ICYMI: The Oklahoman's Editorial

Below is an editorial from the Oklahoman about the American Products, American Power bus tour, a project of the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance.

Get out of the way.

That, in a nutshell, is the message preached by the American Energy Alliance, a right-leaning nonprofit that stumps for free-market energy policy. The AEA, whose multistate bus tour stopped in Oklahoma City last week, has its megaphone aimed squarely at the Obama administration, which has spent nearly four years looking for ways to curb the production of energy that doesn’t have a distinctly green hue.

While fast-tracking approval of projects such as Solyndra, and burning through hundreds of millions in government money in the process, the administration has tried to increase the tax burden on oil and gas producers — the one segment of the economy that’s actually creating jobs — made it more difficult to drill, and rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.

“This tour is about American products and American power, about the goods made from these products and about the threats from government,” AEA President Tom Pyle told The Oklahoman’s Opinion Page writers. “The only thing standing in the way is Washington, and in some places statehouses. Not here in Oklahoma, though.”

That’s because we get it here in Oklahoma. We understand the benefits of a robust oil and gas industry. Obama doesn’t — which helps explain why, as The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial Friday, federal acres available for leasing and exploration are down 18 percent since 2008, and the permitting rate is 37 percent slower. The average time needed to get a federal drilling permit? More than 300 days!

Mitt Romney gets it, too. Romney’s energy plan, unveiled last week, would untangle many of the burdensome regulations imposed by this administration and allow this sector to expand and create more jobs.

The fact that Romney’s plan was immediately dismissed by Obama’s minions as a sop to “Big Oil” speaks volumes.

Electing Romney would help get Washington out of the way. It’s something to consider on Nov. 6.