Guest post by David Middleton
19 January 2012
Obama clean energy ad airing in Va.
A new ad from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that touts his energy and ethics record began airing in Virginia this week even as Republican blasted him over a decision to reject a permit for a proposed oil pipeline from Canada.
The 30-second spot (see below) makes a case that Obama’s policies have promoted clean energy jobs and reduced the nation’s dependence on foreign oil while enduring unfounded attacks funded by wealthy energy industry officials.
[…]
This campaign ad is nothing but a collection of falsehoods.
Falsehood #1: “Secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama”… The Koch brothers (and the oil & gas industry in general) have been anything but secretive in their attacks on President Obama.
Falsehood #2: The ad implies that President Obama has created 2.7 million “clean energy industry” jobs.
The 2.7 million figure is purportedly cited from a Brookings report. The report said that there currently are 2.7 million jobs in America that “produce goods and services with an environmental benefit.”
The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a signifi cant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. (Page 4)
The report says that the “clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010.” So… Obama didn’t even “create” half a million “clean energy jobs.” He didn’t even create half a million clean economy jobs. The Brookings report refers to “clean economy” not “clean energy” jobs. The vast majority of the “clean economy” jobs are not in energy… And almost all of those jobs were created before Obama took office.
More than 82% of the “clean economy” jobs listed in the report have nothing to do with energy production…
Waste Management & Treatment … 386,116 … 14%
Public Mass Transit … 350,547 … 13%
Conservation … 314,983 … 12%
Energy Saving Building Materials … 161,896 … 6%
Regulation & Compliance … 141,890 … 5%
Professional Environmental Services … 141,046 … 5%
Organic Food & Farming … 129,956 … 5%
Recycling & Reuse … 129,252 … 5%
Green Consumer Products … 77,264 … 3%
Green Building Materials … 76,577 … 3%
HVAC … 73,600 … 3%
Sustainable Forestry Products … 61,054 … 2%
Recycled Content Products … 59,712 … 2%
Green Architecture … 56,190 … 2%
Air & Water Purification … 24,930 … 1%
Green Chemical Products … 22,622 … 1%
Total … 2,207,635 … 82%
Falsehood #3: The ad implies that President Obama somehow played a role in the increase in US domestic oil production over the last few years… That is beyond ridiculous! The plays and prospects from which the production growth was derived were worked up, leased, drilled and plumbed-up for production over the last decade or more. The effects of Obama’s disastrous anti-drilling policies won’t show up in production data for quite some time.
Obama’s anti-drilling policies began in 2009 and were ramped up in 2010. This is either the most amazingly arrogant lie to ever come out of this President’s mouth or an example of his incredible ignorance of the oil & gas industry and energy in general.
The increase in US oil production has come from two main sources:
1) Shale plays like the Bakken.
The Bakken shale play has mostly been developed on private property. Very little of the shale plays have been developed on Federal lands – And the Obama administration has actively sought to further restrict development on Federal lands. Apart from the EPA, regulation and obstruction of these sorts of plays are mostly in the hands of State gov’ts.
2) Deepwater Gulf of Mexico discoveries.
The deepwater discoveries that have been brought on line over the last three years were discovered long before Obama took office… Many were discovered while Clinton was still in office. Construction and installation of the production facilities began long before Obama took office. On top of that, much of the increase in production was the result of the ongoing recovery from hurricanes Rita (2005), Katrina (2005) and Ike (2008).
Over the last two years, the Obama administration has almost paralyzed operations in the Gulf of Mexico with an unlawful permitorium and has aggressively tried to hamper the shale plays with fraudulent EPA attacks on fracking and unlawful efforts to make BLM lands unavailable…
This is all anyone ever needs to know about President Obama’s views on energy…
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“Optical trapping”, the confinement of small objects by the radiation pressure of laser light, was invented at Bell Labs by Arthur Ashkin around 1970. He actually started the work without any Bell Labs support. The resulting “optical tweezers” became widely used in holding biological specimens for examination under a microscope.
eventually a chap named Steven Chu was hired into Ashkin’s group, and Ashkin taught him all about making optical traps. Subsequently Chu was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics, for trapping a single atom in an optical trap that Ashkin taught him how to build.
None of Chu’s collaborators on this work received any credit for the final result; Chu alone was credited as the guru of optical trapping; and Arthur Ashkin, who invented it decades earlier go no credit at all.
Chu thinks yeasts and microbes can be used to “create” renewable fuel.; and he clearly knows nothing about photo-Voltaic solar collection and conversion.
But then he was at Lawrence Livermore and Berserkeley; so you can figure the politics of that. I believe that Stanford University also has a highly respected team working with optical trapping; which has many uses.
Excellent Middleton article, as usual. Obama simply parrots what’s been written for him; he doesn’t really understand econ. Even his staff makes fun of him.
The defining characteristic of this President: click
I’m not a Newt fan, but a series of debates between Obama and Gingrich would show the world a naked emperor. So if Newt happens to get the nomination, expect Obama to either run ‘n’ hide out from any debate, or to stack the deck with sycophantic moderators, and a debate format that’s favorable to the Teleprompter-in-Chief.
