News

“The energy debate has changed from scarcity to abundance . . .”  Where have I heard that before?  Oh right, we’ve been saying it for years.  Keep this story in mind over the next few years, because the environmentalists really object to liquids coming out of the shale.  When the Utica comes on line, and the Bakken is going full-out, then the attacks will being in earnest Financial Post (11/21/11) reports: While the green movement naively harbours hopes it will be able to shut down unconventional oil and gas development, in Saudi Arabia they are already contemplating a time when North American fossil fuel will replace their oil…Looking past the din of protesters, state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco is resigned to the fact that its influence will wane because of the massive unconventional fossil-fuel development underway in North America. As such, Saudi Arabia has no plans to raise its production output to 15 million barrels per day from 12 million, said Khalid Al-Falih, the powerful chief executive of Aramco.

Two things.  First, this dude has got 50 billion dollars lying around; maybe he should invest in whatever (instead of “the United States” by which we assume he means “taxpayers”).  Second, I would rather we invest in making sure that Windows actually works (does anyone use Windows anymore?) CNET News (11/21/11) reports: Even though it’s supposed to be a time of federal fiscal austerity, Bill Gates says it’s time to double down on energy research…The software industry icon and philanthropist on Friday published an editorial in Science calling for a massive boost in federal energy research and development from about $5 billion a year now to $16 billion…”In a time of economic crisis, asking policymakers in Washington, D.C., to spend more money might not be the most popular position. But it’s essential to protect America’s national interests and ensure that the United States plays a leading role in the fast-growing global clean energy industry,” Gates wrote, noting that federally funded research in energy has dropped by more than 75 percent in the last three decades.

“California had a gun to their head.”  Isn’t that a pretty good description of how this whole crew operates? Los Angeles Times (11/21/11) reports: Reporting from Washington — On an August morning in 2008, a handful of executives from the country’s top car companies, several environmentalists and two of California’s most powerful pollution regulators met in a windowless conference room in a hotel next to Los Angeles International Airport…For 30 years, the car companies had been locked in battle with California and environmentalists over increasing vehicle fuel efficiency and cutting air pollution.

The gravy train is set to leave at the end of December and it’s powered by coal Bloomberg (11/22/11) reports: U.S. renewable energy developers will need to find new sources of funding after incentives backed by federal stimulus programs wind down, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance…Renewable energy companies have received more than $65 billion in tax credits, grants and loans offered through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the research company said today in a statement…“Nearly all of those stimulus funds have now been deployed,” BNEF said. “Unless the private sector steps into the breach with substantial new investment, project development will slow.”…One important incentive that’s set to end Dec. 31 is the U.S. Treasury Department’s 1603 cash grant program, which repays developers for 30 percent of projects’ costs.

When you can’t win…delay The Hill (11/22/11) reports: The Environmental Protection Agency will not meet a mid-December deadline to propose first-time standards for greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries…Draft rules had been slated to surface in the middle of next month under a settlement with environmentalists and other parties, but EPA says it needs more time…“EPA expects to need more time to complete work on greenhouse gas pollution standards for oil refineries, and is working with the litigants to develop a new schedule to replace the current date of mid-December for a rule proposal,” the agency said in a statement Monday.

Let’s see, Doug Foy.  Gina McCarthy.  John Holdren.  Boyden Gray.  Jim Connaughton.  What do all these people have in common?  That’s easy; they all want to destroy the American industrial economy.  They were all appointed by or consulted with Governor Romney on energy and environmental issues.  They are all Obama Administration appointees (not really, only Gina and John; Jim and Boyden just seem like Obama appointees) Hot Air (10/15/11) reports: Conservatives know well that Mitt Romney has so far refused to back away from his contention that anthropogenic global warming is real, and yet the former Massachusetts governor continues to lead the Republican race for the presidential nomination.  In seven debates, none  of Romney’s competitors have challenged him on this position.  This week, however, the blog Moonbattery found a very interesting memo from Romney’s office in 2005 announcing tough new regulations on emissions — and noting a partnership with a familiar conservative bête noire in this administration.

Of course, one important difference is that Governor Perry never made out on a white couch with Nancy Pelosi.  And he has yet been dopey enough to hire Ed Rollins to do anything Politico (10/15/11) reports: Expanding oil and gas exploration, repealing environmental regulations and restructuring the Environmental Protection Agency are some of the cornerstones of Rick Perry’s energy plan…Also Newt Gingrich’s… The Texas governor’s energy platform, unveiled in a speech Friday morning, is stirring up calls of copycat from the Republican presidential field…A key part of Perry’s 41-page plan deals with dramatically transforming the EPA into an agency that largely serves as a referee between states. Perry’s EPA wouldn’t issue any technology standards or emissions limits, and it would operate with 40 percent of its current budget.

We bore you with this all the time, but the irreducible minimum is that we have all the oil and gas resources we need.  North Dakota (today) and Ohio (tomorrow) and someplace else the day after that is about to prove our point Business Week (10/14/11) reports: North Dakota will likely leapfrog California and may even overtake Alaska in the next year — far outpacing earlier industry predictions — to become one of the nation’s three biggest oil-producing states, a government regulator said…Government and industry officials had predicted that North Dakota likely would hit the No. 2 spot within the decade but the explosion of drilling activity has accelerated the timeline.

Two things about this.  First, take a look at the date stamp of the story.  That’s right, the Administration was so proud of this that they took it out with the trash on Friday evening.  Second, the House Rs pretty much hit the bulls-eye.  There is clearly something there that the President and his crew would rather we not see Politico (10/14/11) reports: President Barack Obama won’t be sharing his BlackBerry messages with House investigators seeking communications about Solyndra, the White House told Hill Republicans on Friday…White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders that they should still be happy with the trove of Solyndra-related documents they’re getting from federal agencies including DOE, the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget.

We’ve also had cars that ran on water.  But my guess is that those pimping for the Chevy Volt and the Leaf and other golf carts won’t talk much about that Daily Caller (10/14/11) reports: Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt, the highly touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called “not a step forward, but a leap forward.”…The executives at Chevrolet can rest easy for now. Since the Roberts was constructed in an age before Henry Ford’s mass production, the 115-year-old electric car is one of a kind.

