There’s Nothing I Can Do --- I’m Only the President of the United States

     The price of gasoline has been rising toward record highs. The driving public has been clamoring for action. President Obama is telling the American public that he can’t do anything about it! Instead of taking action, or more accurately, telling us why he hasn’t taken any meaningful action since he assumed the office of the President of the United States, he once again tells us it’s not his fault and foists the blame on someone else – this time, “it’s all the fault of the greedy oil companies” and the result of “high crude oil prices driven by geopolitical forces – Middle East instability and increased demand by China and India.”(Ref. 1) Haven’t we heard this before?

     Mr. President, to tell me that as president of the United States you can’t do anything about the problem is insulting. In case you haven’t read your job description, It is your job is to do something! You’ve had nearly four years to do something and you haven’t done anything to head off or solve the problem in all that time. In fact, you’ve exacerbated the problem! And, it’s not like you were blind-sided by the problem. The United States has been facing this dilemma since the Arab oil embargo in the 1970’s.

     Not only are you not solving the problem, but you are giving the American people the misleading impression that actions you have taken have resulted in increased oil and gas production. Nothing could be further from the truth! In a recent “White House report on energy security, {you} assure us that the United States is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.” In addition, you said you are all for “opening new areas in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to exploration.
     “The problem with this claim is that most of the expansion in domestic oil and gas production over the past three years is the result of steps taken by the Bush administration. {You have} actually reduced output from what it would have been had {your} administration not reversed many of President George W. Bush’s policies. [Emphasis mine]
     “Indeed, a 2007 report by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency predicted that oil production from federal lands and offshore sites in 2010 would be 16 percent higher than what {your} policies have actually produced. According to the same report, {your} policies reduced oil production [Emphasis mine] from federal lands and the Gulf of Mexico by 15 percent in 2011 from what it would have been under Bush’s policies and will cause production to decline by another 26 percent in 2012 from the 2010 production high.
     “In addition, the real reason that domestic production is up is because of exploration and production on private and state lands, not federal lands. Production on the latter has actually declined thanks to {your} administration.” (Ref. 1)

     "The bottom line is this administration is taking credit for American energy production while it works to aggressively undermine it." (Ref. 2)

     OK, so you really haven’t done anything to address the problem and, in truth, you’ve actually made the problem worse. What you are doing, in an attempt to deflect the anger of the average citizen from you and your administration, is to point your finger at big oil and blame them for the high cost of oil. You repeat the same old tired refrain to the American people that “your tax dollars subsidize the oil industry.” But, in reality, these subsidies “are tax credits such as the ‘expensing’ of intangible drilling costs, a provision of the tax code since its inception designed to minimize risk for companies engaged in enterprises that, if they produce returns at all, will do so in the future.” Do the oil companies really receive unfair tax subsidies? Consider the following in the context of “subsidies” to oil and gas companies compared to taxpayer funded “incentives to clean energy developers. “Oil and gas producers receive 25 cents per unit of production while wind and solar receive around $24 per unit. Another way of looking at the issue is to note that while fossil fuels get one-third of subsidies today, they account for 80 percent of our total energy. The two thirds that go for renewables account for less than 5 percent of our energy.”(Ref. 1)

     While President Obama doesn’t know what to do to combat the high fuel prices facing Americans, he does know how to feed the taxpayers’ money into green energy initiatives – apparently, he doesn’t trust the America’s private sector to know how to pick the winners in the free market place. He and his administration know better – just see how successful the government was with its investment in Solyndra. It seems that Obama is still a fan of crony capitalism and has learned nothing from the Solyndra fiasco. “During a speech at the University of Miami in February, he touted more of the same, including ‘investing’ in fuel from algae, which he claims could replace up to 17 percent of imported oil.” (Ref. 1) Good luck!

     While the President says he doesn’t know how to solve the problem of high gasoline prices, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, says that he knows what to do. His solution is to call “on Saudi Arabia to boost its oil production in order to suppress a politically intolerable rise in the price of gasoline in the U.S.
     “Such chutzpah, even in this cynical age, is eye-opening, Why should we go to the Saudis on bended knee? Why, for God’s sake, don’t we boost our own oil production?
     “Permits for drilling offshore and on government-owned lands are down sharply since Barack Obama took office. His administration, for instance, refuses to open up … Alaska’s Arctic National wildlife Refuge that is laden with oil and gas. Drilling there could be done with no environmental harm. The President has also stymied the Keystone Pipeline from Canada, which would give us an extra million barrels of oil a day from a friendly neighbor.” (Ref. 3)

     While the President talks a good game, his actions and those of his Democratic cohorts demonstrate that they would rather increase America’s dependence of foreign oil than take the steps needed to guarantee our energy independence and maintain a stable price for energy.

