The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic (23 page)

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Authors: David Limbaugh

BOOK: The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic
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Regardless of the precise numbers of jobs lost, the administration’s cavalier approval of the devastating drilling moratorium, after experts repeatedly warned it would not enhance safety, was unconscionable and indefensible.
Amidst all this failure, Obama triumphantly claimed credit when the leaking well was finally sealed. “Today,” he said, “we achieved an important milestone in our response to the BP oil spill.” In his two-paragraph statement, he conspicuously omitted words of praise or even acknowledgment for the BP oil drillers and relief workers who performed the capping and sealing. As the
Los Angeles Times
‘ Andrew Malcolm noted, “Instead, Obama praised—actually he commended—several members of his own cabinet and administration.” He boasted, as if he had been the primary causal agent in the cleanup, “My administration will see our communities, our businesses and our fragile ecosystems through this difficult time.”
43
“ENCOURAGING OTHER COUNTRIES TO CREATE THE JOBS THAT WE NEED”
Similarly, on a trip to Latin America, Obama told Brazilian officials he wanted to help Brazil produce oil from newly discovered offshore sites. “We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers,” Obama declared, adding that “the United States could not be happier with the potential for a new, stable source of energy.”
45
Disgusted, Senator David Vitter exclaimed, “We have abundant energy resources off Louisiana’s coast, but this administration has virtually shut down our offshore industry and instead is using Americans’ tax dollars to support drilling off the coast of Brazil. It’s ridiculous to ignore our own resources and continue going hat-in-hand to countries like Saudi Arabia and Brazil to beg them to produce more oil.”
46
It wasn’t just ridiculous; it revealed Obama’s callousness toward American businesses and workers, his cynicism toward his professed goal of curbing oil production throughout the world, and his insincerity in claiming he wants to lower our dependence on foreign oil. As Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowsky said, “It seems a double standard and it seems somewhat hypocritical to a country that desperately needs jobs … that we’re encouraging other countries to create the jobs that we need.”
47
As if further evidence were needed of the ludicrous futility of the administration’s war on deepwater drilling, Cuba announced plans to drill five deepwater oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico between 2011 and 2013.
48
“A CHILLING EXAMPLE OF THIS ADMINISTRATION’S MISGUIDED APPROACH”
Karen A. Harbert, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21
st
Century Energy, alleged that the new rules would create a de facto drilling moratorium to replace the expiring one. “The fact that BOEMRE [the administration’s offshore drilling regulator] has not considered how the new regulations will affect the industry is a chilling example of this administration’s misguided approach that will have unintended consequences such as increased imports and fewer American jobs,” she warned.
50
Indeed, while oil production from the Gulf was, as of April 2011, down more than 10 percent since Obama implemented the moratorium, our imports of foreign oil had greatly increased, pushing up gas prices and effectively increasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil by around $1.8 billion just in the fourth quarter of 2010.
51
David Holt, president of the Consumer Energy Alliance in Houston, said Americans needed a message of hope rather than more economy-stifling regulations. “Instead, the timeline for this job-killing moratorium is blurred more than ever as it creates tremendous uncertainty for American consumers and those hard-working individuals whose livelihoods are tied to offshore energy activity.”
52
The administration was aware that its new rules would dramatically increase drilling costs and therefore destroy jobs. The Department of the Interior estimated the regulations would raise operating costs by an estimated $1.42 million for each new deepwater well drilled with a floating rig, by $170,000 for each one drilled with a platform rig, and by $90,000 for each new shallow well. Ken Salazar—indifferent to the pain he was causing—claimed the increased costs were justified because the rules would reduce the likelihood of another spill.
53
In rules issued by BOMRE, the administration buried a disgraceful rationalization of the negative effects of the new regulations: “Currently there is sufficient spare capacity in OPEC to offset a decrease in GOM deepwater production that could occur as a result of this rule.” Red State’s Steve Maley translated the sentence into plain English: “It’s OK if we lose domestic production capacity, because OPEC has plenty of oil.”
54
MANIPULATING SCIENCE
Eventually, indications arose that the administration’s politicized, ideological response to the oil spill had spawned excessive secrecy and the crass manipulation of data. A report by Oil Spill Commission staff suggested that White House officials may have blocked the release of “a more accurate and dramatic estimate” of the oil spill’s effects. The report indicated that the White House Office of Management and Budget had rejected an attempt by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to publicize some of its worst-case scenarios. “By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem,” the commission report asserted.
55
The administration, of course, denied any wrongdoing.
56
More damning, seven experts from the National Academy of Engineers claimed the Department of the Interior had misrepresented their views in its report that recommended the offshore drilling moratorium. While the report had suggested the experts endorsed the moratorium, the experts in fact argued that a drilling ban “will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill.”
57
