By Rick Manning — The irony of the Obama Administration excitedly proclaiming the good news that a portion of the Obama Administration-maligned Keystone XL pipeline would be built from Oklahoma to Texas shows a chutzpah unlikely to be seen again in the District.
The pipeline has been the subject of intense debate in Washington as Calgary-based TransCanada Corporation has sought Obama’s approval to build a pipeline from the oil rich Alberta, Canada province to American refiners in the Houston area. And in an election year giveaway to his extremist environmentalist base, Obama has denied TransCanada’s application to build it.
Let’s be clear. Obama only controls about three inches of the pipeline — the three inches that cross the U.S./Canada border. He has nothing to say about whether TransCanada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the border, and nothing to say about whether a pipeline gets built from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas.
That is not the Obama State Department’s jurisdiction.
So, the White House’s laughable jumping for joy at the announcement that a portion of the domestic pipeline from the major crude oil refining and marketing hub of Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas borders would be built is beyond absurd.
Here are some basic facts.
Oil production in the lower 48 states has begun to accelerate due to increases in production on private and state lands. Production on federal land has fallen off severely since Obama took office.
Obama’s EPA is now looking into whether they should continue to allow the very technology to exist that has created the oil and natural gas boom in states like North Dakota, and has revived oil producing fields in west Texas. Incredibly, one stroke of Obama’s environmental avenger, Lisa Jackson’s pen, and the entire boom can go bust.
The Canadian oil that Obama’s environmental allies fear is “dirty” will get produced and shipped either to the U.S. or to China. That is inevitable. If we ever get a President who actually has U.S. interests at heart, we will refine the Alberta sands oil using the most up to date environmental standards rather than the haphazard approaches taken in China.
Due to the failure of the federal government to allow the expansion of oil drilling and exploration in Alaska, the state with the greatest amount of oil reserves is actually declining in production, and is projected to fall behind North Dakota by the end of this year in total production. By the way, to provide perspective, the state of North Dakota is now producing enough oil to replace every drop of oil that our nation imports from Iraq.
And in one of the shockingly, blindingly obvious statements of all time, Bloomberg News quotes Hamza Khan, an analyst with Schork Group, Inc. in Villanova, Pennsylvania saying, “Production will increase and prices will fall.”
Imagine that, producing more oil will make the prices fall much to the beleaguered consumers delight.
Now, if only Obama’s economic and social engineering environmental jihadists would get out of the way, America could have a safe and secure oil, natural gas and coal based energy future at an affordable cost.
Perhaps it is time for Sarah Palin to reunite the band, and go back out on the “Drill, Baby, Drill” tour.
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government.