     It should not have come as any surprise to President Obama that there is an energy problem. A global energy problem has existed for over 3 decades. Those of us over 40 recall that, in 1973, several Arab exporting nations imposed an embargo because of the Arab-Israel Yom Kippur war. This Arab oil embargo brought to the attention of the American public the fact that we no longer controlled our supply of petroleum. We found out that we were highly dependent upon imported oil, primarily imported Arab oil. When the oil spigot from the Arab countries was turned off, we saw the cost of unrefined oil jump up alarmingly, spurring double-digit inflation and a painful recession. After a second oil shock in 1979-80, oil’s price hit a new high. In addition to the skyrocketing cost of oil and gasoline, motorists queued up in long lines at gas stations because there was a resultant shortage of fuel at any price. Today, much of America’s economic and national security is mortgaged to some of the world’s most unstable and despotic nations: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria and even Russia. This is not a desirable situation since secure energy supplies are at the heart of America’s well-being. Some one hundred years ago, Mark Requa, chief engineer of the U.S. Bureau of mines wrote: "We must either plan for a future or we must pass into a condition of commercial vassalage, in time of peace relying on some foreign country for the petroleum wherewith to lubricate the highways of commerce, in time of war at the mercy of the enemy who may . . . control the source of supply." (Ref. 4.) This is as true in 2012 as it was in 1909.

     In 2008, oil prices soared to over $4.00 a gallon. The nation was appalled. Congress held hearings. The oil companies were scolded for the high price of their products and their executives were excoriated for the "obscene profits" of their companies.

     There was panic in the 1970's over the price and supply of petroleum. There was rage at the high price of petroleum in 2008. What has President Obama and his administration done to solve the energy problem since then? He has failed to generate and implement any comprehensive long term energy policy for our nation. As the President has admitted, we continue to be held captive to foreign sources of gas and petroleum and he tells us there is nothing he can do about it.

     Why has he not proposed and put in action a comprehensive plan that would include many of the following steps?

• Reduce speed limits to 55 MPH.
• Effectively raise the price of gasoline from imported oil to $7 a gallon and guarantee to maintain that price, inflation adjusted, for a relatively long period of time in order to provide incentives for increasing the supply of domestic supplies of oil and gas and to encourage the commercialization of alternative energy sources.
• Increase off-shore oil/gas exploration and drilling.
• Allow oil/gas exploration and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) North Slope in Alaska.
• Provide meaningful subsidies for the development, installation and maintenance of: solar energy; wind energy and geothermal energy.
• Streamline the process for siting and building wind turbine farms and marine LNG terminals.
• Eliminate all the bottlenecks to the continued development and deployment in the U.S. of nuclear power.
• Eliminate all the bottlenecks to the continued development and deployment in the U.S. of the exploration, development, and distribution of natural gas.
• Provide financial and regulatory support for updating and improving the electrical power grid distribution system in the U.S.
• Tighten car-fuel economy standards and eliminate the exceptions to these standards.
• Provide long term support for research, development and the start of a commercial leasing program on federal lands to hasten the development of oil shale reserves in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
• Provide meaningful financial incentives for energy conservation and enforce penalties for failure to conserve energy.
• Increase the use of "clean" coal (gasification, removal of pollutants, etc.).
• Computerize and coordinate traffic signals throughout the nation.
• Encourage the development and production of lighter-weight but safe vehicles.
• Provide incentives for the increased use of hybrid and/or alternate fuel burning vehicles (ethanol, propane, etc.).
• Require that all non-essential illumination at night in buildings, on advertising signs, etc. be eliminated.
• Subsidize mass transit and encourage its use in place of automobiles where appropriate.
• Encourage as large a segment of U.S. businesses, schools and public agencies as possible to work four 10-hour days instead of the current five 8-hour days.
• Expedite the permitting and construction of the Keystone Canada-to-Gulf of Mexico oil pipe line.
• Discourage government attempts to micromanage the energy market and pick winners and losers. We need to let the free market do that.