Gas Prices Have Risen 55% On Obama’s Watch And Continue To Soar

Remember all the blame directed at George Bush when gas prices rose?  Remember how the Democrats literally began federal investigations over the price increases in what amounted to a political hit job?

Well, gasoline prices have quietly increased 55%, a dollar a gallon, under Obama’s watch, and suddenly the same Democrats who swore that high crimes and misdemeanors had been committed under Bush are now completely silent.

From the Washington Times:

Gas up $1 a gallon on Obama’s watch
Pressure rises for exploration
Thursday, March 25, 2010
By Stephen Dinan  and Kara Rowland

Gas prices have risen $1 since just after President Obama took office in January 2009 and are now closing in on the $3 mark, prompting an evaluation of the administration’s energy record and calls for the White House to open more U.S. land for oil exploration.

The average price per gallon across the U.S. hit $2.81 this week, according to the Energy Information Administration. That was up from $1.81 the week of Jan. 26, 2009, just after the inauguration, and marks the highest price since Oct. 20, 2008.

John B. Townsend II, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said price increases are a result of the cost of crude oil, thanks to a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries not to raise production even as economic growth in countries such as Russia and China spurs more demand.

“From all indications, we’re going to see $3 gas again this summer,” he said.

The Obama administration also blames the market for the high prices and argues that its record for expanding energy development has been solid over the past year.

“The prices are set by the world market,” said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which manages federal lands that would be leased for oil exploration.

Gas prices have been on a roller-coaster ride over the past decade, dropping to near $1 after President George W. Bush’s first year in office, crossing the $2 mark in 2005 and reaching $4 in June 2008 before Congress and Mr. Bush took action, lifting presidential and congressionally imposed moratoriums on expanding offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Mr. Bush lifted the presidential moratorium in July that year. The congressional moratorium expired Sept. 30, and prices fell precipitously, dropping more than $1 in October.

“The reason that it dropped is because the U.S. sent a signal to the markets, by dropping the moratoria, that we’re going to drill on our lands. Obviously, we never followed up, and thus you see the crisis gradually rising,” said Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee.

He said the solution is the same for both the short-term and long-term prices: Assure the markets that the U.S. will pursue domestic exploration.

You can see the impact that America drilling for its own oil has on prices – and how despicable the mainstream media can be in covering up the truth – in the following CBS piece entitled “The Immediate Benefit Of Offshore Drilling” from July 17, 2008:

After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132.

So what happened? As is usually the case with markets, a variety of factors caused this dramatic drop. According to the Associated Press, the Energy Information Administration announced that U.S. crude-oil supplies rose by 3 million barrels; beleaguered banks have been selling off valuable energy contracts to pay for other debts; and there’s even some speculation that computer programs used by Wall Street may create a “cascading effect” once prices start to drop.

But bizarrely, the AP didn’t mention that on Monday – again, the day of the single biggest one-day drop in oil prices in five years – President Bush removed the executive order imposing a moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States.

To think that this dramatic and unexpected move by the Bush administration didn’t have a significant effect on oil prices is folly. Even Democrats admit that relatively small margins in oil production could have a huge impact on prices.

The price per barrel of crude oil – which was at an all-time high the day Bush signed the moratorium that ended the ban on offshore drilling after going up and up and up to that point – continued to drop and drop.  By September, it was below $109 a barrel.  By October it had dropped even more.  And it kept dropping.

But now in the age of Obama, it’s going up and up and up again.  We have had a 55% increase in the price of our gasoline during a terrible recession.  Obama’s energy policies have hurt this nation badly at an incredibly vulnerable period, without so much as a peep from most of the media.

Barack Obama threatened to bankrupt the coal industry – which produces 49% of our nation’s electricity – and said that:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

He told just enough lies and half-truths to get coal-state Democrats such as  West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller to get them to believe he wouldn’t destroy their economies.  But now that he’s elected he’s free to break those promises and pursue ruinous policies.  Rockefeller is now saying of Obama that:

“he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

But it’s like, “Sorry Sucker.”  When you vote like a fool, you receive a fool’s fate.

Anyway, maybe you thought, “Well, I’m not in a coal producing state,” or “I’m not in a coal-fired electric grid,” so you thought Obama’s shockingly bad energy policies didn’t matter.

But you’re still going to have to put gas in your car, and Obama’s going to see to it that it costs you a pretty penny to do it.

In fact, gas will have to rise to the European level prices of at least $7/gallon in order for Obama’s policies to impact CO2 levels as per his energy policy.  So you can bet that fuel prices will continue to rise, and rise, and rise.

We’ve had a clear call from the American people to drill for our own oil before.  The Democrats who stopped us from drilling in the first place went utterly nutjob ballistic –

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

– in their campaign to prevent domestic energy production – until an overwhelming majority in American opinion made them change their tune.  And then they pledged that they would allow the offshore drilling ban to expire.

Only they didn’t, because Democrats are liars without shame.  Obama signed a brand new moratorium banning domestic drilling.  There will be no domestic energy production under his watch – unless you count the pathetic little toys he says he’ll build that won’t even put so much as a scratch our energy requirements.

Oh, Obama was perfectly willing to lie to us about domestic oil the same way he lied to Jay Rockefeller about domestic coal.  Lies come incredibly easy for Obama – especially since the lamestream propaganda won’t expose him – which leaves him free to tell a whopping load of them.

We have TRILLIONS of barrels of recoverable oil.

Democrats keep saying that there’s no point drilling for our own oil because it would take ten years for the oil to get into system and bring prices down.  First of all that isn’t true; energy companies say they could be up and running in only 3-4 years.  But even if we assume their ten-year figure, they’ve been saying it for decades – and if we’d drilled ten years’ ago, we’d have that oil in our system NOW, wouldn’t we?

Obama’s policy is based upon undermining oil, coal, and natural gas in order to foster the development of solar, wind, and other energy methods that the moonbeam crowd favor.

Here’s the problem: we can’t even BEGIN to address our energy needs with these “environmental” sources.  You get so much more energy at so much lower of a cost from oil, coal, and natural gas versus solar or wind that it isn’t even funny.

A couple of charts illustrate this point:

.

We need to harness our domestic energy.  We need oil, coal, and natural gas.

We’re not going to get them under Obama, or under any form of Democrat rule.

You can count on seeing a shocking trend of higher and higher gasoline prices, to go with a “necessary skyrocketing” of our energy prices, under Barack Obama.

At least until we vote Democrats out of office.

Dishonest Obama Administration Lies Re: People’s Demand To Harness America’s Oil Resources

From Big Government.com

Drillgate: Internal Emails Shows Obama Team Lying to Public
by Vince Haley

If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance.  In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan.  The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration.  The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies.  Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job.  Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people.  It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising.  But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.

This newly gained insight into the anti-energy exploration mindset within the Department of the Interior allows a new perspective of President Obama’s mention of offshore development in his recent State of the Union address.  Here is the one paragraph in which the President described offshore development:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.  It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.  And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

To the passive listener, it sounded like President Obama expressed at least rhetorical support for offshore drilling.

But the President only says we must make “tough decisions” on offshore drilling, deliberately refusing to apply that standard to other decisions on energy.

But tough for whom? Certainly not for the public that overwhelmingly supports more offshore drilling.

Indeed, the only person facing a tough decision is the President since an important part of his political base is opposed to new American energy development.

Bucking public opinion would indeed be a tough decision for this President, but he has shown himself quite comfortable with bucking public opinion to pursue stunningly unpopular policies on health care and cap and trade.

In short, it’s a fair conclusion that the tough decisions the President identified in his State of the Union was his intended decision not to pursue any new offshore oil and gas development. The actions by Salazar and his team are entirely consistent with that conclusion.

What makes all of this dispiriting, especially this month, is that with 15 million Americans out of work and with the President’s recently submitted budget projecting trillion dollar annual deficits for the next ten years and a near tripling of the national debt by 2020, the President is throwing away a golden opportunity over the next three decades to create millions of new jobs and generate more than $270 billion in annual economic growth from new oil and gas development, including $54 billion annually in federal tax receipts that could help lower the federal deficit and the national debt.

These extraordinary benefits of job creation and economic growth – all without requiring any federal spending – are, sadly, not on President Obama’s agenda, notwithstanding all the phony rhetoric to the contrary.

Indeed, we can look forward to the President’s continued strategy of dance, delay, and deceive.

In contrast to opening up our vital oil fields, which would have a huge positive impact in terms of both jobs, the economy, and our national security, it is interesting to compare Obama’s energy policy.

In Obama’s own words:

“You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

You had a chance to decide which policy you wanted 16 months ago – and you chose national bankruptcy.

We voted for this foolish clown.  I guess we deserve to suffer until he’s finally, mercifully gone.