Gas Prices Under President Obama in Pictures

More Hurdles for Drilling
Even as other nations press ahead with plans for deep-water drilling, Obama continues to block Offshore Oil and gas projects in the U.S. Despite the symbolic lifting of the deep-water Drilling Ban back in October, no new projects have been approved. Even those already approved have been halted by the president's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. Now, in another political tease, the president has announced that drilling projects approved before the Deepwater Horizon accident may possibly be allow...

British oil probe shirks drilling ban
LONDON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- A Moratorium in deep-water drilling in British waters isn't recommended, though operators need to make sure work is safe, British lawmakers said. The British Energy and Climate Change Committee wrapped up a six-month study into the impact the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year would have on regional Oil Exploration. Washington in the wake of the April Oil Disaster banned offshore work in deep waters but has since lifted the ban. A federal investigation into the acc...

British Lawmakers: No Need To Ban Offshore Drilling
A report by a British parliamentary committee looking into the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster warned on Tuesday that Britain is not ready to handle a spill of the kind suffered by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, but found that a Moratorium on drilling around British coasts was unnecessary because British safety standards are "superior to those under which Deepwater Horizon operated." The Energy and Climate Change committee issued the report, which comes on the same day as an excerpt of an upcoming U.S...

Sobering Numbers on American Energy
This week the American Petroleum Institute (API) hosted a conference on “The State of American Energy” in Washington, which I attended. In it, API president Jack Gerard set forth some rather startling figures which speak to the future of the energy industry in the United States and how government policy will impact the effect this critical sector of our economy will have on jobs and the Deficit - two areas of immense concern to the majority of Americans. (The full text of the a...

Obama driving up the cost of energy faster than a Hummer
Image via Wikipedia IBD: Oil Prices are surging to levels that will soon crimp Economic Growth. And what's our government doing about it? Just making it worse. Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the price of Oil has rocketed 117% to $90.41 a barrel and Gasoline has jumped 67% to $3.07 a gallon. In the 34 industrialized nations, Oil imports have surged 34% in the last year to $790 billion. The U.S. alone has seen a $72 billion jump. All this imperils a fragile recovery from the ...

GOP bills would curb EPA on global warming battle
(01-06) 17:28 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) -- House Republicans wasted no time Thursday in trying to block the Obama Administration from acting to stem Global Warming. On their second day in power, GOP lawmakers introduced several bills that would hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency from moving forward with Regulations to reduce heat-trapping Pollution from factories and other sources that they say contributes to Global Warming. The bills are part of an effort by House Republicans to reverse...

GOP fires early salvo on global warming
House Republicans wasted no time Thursday in trying to block the Obama Administration from acting to stem Global Warming. On their second day in power, GOP lawmakers introduced several bills that would hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency from moving forward with Regulations to reduce heat-trapping Pollution from factories and other sources that they say contributes to Global Warming. The bills are part of an effort by House Republicans to reverse what they consider job-killing policies...

Daniels has been a big ethanol booster
Sad, bad news for those of us looking to the Governor of Indiana as potential nationally. He's backing away from it now, presumably given his concern about our spending and Debt. Even so. I so hate Ethanol. Iowa--you have got to swear this stuff off. You may like the profits for corn growers but it's destructive to The Economy to waste resources like this in subsidies. We've already seen quite a run--commodity and corn prices may be headed higher, impacting food and Gas Prices, a ripple effect....

Utah Republican to attack Interior wilderness policy with whatever mechanism possible
A staunch House critic of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hopes to undermine a recent Interior policy change that paves the way for conserving large areas in western states without a formal wilderness designation by Congress. “It is so bad we will use whatever mechanism is possible,” said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), when asked Wednesday about legislative efforts to block the policy. Bishop chairs the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, which is a panel of the Natural Res...

Obama: Not So Wild About Wildlife
Thu Jan. 6, 2011 3:00 AM PST By the time he left office, President George W. Bush wasn't exactly known as a friend of endangered wildlife. Over eight years, his administration protected 62 species of domestic animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act. By contrast, Bill Clinton had declared 522 species endangered during his two terms. (See chart below.) On average, Bush added eight New Species to the list annually, the slowest pace of any president since Richard Nixon signed the ESA int...

Sen. Graham: Gas prices will drive Senate energy debate
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Wednesday that rising Gas Prices will serve as a catalyst to begin a new energy debate in the 112th Congress. “At $4 per gallon everybody is tripping over themselves to find an Energy Policy. At $2 and a half a gallon nobody talks about it,” he told The Hill. Gas prices are emerging as a key issue of concern among lawmakers. The current average price for a gallon of gas in the United States is $3.07, according to AAA. That’s up from $2.66 per gallon

How Oil Could Kill the Recovery
There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the U.S. economy. Workers are earning more, consumers are spending more, banks are Lending more, and companies are ready to hire more. But if there's one number that could derail the recovery, it's the price of a barrel of Oil. Economists and Watchdog groups are nervously monitoring the rising price of crude, now hovering around $90 -- down from a 2008 high of nearly $150. "Oil Prices are entering a dangerous zone for the Global Economy," warns ...

