http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-oil-20120313,0,5578659.story

The Obama administration claims ‘significant progress’ in cutting foreign oil imports and increasing U.S. production.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar discusses the federal energy report at a Washington news conference. (Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press / March 12, 2012)

By Neela Banerjee, Washington Bureau
March 12, 2012, 6:36 p.m.
Reporting from Washington-

Against the backdrop of gasoline prices rising in an election year, a new Obama administration report cites “significant progress” in reducing foreign oil imports and increasing domestic oil and gas production.

The report by six federal agencies was released Monday on the first anniversary of a speech by President Obama in which he pledged to reduce American dependence on foreign oil imports by a third in about a decade.

According to the study, the United States reduced net imports of crude oil last year by 10%, or 1 million barrels a day. The U.S. now imports 45% of its petroleum, down from 57% in 2008, and is on track to meet Obama’s long-term goal, the administration maintains.

Imports have fallen, in part, because the U.S. has increased domestic oil and gas production in recent years.

U.S. crude oil production increased by an estimated 120,000 barrels a day last year from 2010, the report says. Current production, about 5.6 million barrels a day, is the highest since 2003.

The U.S. has been the world’s largest producer of natural gas since 2009, the report says. Use of renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, is still relatively small but has doubled since 2008.

A new poll shows that mounting frustration with the president’s handling of the economy, driven in part by a sense that he can influence gasoline prices, has eroded Obama’s approval rating.

A Washington Post/ABC poll found that 46% of people surveyed approved of Obama’s job performance, while 50% disapproved. That’s a reversal of the president’s ratings from last month, when his approval hit 50% for the first time in that survey in nearly a year. The quick drop coincides with a hike in gas prices and an increase in criticism from Obama’s Republican rivals on the issue, even as the economy has shown signs of growth.

The poll underscored how rising gas prices threatened to keep Obama from reaping the rewards of the good economic news. The survey found that 65% of respondents disapproved of Obama’s handling of gas prices, even though half said they believed there was nothing the administration could do to bring down the cost of gas.

Still, the report highlights improvements in the overall energy picture, citing initiatives such as the higher fuel efficiency of passenger cars, the jump in renewable energy output and improved weatherization of 1 million homes.

But independent analysts attribute much of the fall in oil imports to slack U.S. demand in a still-anemic economy. And to a certain degree, they say, the boost in domestic oil and gas production is the result of decisions energy companies made during theGeorge W. Bushadministration to develop key reservoirs.

The report, titled “The Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future,” appears aimed, at least in part, at tamping down political fire from Obama’s Republican rivals and other critics who say his administration has not done enough to fight higher gasoline prices.

“We’re experiencing yet another painful reminder of why developing new American energy is so critical to our future,” the report states. “We know that there are no quick fixes to this challenge.”

Domestic gasoline prices rise and fall with global crude oil prices, which have been driven up by the gradual economic recovery and by market jitters over mounting tensions with Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers. The closing of several U.S. refineries also has pushed gas prices higher.

Most Americans are convinced that Obama and Congress could do more to reduce gasoline prices, according to a recent Gallup poll.

GOP candidates on the campaign trail and some oil industry leaders have charged that Obama’s energy policies stifle domestic production, and they have urged the administration to open as much public land and offshore areas as possible to drilling.

More domestic drilling, however, would not end the need for imports. The U.S. holds 2% of the planet’s proven oil reserves, but Americans consume 25% of the world’s daily output of crude oil.
neela.banerjee@latimes.com

Kathleen Hennessey in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.vcstar.com/photos/2012/mar/10/159788/
Sanders: House energy bill threatens our fragile coastline
By Alan Sanders
Posted March 10, 2012 at 3 p.m.

The recently passed House transportation and energy bill brings back an old threat of offshore oil spills that has been in the public mind since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.
In the documentary “Stories of the Spill” produced by Earth Alert’s Janet Bridgers of Oxnard, area fisherman Mike McKorkle points out that oil from the Platform A blowout first hit shore in Ventura County, where spill-related problems were as great as they were in Santa Barbara County.

The disastrous effects on the local environment were addressed in the documentary by then-Ventura resident Mary Destin.

The House bill has a two-pronged attack upon the Central Coast. First is the inclusion of new oil leases in the Santa Barbara Channel for its thick, low-grade crude oil that is unsuited for production of gasoline.

But more significant, the bill undermines California’s ability to comment on drilling issues provided under the National Coastal Zone Management Act and California Coastal Act.
Ironically, this year marks the 40-year anniversary of the passage of Proposition 20, a true people’s initiative that led to the Coastal Act. Under this act, Ventura County and each coastal city in our county have local coastal plans that include mechanisms we agree upon to care for our environment.

But the current bill eliminates the ability of our state and local governments to even comment in an official capacity as they may now do.

