Oil Rhetoric


Mitt Romney has been campaigning in New Hampshire. According to Reuters, he "said he believed Obama was contributing to oil price pressures by not pursuing an energy policy aimed at drilling more and increasing America's supply." U.S. Representative James Lankford (R-OK) claimed "Americans are looking for leadership to tackle the rising gas prices, but President Obama has only offered a tax increase on energy and the prospect of reduced supply. For more than two years, his administration has knowingly increased energy prices by choking off new sources of traditional American energy and smothering our economy in new energy regulations."

But as usual, no one can outdo the former governor of Alaska. On her Facebook page on Tuesday, Sarah Palin charged

Taken altogether, it’s hard to deny that the Obama Administration is anti-drilling. The President may try to suggest that the rise in oil prices has nothing to do with him, but the American people won’t be fooled.

If Mrs. Palin read any newspapers, she might have learned

More than two-thirds of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico are sitting idle, neither producing oil and gas, nor being actively explored by the companies who hold the leases, according to a Department of Interior report released Tuesday.

Those inactive swaths of the Gulf could potentially hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Interior said in the report obtained by The Associated Press.

President Barack Obama ordered the report earlier this month amid pressure to curb a spike in gasoline prices following instability in the oil-rich Middle East. The White House said Obama would outline his plans for America’s energy security in a speech in Washington today.

The inefficiencies detailed in the Interior Department report also extend to onshore oil and gas leases on federal lands, with 45 percent of those leases deemed inactive. The department said it is currently exploring options to provide companies with additional incentives for more rapid development of oil and gas resources from existing and future leases.

Or she might have learned of the ten deep water drilling permits approved by the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from February 28 through April 8 of this year.

Still, the Obama Administration, in Palin's imagination, must be "anti-drilling." The permits were granted by the socialist-in-chief even though

The blowout preventer that should have stopped the BP oil spill cold failed because of faulty design and a bent piece of pipe, a testing firm hired by the government said Wednesday in a report that appears to shift some blame for the disaster away from the oil giant and toward those who built and maintained the 300-ton safety device.

At least one outside expert said the findings cast serious doubt on the reliability of all the other blowout preventers used by the drilling industry.

The failure of the piece of equipment intended to prevent tragedies like the Deepwater Horizon spill was no fluke; it's how it was designed. And still permits are issued, while domestic oil production has held steady and net imports have declined since Obama became president.

What is not steady is Sarah Palin.

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