Deepwater Spill Was Just an Excuse
The problem the U.S. faces, of course, is not too much overseas competition per se from adversaries like Cuba or China. It is domestic restrictions and regulations that restrict the nation’s ability to drill for its own oil and natural gas.
By Bill Wilson at GetLiberty.org
EXCERPTS:
When even Cuba, which minus Chinese assistance lacks the technological capability to do so, is looking to drill for oil in the deep waters just 50 miles off the coast of the U.S., but we refuse to do so, clearly the nation is falling behind in the global energy race.
According to data collected by the Energy Information Agency (EIA), in 1970 the U.S. produced 9.6 million barrels of oil every day. Now only 5.5 million barrels are produced a day, a 42 percent decrease. So precipitous has this decline been that the U.S., which was once energy independent, now imports more than half of its energy.
“[N]ot a single deepwater permit has been issued in nine months,” said Offshore Marine Service Association President Jim Adams in a report by Bloomberg News. The association is calling it an informal moratorium, even though Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar supposedly lifted a second government moratorium on deepwater drilling.
In fact, so rampant has the Obama Administration’s obstruction of U.S. drilling been that federal Judge Martin Feldman blocked Salazar’s first moratorium from being implemented, and then found the government in contempt of court because it refused to follow the order.
But it’s even worse than that. As noted by the editorial board of Investor’s Business Daily, “The moratorium is driven by ideology and not safety. Its purpose was to further the administration’s war on domestic energy production, including a seven-year ban on offshore drilling off both coasts and the eastern Gulf.”
In other words, the Obama Administration is exploiting the oil spill as an excuse to shut down domestic oil production, something the Hard Left has sought for decades.
FULL ARTICLE
Help Make A Difference By Sharing These Articles On Facebook, Twitter And Elsewhere:
