The irony is, we are being told the polar ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, so why are they worried about needing an icebreaker again? The whole thing is bollocks. On one hand we have Obama telling us we need to end our dependence on foreign oil…
“I will set a clear goal as president: in ten years we will finally end our dependence on oil in the Middle East,” said Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. ” Source here
….then we have the EPA pulling this crap to prevent domestic oil production with the help of NGO’s.
EPA Shuts Down Drilling in Alaska
by Brian McGraw on globalwarming.org
Shell announced today, for now, it must end a project to drill for oil off the coast of Northern Alaska, because of a decision made by an EPA appeals board to deny permits to acknowledge that Shell will meet air quality requirements. This is not part of ANWR.
Companies that drill for oil must go through extensive permitting processes and invest billions of dollars as payments for leasing the land, exploring for possible oil fields, equipment, etc. This is all done with the understanding that assuming they follow the letter of the law, there is a chance that this investment won’t be flushed down the toilet at the end of the tunnel. It appears that in this case Shell has followed procedure and that emissions will be below any standards required by the EPA:
The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling.
“What the modeling showed was in communities like Kaktovik, Shell’s drilling would increase air pollution levels close to air quality standards,” said Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case. Earthjustice was joined by Center for Biological Diversity and the Alaska Wilderness League in challenging the air permits.
Talk about moving the goalposts. They must have been really desperate to cancel this project given that this was the best straight-faced excuse they could muster. Not only do you have to be below the legally required emission limits but you must also not even be “close” to the limits, as defined by unelected officials, one of whom is a former attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Events like this are a prime example of why many in Congress want to strip authority from the EPA. Shell had reportedly invested over $4 billion in this project. When companies make investment decisions, consideration is given to whether or not bureaucrats can make arbitrary decisions to shut the project down halfway through a multi-year process. There are many other countries with natural resource reserves who do not subject economic activity to such unpredictable insanity, and in the eye of a corporation, after an event like this these locations begin to look more preferable to dealing with the United States.
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Events like this are a prime example of why many in Congress want to strip authority from the EPA. Shell had reportedly invested over $4 billion in this project.
Ya think?
IIRC, when oil was around $143 a barrel in 2008, President Bush simply announced that he was lifting the drilling moratorium. Although no extra oil came on line as a result of his announcement, the price of oil immediately began to decline. It went down to $33 a barrel, and gasoline was $1.87 a gallon when Obama was sworn into office.
The first thing Obama did as President was to impose a new drilling ban. Obama’s ban covers much more area than the previous moratorium that both Presidents Bush 41 & 43 inherited from the Clinton Administration.
Remember, Bambi gets funding from BP and is a friend of Petrobras. Screw all the other oil companies (till they contribute to his 2012 election campaign).
Obama’s Gulf of Mexico oil moratorium and subsequent “permitorium” will, within 18 months, result in a loss of GOM crude oil production equivalent to a supertanker load every two days–just what the nation needed…
Didn’t Obama and the Dems muse about fines or outright revocation of leases for oil companies that didn’t drill on their leases not too long ago?
So Shell failed to consider greenhouse gas emissions from its icebreaker and that pushes it to a level where it might violate air quality standards? There are no air quality standards for greenhouse gasses, only EPA “guidance.” So now facilities/sources have to meet non-existent standards for unspecified emissions. Nothing will ever get done.
If the US wants oil independence then it had better use less cause it can’t drill its way there, hasn’t been able to for well over 30 years. Isn’t from a lack of trying either.
domestic drilling also has very little effect on price, few cents at best since oil is priced on the world market
Obama is like every other POTUS going back to like Carter, mentioning oil independence is something they all have done and they all have been lying, this is old news.
Until the pricing of oil is no longer distorted by policy the US is going to increasingly find itself in an impossible and tragic situation. Judith Curry talks about “wicked” problems, oil depletion is a real bear of a problem that makes others look tame.
Sadly things are no better here in Australia.
Here it can take the State Government department concerned more than three years to permit even a small tailings extraction plant in the middle of nowhere. And this for a plant that will remediate sands that have lain contaminated with high levels of arsenic and heavy metals for more than 100 years.
We also have a National Government that seeks to kill-off profitable mining companies with its super tax, a tax which would take the overall level of royalty/tax to not far short of 50%. We are in a resources boom they say you must share the profits – no heed of the decades of poor markets, the years of exploration and development. This is all before we even consider the Government’s ill conceived carbon dioxide tax on everything.
It’s no wonder people just give up and go elsewhere.
Let me fix that headline for you . . .
“Obama’s EPA Shuts down America”
Just like he said he would.
This is completely unacceptable. Can’t wait for the elections to come around. I will be hitting the streets.
One thing we’ve all seen are requests from many sources to write your congresscritter to support or oppose some random bill. I wonder how much mail they get about the government squashing projects like this. So…
Please write your congresscritters. Keep the letters short, but given the plethora of issues behind this action, write several letters.
How many subjects are there on this?
If you have a good topic or write a good letter, post it here.
The Obama EPA has taken this to a whole new level but this has been occurring in the USA for decades now. As others have said, how can anyone invest long term capitol in this environment………never knowing when some NGO or local opposition group will successfully destroy all, or part, of your invested capitol? There are MANY socialist European societies that do a better job of encouraging capitol investment than we do. There is a saying in economics………”Capitol goes where it is needed, and stays where it is treated well.” We do not treat it well in the United States.
Well, I’m for the Chi-comms coming in a tapping this reserve with their sideways drilling. Somebody needs to bring this field into play and if I was them I’d say “put up or shut up” to anyone who claimed more than a three mile limit. Other than the jobs lost, at least that way we get oil into the market to help balance the demand with supply.
Why doesn’t Shell just agree to power any needed icebreakers with Veg. Oil, or Cellulosic Ethanol, or some other fuel that the EPA is down with?
Yes. The EPA action, destroying a$4 billion dollar investment with the most trivial of bureaucratic excuses, is profoundly wrong. We must do more than write about it on blogs, though. We must immediately call our legislators and, in the strongest terms, tell them to cut all funding for the EPA until this decision is reversed and every person in the approval chain of this travesty is fired, including AdministratorLisa Jackson.
Then, hike thee (physically, electronically, and financially) down to your favorite local political organization and work your butts off for the next year and a half to defeat all politicians supporting these EPA hacks and the current administration that installed and sustains them! It is a many headed hydra, we must slay… and no time to spare but for sharpening your grass roots swords.
elbatrop says:
April 26, 2011 at 5:22 pm
If the US wants oil independence then it had better use less cause it can’t drill its way there, hasn’t been able to for well over 30 years. Isn’t from a lack of trying either.
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I disagree. We import 10 million bbls of crude a day. There are an estimated 800 billion bbls of shale oil in a play near the Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado borders that the federal government puts off limits for drilling. In the central part of Louisiana, the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale play is now being leased. It has an estimated 70 billion bbls of shale oil reserves. None of this even includes huge reserves still left on the OCS. Do the math…
Smokey says:
April 26, 2011 at 5:12 pm
The first thing Obama did as President was to impose a new drilling ban. Obama’s ban covers much more area than the previous moratorium that both Presidents Bush 41 & 43 inherited from the Clinton Administration.
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What most people don’t realize is that there is about to be a bonanza of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico off the northern coast of Cuba. Nine foreign countries have leases to drill there. Some of them are so close to Florida, you could spit on it. Cuba will get the jobs, the oil, and the hard currency. We are still waiting for our domestic Gulf of Mexico jobs and investments that Obama took from us to return. Maybe some of our rigs will go to Cuba. That would be tragic irony…
Uh, and besides, that’s not exactly how this deal came down.
The regulatory status in Alaska is “much different,” he said. Odum said he’s hopeful the delay will be resolved and he appreciates EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson looking at the issue.
Several federal agencies have worked with Shell to help the company in Alaska, including the EPA, which issued a permit on March 31, 2010, according to a statement.
“That permit was subsequently appealed by outside groups, including local Alaskan stakeholders, and overturned by the independent Environmental Appeals Board,” according to the statement. “EPA immediately appealed for reconsideration and we have worked with Shell to address the concerns.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-26/shell-says-slow-u-s-drill-permits-in-alaska-irresponsible-1-.html
This makes about as much sense as taxing oil companies more so they will lower prices. With that kind of logic, is it any wonder western civilization is going down the low-flow toilet?
The sad reality is that this is NOT isolated. All sorts of groups – EVERYwhere – are impeding energy independence. Whilst simultaneously decrying gasoline and food prices. The intellectual dissonance is stunning.
Consider this one example – http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/26/3027935/xto-energy-drops-plans-to-drill.html
Just today. Not isolated by any stretch of the imagination. It goes on, and on, and on….
And they wonder why the US companies leave…..
Well, well…here’s the culprit…
“What the modeling showed was in communities like Kaktovik, Shell’s drilling would increase air pollution levels close to air quality standards,” said Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case.
Does anyone have any references to the “models” that were employed in the “study?” And were the models enough evidence for the EPA to scuttle billions of dollars invested oil exploration by Shell?? You’ve got to be kidding!
But, again, for anyone who wants to know what the end game is for the CAGW alarmism being spread by the likes of Hansen, Schmidt, Mann, Santer, Trenberth, et al., here it is, writ large.
Also…remember that the climate elites (who have raked in billions of dollars for themselves and their research) don’t care about your job, your family, or your community if it gets in the way of their aims – specifically, total government control of the economy in the name of global warming…
On another front, watched Evil Fox news today and caught an interview with an oil guy about EPA plans to list some lizard… which will shut down oil drilling in western Texas.
Sorry, can’t find a link.
But that should help. After all, under Barry’s plan – well, actually his masters’s plans – energy prices will necessarily skyrocket.
So sad… but it is happening right before our eyes. As this begins… “read it and weep” for the good old days.
http://sppiblog.org/news/the-abdication-of-the-west
Don’t get sucked in. Obama’s plan isn’t to reduce oil consumption, only to change vendors. That’s why he’s promising to be Brazil’s best customer. One has to wonder why we don’t spend the money here and not in foreign countries.
The world is full of these sad sack leftist like Obama and his EPA they do 5% good and 95% bad. I’ve watched it all my life, from the many countries I’ve lived in and the modus oparandi is always the same. Promise, subvert,tax and destroy.
But of all of them Obama takes the cheese with his Czars/comrades and agency’s such as the EPA, it’s amazing how much damage socialist cooks can do in such a short period of time. Some say Obama is so a-peeling, so nice,hes so charming, he has a nice smile? So did Stalin and he was one of the most vicarious mean bastards in history!
Obama and his like will reap a whirl wind of financial and emotional hurt to America and it will reverberate around the world! Voters are enamored with the smile and a turn of phrase and never with the consequences or substance!
“A pretty face don’t make a pretty heart, I’ve learn’t that right from the start”
Robert Palmer from Doctor Doctor give me the news!
My goodness. For this one-time Dem, 2012 can’t come fast enough. I don’t care how bad the Repub nomination turns out to be, this just cannot continue. A bad, blond, back of the head comb-over with pursed lips, and hot-headed sound bites is better than “devastating”.