We hate it when we are right because that means we lost money — Solyndra’s little brother is able to join the ash heap of failed government dreams New York Times (10/15/11) reports: Three weeks before Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer, based in Fremont, declared bankruptcy, the United States Department of Energy issued a $197 million loan guarantee to another Bay Area solar company that uses the same innovative, but risky, technology…Like Solyndra, which failed despite a $535 million federal loan guarantee, SoloPower, based in San Jose, is a politically connected firm that produces thin film panels built with copper, indium, gallium and selenium (or CIGS) instead of silicon, the basis of most photovoltaic panels.

This is a little complicated.  Let me make it easy.  When you have a commodity defined by stochasticity, and then you mandate its use, things tend to go bad pretty quickly for the remainder of system.  Or, mandating unreliable energy, like wind, is usually not a good idea Bloomberg (10/3/11) reports: The 15 mile-per-hour winds that buffeted northern Germany on July 24 caused the nation’s 21,600 windmills to generate so much power that utilities such as EON AG and RWE AG (RWE) had to pay consumers to take it off the grid…Rather than an anomaly, the event marked the 31st hour this year when power companies lost money on their electricity in the intraday market because of a torrent of supply from wind and solar parks. The phenomenon was unheard of five years ago…With Europe’s wind and solar farms set to triple by 2020, utilities investing in new coal and gas-fired power stations no longer face stable returns. As more renewables come on line, a gas plant owned by RWE or EON that may cost $1 billion to build will be stopped more often from running at full capacity. It may only pay for itself on days like Jan. 31, when clouds and still weather pushed an hour of power on the same-day market above 162 ($220) euros a megawatt-hour after dusk, in peak demand time.

Math is hard — AEA President Tom Pyle adds up the Obama jobs plan and it doesn’t look good for the middle class. I guess it’s easier to have a war with just two sides: ultra rich and hopelessly poor Fox News (10/3/11) reports: President Obama conjured up his favorite boogeyman recently: the oil and gas industry. He reached for it when he released his job creation and deficit reduction package…Despite the fact that the oil and gas industry pays over $86 million a day in income taxes, royalties, bonuses and rents to the federal government, the president claimed that U.S. energy producers have not paid “their fair share.” …The president is proposing an additional $41 billion in new taxes on energy producers. This will result in higher energy prices, more oil imports, and in the end, few jobs in America. No wonder why the economy continues to be mired in an economic funk.

Winning the Future — China cashes in on Western subsidies for solar panel demand and President Obama gets a lesson on the long con. Wall Street Journal (10/4/11) reports: Solar-panel company stocks have plunged to multiyear lows as slowing demand and a glut of panels from Asia have squeezed margins, creating a cloud that could hang over the industry for some time…Shares of U.S. solar-panel giant First Solar Inc. (FSLR) have been trading at four-year lows, while shares of Chinese rival Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP) have reached all-time lows since the company went public in 2005. The Standard & Poor’s Global Clean Energy Index, which includes First Solar, Iberdrola S.A. (IBE.MC) and other renewable energy companies, was down 41% year-to-date as of Monday. That compares to the broader S&P 500 index, which was down 11.3% during the same period.

You know you’re in trouble with the Huffington Post calls BS on green jobs Huffington Post (10/4/11) reports: A $500 million Labor Department program designed to train workers for green jobs has come up far short of its goals, with only 10 percent of participants finding work so far, the agency’s assistant inspector general has found…The report said the low rate makes it unlikely the program will meet the goal of placing nearly 80,000 workers in careers in energy efficiency or renewable energy by 2013…”Grantees have expressed concerns that jobs have not materialized and that job placements have been fewer than expected for this point in the grant program,” said the report from Assistant Inspector General Elliott Lewis.

Brave New World — Turns out Obama realizes he needs oil to run his utopia Wall Street Journal (10/4/11) reports: The Obama administration said Monday it was moving forward with oil-drilling leases off the coast of Alaska issued by the Bush administration in 2008, a victory for oil companies in the battle over Arctic Ocean drilling…The Interior Department said it would uphold nearly 500 leases issued in the Chukchi Sea after several environmental groups challenged the sale of the leases in court… The department’s decision came in response to the lawsuit filed by environmental groups, and those groups still had the option of challenging the department’s determination…Among the companies securing leases in what is known as Lease Sale 193 was Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the energy giant already at the center of another high-profile fight to secure permits to drill in the Arctic.

Last week GAO noted that 42% of the temperature stations run by NOAA don’t actually meet NOAA’s own standards.  This week, they are suggesting that NOAA do something about it.  How much would you like to bet that NOAA’s response is going to be less than prompt and thorough?E&E News (10/3/11) reports: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should develop a policy to track and address weather stations that are sited in ways that could distort the data they collect, the Government Accountability Office said last week…The GAO report examined NOAA’s Historical Climatology Network, which consists of 1,218 weather stations across the United States that record daily minimum and maximum temperatures and precipitation totals. The agency uses those data to monitor the climate, including long-term temperature trends…The GAO report found that last year, 42 percent of the network’s active stations were sited in ways that did not meet one or more of NOAA’s standards for station locations.

Obama doesn’t regret betting on Solyndra–after all, it wasn’t his money he was playing roulette with CNET (10/3/11) reports: President Obama said today he does not regret the loan-guarantee Solyndra received, while recently revealed e-mails show early doubts within the White House about the now-famous solar company…In an interview with ABC News and Yahoo News, Obama said the policy of providing loan guarantees to clean-energy technology companies is sound despite the failure of Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy at the end of August. The company received a $535 million loan guarantee and about $1 billion in private capital…Obama said loan guarantee program is important to developing clean-energy technologies and demonstrating that that U.S. can be an exporter of manufactured goods, rather than only an importer.

“The high value for destroying these gases creates perverse incentives in developing countries to manufacture more of them bringing into question the environmental gains,” Smith said in a statement.”  Are you sure?  Because we only have about 10 years worth of data that says that this whole program is a sham Reuters (10/3/11) reports: New Zealand is looking to exclude the use of U.N. offsets from industrial gas projects in its emissions trading scheme from as soon as 2012, as these offsets threaten to distort the market, the government said on Friday…Climate change minister Nick Smith said he wanted to maintain the integrity of the emissions trading scheme, which is why the government is considering banning offsets from the potent greenhouse gas hydrofluorocarbon-23 (HFC-23) and nitrous oxide credits…”The high value for destroying these gases creates perverse incentives in developing countries to manufacture more of them bringing into question the environmental gains,” Smith said in a statement.

The North Dakota Experiment — we can become the Saudi Arabia of the 21^st century with the right energy policies Wall Street Journal (10/1/11) reports: Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be “completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century.”…”President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy,” he adds. We can’t come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into “green energy” sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas…You’d expect an oilman to make the “drill, baby, drill” pitch. But since 2005 America truly has been in the midst of a revolution in oil and natural gas, which is the nation’s fastest-growing manufacturing sector. No one is more responsible for that resurgence than Mr. Hamm. He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers.

We knew the NYT hated poor people, but Canadians? Editorial Board tells Canada to go to hell New York Times (10/2/11) reports: Unless good sense intervenes, it looks increasingly likely that the State Department will approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry a coarse, acidic crude oil from northern Alberta in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. That would be a mistake…In August, the State Department, which has authority because the pipeline crosses an international boundary, released its final environmental impact statement on the project. It found that the Keystone XL would have “no significant impact” on land and water resources along its route. We, and many others, are skeptical.

Uh-Oh  New York Times (10/2/11) reports: In a remote desert spot in northern Nevada, there is a geothermal plant run by a politically connected clean energy start-up that has relied heavily on an Obama administration loan guarantee and is now facing financial turmoil…The company is Nevada Geothermal Power, which like Solyndra, the now-famous California solar company, is struggling with debt after encountering problems at its only operating plant…After a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was “significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

Having humiliated Mike Bromwich on the question of delayed permitting in the Gulf of Mexico, Dan Yergin decides now is a good time to tell some more truths The Inquirer (10/1/11) reports: With all the excitement over renewable energy, it might be reasonable to assume that fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas will go the way of the steam engine in the next 20 years…Not so fast, says Daniel Yergin, author and one of the most influential voices in the world of energy…”There is always the possibility that something big will happen very quickly, but probably not,” Yergin said in an interview this week before delivering a lecture at the Free Library of Philadelphia…”On a worldwide basis, about 80 percent of energy today is oil, gas, and coal. You say, What’s it going to be in 2030? Most studies say somewhere about 75 percent of the bigger pot.”

The usual Hollywood suspects want to shut down Pebble Mine. It’s too bad they don’t realize they need to copper to build their EV’s and wind turbines Huffington Post (9/30/11) reports: The battle over a copper and gold mine near one of the world’s premier salmon fisheries is headed to the ballot in a vote next week that has turned a normally sleepy local election into a national environmental debate…Voters in southwest Alaska’s Lake and Peninsula Borough are deciding whether to ban large-scale resource extraction activity, including mining, that would destroy or degrade salmon habitat. The measure is aimed squarely at Pebble Mine, the massive gold-and-copper prospect near the headwaters of Bristol Bay…The debate surrounding Pebble has attracted the attention of chefs, Robert Redford and big-name jewelers who have vowed not to sell any gold coming from the project.

We missed this on Friday.  But it is important.  Do you think the threats to the electrical grid are going to increase or decrease when we start installing smart meters everywhere?  That’s right; they are going to increase dramatically.  Maybe FERC will notice before something really bad happens Associated Press (9/30/11) reports: U.S. utilities and industries face a rising number of cyber break-ins by attackers using more sophisticated methods, a senior Homeland Security Department official said during the government’s first media tour of secretive defense labs intended to protect the nation’s power grid, water systems and other vulnerable infrastructure…Acting DHS Deputy Undersecretary Greg Schaffer told reporters Thursday that the world’s utilities and industries increasingly are becoming vulnerable as they wire their industrial machinery to the Internet…”We are connecting equipment that has never been connected before to these global networks,” Schaffer said. Disgruntled employees, hackers and perhaps foreign governments “are knocking on the doors of these systems, and there have been intrusions.”…According to the DHS, Control System Security Program cyber experts based at the Idaho National Laboratory responded to 116 requests for assistance in 2010, and 342 so far this year.

Blinded by the light — Obama Administration rushed the Solyndra loan to boost solar energy production for political points and it worked, but it turns out those are our political points… New York Times (9/23/11) reports: President Obama’s visit to the Solyndra solar panel factory in California last year was choreographed down to the last detail — the 20-by-30-foot American flags, the corporate banners hung just so, the special lighting, even coffee and doughnuts for the Secret Service detail… “It’s here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future,” the president declared in May 2010 to the assembled workers and executives. The start-up business had received a $535 million federal loan guarantee, offered in part to reassert American dominance in solar technology while generating thousands of jobs.

So Long Solyndra — IER released a new video that tells the story of how Solyndra recevied $535 million. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t have a happy ending 

To watch the video, click the image or here.

Does this author really think that oil, natural gas and coal energy production was started by federal government subsidies? If so, we are in worse trouble than I thought New York Times (9/23/11) reports:  The analysis is by Nancy Pfund, a managing partner of DBL Investors of San Francisco, which backs renewable energy ventures, and Ben Healey, an environmentalist who is earning a joint master’s degree in business administration and engineering management at Yale. It traces oil and gas subsidies beginning in 1918, biofuel subsidies since 1980 and renewable electricity subsidies since 1994. All of those are tracked through the end of 2009, meaning that the study does not capture all of the aid to renewable energy in the stimulus bill. It tracks nuclear energy from 1947 to 1999.

You know, we are not going to take sides in this thing.  But this looks bad for Romney.  Really bad.  Although in all fairness, I’m not sure it looks worse than having Jim Connaughton and Boyden Gray hanging around, shooting pool at Romney headquarters National Journal (9/22/11) reports: President Obama can thank Republican Mitt Romney for more than the Massachusetts health care law that helped shape Obama’s national health care plan…One of Romney’s former top state environmental officials during his tenure as Massachusetts governor now oversees air quality at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, playing a key role in the march of environmental regulations to fight climate change and slash pollution from coal-fired power plants that is regularly blasted by Republicans seeking Obama’s job. Sometimes, even Romney himself…House GOP leaders, powerful industry groups like the Chamber of Commerce, tea party groups like Americans for Prosperity, and Romney’s chief rival, GOP front-runner Rick Perry, have essentially declared war on EPA air rules, slamming them as “job-killing regulations” that will tank the economy.

See, when you depend on the federal government, bad things tend to happen Reuters (9/23/11) reports: First Solar Inc (FSLR.O) said it would not meet a deadline to receive a federal loan guarantee for a huge solar power plant it is building in California, sending its shares to their lowest level in more than four years…The announcement cast a spotlight again on the Obama administration’s support of renewable energy, which have come under fire by Republicans since the collapse of solar company Solyndra after it won more than $500 million in backing from the Department of Energy.

We hate to be slaves to the narrative, but again, energy development means more economic growth, more jobs, more tax revenues (pay attention you big government weenies!), and a better life Investors (9/22/11) reports: In announcing yet another overhaul of New York’s economic development bureaucracy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recently observed that, “we must do all we can to keep businesses and jobs in our state, and today’s launch demonstrates that New York is once again open for business.”…If only it were that simple. In fact, New York’s famously unfriendly tax and regulatory climate has been pushing businesses and jobs out of the state for decades…In a new survey of business leaders published by Chief Executive magazine, the Empire State ranked 49th among all states against a wide range of business climate indicators.

Again, the narrative remains sturdy:  energy development equals . . . well, you know the rest Vindy (9/22/11) reports: Ohio’s oil and natural-gas industries and the emergence of horizontal hydraulic fracturing could create more than 200,000 jobs and pump billions into the state economy over the next five years, according to a new study released at the Statehouse…“[These] resources will be responsibly developed, and doing so will benefit all Ohioans who are looking for economic opportunity and energy security,” said Tom Stewart, executive vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association…The economic-impact study, released Tuesday, was prepared by a Cleveland-based consulting firm on behalf of the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program.

Someone buy Rep. Issa a beer — last hearing was entitled, “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs” San Francisco Chronicle California Rep. Darrell Issa opened a new front Thursday in the GOP attack on renewable-energy subsidies following the bankruptcy of solar manufacturer Solyndra, accusing the Obama administration of waging a “war on carbon-based energy” and exaggerating claims of new “green jobs.”…Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, mocked Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ description of a San Jose, Calif., transit district bus driver’s job as green…Issa titled the hearing, “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs.”…At a committee hearing Thursday, Solis cited the case of Peter Reyes, who had been laid off from his job in banking and retrained with government help to drive a hybrid bus manufactured in Hayward and operated by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

EPA, after Shell spends $4 billion and counting and may have 54,000 jobs waiting to be filled by Americans, grants a permit Washington Post (9/19/11) reports: Shell Oil Co. on Monday took a step closer to tapping vast petroleum reserves off Alaska’s Arctic coasts when the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved an air quality permit for one of the company’s drilling vessels…The EPA approved the air permit for the drilling vessel Noble Discover, which Shell hopes to use for exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast, and its support fleet of oil spill response and supply vessels.

With Solyndra gone, it’s a race against time for the DOE to clear out the books for politically well connected friends before the American people bring down the hammer Politico (9/20/11) reports: Even as it takes fire over its $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, the Energy Department intends to keep pushing billions of dollars in additional guarantees in the next week and a half…For the department, it’s a matter of bad timing: Last month’s collapse of Solyndra has thrown a cloud of suspicion over the entire clean-energy loan guarantee program, just as DOE nears a Sept. 30 deadline to close on $9.3 billion in pending applications… Some Republicans have accused DOE of slapping together the remaining guarantees to beat the clock…”With $10 billion still on the shelf, the last thing we can afford from the Obama administration are more of the same sloppy, poor investments in the final rush to get the cash out the door,” Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), oversight chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement.

I thought Nobel winners were supposed to care about those with the least among us? Well, nine of them sign a letter urging Obama to reject the Keystone project and sentence our poor to high energy prices New York Times (9/19/11) reports: With his approval rating among American voters at an all-time low, President Obama could use a little support from his peers. But this month nine fellow recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the Dalai Lama, sent the president a letter urging him to veto the construction of a huge pipeline that would bring bring crude oil to the United States from Canada…On Monday, the letter was published as an advertisement in The Washington Post. It reads in part: “The night you were nominated for president, you told the world that under your leadership — and working together — the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal. You spoke of creating a clean energy economy. This is a critical moment to make good on that pledge.”

Here’s an idea for job growth, let’s mandate that every building needs an escalator that runs on renewable energy New York Times (9/19/11) reports: A business consortium that includes Lockheed Martin and Barclays bank plans to invest as much as $650 million over the next few years to slash the energy consumption of buildings in the Miami and Sacramento areas. It is the most ambitious effort yet to jump-start a national market for energy upgrades that many people believe could eventually be worth billions… Focusing mainly on commercial property at first, the group plans to exploit a new tax arrangement that allows property owners to upgrade their buildings at no upfront cost, typically cutting their energy use and their utility bills by a third. The building owners would pay for the upgrades over five to 20 years through surcharges on their property-tax bills, but that would be less than the savings.

This is why you don’t play nice in the sandbox — greenies throw renewable energy in the face of those conservatives who supported renewable energy New York Times (9/19/11) reports: lambasted the Obama administration over what he has described as its failed efforts to stimulate new jobs through clean-energy projects backed with billions of dollars in federal loans or other assistance.,, But Mr. McConnell, of Kentucky, is one of several prominent Republicans who have worked to steer federal money to clean-energy projects in their home states, Energy Department documents show…Mr. McConnell made two personal appeals in 2009, asking Energy Secretary Steven Chu to approve as much as $235 million in federal loans for a plant to build electric vehicles in Franklin, Ky.

