pivot away from our concerns to his priorities.  He offered the oil spill crisis as a pretext for a mammoth expansion of government power he has advocated since his Presidential campaign began:

The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.

Thus he began the pitch for Cap and Trade legislation now pending in Congress.  It would implement sweeping new taxation of and government power to restrict the production and consumption of not just off-shore oil, but all sources of oil, and most other forms of energy, including natural gas, nuclear and coal.  He never mentioned the name of the legislation, Cap and Trade, because it has recently become very unpopular.

He began with a specious statistical comparison that revealed his narcissistic belief that he can dupe the voters with meaningless sophistry:

We consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves.

This is ambiguous language, sloppy reasoning, and fictitious data.  The 20%/2% ratio is a fallacious comparison of two different statistics:

1. Current annual production or extraction of oil, and
2. Reserves of oil remaining under the ground.

America does consume some fraction of the world’s current production of oil, but probably not as much as 20%. In truth, the fraction is unknowable because there isn’t enough publicly available data.

Does America have 2% of the world’s oil reserves? The absolute truth is nobody knows. Nobody knows how much oil is under all the lands and all the seas of the world.

Most of the world’s oil production is owned by corrupt, authoritarian governments that are not accountable to anyone, and thus, not required to disclose accurate production or reserve information. Nobody knows how much oil is extracted by all the world’s oil producing nations, so it isn’t possible to determine what fraction the US consumes. And, it’s irrelevant.

The relevant question is, or should be, how much conventional energy does America have?  The answer is plenty.  Including natural gas, coal and oil we have more than enough to dramatically reduce and possibly even eliminate all oil imports except from Canada.  But for decades access to America’s abundant domestic energy supplies has been limited by a political-environmental movement that demands conversion to so-called renewable forms of energy that do not yet exist or are not yet practical or cost effective.

Since most of us are concerned about the economy, Obama attempted to frame his energy taxation and restriction agenda as having something to do with jobs.  In truth, the Cap and Trade legislation pending in Congress would strangle the economy and cost America millions of jobs.

The good news is that the next election is only 4 1/2 months away and it appears now that it will dramatically weaken the faction in Congress that drives Obama’s imperial government agenda.  The bad news is that he has 4 1/2 months left to find some way to enact Cap and Trade.

…part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

Well, there are plenty of places to drill on land.  One is ANWR in Alaska.  Drilling at ANWR would generate hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.  It would provide tens of thousands of American jobs while reducing oil imports, something the President keeps saying he wants.

But due entirely to deceptive propaganda from the environmental lobby most Americans are misinformed about ANWR.

The inconvenient truth is revealed in these winter and summer photos of ANWR’s barren, coastal plain, the section originally set aside by Congress in 1980 for oil drilling.

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Using modern technology to explore for, and extract oil from a barren, frozen plain looks like this…

In 1980 legislation called the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), Congress designated part of ANWR a wildlife refuge, part a wilderness area. Congress also designated the Coastal Plain, the northern-most 8% of ANWR, an oil exploration and drilling zone, which is now called the “1002 Area,” named for the section of ANILCA.

The Coastal Plain/1002 area is completely flat and barren with no trees, hills, or mountains. Most of the year it’s covered with snow and ice and shows virtually no life. During the six week “summer” the coastal plain is dotted with thousands of lakes and is covered by boggy tundra on permafrost (permanently frozen ground).

The yellow portion at the northern edge of ANWR is the Coastal Plain, or “1002 area,” the zone that Congress set aside for oil exploration and drilling in 1980.

According to USFWS  the water must be diverted from farms to the Sacramento Delta, the outlet to the Pacific Ocean,  for the benefit of the “Delta Smelt” a tiny fish that was listed as “threatened”  under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1992.

We called on Congress to invoke its authority under the Constitution and pass a very short law or amendment that would override the Endangered Species Act a previous Congress created, and restore the water supply to Central Valley farms.

Yesterday, Senator Jim DeMint of  South Carolina introduced just such an amendment to the budget appropriation for the Department of Interior.  Here’s the text:

None of the funds made available by this act may be used by the Secretary of The Interior to restrict, reduce or re-allocate any water as determined in the [government "biological opinions" cited as justification turning off the water.]