Analyst: BP spill may sap drill here, drill now revival despite high prices
Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations has nicely summarized a central tension in the Offshore Drilling fights. Here’s a blurb from his blog post on energy topics to watch in 2011: “No one really knows whether Oil will go substantially above $100 in the coming year, but if it crosses that symbolic threshold, expect advocates of expanded drilling to go to town. What remains to be seen is whether in a post-BP-disaster world, ‘Drill Here, Drill Now’ has as much traction as i

UK Lawmakers Question Deep Water Drilling Safety
Source: WSJ LONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. lawmakers Thursday raised serious doubts about whether the Oil Industry is prepared to tackle a similar to the Deepwater Horizon blowout should it occur in the North Sea, but they stopped short of recommending a Moratorium on drilling similar to that imposed in the U.S. Instead, the U.K. Parliament's Energy and Climate Change Committee called on the government and Regulators to compel companies to improve their spill response plans, install extra failsafe eq...

MCEA Part of Coalition For Higher Gas Prices
With the national gas price exceeding $3.00/gallon, you’d hope that environmental Extremists wouldn’t be working to drive it higher. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what they’re attempting to do: “A coalition of US-based environmental groups filed a Lawsuit in Federal Court September 3 against the State Department seeking to overturn a permit to build a Pipeline to import Canadian crude. The lawsuit, which also names Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the US Army C...

Lessons from the BP fiasco
Ever since the April 20 Gulf of Mexico Macondo Oil Well blowout and Deepwater Horizon Rig Explosion, which killed 11 men, the three mega corporations involved have stood in a triangle pointing fingers at each other. Now, the presidential commission investigating the disaster, which led to the largest Oil Spill in the nation's history, says they're right, in a way: All three are to blame -- as are government Regulators. More ominously, the panel, co-chaired by Florida's former U.S. Sen. Bob Graha...

Its show time for Gov.-elect Hickenlooper in NYT Mag
Hickenlooper, running for Governor, took seven showers to get his TV ad against dirty politics just right. (Photo by Evan Simone) Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper is featured in the Sunday New York Times Magazine in a story by Frank Bruni that explores the brew-pub-owner-cum-politician through the alleys of LoDo and the corridors of Denver power. After tracing the Democrat’s personal and professional histories, the author concludes by jumping over the job at hand for Hickenlooper and practi...

Hickenlooper picks ex-Rep. John Salazar to be ag commissioner
Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper tapped outgoing U.S. Rep. John Salazar on Wednesday to be his Agriculture Commissioner, bringing a rural Latino voice to his Cabinet. Salazar, a Democrat from Manassa who served three terms representing the 3rd Congressional District before losing to Republican Scott Tipton in November, is a sixth-generation farmer and rancher who served on the U.S. House Agriculture Committee. He's also a former State Legislator. Salazar, brother to former U.S. Sen. and current Inte...

House members to Interior: Back off natural gas drilling rules
A Bipartisan group of House members are pressuring Interior Secretary Ken Salazar not to impose new regulations on a Controversial Natural Gas drilling method called Hydraulic Fracturing. Thirty-two members Congressional Natural Gas Caucus wrote to Salazar Wednesday urging him to back off until the Environmental Protection Agency completes a review of the environmental and health effects of the technique dubbed “fracking.” Their letter warns against “hast

Energy industry "on the dole?" Not exactly
In a snit of an article, Jeffrey Leonard of Washington Monthly says he wants to end all federal energy Subsidies. While such sentiment is commendable, Leonard oversimplifies the subsidy situation. But one thing about them is easy to summarize: they are heavily tilted toward Fossil Fuels. Government statistics show that about 70 percent of all federal energy subsidies goes toward oil, Natural Gas, and coal. Fifteen percent goes to Ethanol, the only renewable source of energy that consistently get...

Sobering Numbers on American Energy
This week the American Petroleum Institute (API) hosted a conference on “The State of American Energy” in Washington, which I attended. In it, API president Jack Gerard set forth some rather startling figures which speak to the future of the energy industry in the United States and how government policy will impact the effect this critical sector of our economy will have on jobs and the Deficit - two areas of immense concern to the majority of Americans. (The full text of the...

Report: Sudan must be more open about oil
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Sudan needs to be more transparent about its Oil Production and revenues to help preserve peace, the Watchdog organization Global Witness said. The group said suspicion over how Oil revenue is shared has developed mistrust between the north and south and could result in a Civil War, the BBC reported. Most of Sudan's Oil comes from wells in the south but most of its infrastructure is in the north. Global Witness said both sides should agree on a more transparent ...

Global Oil Prices Are Soaring Again. Is the Fed to Blame?
Here we go again: the spike in global oil prices that preceded the Great Recession is being repeated. Just three years ago, the price of oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $100 a barrel for the first time ever, bringing dire warnings about looming economic hardship. Sure enough, the world economy entered its worst downturn since the Depression just months after oil prices peaked at a record $147 a barrel in July 2008. Now the doomsayers are back, as oil futures crept above $92...

Senators mount opposition to EPA's decision to allow higher ethanol blends
A Bipartisan coalition of senators are mounting increased opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to allow some vehicles to fuel with higher blends of Ethanol in their Gasoline. In two consecutive letters to the EPA this week, the senators criticized the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to allow 15 percent Ethanol blends (E15) in gasoline for some vehicles and they asked the agency to analyze the impacts of increased Ethanol use on the vehicle fleet. Sens. Ol...

Ethanol in gasoline bad for engines and emissions
The Obama Administration has directed the EPA at the behest of corn growing states to allow 15 percent Ethanol in Gasoline.  The EPA staff is disturbed by this but have no choice but to carry out Obama’s bad policy for the environment.  Count on you car lasting half as long as it would without the rule. Alcohol fuel, Ethanol and methanol, is highly corrosive to metal, which is what all engines are made.  Ethanol in gasoline engines requires the manufacture to coat the engine...