Obama new five year plan continues “crippling moratorium” on US offshore energy

The Obama administration’s recently released five-year plan for offshore drilling leases has been met with sharp criticism from the oil and gas industry and Republicans, who say it continues a crippling moratorium on potential energy reserves on the West and East Coasts.

The administration’s 2012-2017 offshore lease plan, released June 28, expands available leasing areas for drilling slightly in the Gulf of Mexico and opens new areas in the Arctic Ocean, but also keeps both the West and East Coasts completely off-limits for offshore oil exploration.

Three of the fifteen lease auctions will be held in the Arctic seas—in Alaska’s Cook Inlet in 2016, in Chukchi Sea in 2016, and in the Beaufort Sea in 2017. The administration lauded its plan, saying the Arctic regions hold more than 75 percent of total undiscovered and recoverable oil.

However, Republicans and industry officials disagreed.

“It’s a very disappointing backtracking of the administration’s supposed ‘all of the above approach,’” said Jim Noe, the senior vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer of Hercules Offshore Inc., the largest shallow-water drilling company in the Gulf of Mexico. “It takes both coasts and leaves us the same areas we’ve been drilling in since the ’40s.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: L.C.Nøttaasen

Alaska Oil Output Drops Significantly as North Slope Production Declines

Alaska crude-oil production dropped 11 percent in June from a year earlier, the largest drop in almost a year, after Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., operator of the cross-state pipeline system, conducted maintenance and as output from wells declined.

Production averaged 516,871 barrels a day last month, down from 581,297 a year earlier, the biggest decline since output fell 15 percent from July 2010 to July 2011, the state Department of Revenue said on its website. The pipeline delivered 570,770 barrels a day in May.

Production peaked for the month at 592,381 barrels on June 12 and fell to a low of 380,893 on June 2, when crews scheduled valve testing.

“Any fluctuations in throughput are due to planned maintenance,” Michelle Egan, a spokeswoman at Alyeska, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Output on the 800-mile (1,287-kilometer) Trans-Alaska crude system has declined annually since 2002 as falling yield from existing wells hasn’t been replaced, according to the state tax division. Crude-oil output from Prudhoe Bay averaged 305,132 barrels per day in June, down from 324,919 in May, the state said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: Arthur Chapman

More Fantasyland: Obama Promotes Algae as Fuel Source

First, Obama said we could save oil by proper inflating of our tires. Not just a little oil, but enough oil to account for what we’re NOT drilling. Still, a majority of Americans elected him. Three+ years later, another fantasy energy boondoggle surfaces, this time it’s even more of a head-scratcher (algae), and complete with massive subsidies to an exuberant CEO.

From Michelle Malkin:

Pond scum stinks. And so do the Obama administration’s enormous, taxpayer-funded “investments” in politically connected biofuel companies. While the president embarks on a green rehabilitation tour this week to quell growing public outrage about big green boondoggles, the White House continues to cultivate a cozy algae racket.

Obama’s promotion of algae as a fuel source at a campaign speech in Miami last month caught the nation’s attention. But algae companies have been banking on administration support from Day One. In December 2008, when the White House announced the nomination of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the CEO of Florida-based biofuels startup Algenol, Paul Woods, exulted to Time magazine: “You see this smile on my face? It’s not going away. Everyone is really excited by this.”

The next year, Woods and Algenol — dubbed “Obama’s favorite algae company” by Forbes magazine — racked up $25 million in federal stimulus grants from Chu. Say cheese.

Yet another algae-based biofuels developer, Sapphire Energy, has absorbed $105 million in stimulus funds and loan guarantees even as doubts about the practicality, efficiency and viability of pond-scum fuels multiply. Sapphire’s CEO, Jason Pyle, has donated exclusively to Democratic campaigns, candidates and committees — and his company’s website reads like a satellite White House communications office …

Read more at Michelle Malkin, see her interview on Hannity

Duplicity is the progressive’s game, and they continue to play it at the expense of American jobs and security.  No nation is going to be prosperous if they deny reality, as the Obama Administration continues to do time and again.  Energy drives a nation, and affordable energy drives an economy. Yet the Administration (and their buddies in the MSM) yawn as gas hovers at $4.00 a gallon nationwide, as jobs, confidence, and investments continue to deteriorate.

Photoshop source

Obama giving away Alaska’s oil rich islands to Russia

 

Author’s note:  This is not a new issue.  In fact the Bush & Clinton administrations are directly at fault for the same inaction. A maritime agreement negotiated by the US State Department set the Russian boundary on the other side of the disputed islands, but no treaty has ratified this action.  Consequently, it is within the President’s power stop this giveaway.  The Alaska delegation’s failure to put pressure on the Administration is inexplicable. State Department Watch, an organization that assisted with this article, has confronted each administration & is currently confronting the Obama administration – and has been met by silence. I’m hoping this piece will help reinvigorate efforts to stop this handover.

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The Obama administration, despite the nation’s economic woes, effectively killed the job-producing Keystone Pipeline last month. The Arab Spring is turning the oil production of Libya and other Arab nations over to the Muslim Brotherhood. Iraq is distancing itself from the U.S. And everyone recognizes that Iran, whose crude supplies are critical to the European economy, will do anything it can to frustrate America’s strategic interests. In the face of all of this, Obama insists on cutting back U.S. oil potential with outrageous restrictions.

Part of Obama’s apparent war against U.S. energy independence includes a foreign-aid program that directly threatens my state’s sovereign territory. Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin.

The seven endangered islands in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea include one the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The Russians are also to get the tens of thousands of square miles of oil-rich seabeds surrounding the islands. The Department of Interior estimates billions of barrels of oil are at stake.

The State Department has undertaken the giveaway in the guise of a maritime boundary agreement between Alaska and Siberia. Astoundingly, our federal government itself drew the line to put these seven Alaskan islands on the Russian side. But as an executive agreement, it could be reversed with the stroke of a pen by President Obama or Secretary Clinton.

The agreement was negotiated in total secrecy. The state of Alaska was not allowed to participate in the negotiations, nor was the public given any opportunity for comment. This is despite the fact the Alaska Legislature has passed resolutions of opposition – but the State Department doesn’t seem to care.

Read more at WND.com HERE.