Astoundingly, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, who represents the farmers, spoke in opposition.   In the video she compares this simple, direct amendment to the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor.

Senator Feinstein first said she didn’t “understand what’s going on here.”  Then she wanted to prevent the “threat another lawsuit.”  But as we reported Monday, there already is another lawsuit, brought against the government by the Pacific Legal Foundation, on behalf of the farmers.

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In reality, Feinstein and California’s other Senator, Barbara Boxer serve the radical environmental movement that dominates the Democratic party, especially in California.  In their value/priority system no amount of human suffering is too great if it can be claimed to be a consequence of “protecting the environment.”  In the video she says the people she meets with have never said the water should be turned back on.  Of course not!  She refuses to meet with the farmers!

Eventually, the full Senate voted along party lines, with all the Democrats including Feinstein and Boxer voting against the farmers.  Thus, the water continues to flow into the ocean instead of into the Central Valley irrigation canals.

As Senator DeMint noted in his remarks, this is more than a local California issue.  If Central Valley farmers are not able to produce crops the entire nation will suffer higher prices and more food will have to be imported.  California provides 13% of the nation’s total food supply including

• 89% of America’s carrots
• 93% of America’s broccoli
  
• 94% of America’s tomatoes
• 78% of America’s lettuce
• 86% of America’s garlic
• 88% of America’s grapes
  

Senator DeMint cited a University of California study concluding that 40,000 Central Valley jobs will be lost within a year if the water is not turned back on.

Every California voter should be aware that both Senators sided with the radical environmental movement over the farmers and their thousands of employees.  Senator Boxer is up for reelection next year and Senator Feinstein is up for reelection in 2012.  Both should be soundly defeated.

All Americans should be alarmed at the power and influence the radical environmental movement wields in Congress and this Administration.

As Congressmen and Senators stumble through the political process writing, negotiating, horse-trading and re-writing the thousands of pages that will empower government with dramatically increased authority over every American’s access to medical services, we should contemplate the experiences of others who have, in good faith, placed themselves at the mercy of the same political processes.

Consider the farmers of California’s Central Valley.  The Central Valley has been called the most fertile farmland in the world and the breadbasket of the America.    But for much of the valley, farming depends on the transfer of water from the north, where it is  more plentiful.  To accomplish this transfer the federal government built the Central Valley Water Project a system of dams and canals.  Construction began in the 1930s and was completed in the early 1950s.

For decades Central Valley farmers made major investments in their land and hired tens of thousands of workers based on a promise from the Federal Government that water would always be delivered through the Central Valley Project, subject to reductions in drought years.

This year, farmers on the Western side of the valley are suffering a one-two punch.  First, there is  a drought that likely would have reduced water allotments by as much as 25%.

But the worst hit results from a maniacal policy of The Obama Administration, through the US Fish and Wildlife Service, to cut allotments to Central Valley farms by 90% in order to divert more water into the Sacramento Delta, from where it then flows into the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

According to Administration officials this action is necessary to provide more water for the “Delta Smelt” a tiny fish that was listed as “threatened”  under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1992.

Almost 2,000 species are registered under the ESA, an act that exceeds the government’s Constitutional authority but which was passed and is enforced anyway.  Each species registration results in measures to “protect critical habitat.”  Over the past four decades incalculable damage has been done to American individuals and businesses and the economy in general by restrictions placed on the uses of public and private property in order to “protect critical habitat.”  The latest victims are the Central Valley farmers and their employees.

Unfortunately, the Endangered Species Act provides no compensation to citizens who are harmed by it’s enforcement.  Because the government shut off the water  thousands of workers have lost their jobs and tens of thousands more will soon become unemployed.  The farm owners have lost or will lose their investments.

Today, the farmers and their employees are reduced to begging indifferent politicians and bureaucrats to restore the water flows they were promised.

The same Congress that created the ESA could correct this outrageous injustice

Congress could enact a one page bill that would override the Fish and Wildlife Service’s administrative orders to shut off the water to Central Valley farms.  The bill could be written, voted upon and sent to the President within 24 hours.  But, this Congress, that has voted on thousand page bills without reading them, in an atmosphere of contrived emergency, can’t seem to develop a sense of urgency around turning the water back on in the Central Valley.