Jim G says:
January 25, 2012 at 7:50 am
“So, irrespective of who gets the credit, we now have more oil and we are in a recession, presumably using less as a result, so why are prices for petroleum products up in our “free market” system?”
Although the current wholesale price of gasoline varies a bit across the US, $2.85/gal is probably a reasonable average estimate. That’s about 2 1/4 cents/oz. Many grocery stores nowadays have shelf price labels that breakdown unit prices for each item. Next time you find yourself in one, spend some time looking at the per ounce costs of a few liquid items that you normally purchase.I don’t know where you live, but around here $3.99 is a significant sale price for a 12 pack of Coke. Now think about the difference in what it takes to bring those items to those shelves relative to what it takes to bring that gallon of gasoline to the pump that delivers it to your car. The pump price for gas includes on average 48.8 cents/gallon (38 to 60 cents)in federal, state, and local taxes. The oil companies’profits on that gallon run less than 10 cents. Leave us not forget that at every stage of production from the geologist that picks the drill site, to the driller who drills the well, to the shippers who move the crude to refiners, to the refiners themselves, to the pipeline operators and truckers who deliver it to your local gas station and to the station operators as well, the government federal, state and local is taking further bites off of everyone’s profits Since Corporations don’t ever really pay taxes they only collect them, if you were actually able get the data to do the calculation, I think you’d find that well more than half of what you pay for a gallon of gas ends up in government coffers. Given that and the incredible difficulties of producing motor fuels to keep us moving in the current environment you ought to consider each gallon of gasoline you buy as one of the biggest bargains in your life
@Dave Wendt,
The tax data are in the 10k filings and the DOE’s annual survey of FRS companies.
In 2009 ExxonMobil paid $75 billion in income (US Federal, State, local and foreign), sales, property and other taxes. Their net after-tax income was $19 billion.
The average effective income tax rate for US oil companies is ~40%.
Dave Wendt says:
“… you ought to consider each gallon of gasoline you buy as one of the biggest bargains in your life.”
Exactly. If in doubt, get into your car, put it in neutral, turn off the ignition, get out, and push it about twenty miles down the road. Then explain how the price of a gallon of gasoline is too high.
David Middleton says:
January 26, 2012 at 3:57 am
“The average effective income tax rate for US oil companies is ~40%.”
Generally the oil companies then distribute up to 50% or more of their after tax profits as dividends to their shareholders, whereupon the government takes another bite. As i indicated in my comment all of the corporations that are subcontractors and suppliers in the chain of production are hit with taxes on their profits, which because of the realities of economics ends up cooked into the prices they charge and by extension into the price of the final product. The always expensive permitting process is another cost which, though not necessarily collected by the government, is one they are entirely responsible for adding. Even with all that, the US is near the bottom of the world in the rake that government takes off of energy, although as clearly demonstrated by the last video in your post, that is something that our Dear Leader Barry would love to change.
@Dave Wendt,
The Federal waters of the US Gulf of Mexico accounts for about a quarter of US crude oil production (a bit over 1.5 million BOPD). The leases are awarded through an ausction process. The gov’t collects a lease bonus from the oil company with the high bid. Then it collects rental payments on held non-producing leases. If production is established, the then gov’t collects 1/8 to 1/6 of the gross production revenue in royalty payments.
David Middleton says:
January 26, 2012 at 11:18 am
There are a couple interesting graphs in this piece concerning the average annual number of leases issued and the share of NG production from federal lands vs State and private lands
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/01/obama-deserves-no-credit-for-oil-and.html
“MP: The bottom chart above shows that the share of total natural gas production taking place on federally administered land fell to 20% in 2010, the lowest share in at least 35 years.”
The Institute for Energy Research has a good post on this… LINK
In the aftermath of the SOTU another of BHO’s touted accomplishments is circling the bowl
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/26/another-green-tech-stimulus-recipient-files-for-bankruptcy/
“We saw this coming last October, when CBS first reported on Ener1′s shaky financial position. At that time, the company had spent $53 million of the grant and had pledged to create 1700 jobs from it in total. When the story got reported, Ener1 traded at 11 cents a share, down from its December 2008 peak of $9.40 and the $3 per share price when the Department of Energy decided to invest in a company that had lost two-thirds of its value. The share price was five cents by the beginning of this month, and is now at two cents a share.
Don’t forget, too, that the $53 million spent by October created jobs … 33 of them.”
“”””” Smokey says:
January 26, 2012 at 5:23 am
Dave Wendt says:
“… you ought to consider each gallon of gasoline you buy as one of the biggest bargains in your life.”
“Exactly. If in doubt, get into your car, put it in neutral, turn off the ignition, get out, and push it about twenty miles down the road. Then explain how the price of a gallon of gasoline is too high.”
I believe that gasoline is just about the cheapest liquid you can buy, that people consume in significant quantities. I’m sitting here at Starbucks, and the water they sell here is $10.40 per gallon, and that is far from the most expensive. Sometimes my wife pays around $35 per gallon for potable drinking water.
@ur momisugly David Middleton, January 26, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Thank you for the link to The Institute for Energy Research. I now have the site in my bookmarks.