The Department of the Interior’s inspector general found that a staff member of White House energy advisor Carol Browner had indeed edited the report’s executive summary to imply the experts endorsed the moratorium. However, the IG found the administration had not violated federal rules because it had offered a formal apology and publicly clarified the report. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, called on President Obama to fire Browner for this “manipulation of science.”
58
A MINIMUM SEVEN-YEAR BAN
On October 12, the administration finally lifted the revised moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cynically announcing, “We’re open for business.” The effect was hardly dramatic, since oil companies had to comply with the “permitorium”—the new regulations that severely slowed the permitting process. Noting that a de facto drilling ban would remain in place, the Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper observed that behind the rhetoric, President Obama had completely shut down the nation’s oil drilling infrastructure, and at least 103 permits were awaiting review by BOEMRE. Experts expected the de facto ban to continue until the second half of 2011 and possibly into 2012. Notably, as of February 2011, the administration hadn’t approved a single new exploratory drilling plan in the Gulf since Obama had supposedly lifted the ban.
59
In fact, in December the Obama administration revoked its promise to expand offshore oil exploration into the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast. Using the Gulf oil spill as an excuse, Salazar approved an official moratorium on exploration in those areas for at least seven years. As the
New York Times
commented, “The move puts off limits millions of acres of the Outer Continental Shelf that hold potentially billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.”
60
Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute warned the decision could result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, billions in government revenues, and greater dependence on foreign energy. Others noted that the policy would have negative rippling effects throughout the economy.
61
The seven-year moratorium, according to University of Illinois professor John W. Kindt, “is a ridiculous decision” that would devastate businesses.
Some found a deeper, unsettling problem. “The real issue,” said Gerard, “is the Interior Department, which is the most scandal-ridden agency in American history. Along with an inability to regulate, the entire department is rife with conflicts of interest.” Kindt agreed, noting that the administration was just as culpable for the gulf disaster as BP but has avoided public scrutiny. “The regulators at Interior didn’t just have a cozy relationship with the people they’re supposed to be regulating,” said Kindt, “they had outright conflicts of interest.”
62
The administration’s excuse was that it was “adjusting [its] strategy in areas where there are no active leases” to “focus and expand [its] critical resources on areas that are currently active.”
It seemed that instead of finding innovative ways to allow the industry to compensate for lost revenues and jobs from the Gulf spill, the administration was capitalizing on hyped-up environmental hysteria over it to further smother the industry. Rory Cooper reported that with all the reductions in drilling, the Energy Information Administration estimated that the government would lose $3.7 million in revenue per day from foregone royalties, amounting to $1.35 billion in 2011 alone. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Karen Harbert, “The Administration is sending a message to America’s oil and gas industry: take your capital, technology, and jobs somewhere else.”
63
Unsurprisingly, amidst all these moratoriums and regulations, energy companies such as Seahawk Drilling of Houston began going out of business. “The decision by regulators to arbitrarily construct unnecessary barriers to obtaining permits they had traditionally authorized has had an adverse impact not only on Seahawk, but on the sector as a whole,” former Seahawk CEO Randy Stilley said.
64
In addition, Reuters reported that many of the more than thirty deepwater rigs in the Gulf, each of which employs some 200 people, had “moved to other markets, first because of a U.S. halt last May after BP Plc’s well blowout, and then because of the lack of permits once the moratorium was lifted.”
65
Sure enough, more than two months after the administration had nominally lifted its ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies were still stymied from obtaining drilling permits. Even former president Bill Clinton called the drilling permit delays “ridiculous” at a time when the economy was struggling to rebuild.
66
In March 2011, Obama reacted to the criticism in his usual manner, indignantly blaming the oil companies for their own lack of drilling. In a press conference, he suggested that the industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres that “aren’t producing a thing” and announced that he had directed the Department of the Interior to investigate and report back to him so “we can encourage companies to develop the leases they hold and produce American energy.” With amazing chutzpah he added, “People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner.” As
Investors Business Daily
observed, Obama was arguing that the companies were foregoing drilling and profit-making for no discernible reason. “It’s a bizarro-world inversion of the usual complaint against oil companies—that they are reckless and all-too eager to despoil pristine lands in search of black gold.”
67
After greatly contributing to rising gas prices through his systematic assault on domestic energy, Obama, in June 2011, decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from U.S. emergency stockpiles—the Strategic Petroleum Reserve—to bolster the economy. It was striking how casually Obama chose to designate a non-emergency as an emergency to release just a few days’ worth of the nation’s total oil and petroleum consumption.
68
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner denied the decision was a political move, claiming it was designed to meet a shortfall caused by the crisis in Libya and other unrest in the Middle East.
69
In little more than a week it was clear that the move had no appreciable, lasting impact, for oil prices quickly climbed back to their previous levels.
70

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