Obviously, Congress members from other areas are unaware that these wells will produce no gasoline while posing a great threat to our local economy and environment.

They will never learn that although the wells are in federal waters, currents and winds will bring any spilled oil straight to Ventura County shores. Also, they will never learn of the biological diversity of the channel due to this provision that slams the door in the face of local interests.

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors and many others have tried to fight this bill, unsuccessfully. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, supported the bill.

A New York Times column by Thomas Friedman expresses the view that making gains on national energy interests is a possibility. “All of this is good news, but it will come true at scale only if these oil and gas resources can be extracted in an environmentally sustainable manner. This can be done right, but we need a deal between environmentalists and the oil and gas industry to lock it in – now.”

He quotes energy expert Hal Harvey: “The oil and gas companies need to decide: Do they want to fight a bloody and painful war of attrition with local communities or take the lead in setting high environmental standards and then live up to them?”

Unfortunately, this approach was rejected by the House. Instead, it included poison pills like drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As for a painful war of attrition, Ormond Beach Observers recommends supporters of that option study the record on the failed Cabrillo Port and Clearwater liquefied natural gas projects.

OBO furthermore recommends that candidates for the newly established 26th Congressional District should clearly state their support for or opposition to the bill.

Credit for preservation of environmentally sensitive habitat areas along the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the Channel Islands and the channel itself is owed to many local leaders who worked very hard 40 years ago on Proposition 20.

They established a legacy of coastal planning that we all enjoy today and which has been used as a model for coastal protection around the world.

Their work is in part responsible for the elimination of toxic materials once routinely dumped in or near shore waters; for populations of many marine mammals that have rebounded; and for the dedication of one of America’s most spectacular national parks.

Our citizens have taken pride in learning about our area’s natural resources and have joined many battles to preserve what we have. Much of the work to establish this legacy was motivated by parents hoping that their children would also enjoy the beauty of the channel.

It was worth fighting for all those years ago, as it is today.

Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/mar/10/sanders-house-energy-bill-threatens-our-fragile/#ixzz1ov12H7Es
– vcstar.com
Special thanks to Richard Charter

Referendum Says No to Belize Offshore Oil Exploration

by Ken on March 2, 2012

COALITION RELEASES REFERENDUM NUMBERS

Yesterday was a busy day for the Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage as they held the People’s Referendum, as a way to give a voice to many who were silenced when signatures were rejected from a petition to host a national referendum. People came out by the numbers to vote and the results were released today at a press conference in the front yard of the OCEANA Belize office. Ninety six percent of the twenty nine thousand two hundred and thirty five voters came out, voted no to offshore oil drilling while the remaining four percent voted yes. Vice President for OCEANA Belize, Audrey Matura Shepherd went more in detail with the results at the conference this morning.
Audrey Matura Shepherd – Vice President, Oceana Belize
“We had 143 spoilt ballots and 25 missing and this may sound funny but apparently people got the ballots and walked away with it, I wonder if those were the mischievous operatives. 25 ballots went missing. For the Corozal District what we had, we had a total of 3,501 voters came out and that is only in the District itself because a lot of them did vote in San Pedro or Belize City where they live or work. There we had 98% of the people of Corozal say no to offshore drilling and 1.5% said yes, that .5% may have accounted for spoilt or missing ballots. In the Stann Creek District we had a total 3,721 voters went out to cast their vote, 95% of them said no to offshore drilling, 4% said yes. In Caye Caulker we had 478 registered voters went out to cast their vote, of those 97.2% said no to offshore drilling and 1.8% said yes. In San Pedro 2,725 persons cast their votes, of those 98% of said no to offshore drilling, 1.5% said yes. In Cayo, those people love their politics, listen to this number, 4,984 people went out to cast their vote and of those 95% of those said no to offshore drilling and 2.7% said yes. In the Belize District we had the largest amount of course, we had 9,463 voters went out to cast their vote and listen to this number , 97% of them said no offshore drilling, loud and clear and 3% said yes, also loud and clear. In Orange Walk again another place that loves their politics, listen to this number, 3,356 people went out to cast their vote and they only had three polls in Orange Walk and of those 97% said no to offshore drilling and 1.9% said yes and finally, this one is alarming too, Toledo; 1,007, we couldn’t get the polls we had to bring the people out and of those 94% of them said absolutely no offshore drilling and 5.6% said yes, so those are the figures.”
Matura-Shepherd says that this is just the beginning of the fight against offshore oil drilling.
LoveFM
My Hero for Today is Mr. Pan he is from the village of Dolores. He got up at 1 AM start walking at 1:30 AM to the village of Otoxa so he can catch the 3:30 bus to PG so he can vote against offshore drilling. He voted and catch the 1130 bus back to Otoxa then he will walk again another two hours or so to get home. Thats my hero for today!
Wil Maheia

Special thanks to Coral-list

http://ecowatch.org/2012/109-organizations-speak-out-against-obamas-support-for-fracking/

What is Obama fracking thinking????? DV

3-05-2012
Environmental Working Group

On March 5, more than 100 organizations—including environmental, religious and public health groups—expressed concern about President Obama’s endorsement of hydraulic fracturing and shale gas drilling in his recent State of the Union address.