Last Week Fox News originated the Sean Hannity program from one of the dry, dusty farms that was forced to stop growing food due to lack of water.  Hannity was surrounded by hundreds of desperate farmers, unemployed farm workers and their families.  But without sustained pressure it’s unlikely the political establishment will react favorably.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is suing on behalf of the farmers to force the Fish and Wild Life Service to turn the water back on.  According to documents filed with the court the Fish And Wild Life Service violated the law and it’s own procedures by ordering the water to be shut off without considering several factors including the economic impact on the farmers and their employees.  Of course law suits take many months or even years.

The lesson for the rest of us is that a promise from politicians is good only until the next special interest pressure group, in this case the avaricious  environmental lobby, can harness the power of government to force its agenda upon all of us, regardless of the consequences to innocent victims.

This week we celebrate  the 233d anniversary of Independence day, when the founders voted to adopt the final wording of The Declaration of Independence.  The Declaration  includes a list of grievances against King George that motivated the Americans to declare their independence from Great Britain and form a new nation.   One of those grievances was:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Over the past 80 years, a second wave of bureaucratic offices has overtaken the American people, adding financial burdens and restricting liberty.  But this time the origin isn’t an absentee King an ocean away.  This time it’s the United States Congress led or abetted by a succession of Presidents.  The latest outrage is the monstrosity passed by the House Friday under the absurdly dishonest title: American Clean Energy And Security Act (ACESA).  Below, copied directly from ACESA, is a partial list of the “multitude of new offices” that will spring to life under this law, funded by your tax dollars, to “eat out your substance:”

Sec. 171 Clean energy innovation centersEnergy Innovation Centers. CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 172. Building Assessment Centers. CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 173. Centers for Energy and Environmental Knowledge and Outreach

Sec. 186. Clean Energy Deployment Administration.

Sec. 188. Federal credit authority.

Sec. 191. Study of ocean renewable energy and transmission planning and siting. CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 192. Clean technology business competition grant program. CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 193. National Bioenergy Partnership. CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 194. Office of Consumer Advocacy.

Sec. 204. Building energy performance labeling program

Sec. 217. Water efficient product rebate program CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 218. Certified stoves program CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 219. Energy Star standards authority

Sec. 223. SmartWay transportation efficiency program

Sec. 264. Low income community energy efficiency program CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 273. Affiliated island energy independence team CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 274. Product carbon disclosure program

Sec. 713. Greenhouse gas registry CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

‘Sec. 731. Offsets Integrity Advisory Board CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 451. National climate change adaptation pClimate Change Adaptation Program

Sec. 453. State programs to build resilience to climate change impacts

Sec. 463. National strategic action plan Advisory Board CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 472. Natural resources climate change adaptation policy board CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 474. Council on Environmental Quality CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 475. Natural Resources Climate Change Adaptation Panel CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Sec. 481. National Wildlife Habitat and Corridors Information Program

Sec. 493. International Climate Change Adaptation Program

CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

Today’s federal government with thousands of agencies, offices, bureaus, departments and commissions is a disgraceful mockery of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the founders’ vision of a streamline, efficient government performing a few necessary services without dominating the citizenry.

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An Opportunity

This monstrous energy/global warming bill is so corrupt, and would be so expensive and so destructive to the economy and to liberty, it could serve as the ultimate outrage, finally motivating The People to stand in opposition to the growth of governmental power and cost.  Over the coming weeks Liberty Works will publish section by section analyses, exposing the lurid details.  We’ll do what your elected representatives didn’t: we’ll read the bill.  Together we and you will learn what’s in it, and what the consequences will be.

If this bill, or a modified version passes the Senate and becomes law,  any candidate running for election or reelection to Congress next year must be forced by the voters to make a solemn promise to repeal it.

But we couldn’t let this one go by.

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The alarming development is that even though there are roughly a thousand limousines available for hire in the DNC Convention city of Denver, theres a shortage for convention week. Distressed delegates have to compete with each other, as they urgently pursue available limos to reserve.

Colorado State Government has agreed to help out during the emergency by temporarily waiving the usual licensing requirements for limos from other states.

These are Al Gore’s acolytes in the Temple of The Global Warming Cult, who constantly hector us with dire predictions of imminent climate calamity caused by our SUVs, RVs, boats and lawnmowers. These are the folks who have, for decades, politically blocked new drilling for oil in America because – they always said – we should convert to “alternative” sources, that aren’t yet viable or available.

