Globalist-fueled Revolutions in Oil-producing Countries Give Oil Barons the Opportunity to Raise Prices, Continuing Record Profits

Obama Sees No Magic Bullet to Push Down Gas Prices

I'm confused. I thought Obama was President of the United States. So why is Obama not investing our money in developing/discovering our energy resources (oil, coal, natural gas), investing in American companies, creating American jobs? Follow the money. Ask yourself one simple question. Who profits? George Soros (friend and fundraiser) profits as a major investor of Petrobras; renewable-energy companies profit (GE); huge federal subsidies (your taxpayer dollars) for numerous renewable-energy projects (more friends). Pay real close attention to those campaign contributions next election. - GPfisher

This article should read: Obama plans to shrink the economy by a third.

I think by now everyone realizes that "green" and environmental" is the code word for losss of freedom and Socialism. Obama is typing up resources and forcing the cost of food and energy to skyrocket. He and others are engaged in a fierce economic sabatoge of this country. Chu (Obama's energy secretary) testified to Congress that Obama and he would like to see gas prices go to $8 to FORCE Americans into the "Green " initiative -- electric cars, solar and wind. Problem is, planes, trains and automobiles can't efficiently use any of these. And just like ethanol, the results of trying and of keeping pushing these failed experiments means disaster to this country. He is subsidizing GE with millions if not billions in "clean energy" money. Jeffrey Imelt made millions in bonuses and GE made 18 billion in profits, but paid no taxes. This criminal of a "president" is waging war on America, and Americans, for greed and power. - justintime

April 23, 2011

Reuters – Barack Obama told Americans on Saturday there is no "magic bullet" to bring down high gasoline prices and said he wants to end what he called $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies.

Obama is feeling the heat from gasoline prices that are about $4 a gallon and may surge higher. A New York Times-CBS News poll found that 70 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track and analysts believe gas prices are a main reason.

The president devoted his weekly radio and Internet address to outlining his views on the U.S. energy predicament, saying clean energy is ultimately the way forward for a country long addicted to gas-guzzling vehicles.

"Now, whenever gas prices shoot up, like clockwork, you see politicians racing to the cameras, waving three-point plans for $2 gas. You see people trying to grab headlines or score a few points. The truth is, there's no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away," he said.

Obama, in the early stages of his 2012 re-election campaign, has been seeing steady improvement in the U.S. economy. But rising gasoline prices are forcing Americans to pay more out of their income, which some fear could harm the fragile economic recovery.

Obama said it is time to eliminate what he called $4 billion in annual "taxpayer subsidies" to oil and gas companies.

"That's $4 billion of your money going to these companies when they're making record profits and you're paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop," he said.

The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a working group of federal agencies to probe potential fraud in the energy markets that affects pump prices, including actions by speculators.

"Fighting in the Middle East is not the cause of rising oil prices. The rising cost of oil is due to the Wall-street traders speculation. If you take oil and gas off of the commodities trading list it would stabilize. We can thank our own greedy government for allowing this to happen," says Don G. at Yahoo! News.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Obama accused Republicans of seeking to cut 70 percent in government spending to encourage development of clean energy projects.

"Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow's. We need to invest in clean, renewable energy," he said.

"Yes, we have to get rid of wasteful spending -- and make no mistake, we're going through every line of the budget scouring for savings. But we can do that without sacrificing our future," he added.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in response to the president that the Obama administration over the past two years has "declared what can only be described as a war on American energy."

"It's canceled dozens of drilling leases, imposed a moratorium on drilling off the Gulf Coast and increased permit fees. It's done just about everything it can to keep our own energy sector from growing," McConnell said.

McConnell said more must be done to increase domestic oil production.

The comments by Obama and McConnell came three days after the anniversary of the giant BP Plc oil spill off the coast of Louisiana that caused economic and environmental harm to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Obama Says Nuclear Power Will Be a Part of the U.S.'s Long-term Energy Plan

The main problem and drawback with alternative energy is how to tax it. The government can't let any alternative energy technology become widely used, unless they are able to take about a third of the money spent by consumers as "taxes" on the alternative energy. If a car was invented that ran on water, all municipal water supplies would have to raise rates 1000 times or more to make up for the loss of gasoline taxes. Consumers will never see any benefit whatsoever from alternative energy. - Ralph

Windmills, solar panels, ethanol are all LIES for the dunces in this country to latch on to and lead us to poverty. They produce less than 1% of our power now...even if we were able to get 10X the production out of them (which is practically impossible) we would still need 90% from conventional sources -- which this president is hell bent on shutting down. The Road to Serfdom -- we're on it following an imposter. - Brian

March 30, 2011

Reuters - President Barack Obama on Wednesday proposed to cut U.S. oil imports by a third over 10 years, a goal that eluded his predecessors and seen as extremely ambitious by analysts skeptical it can succeed.

Obama outlined his strategy after spending days explaining the U.S.-led military action in Libya, where fighting, accompanied by unrest elsewhere in the Arab world, has helped push U.S. gasoline prices toward $4 a gallon.

In a speech that was short on details on how to curb U.S. energy demand, Obama did not pretend there were speedy measures to curb mounting fuel costs, which could threaten the country's economic recovery by weighing on American spending and confidence.

"There are no quick fixes ... We will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we finally get serious about a long-term policy for secure, affordable energy," Obama said.

As he rolled out a blueprint on energy security, Obama said the country must curb dependence on foreign oil that makes up roughly half of its daily fuel needs.

Previous presidents have made similar promises on energy imports that they failed to meet. And any new policy initiative can expect tough opposition from Republicans, who see high energy prices hurting Obama and his Democrats in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

Republicans have mocked the idea of Obama curbing oil imports a week after visiting Brazil, where he said the United states wanted to be a good customer for its oil exports.

Obama laid out four areas to help reach his target of curbing U.S. dependence on foreign oil: lifting domestic energy production, fostering the use of more natural gas in vehicles like city buses, making cars and trucks more efficient, and boosting alternative energy by encouraging biofuels.

The United States consumed almost 20 million barrels of oil a day in 2010 of which roughly half was imported.

Noting natural gas made sense after discoveries of an estimated 100-years' worth of domestic shale gas reserves, Obama urged Congress to pass legislation to encourage the use of natural gas burning vehicles.

He said his administration would help private business break ground on four next-generation biorefineries, and "look for ways to reform biofuels incentives" to save taxpayer money, without going into details.

Obama also reiterated nuclear power would be a part of the country's long-term energy plan, stressing the lessons from the nuclear disaster in Japan would be studied carefully, while making just passing reference to climate change.

Obama's election campaign goal of passing measures to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has made little headway on Capitol Hill, to the dismay of environmental activists who complain it has slipped way down his list of priorities.

HARD SELL

Analysts and experts said Obama's goal is ambitious and that truly reforming U.S. energy use would involve sweeping changes, including possible fuel taxes to encourage Americans to change their habits, which could be politically toxic.

"I'm very skeptical it will have any impact," said Edward Meir, chief analyst at MF Global in New York. "Presidents have been saying this since the days of Richard Nixon."

Polls show Americans have mixed feelings about involvement in Libya, a third Muslim country with the United States still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are clearly worried by high gas prices before the summer driving season.

The latest measures of consumer confidence have been dented by rising energy prices, which sap household spending and could derail the U.S. recovery if prices stay high enough for a long time, hurting Obama's re-election prospects.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday showed that 48 percent of American voters disapprove of Obama's job performance, and 50 percent think he does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012, compared with 42 percent who approve and 41 percent who feel he does deserve to be re-elected.

Those were his lowest ratings ever, Quinnipiac said.

Some analysts reckon Obama may tap America's emergency oil stockpiles if U.S. oil prices hit $110 a barrel. Prices ranged between $104.13 and $104.81 a barrel in Wednesday's trade.

Obama singled out Canada and Mexico, the United States' two largest suppliers, as reliable sources of oil and also cited Brazil as a promising future energy partner.

The U.S. Interior Department estimates millions of acres (hectares) of U.S. energy leases are not being exploited by oil companies and the White House wants that to change.