OPEC counties have oil money and we have T-Bills to pay off our disaffected youth Fuel Fix (9/20/11) reports: Saudi Arabia will spend $43 billion on its poorer citizens and religious institutions. Kuwaitis are getting free food for a year. Civil servants in Algeria received a 34 percent pay rise. Desert cities in the United Arab Emirates may soon enjoy uninterrupted electricity…Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members are poised to earn an unprecedented $1 trillion this year, according to the U.S. Energy Department, as the group’s benchmark oil measure exceeded $100 a barrel for the longest period ever. They are promising to plow record amounts into public and social programs after pro-democracy movements overthrew rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and spread to Yemen and Syria.

Why change a good headline — There Will be Oil Wall Street Journal (9/17/11) reports:  Since the beginning of the 21st century, a fear has come to pervade the prospects for oil, fueling anxieties about the stability of global energy supplies. It has been stoked by rising prices and growing demand, especially as the people of China and other emerging economies have taken to the road… Its advocates argue that the world is fast approaching (or has already reached) a point of maximum oil output. They warn that “an unprecedented crisis is just over the horizon.” The result, it is said, will be “chaos,” to say nothing of “war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens.”…Its advocates argue that the world is fast approaching (or has already reached) a point of maximum oil output. They warn that “an unprecedented crisis is just over the horizon.” The result, it is said, will be “chaos,” to say nothing of “war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens.”… The date of the predicted peak has moved over the years. It was once supposed to arrive by Thanksgiving 2005. Then the “unbridgeable supply demand gap” was expected “after 2007.” Then it was to arrive in 2011. Now “there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020.”…But there is another way to visualize the future availability of oil: as a “plateau.”…In this view, the world has decades of further growth in production before flattening out into a plateau—perhaps sometime around midcentury—at which time a more gradual decline will begin. And that decline may well come not from a scarcity of resources but from greater efficiency, which will slacken global demand…Those sounding the alarm over oil argue that about half the world’s oil resources already have been produced and that the point of decline is nearing. “It’s quite a simple theory and one that any beer-drinker understands,” said the geologist Colin Campbell, one of the leaders of the movement. “The glass starts full and ends empty, and the faster you drink it, the quicker it’s gone.”

Pay to play — Solyndra is the latest example of Chicago style politics on the national stage Chicago Tribune (9/17/11) reports: The Solyndra scandal cost at least a half-billion public dollars. It is plaguing President Barack Obama. And it’s being billed as a Washington story…But back in Obama’s political hometown, those of us familiar with the Chicago Way can see something else in Solyndra — something that the Washington crowd calls “optics.” In fact, it’s not just a Washington saga — it has all the elements of a Chicago City Hall story, except with more zeros… The FBI is investigating what happened with Solyndra, a solar panel company that got a $535 million government-backed loan with the help of the Obama White House over the objections of federal budget analysts…Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got a nice photo op. They got to make speeches about being “green.” But then Solyndra went bankrupt. Americans lost jobs. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill. And members of Congress are now in high dudgeon and making speeches…Federal investigators want to know what role political fundraising played in the guarantee of the questionable loan. Washington bureaucrats warned the deal was lousy. And White House spokesmen flail desperately, like weakened victims in a cheesy vampire movie…So forget optics. What about smell? It smells bad, and it’s going to smell worse…Or, did you really believe it when the White House mouthpieces — who are also Chicago City Hall mouthpieces — promised they were bringing a new kind of politics to Washington?

Need a job? The North Dakota experiment shows that with energy production comes good paying jobs American Enterprise Institute (9/16/11) reports:  There’s no shortage of bad economics news these days. In August there were no new jobs created, retail sales were flat, consumer confidence plunged to recession-era lows, and it was reported this week that the nation’s poverty rate last year rose to the highest level since 1993. Yet, amid all of the national “gloom and doom” there is an amazing story of a booming economy in North Dakota, America’s most successful state by every economic measure. Here are some recent facts about North Dakota’s economy, which is flourishing as a direct result of the booming oil and gas production in the state’s oil-rich Bakken formation:…1. North Dakota set a new record in July for the most oil ever produced in a single month—more than 13 million total barrels at the rate of 423,600 barrels per day—an increase of almost 14 percent above the previous record in June, and a gain of almost 32 percent from July of last year (see chart below). In just a little more than two years (since June 2009), oil production in North Dakota has doubled to its current level. At the current rate of ongoing record-setting production increases, North Dakota will likely surpass California (540,000 barrels per day) and Alaska (550,000 barrels) by next year to become the number two oil-producing state in the country, behind only Texas (1.4 million barrels)….2. While the national economy struggles to add jobs in the current “jobless recovery,” jobs in North Dakota are increasing at a record-setting pace, and not just oil-related jobs. The overall state employment level reached an all-time high in July and is 10 percent above the pre-recession level in 2007. In contrast, U.S. payroll employment is still 5 percent below the December 2007 level. Oil-related employment in North Dakota has more than doubled in just two years, from 6,600 jobs in July 2009 to 15,800 jobs in July of this year.

Winning the Future — China invests billions in Canadian oil sands while bureaucrats squabble and anti energy activist get arrested Houston Chronicle (9/19/11) reports: As U.S. companies look toward oil riches in northern Canada, they’re encountering increasing competition – as well as some much-needed cash infusions – from the Far East…U.S. and Canadian companies have dominated Alberta’s oil sands for decades. Now, though, Chinese firms are rushing to snap up Canadian oil sands resources and invest in ongoing projects – to the tune of $15 billion in the past 18 months in Alberta alone…They are motivated by a desire to jump into one of the world’s lowest-risk oil investments and to quench the exploding energy demands of Asian markets – even though getting the product from Canada to Asia is just a pipe dream now…The foreign funding can help pay for what research firm IHS CERA estimates will be $100 billion in spending on oil sands projects over the next decade…And for a growing number of U.S. oil companies, many based in Houston, the infusion of Chinese cash in Canadian projects is welcome funding for some capital-intensive oil sands projects…”Many of the actual oil companies – no matter where they are from – are very interested in partnering,” said Jackie Forrest, the Calgary, Alberta-based head of oil sands research for IHS CERA. “That can help raise capital and, in some cases, also bring expertise and knowledge to the partnership.”…Most of the recent deals have been by Chinese companies buying shares in existing projects. For instance, Sinopec spent $4.65 billion last year buying ConocoPhillips’ 9 percent stake in Syncrude Canada Ltd., the world’s biggest oil sands producer. And earlier this summer, state-owned CNOOC spent $2.1 billion acquiring the bankrupt OPTI Canada, whose main asset was a 35 percent working interest in Nexen’s Long Lake oil sands project in Alberta.