America uses too much oil and looks too opulent and the world isn’t going to put up with us much longer, Senator Obama warned, ominously, last month.

Apparently a lot of the delegates believe their tedious chanting on behalf of “saving the planet” entitles them to a conspicuous arrival presentation in chauffeured, gas-guzzling magnificence.

The august delegates are not about to suffer the indignity of being seen by their peers crammed into the kind of elfin coupe they demand the rest of us drive.

Today, in a Michigan speech, Obama spoke at length on energy but apparently forgot about how important tire pressure was last week. But some helpful folks from the McCain campaign reminded the audience by passing out customized tire pressure gages.

Today, we’ll comment on two excerpts from Senator Obama energy speech. First Excerpt:

…in the short term, as we transition to renewable energy, we can and should increase our production of oil and natural gas. But we should start by telling the oil companes to drill on the 68 million acres they currently have access to but haven’t touched. And, if they don’t use it they should lose it -we shoudld require them to give up their leases to somebody who will do something.

Here at Liberty Works we’ve done considerable research into this latest ruse by the Democrats to resist making off shore oil fields available for drilling – the claim that big bad oil companies already have access to “68 million acres” but instead of drilling they whine that they need more.

The existing lease process already includes a ten year time limit. If the company doesn’t produce oil in ten years it loses the lease. The idea Obama and his friends in Congress are trying to sell, that oil companies would spend Billions to lease sections of ocean floor for ten years and then make no effort to recover their investment by producing oil is preposterous.

Some of those acres have been drilled and depleted once. The government leased them a second time to drillers with new technologies to see if they could pump out more oil. Some of the leased acres have been explored and found not to contain any oil.

But the biggest barrier to actual drilling comes up right after an oil company leases a section of the ocean floor, paying Billions of dollars. The company must then navigate years of bureaucratic permitting processes and sometimes years of litigation, before they can legally begin exploration and drilling.

Why is that, you ask? If a company is granted a lease to explore and drill for oil, then shouldn’t permission to explore and drill be automatic? Of course! Only in the alternative reality of the Bureaucratic/Administrative State would it not be. If the all-knowing Federal Government clears a section of ocean floor for drilling, shouldn’t Congress ban lawsuits that are brought for no other reason than to delay drilling and make it more costly?

Congress can quickly pass legislation that forbids lawsuits when the government has sold leases, and requires the Department of Interior to include in the lease permission to explore and drill. Further, Congress can require the leasing/permission process to take no more than a couple of months.

Second excerpt:

We should invest in the technologies that can help us recover more from existing oil fields.

The private sector already has invested, and continues to invest, in such technologies. There is no need for Obama’s “WE”, which in this context apparently means the government, to hurl Billions in taxpayer money, and cause more years of bureaucratic delay, to help “US” recover more oil from existing fields.

Government could help by simply getting out of the way, or at the very least, by streamlining permitting processes. Here’s an example:

The PXP Company operates the Inglewood oil field in the Baldwin Hills of West Los Angeles. Oil was discovered here when Standard Oil drilled a test well in 1924. It took Standard Oil only one year to develop a full-blown oil field with dozens of wells, producing 90,000 barrels of oil per day. Since then some 1600 wells have been drilled. Today, only a few of the wells are still operating, pumping about 7,000 barrels per day.

I grew up about a mile from the perimeter of the Inglewood oil field and as a child I rode my bike on the oil field roads. After 84 years as an active oil field, it’s covered with winding roads, wells, pipelines, tanks and sundry oil field infrastructure. It’s a dirty, ugly place. But it’s already there, and most of it is out of sight of surrounding homes and businesses.

PXP has the technology and the financial resources to extract a lot more oil from this existing oil field, by drilling new, deeper wells. Sounds pretty good, huh? New oil production without touching any new site! Just keep drilling in the same place, a place that’s already degraded from almost a century of oil and natural gas production.