This argument also helps the administration push back against Obama's Republican opponents, who claim he is tying the hands of the U.S. energy industry by denying leases and restricting offshore drilling in the wake of the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The American Petroleum Institute, a major oil and gas trade group, said the president's message was "just absurd".

"What we hear ... are actually disincentives. What he's talking about is more regulation, shorter lease terms and higher costs," API head Jack Gerard told Reuters.

Flashback: Gas Prices May Reach $7 Per Gallon

When the gas prices are driven up by artificial shortages claimed by foreign interest, you increase domestic production so as not to let your nation suffer at the hands of foreign tyrants that Obama has bowed to. We don't even have to talk drilling yet or more refineries. Our wells are being subsidized to not pump at capacity and refineries are being regulated back to around 60-70% of their optimum output. Taxpayers are paying for thousands of wells in the U.S. to sit idle and not pump oil and for refineries in Texas and other states to sit dormant while communities go without jobs. Obama said he liked high gas prices because they made selling the fraud of Global Warming easier. - Andy Anderson

March 8, 2010

The New American - President Obama's fiscal year 2010 EPA budget calls for carbon reductions that would require raising the cost of gasoline to $7 per gallon within the next 10 years. A report released this month by Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs explained that for Obama to reach his goal, he would need to employ a one-two punch approach, hitting both utility and transportation sectors with strong emissions-reducing taxes.

The Belfer Center report, Reducing the U.S. Transportation Sector's Oil Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions, criticizes Obama's current plan as short-sighted.

"Reducing oil consumption and carbon emissions from transportation is a much greater challenge than conventional wisdom assumes," warns the report.

It also says subsidies for alternatives such as electric and hybrid vehicles are "extremely expensive and ... ineffective" in the short term.

But don't let their criticisms fool you. The authors of the report call for aggressive climate change policies and illogically conclude,

"Even under high-fuels-tax, high-carbon price scenarios, losses in annual GDP, relative to business-as-usual, are less than 1 percent, and the economy is still projected to grow at 2.1 – 3.7 percent per year assuming a portion of revenues collected are recycled to taxpayers."

Ignoring recent revelations that EPA's greenhouse-gas "endangerment finding" is based on fraudulent data, the report proposes several scenarios which the authors claim will reduce so-called emissions from the transportation sector without significant harm to the economy. The scenarios involve an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax set at $30 per ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 per ton in 2030. The Belfer Center says it would be "a surrogate for a cap-and-trade system like that proposed in the pending American Clean Energy and Security Act." The reference is to H.R. 2454, passed by the House last June and now before the Senate in the form of S. 1733. Many Democrats have suffered in the polls because of their support of these bills, leading Obama to begrudgingly admit final passage is unlikely.

Harvard's solution (in characteristic socialist fashion) is adding to a cap-and-trade tax one or more of the following:

1. Income tax reductions to offset the burden of a carbon tax on consumers. The authors note there is no such provision in the American Clean Energy and Security Act, but claim including it would significantly reduce economic impacts.
2. A "strong" gasoline and diesel tax of $0.50 per gallon this year, increasing by 10 percent per year to reach a $3.36 per gallon tax in 2030.
3. Improvements in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 43.7 miles per gallon by 2030.

The authors argue an economy-wide carbon tax alone would provide little incentive to the transportation sector to curb emissions. Electric utilities would be more adversely affected since they rely more heavily on coal. Therefore, the suggested "additions" listed above are necessary because taxing consumers is the only way to reduce oil consumption and its accompanying greenhouse gas emissions.

The report advises if Obama wants to reduce both emissions and petroleum imports, "consumers cannot continue to drive more and more each year." That is why, according to the authors, electric and hybrid vehicles don't measure up — they only encourage more driving. The report argues,

"The most effective policy for reducing CO2 emissions and oil imports from transportation is to spur the development and sale of more efficient vehicles with strict efficiency standards while increasing the cost of driving with strong fuel taxes."

It ends with the ominous warning that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow if the report's suggestions go unheeded.

Flashback: Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling

August 28, 2009

Wall Street Journal Opinion - You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.

This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.