This Houstonian is sad he doesn’t have a job with Solyndra and wants to know if Obama can bring the ‘green energy future’ to Texas Houston Chronicle (9/19/11) reports: With a Valero refinery in the background, environmental activists gathered in Hartmann Park in east Houston Sunday to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, which they say will lead to more pollution in smog-filled Houston….”The rest of the country gets to have a green energy future, but not this community,” Leslie Fields, the Sierra Club’s national environmental justice director, told a group of about 30 protesters who earlier marched the streets of the Manchester community. “This community is going to become a sacrifice zone. Why is that?”…The proposed 1,700-mile pipeline would carry oil from Alberta’s controversial tar sands to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur…Environmental concern…Like protesters around the nation, the Houston group is concerned that tar sands oil emits more greenhouse gases than conventional crude oil. They also worry it would endanger groundwater in states along the route…Bryan Parras, a founder of Houston-based Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, noted that it’s often poorer, minority communities who end up living near refineries and are most impacted by pollution produced by an industry that drives Houston’s economy. Residents of the area have high rates of asthma and cancer, he said…”This is going to lead to more health problems,” he said, noting that many of those who live in the area can’t afford to move, much less afford health insurance. “No matter how many jobs you create, it’s not worth the health problems children growing up here will have to deal with.”…Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada, which is building the Keystone project, however, says the claim that tar sands oil will mean higher emissions is exaggerated…”If people really want to focus on reducing emissions, 80 to 90 percent of emissions come from burning fossil fuel products such as using gasoline in our cars,” he said, adding that the pipeline is being built to meet market demand. “Refiners on the Gulf Coast approached us. That’s why we’re building this.”…Backers of the pipeline say it will lower reliance on oil from the volatile Middle East and create jobs, as well as provide energy security.

They are getting sloppy with embezzlement these days Wall Street Journal (9/9/11) reports: The political scandal over the failure of Solyndra, the politically connected solar-panel maker, just got a lot more interesting. The FBI raided the company’s Fremont, California offices yesterday and executed a search warrant…Congress has been investigating the company, which received a $535 million government loan guarantee in March 2009 and announced August 31 that it is filing for bankruptcy. Yesterday’s FBI raid is the first hint of a larger government probe, which is being conducted in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s Inspector General. The FBI declined to comment. A Solyndra spokesman said it was surprised by the raid and is cooperating…Solyndra was once a leading light, if you will, of the Obama Administration’s signature “green jobs” dreams. The Energy Department signed off on the loan guarantee under a George W. Bush-era law, and the Federal Financing Bank, a unit of the Treasury Department, also provided a loan with a 1.025% quarterly interest rate. A parade of Administration officials praised the investment, including President Obama, who said in a speech last year at the company’s Fremont headquarters that “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”…Solyndra never did turn a profit and laid off employees in November. But in February the company renegotiated its loan guarantee—with a hitch. Under the new agreement, Solyndra’s investors would loan the company $75 million but be first in line on repayment in the event of bankruptcy, in front of taxpayers…One of Solyndra’s biggest backers is the George Kaiser Family Foundation, whose namesake is an Oklahoma oilman who bundled campaign contributions from multiple sources for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign…In an email yesterday, an Energy Department spokesman said the government “restructured the debt to give Solyndra more time to repay and avoid default—much like commercial lenders do when a homeowner is having trouble making the mortgage payments.”…The email added that the new deal ensured that “no additional taxpayer funding was used,” that Energy received “substantial additional collateral protection in the form of intellectual property, claims on the parent company and more,” and that the deal “permitted the company to complete, equip and begin operating its plant, which increased its value in any future liquidation or sale.” Sounds like Energy officials already feared Solyndra might go belly-up.

You have to love Ed Rendell (Penn ’65).  “You guys are screwing up.  But if you cut us in for a piece of the action, we can look the other way.” Gazette (9/8/11) reports: Former Gov. Ed Rendell closed out the first day of the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s inaugural conference on a fiery note, saying gas drillers have continued to “screw up” for too long and that they should be more loudly supporting a tax on their industry…A sharp rebuke from the Democratic politician who oversaw the beginning of the commonwealth’s Marcellus Shale exploration was an unexpected end to a day of industry-sponsored sessions touting the new jobs, technology and investments from natural gas drilling…Mr. Rendell, who handed over the reins to Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in January, pointed to the protesters outside the convention center around midday Wednesday as an example of how the activists have grown into “a serious, long-term problem.”…”[Drillers have] screwed up so bad that there are protesters everywhere anybody associated with this goes, and the protesters grow stronger and deeper in number,” he said… Mr. Rendell urged drilling firms to publicly support a tax on natural gas extraction and to write to Mr. Corbett indicating their support. Mr. Corbett has signed a pledge not to raise taxes during his term, specifically opposing the severance tax that Mr. Rendell twice failed to enact…However, some drillers, particularly the larger firms active in the commonwealth, have said they would support a tax or fee on their development, repeating that position to reporters during interviews Wednesday…Range Resources CEO John Pinkerton said enacting a tax or fee could give the industry some certainty of its future costs, and noted that his company was the one to urge the Department of Environmental Protection to hike permit fees in order to hire more staffers.

Now I understand why Google has been investing in renewable energy, they feel guilty for using as much energy as Salt Lake City New York Times (9/8/11) reports: Google disclosed Thursday that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, but it says that in doing so, it also makes the planet greener… Every time a person runs a Google search, watches a YouTube video or sends a message through Gmail, the company’s data centers full of computers use electricity. Those data centers around the world continuously draw almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant…Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations…While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview.

