Source: Wash Examiner

First lady Michelle Obama skis at Buttermilk ski area on Saturday in Aspen, Colo. The first lady is spending Presidents Day weekend in Aspen with her daughters, Sasha and Malia. (AP Photo/Aspen Daily News, Chris Council)

Obama rejects Keystone XL jobs, promotes more wind and solar subsidies. What to do now?

Paul Driessen

President Obama “is focused like a laser on putting people back to work,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) assured us last fall – echoing repeated statements by President Obama and Administration officials who “can’t wait” for Congress or others to take action and create jobs.

The jobs thing didn’t last long, however. The President soon vetoed TransCanada’s application for permits to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Approving them “would not be in the national interest,” he declared.

It is hard for most Americans to understand how it is contrary to the national interest to create 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs, increase US gross domestic product by an estimated $350 billion, and bring 830,000 barrels of oil per day via pipeline from friend and neighbor Canada to Texas refineries. It’s hard for us to grasp how pipelining Canadian oil is worse than importing oil in much riskier tankers from unstable, unfriendly places like Venezuela and the Middle East – or how it’s better for the global environment to transport Canadian oil by tanker to China, where it will be burned under far less rigorous pollution laws and controls. (more…)

Source:  Townhall

When it comes China, President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Speech last month was nothing more than a rhetorical exercise from the political pied piper, who, along with his supporters, believes his own words magically alter reality. He is oblivious to his own hypocrisy and frighteningly disconnected from the consequences of his policies. The Chinese probably love him for it.

Obama spoke of “American energy,” but his policies encourage reliance on unpredictable regimes like China and turn away from friendly trading partners.

Obama spoke of fairness, criticizing China for subsidized manufacturing while his policy is to heavily subsidize industry with money borrowed from China.

His references to China appeared weak in the wake of China’s strategy to influence U.S. economic and military policy and to control the world’s energy resources. (more…)

Source:  Sen. Inhofe

“Today, hundreds of Americans learned that they will be losing their good-paying jobs because of the Obama EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda,” Senator Inhofe said. “Due to EPA’s forthcoming Utility MACT rule, FirstEnergy will be closing six power plants, which will put 529 Americans out of work in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland – states that have already been hit hard by the recession. (more…)

Source:  Wash times

Checking his sundial and solar-powered calendar, Barack Obama has decided that he did not have enough time to study the impact of the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, so he killed it.

Seriously. That was the excuse for halting a project that could have created 20,000 jobs, brought 830,000 barrels of oil a day to Texas refineries and helped free America from unstable dictators’ stranglehold on our energy supply.

This from the man who had to hurry, hurry, hurry and jam the 2,700-page Obamacare bill down America’s throat so, as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “you can, uh, find out what is in it.” He’s also the same guy who, in March, went to Brazil, cup in hand, asking the Brazilians to hurry up and develop their offshore oil so we could buy some. (more…)

Source: Wash times

by Gale Norton

Which nation will be the world’s leading superpower a few decades from now? I fervently hope it is the United States, and I have great faith in American ingenuity. But the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is a reminder of why our No. 1 position is in jeopardy.

The Keystone XL pipeline would bring oil from the Canadian oil sands and North Dakota’s Bakken Formation to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline has been in the regulatory approval process since 2008. Its eight-volume environmental impact statement was produced following myriad studies, hearings, public comments and reviews by multiple agencies and each of the states along the route. (more…)

Source:  SPPI

White House, environmentalists and U.S foundations seek to block all oil sands development

by Duggan Flanakin and Redmond Weissenberger

Oilfield workers in Alberta, refinery workers in Texas and countless factory workers just learned that the White House will not allow construction of an oil pipeline that would bring over half a million barrels of oil a day from Canada’s Alberta Province and North Dakota’s Bakken Field to refineries in Texas and Louisiana. The job-killing decision was a victory for radical environmentalists and well-heeled U.S. foundations that have long battled Canadian oil sands companies and the U.S. oil and gas industry.

President Obama says Congress gave him insufficient time to examine environmental issues. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP can reapply, he added, if it reroutes the pipeline around Nebraska’s Oglala Aquifer and Sand Hills area and addresses other concerns. In the meantime, the Administration insists, the project “would not serve the national interest.” (more…)

Source: Wash Times

BUENOS AIRES — Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40 percent of that coming from the seabed. One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.

The United States wants it, but China is getting it. (more…)

Source: Bloomberg

President Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”

The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.

Currently, 99 percent of Canada’s crude exports go to the U.S., a figure that Harper wants to reduce in his bid to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets. (more…)

Source:  National Journal

In a decision that quickly re-ignited a fierce energy debate, the Obama administration on Wednesday rejected the controversial Keystone XL pipeline because the 60-day deadline imposed by Republicans did not allow adequate time to review an alternate route through an ecologically sensitive area in Nebraska.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns made the announcement on President Obama’s behalf on the project that would carry oil from Canada’s carbon-heavy tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. TransCanada, the company seeking to build the $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline, will be able to reapply with a new route avoiding an ecologically sensitive area of Nebraska, sources told National Journal.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, decried the news. “President Obama is about to destroy tens of thousands of American jobs and sell American energy security to the Chinese,” said Brendan Buck. “The president won’t stand up to his political base even to create American jobs. This is not the end of this fight.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also jumped on it. “The president’s focused more on the next election than on the next generation.” (more…)

Source: The Global Warming Policy Foundation

CCNet –  17 January 2012

Obama Discovers Shale Gas

 A re-election campaign is a terrible thing to waste, and this year’s race is already producing miraculous changes at the Obama White House: The latest example of a bear walking on its hind legs is the President’s new embrace of … natural gas from shale. The catch is that this endorsement runs against every energy policy pursued by the Obama Administration for three years. It’s certainly smart politics for Mr. Obama to distance himself from the anti-fossil fuels obsessives, and no doubt his political advisers are hoping it helps this fall in the likes of Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, this could be a one-year wonder, and if he wins Mr. Obama might revert to form in 2013. –- Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 17 January 2012 (more…)

Source:  Global Warming Policy Foundation

Protesting tar sands development

It is a cliché in journalism to declare metaphorical wars at the drop of a news release. In this case, it looks like war is exactly what Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver launched Monday in an unprecedented open letter warning that Canada will not allow “environmental and other radical groups” to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” What a welcome war this is. Never before has a Canadian politician challenged the hitherto saintly protectors of the environment in such direct language. –Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, 10 January 2012 (more…)