Americans hitting the road this week are likely to encounter the highest-ever price for gas at Christmas in history. According to figures from AAA, the nationwide average for regular unleaded is $3.21 per gallon — an increase of 23 cents over last year’s Christmas record. This marks the second straight year Americans are paying more at the pump during the holidays. The price in 2009 was around $2.60 per gallon and jumped to about $3 per gallon at Christmas last year. These higher prices aren’t grabbing headlines as they once …
President Obama’s decision to allow some deepwater drilling to resume in the Gulf of Mexico is already yielding impressive results. ExxonMobil announced yesterday it had discovered what amounts to 700 million barrels of oil in the Gulf — the largest find in 12 years. The discovery comes about two months after ExxonMobil had resumed drilling under new regulations put in place by the Obama administration. The company had drilled two wells at the site prior to last year’s oil spill, but was forced to cease work when the government …
Billions of dollars in potential oil revenue that could help close the federal deficit is being lost as a result of President Obama’s anti-drilling agenda. Production in the Gulf of Mexico — which normally accounts for about 30 percent of all U.S. production — is expected to drop this year by 220,000 barrels per day, according to projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. With oil currently at $90 a barrel and the royalty rate at 18.75 percent, that equals $3.7 million in lost revenue each day. If the agency …
Yesterday, authorities arrested Antonio Martinez in a plot to bomb a military recruiting center in Maryland. This plot was very similar to the Little Rock, Arkansas, recruiting center shooting in 2009. Like Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the main suspect in the Little Rock shooting, Martinez is a converted Muslim American living in the United States. There are three key points to take from this foiled plot: 1. The recent focus on adding more physical airline security measures at airports won’t help stop plots like the military recruiting center shooting and yesterday’s …
Earlier this year, despite Sarah Palin’s best efforts, the Bush Administration chose to cave into the environmental left and designate the polar bear as ‘threatened’ pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. Bush made the decision despite the fact that an independent committee of scientists told the Canadian government that the polar bears are not, in fact, threatened or endangered. Bush tried to mollify pro-growth critics by claiming he could list the polar bears as threatened without then naming a critical habit as required by law. It is because of wishful …
Twenty-five percent of America’s oil production and a significant amount of onshore refining capacity and pipeline infrastructure is located in the hurricane-prone central and western Gulf of Mexico — and much of it was in the path of Hurricane Gustav. Fortunately, unlike Katrina and Rita in 2005 and other past hurricanes, Gustav has not done significant damage to the energy infrastructure there. Prices and markets will be relatively unaffected. Nonetheless, the hurricane does underscore the benefits of geographic diversification in domestic oil production. The Atlantic, Pacific, and eastern Gulf of …
Writing at The ChamberPost, John Murphy notes: Exports generated an impressive two-thirds of U.S. economic growth over the past year (67% in Q3 2007 – Q2 2008), according to data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce on July 31. … If it weren’t for the fact that the United States today imports two-thirds of its petroleum, the overall trade deficit would look quite different: Since 2002, rising imports of petroleum products have accounted for 93% of the increase in the U.S. trade deficit.For 2008, the United States is on …
The Politico reports today that according to Democratic House aides, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “energy agenda has been carefully gamed out in strategy sessions” with Pelosi taking “heat on gas prices while tacitly encouraging more vulnerable Democrats to publicly disagree with her and show their independence.” One senior House Democratic aide said, “The reality is we will have a new president in three months … we have many more options postelection.” To deflect “heat” on energy prices in the short term, Pelosi is advocating releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve …
Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t allow C-SPAN show what happened on the House floor on Friday, but thanks to YouTube you can catch a clip here: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7teE7qKwl8[/youtube]
This Sunday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi again promised to use all her power to prevent the House from voting on any measure that would allow new oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf. A majority of Americans support new oil exploration in these regions. Pelosi has tried to prevent the House from even debating whether or not to increase domestic energy production, but this past Friday a small group of conservatives took over the House floor after Democrats voted to go on a five-week paid …