But this isn’t 1925. Before PXP can drill new wells it must apply to and receive blessings from all of the following:

• California Environmental Protection Agency
• Los Angeles County Department of Toxic Substances Control
• California Air Resources Board
• California State Water Resources Control Board
• South Coast Air Quality Management District
  
• California Department of Conservation
• California Geological Survey
• California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources
• City of Los Angeles Environmental Affairs Department
• Baldwin Hills Community Standards District
• Los Angeles County, Department of Regional Planning

PXP has invested years and millions of dollars in bureaucratic processes, with no guarantee that permission can be secured, or that lawsuits won’t stall the project. Nobody yet knows if this additional oil will be produced.

Obama is dishonest when he speaks as if more oil from existing oil fields could be had if only “WE” – government – would “invest” your money. In truth, a lot more oil could be produced in this country without spending a single taxpayer dollar. The only barriers are political.

to repeal it’s bans against drilling for oil on

American territory and in American waters.

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From the Democrat leaders in the House and Senate came the usual insipid response that “Bush policies” caused high gas prices. As always, they were unable to identify or describe the bad “policies” or explain cause-effect connections between policies and gas prices.

On the campaign trail Barack Obama announced that YOU could save more oil than the oil companies can produce if allowed to drill more. How? Inflate your tires and get a tuneup! Here’s the video!

In reality, $4 gas and massive dependence on imported oil result from a “policy” enacted into law by Congress twenty years ago, that bans new exploration and drilling for oil almost anywhere on US soil or in US waters. Also banned, is extracting oil from shale, even though America has the world’s largest shale oil deposit. The Bush Administration produced an energy report in April, 2001 that called for lifting some of the bans but the Democrats condemned it as “written by big oil” and refused to consider it.

So, the bans stayed in place and now, here we are, once again, enduring the tediously familiar Washington dance: finger-pointing, incoherent debate and stonewalling against resolution of a crisis.

The anti-drilling politicians cloud the issue with the misplaced use of “we-ours-us.” They talk about how “we” must not drill for oil because “we” must instead use “our” resources to invest in alternative energy sources.

Politicians introduce ambiguity, confusion, and deception, when they use the we-ours-us terms to describe decisions that, in a society built on the principles of individual liberty, should be private and not under government control. The misplaced use of we-our-us leads, over time, to a sort of numbed popular acceptance of the notion that nothing can happen unless government authorities first do the thinking and then provide official blessings and release funds.

The we-our-us rhetorical device obscures the truth: if permitted to drill, the oil companies will invest their own, not “our” or government’s resources into growing their own business – and create tens of thousands of new American jobs along the way. It isn’t necessary for “us” – meaning politicians and regulators in Washington – to choose between investment in drilling and investment in alternatives.

At the same time oil companies, if permitted, invest their resources to produce more oil, other companies are investing and will continue to invest their own resources in research and development of oil-alternatives and fuel saving technologies. General Motors has invested heavily in hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, including buying a stake in fuel cell researcher Quantum Technologies. At this moment a fleet of GM fuel cell cars is undergoing long term testing by “regular people” in New York, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. Honda has also developed fuel cell prototypes and has put a test fleet on the streets of Los Angeles.

Other companies are researching wind, solar and other exotic alternatives. There is no reason for the big “we,” meaning politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, to decide which research should or should not be conducted, or to pick research projects to fund, or to subsidize some forms of energy and penalize others. Politicians and regulators have no track record that would demonstrate them qualified to pick winners and losers in advance, before all research and development has been completed.

The best thing for government to do is remove the barriers and get out of the way. Government should allow individuals, groups and companies to do which ideas are most promising and do as little or as much research and development as they wish, without any political interference. Government should allow oil companies to produce as much oil as they can sell.

America would not be in this critically urgent situation if the activists and lobbying groups – who always use the we-our-us cloud to confuse and deceive us – had not persuaded Congress to overstep its Constitutional authority, banning production of oil and natural gas and nuclear power and thus creating a shortage energy and high priced gasoline.

The politicians should solve the energy crisis they created in Washington by stepping back, removing politically motivated barriers, and allowing liberty to work!

joined the propagandist’s chorus chanting

“NO! We can’t drill our way out of this!”

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On July 11 at town hall meeting Obama said

“Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coast for drilling, America still only has three percent of the world’s oil reserves. in the meantime we use about a quarter of the world’s oil – 25%. Drilling is not a real solution to our energy crisis.

This is ambiguous language, sloppy reasoning, and fictitious data.