You mean Californians might be on the hook for the whole $65 billion disaster that is Jerry Brown’s high speed rail to nowhere?  What they need is a U.S. President who can spend money like there’s no tomorrow to help them with this ridiculous idea.  Maybe someone who needs just another 450 billion to pop start the economy . . .Los Angeles Times (9/8/11) reports: As California prepares to commit tens of billions of dollars to an ambitious high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Southern California, Congress’ political will to provide the bulk of the funding is disappearing, leaving the possibility that the state could end up stuck with a crushing financial burden…State voters have agreed to issue more than $9 billion in bonds to build the system, but that’s a fraction of the $43 billion projected tab for the initial phase. And those costs could swell to $65 billion or more, by some estimates…Should federal funds dry up after the scheduled start of construction next year, the state could be left with no more than an unfulfilled dream and some tracks in the Central Valley…”If the federal government and private investors are not going to provide funds, and California is broke, why would it take on an enormous new commitment?” asked Martin Wachs, a Rand Corp. transportation expert and former director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies…In coming months, Gov. Jerry Brown will decide whether to issue the bonds to launch the project — at a time when the nation and state are attempting to control mounting public debt that has already damaged both their credit ratings…The bullet train hinges on a huge investment of federal dollars when Washington is intent on cutting the nation’s budget. Republicans who control the House of Representatives have already declared new rail construction their “lowest priority.”

Poor bastard bet the farm on Obama’s promise of green jobs and now he’s left with training in wind energy and no one is hiring American (9/8/11) reports: When Barack Obama was running for president, he promised to spend $150 billion over the next decade on renewable energy technologies, an investment that would lead to 5 million new, high-paying jobs that could never be outsourced…Once elected, Obama pushed through an economic stimulus plan that allocated $500 million to green job training efforts giving all Americans a shot at good jobs that benefit the environment…But more than two years later, these green job-training initiatives have fallen far short of the hype. Out-of-work Americans are finding that special training isn’t always enough to get a good “green” job. Or that the jobs they do qualify for have lousy pay and may last only as long as the government subsidizes them…Measuring the success of green job programs is difficult. The Labor Department has no reliable statistics on how many green jobs there are, or even a solid definition of just what a green job is. But people like Casey McDonald and his fiancée, Jade Mooneyhan, don’t need to see statistics to know that political promises do not amount to economic reality…Dashed hopes…McDonald and Mooneyhan moved from Tennessee to California so they could attend a private, wind-power technician training program. Mooneyhan planned to complete the program while McDonald took care of their then 1-year-old son, Jaeden. Once she finished training and got a job, he would start the program…The couple considered the $10,000 they saved for the trip as an investment in their future…McDonald said he’s had a lot of jobs, but the pay usually maxes out at $20 to $25 per hour…“I don’t want to be 55 and still working at $25 an hour,” he said. “We really, really wanted to secure something for us and our son, maybe in the future have a house that we can feel good about.”

In an effort to advert more solar bankruptcies, the Obama administration is now financing 160,000 solar installation on military bases Mercury News (9/7/11) reports: Foster City-based SolarCity, which has installed solar panels on 16,000 homes nationwide, on Wednesday announced an ambitious $1 billion plan to put solar panels on 160,000 houses and other buildings on military bases in 33 states…The move signals that the military, which is eager to reduce its energy use, is becoming a key consumer of clean technology — and at a scale far larger than ever seen in the private sector…”This is the largest domestic residential rooftop solar project in history,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. “This groundbreaking project is expected to create hundreds of jobs for Americans and provide clean, renewable power to our military families.”…The “SolarStrong” project is being funded by USRG Renewable Finance and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and has been awarded a guarantee from the Department of Energy to cover up to 80 percent of a $344 million loan…”One hundred sixty-thousand homes is big for anyone,” SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said in an interview. “It’s 10 times the size of what we’ve done to date and would basically double the number of solar installations in the U.S.”…The first phase of the project, which will provide solar power to more than 2,000 military family homes, is already under way at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. SolarCity plans to target not only military housing but also community centers, administrative offices, maintenance buildings and storage.

At what point does this constitute criminal negligence? New York Times (9/8/11) reports: Undeterred by the bankruptcy filing of a California solar company that got $535 million in federal loan guarantees, the Energy Department is issuing two more large loan guarantees, albeit to companies that look like safer bets… The department will announce Thursday that it has completed a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies, a company with a new way to make the silicon wafers used in solar cells. The company, based in Lexington, Mass., is the star pupil of the department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy, or ARPA-E, which makes grants to entities with radical ideas with great potential value; 1366 appears well on the way to being the first of the project recipients to reach commercial application.,,The company casts the wafers from molten silicon, cutting costs in half. The conventional method is to slice the wafers from a big block, turning half the silicon into dust. While Solyndra, the company that filed for bankruptcy, tried to sell a markedly different product, 1366 offers a commodity product made in a different way with lower production costs…Jonathan M. Silver, the head of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, said, “It’s a process innovation, not a product innovation. They can produce silicon wafers with much less material and many fewer steps.”…The price at which 1366 will sell its product is not clear, but Mr. Silver said he expected the company to continue to drive down the market price of solar cells.

Whether we like it or not, Canadian oil sands will be refined in the U.S. — the best and safest way will be through a pipeline, but rail or shipping will work too Forbes (9/8/11) reports: Canadian tar sands oil will almost certainly find their way to U.S. refineries even if a $7 billion pipeline from western Canada to the Gulf Coast doesn’t gain federal approval, a U.S. State Department consultant has concluded…Lexington, Mass.-based EnSys Energy & Systems Inc.’s report said if the proposed 1,980-mile-long Keystone XL pipeline or a similar pipeline project is halted, it would be “difficult to visualize a situation” that would prevent the Canadian oil from making its way to U.S. refineries by rail, barge or trucks…The study commissioned by the State Department estimated that rail alone could haul 1.25 million barrels of Canadian crude daily by 2030, or nearly twice the amount of the proposed pipeline…”U.S. and Canadian rail sectors have a history of expanding to meet clearly defined demand increases,” according to the study, which cited North Dakota’s booming oil patch as a recent example…The analysis was done at the request of the State Department, which determined last month that the proposed pipeline project would not have significant environmental impacts along its U.S. route…The Keystone XL pipeline, a project of TransCanada Corp. of Calgary, would carry crude extracted from tar sands near Hardisty to the Gulf Coast via Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. A spur also is planned to tap into North Dakota’s oil patch.

