By Rick Manning –
$220 a barrel oil? That’s what the headlines on MSN blared, with oil industry predicting that the price for a barrel of oil could top the $200 a barrel mark if exports from Libya and Algeria are cut off due to civil unrest in those countries.
For those who don’t follow the spot market on oil, that is more than double the current price for a barrel of oil, and is likely to lead to gasoline prices doubling from their already near historic highs. In an Associated Press article found on the Washington Post, it is estimated that sustained oil prices of as low as $150 a barrel could plunge the economy back into recession.
It doesn’t take an Old Testament prophet to predict that when gas prices are running in the $5-$6 a gallon range in 2012, that the standard liberal tactic to attack oil companies will be all the rage on CNN and MSNBC.
While the Middle East turmoil may have been unavoidable, the Obama Administration’s mind numbing opposition to allow the development our own domestic national resources is either the height of incompetence or borders on treason for its deliberate impact of weakening the American economy.
Any rational government would immediately open up as many sources as possible to begin producing domestic oil and gas rapidly. Instead, the Administration has declared the Eastern Seaboard off limits for drilling, has moved against proven oil drilling sites in the Arctic Sea, refuses to consider opening Alaska’s ANWR, and is dawdling in re-opening drilling in the Gulf.
Nero had nothing on Obama when it comes to partying while his nation is in crisis.
Of course, environmentalists are actively rooting for this economy choking development, as Daniel Gatti of the green website, The Grist, writes, “Oil prices above $5 per gallon would make oil dependence the paramount energy and economic issue of the next Congress.”
Gatti argues that this is the opportunity for environmentalists to push for more renewable energy and finally end their war on fossil fuels.
Of course, Gatti fails to acknowledge that environmentalists will be almost solely responsible for the crisis that they hope to benefit from, as their short-sided, political war on U.S. domestic energy production has directly resulted in our extreme dependence upon foreign oil in the first place.
Natural gas? They don’t like it, because they believe that new drilling techniques are environmentally unsafe. No science behind it, but if it is drilled, it must be bad.
Coal? Forget about it, even the cleanest burning coal is inherently evil, after all have you seen pictures of how dirty those miners get, yech.
Nuclear? Obama’s Energy Department has illegally ended the only plan for safe storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, so this clean energy producing source is being hamstrung at every turn. Besides, nuclear power plants are run by people like Homer Simpson, and we don’t want that.
Oil? C’mon, there isn’t enough of a supply, but even if there is, it requires drilling in areas that are just too pristine to touch. You can’t drill in Alaska — too perfect, no people, so we have to protect it. You can’t drill the abundant reserves off the coast of California — too many people would see the oil platforms, and besides the tax revenues for the state might actually save them from bankruptcy.
The Gulf Coast? Heck, the Obama Administration has been declared in “contempt of court” by a federal judge in New Orleans due to their refusal to follow a decision to reopen the Gulf Coast to drilling.
So even though the Bakken Oil Field in Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan, Canada looks to rival the Saudi oil fields, environmentalist strangleholds on production of other domestic fields has put the U.S. economy at the mercy of Islamist extremist revolutions in the Middle East.
The only questions that remain are whether the Obama Administration is incompetent or willfully negligent, and whether the American public will finally declare an end to this “green” madness that is directly responsible for what I fear is the final American economic death spiral.
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications of Americans for Limited Government.