“Amid mounting evidence of the harm and significant costs associated with drilling and fracking, it is premature to declare that government investment in shale gas drilling has been a success,” the groups wrote in a joint letter sent to the White House on March 5.

The groups, which represent more than 3 million supporters in 16 states, questioned the president’s statement that the U.S. sits atop a supply of natural gas that “can last America nearly 100 years.” They also disputed the claim that natural gas “will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade,” an estimate based in part on a study funded by the natural gas industry. The president repeated the job creation estimate in recent speeches on energy policy at the University of Miami on Feb. 23 and in New Hampshire on March 1.

“To consider an industrial process that has contaminated water supplies, caused rampant air pollution and disrupted communities across the country a success story is misguided,” said Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a non-partisan advocacy organization headquartered in New York State. “Our nation needs an energy policy based on solid, independent science, not industry hype.”

The 109 groups noted that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently conducting two studies to determine whether hydraulic fracturing can contaminate water supplies. One of the studies, focused on the town of Pavillion, Wyo., has already found that fracking had likely contaminated groundwater.

“We now know that the results of fracking with unknown chemicals have included earthquakes in Ohio, contaminated drinking water in Pennsylvania and spoiled farmland and rivers wherever wastewater is dumped,” said the Rev. Jim Deming, minister for environmental justice for the Ohio-based United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries. “The administration must take concrete, meaningful steps to safeguard the health of our citizens and protect the natural resources of our communities from this unregulated industry.”

Congress has granted the industry major exemptions from important federal environmental and health protection laws, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water acts.

“Homeowners across the country have had to witness first-hand what happens when the shale gas industry is left to regulate itself,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which drafted the letter. “We hope the administration will temper its enthusiasm for fracking until the EPA has completed its studies. We urge the president to work with Congress to not only require disclosure of fracking chemicals, but also to ensure that this industry no longer gets a free pass when it comes to compliance with major federal environmental laws.”

According to the Bloomberg news service, the job number cited by the president comes from an industry-funded study conducted by the consulting firm IHS Global Insight, whose Executive Vice President, Daniel Yergin, served on a federal shale gas advisory committee. In August 2011, EWG, along with federal and state lawmakers, scientists and public interest organizations objected that Mr. Yergin and five other members of the advisory committee had ties to the natural gas and oil industry. The committee’s final report sidestepped the crucial question of whether fracking should remain exempt from most federal environmental laws.

Special thanks to Shaw Thacker

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/01/the_driller_in_chief
MICHAEL LEVI
Foreign Policy
MARCH 1, 2012 (many weblinks in original)

It was a strange scene even by the standards of an odd primary season.
Rick Santorum, fresh off a narrow loss in Michigan, started waving about a
hunk of jet-black rock during his concession speech on Tuesday night, Feb
28. “Yeah, this is oil,” he explained. “Oil. Out of rock. Shale.” But not
under this American president. Like his fellow candidates for the
Republican presidential nomination, as well as most of the fossil fuel
industry, Santorum is convinced that Barack Obama is out to kill oil and
natural gas. “We have a president who says no,” he warned. “We need a
president who says yes to the American people and energy production!”

It’s a potent line in a country where many assume that Democrats despise
oil and gas. Their instinct is sometimes right: There are large segments
of the party that have never encountered a fossil fuel development that
they liked. But Obama doesn’t fit that mold. Indeed there is a strong case
to be made that he, not his opponents, offers the best hope for American
oil and gas.

Let’s start with the statistics. After falling every year from 1991
through 2008, U.S. oil production has climbed for three years in a row.
U.S. oil imports started to drop in 2005 under President George W. Bush,
but Obama’s policies haven’t stopped the trend. Last March, Obama
announced a target of cutting oil imports by a third by 2020; less than a
year later, the United States is already more than halfway there. Natural
gas production is also surging. The United States hit rock bottom in 2006,
at which point the shale gas revolution began to re-energize the sector.
That boom has continued since Obama took office. It’s tough, in other
words, to square claims that Obama is destroying American oil and gas with
the record production numbers that the industry is posting year after
year.

Statistics, of course, can be misleading. Most of the groundwork for
what’s happening now was laid before Obama took office — and markets, not
policymakers, can take most of the credit for the oil and gas sector’s
strong performance. Critics will argue that because the energy business
moves slowly, many of the biggest consequences of the president’s policies
have yet to be felt. What might surprise them, though, is that this is
where Obama could have the best story to tell.

Take the battle over fracking, a controversial technique used to unlock
massive deposits of oil and natural gas in underground rock formations
that has come from nowhere to become one of the most critical features of
the U.S. energy scene. Santorum and his acolytes are convinced that tough
regulation will kill this key driver of the U.S. energy boom. But if the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico taught us one lesson,
it’s that lax regulation — in enabling industry mistakes to gut public
support and confidence — can be far more damaging. A spate of dumb and
preventable accidents by poorly regulated shale developers would do far
more to set back U.S. oil and gas development than some smart minimum
standards set out at the federal level.

This White House has signaled that it prefers precisely such an approach,
though precise details haven’t yet been forthcoming. Undoubtedly, some in
the administration would like to see a dominant role for the federal
government and regulations that could hit the industry harder than is
needed. So far, however, they appear to be losing. Last year, Obama had
his energy secretary appoint a group of industry experts and environmental
authorities to advise him on shale. The team, which included prominent
shale enthusiasts like Daniel Yergin and John Deutch, produced a string of
recommendations that were widely seen as constructive rather than
adversarial. Fuel Fix, a news service run by the Houston Chronicle,
described them as an “olive branch to industry.”

The Obama administration has a particularly strong case to make when it
comes to natural gas. Smart developers aren’t crying because Obama has put
too much gas out of reach — they’re terrified because production is so
strong that collapsing prices have crushed their bottom lines. The best
way out of this situation is to find new uses for natural gas. Although
markets will play a critical role in this endeavor, the most powerful
approach is to get government involved. For those who believe in the
urgency of fighting climate change, the right step is obvious: Adopt
policies that replace coal-fired power with natural gas, which would slash
carbon emissions and clean up the air at the same time.

Indeed, the worst political news for the gas industry in the last few
years should have been the collapse of a signature Obama initiative: cap
and trade. A modest cap-and-trade program would have increased the price
of coal relative to that of natural gas and encouraged utilities to switch
to the cleaner-burning fuel, just as it has in Europe. The best hope for
boosting gas demand going forward is some variation on that theme, be it
Clean Air Act rules that favor gas over coal or a clean energy standard
that creates preferences for cleaner fuels, including gas. Both are
policies that Obama has championed — and that his adversaries have
opposed.

None of this is to suggest that Obama’s record on energy is without
blemish. His delay last November of the Keystone XL pipeline sent an
unfortunate signal to developers and markets that the administration was
willing to waver on oil development when politically pressed to the wall.
The administration’s insistence that developers quickly drill on their
leases — known as “use it or lose it” provisions — is difficult to
square with how development works best. There is also a legitimate debate
to be had about whether more federal lands might prudently be opened to
energy production. In particular, though the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was
good reason to take a fresh look at offshore drilling, Obama should
probably have pressed forward with his March 2010 plan to open more waters
to production rather than reversed course.

But most of the other criticisms from administration opponents fall flat.
The White House, for example, has been called out for railing against oil
and gas industry tax subsidies. But with the exception of the “intangible
drilling costs” deduction, which can help smaller and more nimble oil and
gas companies with their cash flow, these benefits are largely without
merit; instead, they simply transfer money from taxpayers to producers’
bottom lines. Obama has been attacked for slow-rolling offshore drilling
permits in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, but the alternative
could have allowed unsafe projects to proceed — and another spill would
have been devastating for the environment and development alike.

While Obama’s opponents continue to attack him for his supposedly
anti-development policies, one group seems to have figured him out. When
TransCanada announced on Feb. 27 that it would go ahead with a segment of
the Keystone XL pipeline and the White House embraced it, the response
from a leading environmental organization was far from supportive:
“Splitting the project means double the trouble,” the Natural Resources
Defense Council declared, en route to savaging those who would disagree.
When the president spoke up in favor of a smart approach to oil and gas in
late February, Joe Romm, a prominent climate blogger at the Center for
American Progress, responded with a biting headline: “‘All of the Above’:
Obama Names His Failed Presidency.”

The attacks from the right and the left must make for a lonely White House
— and that should make those people who genuinely desire prudent energy
development worried. Instead of attacking Obama for sins not committed or
fixating on the handful of places where they differ from him, they should
lend support to the president’s surprisingly constructive policies. Both
the hands-off alternative that his opponents advocate and the (at best)
ambivalent approach that many of his erstwhile allies prefer could be far
worse.
– Michael Levi is senior fellow for energy and the environment at the
Council on Foreign Relations. He blogs regularly at Energy, Security, and
Climate.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/01/the_driller_in_chief

Special thanks to Richard Charter