Senator Obama reveals himself as condescending and arrogant, believing he can dupe voters with meaningless sophistry.

America has not used up 25% of the world’s oil. Most of the world’s oil still lies beneath the surface of the earth and nobody knows how much there is under all the lands and all the oceans of the earth.

America does consume some fraction of the world’s oil production, but probably not even close to 25%. In truth, the fraction is unknowable because there isn’t enough publicly available data.

American Oil producers are accountable to shareholders and the government. Thus, they produce verifiable production data. But most of the world’s oil production is owned by corrupt, authoritarian governments that are not accountable to anyone, and thus, not required to disclose production information. In truth nobody knows how much oil is extracted by all the world’s oil producing nations, so it isn’t possible to determine what fraction the US consumes. And, it doesn’t matter.

Does America have 3% of the world’s oil reserves? The absolute truth is nobody knows. Nobody knows how much oil is under all the lands and all the seas of the world. Many oil producing nations keep what limited information they do have a secret.

The 25%/3% politics ratio was invented years ago, by the political movement that calls itself “environmental.” Through constant repetition by mendacious politicians and a lazy news media that doesn’t bother to verify such assertions, the politics ratio has evolved from wild guess to perceived truth. But it has no basis in any verifiable statistics.

Not only are the statistics phony, the reasoning is fallacious. If “drill our way out of this” means producing more oil, which would make the price of oil and gasoline lower, then the answer is YES WE CAN! and the politics ratio, whatever it is, turns out to be completely irrelevant. The relevant question is how much crude oil is available in America, that American companies could extract?

“Proved reserves” are estimates of the amount of oil recoverable from known and evaluated reservoirs, under current economic and operating conditions. The US has some 21 Billion barrels of “proved reserves.” If American companies were to double current production, which most certainly would result in a significant drop in the price of oil and gasoline, it would take more than ten years to extract those 21 Billion Barrels.

But Proved oil reserves reflect only a fraction of the oil that a reservoir may hold, and don’t count reservoirs that have not yet been evaluated, and don’t count reservoirs that haven’t even been identified yet, exploration off shore and in Alaska is illegal.

In addition to the Outer Continental Shelf and Alaska, the largest deposits of shale oil in the world, 1.2 to 1.8 trillion barrels, are found right here in America, in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. In a previous post we provided a detailed analysis of the potential of shale oil.

No company is ramping up shale oil production because it is against federal law.

Senator Obama’s “position” is based on two statistics that are entirely fictitious, unknowable and irrelevant. Beyond that, his reasoning is fallacious and his conclusion is erroneous.

How can this man claim to be ready to be President when he is so intellectually lazy?

The inconvenient truth is revealed in these winter and summer photos of ANWR’s barren, coastal plain…

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Using modern technology to explore for, and extract oil from a barren, frozen plain looks like this…

ANWR is a wildlife refuge because of politics, not because God or an infallible natural law made it so. In a 1980 law, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), Congress designated part of ANWR a wildlife refuge, part a wilderness area. Congress also designated the Coastal Plain, the northern-most 10% of ANWR, an oil exploration and drilling zone, which is now called the “10-02 Area,” named for the section of of ANILCA.

The Coastal Plain/10-02 area is completely flat and barren with no trees, hills, or mountains. Most of the year it’s covered with snow and ice and shows virtually no life. During the six week “summer” the coastal plain is dotted with thousands of lakes and is covered by boggy tundra on permafrost (permanently frozen ground).

The sliver of yellow at the north edge of ANWR is the Coastal Plain, or “10-02 area,” the zone that Congress set aside for oil exploration and drilling in 1980.

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]]> http://libertyworks.com/anwr-the-inconvenient-truth-part-1/feed/ 0 http://libertyworks.com/global-warming-hysteria/ http://libertyworks.com/global-warming-hysteria/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 20:57:48 +0000 BoomerJeff http://libertyworks.com/global-warming-update/

From The National Climatic Data Center’s United States Climate Summary for April, 2008:

The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years.

Or put another way, since 1894 when the government started keeping records, 73% of Aprils were warmer than April, 2008.

The weekly Global Warming Update is a feature of Liberty Works, offering facts, data and analysis to rebut hysterical warnings of imminent climate catastrophe from the Global Warming Cult.

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