First, and as always, Chris Tucker is as cool as the other side of the pillow.  Second, it would have been good if someone, maybe someone who had done some focus groups or polling early on, had suggested to the industry that “hydraulic fracturing” was a suboptimal phrase Fuel Fix (9/8/11) reports: The Marcellus Shale natural-gas industry has gotten tripped up by the F-bomb…Not that word…“Fracking has become almost a dirty word,” said Brian McDermott, spokesman for Gregory FCA Communications, an Ardmore public relations firm that has measured popular sentiments associated with various resource-extraction terms. It found fracking lacking, scoring even lower in positives than strip-mining…Fracking, of course, is short for hydraulic fracturing, the controversial natural-gas recovery process. The word — harsh, threatening and vaguely profane — has become a linguistic weapon in the shale-gas culture wars…The fracas over fracturing will be on full display in Philadelphia this week as the Marcellus Shale Coalition holds a two-day conference to promote the industry…Anti-drilling activists plan a Wednesday protest outside the Convention Center, providing a stage for some censor-defying chants employing the new F-word…The oil and gas industry is irked about what it calls mischaracterizations of fracking, not the least of which is how the word is spelled. In the trade press, it is frac…But as the shale-gas boom took off, and the mainstream media took interest, the K got appended to frac to reduce the chance of mispronunciation. Otherwise, fracing might look like it rhymes with racing…The new spelling has an unfortunate resemblance to one of George Carlin’s seven dirty words, providing anti-drilling activists with a bounty of double entendres…“I take exception to the fact that drilling opponents have taken to using frack as euphemism for a curse word I can’t print in this family newsletter,” wrote Will Brackett, managing editor of the Powell Shale Digest, a trade weekly based in Fort Worth, Texas…Mr. Brackett now inserts an apostrophe into the noun — frac’ing — to avoid the offensive K. But his adaptation has failed to win widespread acceptance.

Economic growth?  Jobs?  Tax revenue?  Domestic energy production?  Are you sure all those are related? Houston Chronicle (9/7/11) reports: The congressional super committee searching for ways to pare at least $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit should open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling instead of increasing taxes, a top House Republican said Wednesday…Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the head of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he would make that ANWR recommendation to the 12-member panel, which holds its first public meeting today…Under Congress’ debt ceiling deal, the newly created deficit reduction committee has until Nov. 23 to approve a plan to cut $1.2 trillion or more from the deficit over the next decade. If the committee fails to reach a compromise or it doesn’t pass Congress, automatic, across-the-board cuts in domestic and defense spending would start in 2013…Since Republicans on the panel and in the House are unlikely to support any plan that hikes taxes to raise revenue, the lawmakers on the joint committee need to search for other solutions, Hastings noted….”They need to find a means to increase revenue to the federal government without raising taxes (and) this is a logical extension of that,” Hastings said at a wide-ranging summit on energy-related jobs sponsored by The Hill newspaper and the American Petroleum Institute….”Increasing American energy production is one of the easiest ways to generate federal revenue.”…According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil harbored in the Arctic refuge’s coastal plain. At peak production, that could supply the U.S. with up to 1.45 million barrels of oil daily.

So at least someone in town gets the idea that the real jobs in energy involve domestic production of affordable, reliable energy rather than throwing money at pinwheels E&E News (9/7/11) reports: As President Obama is gearing up for his much-publicized jobs speech tomorrow night, House Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee are setting up their own jobs pitch — for more domestic energy production…The panel tomorrow will hold the first of a two-part oversight hearing on the potential to create jobs in the domestic energy sector…”American energy and mineral production, whether onshore, offshore or renewable, already employs millions of Americans and could support millions of additional jobs by simply harnessing the resources we have here at home,” Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said in a statement. “Yet during the first two years of the Obama Administration, American energy production has faced constant obstacles from unnecessary government regulations and red tape.”…The hearing comes after Republicans and energy industry advocates for months have attempted to tie together the sluggish economy with a slowdown in domestic oil and gas drilling activities and an increase in energy production regulations…”The offshore energy industry has shed thousands of jobs and lost the potential to create millions, renewable energy jobs have seen little growth, and the mining industry is facing job-destroying proposed new rules,” Hastings said. “It’s simply unacceptable for this administration to put the brakes on the job-creating potential of some of America’s leading economic contributors.”

See, the great thing about Florida is that they are completely unaware of how ridiculous and nonsensical they look when talking about energy exploration Miami Herald (9/7/11) reports: Gov. Rick Scott found himself on both sides of the fence on Tuesday when he said in a speech that he supports oil drilling in the Everglades, then hours later issued a clarification that he didn’t mean “an expansion of drilling.”..Scott’s remarks to the Tallahassee-based Economics Club of Florida were prompted by an audience member who asked whether the governor agreed with Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann’s call last week for oil drilling in the Everglades for “additional energy.”…“You know we already have drilling in the Everglades. We already have oil wells in the Everglades,’’ Scott replied. “There’s a road in Naples called ‘Oil Well Road,’ so we already have oil drilling. We’ve had it since 1943.’’…He noted that most Floridians are “very shocked” to learn that drilling is happening in Florida. He added that “I think we have to be very cautious if there’s going to be any more drilling.”…The comments unleashed immediate warnings from environmentalists, who have fought for decades to shield South Florida’s crucial watershed from additional oil drilling as they attempt to restore the Everglades ecosystem….”My suggestion to the Governor is quite simple: Don’t go there,’’ said Kirk Fordham, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, the non-profit agency formed to advocate for protection of the state’s River of Grass. “Unless Governor Scott wants to unleash a firestorm of opposition from hunters, fishermen, conservationists and millions of Floridians who depend on the Everglades for their water supply, he should abandon any notion of encouraging drilling in this sacred place.”