Obama Goes Full Shizoid On Gas Prices

Our beloved energy and jobs President is embarking on a tour to explain how the anger over rapidly rising and crippling gasoline prices is misplaced. As we have come to expect, he is blaming everybody but himself for the skyrocketing costs of fuel. I keep waiting for him to blame the prehistoric plants for not dying fast enough and in sufficient numbers to make oil more readily available today.

His explanations are quickly becoming more ridiculous than ever. You see, the President has a message that is completely self-contradictory. He cites huge international forces over which he has no control as the real reason behind rising gas prices. At the same time, he is telling us about all the wonderful things he has done to reduce gas prices. He tells us that we can’t drill our way out of this problem, and says that anyone who disagrees is lying or ignorant. Then he tells us how he is working to reduce gas prices by allowing more drilling (an outright lie).

In fact, most of the drilling now being done is the result of actions taking during the Bush administration, and are the rare survivors of Obama regulations that greatly reduced the number of drilling sites which would have been created had his administration not intervened. Yes, some additional drilling is being done, but no, Obama did nothing to encourage it. Had the Bush-era approvals all been left intact, there would have been a great many more new drilling sites today.

Another way that Obama has proposed to increase oil production is to wait for a big oil company to announce it has produced more oil, and therefore more profits, then call it a “windfall” and tax the company to death. Using this method, which he is touting during his tour, he gets to have it both ways. “Look, I’ve increased oil production, but I’m not letting those greedy oil barons get away with making too much money.” What kind of suckers are going to fall for that? Answer: liberals. And let's not forget those evil Wall Street speculators who drive the price of oil up (the same ones who drive it down when economic conditions are better). They didn't invest in Solydra, so they must be demonized.

And then, as the piece de resitance, he blames the increased demand in China and India and unrest in the Middle East for the explosion in gas prices. But he does nothing except babble about democracy in the Middle East while diverting Canadian oil to China by nixing the Keystone XL pipeline. He’s even talking about raising tariffs to punish China and India for making those demands. Apparently he has never read anything about how the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act turned the Depression into the Great Depression.

He also fails to explain how increased domestic oil production would not alleviate the problem of oil from the Middle East going elsewhere. I guess a simple fact like that is not sufficiently “nuanced” for his great mind. He also fails to understand that increased domestic production would have a positive effect on world prices, not just American prices. The more oil that is being produced to meet the demand means greater profits from selling more oil at a lower price than selling less oil at a higher price. And domestic oil has the benefit of being determined by the market, not by the greed of Middle Eastern dictators and terrorists. Obama’s reply: “What’s the market?”

In fact, Obama has done a great deal more for oil production in Brazil than he has for production in America. But he would have you believe otherwise. Based on Bush-era actions, the Department of Energy predicted that oil production from federal land and offshore locations would be a minimum of sixteen percent higher than they have actually been under the Obama anti-oil administration. Conversely, the DOE’s information agency reports that Obama’s policies reversing the Bush-era actions resulted in fifteen percent less domestic oil production in 2011 and will reduce it by another twenty-six percent in 2012 from the 2010 highs.

What few increases have occurred during the Obama years have been accomplished on privately-owned land. Exploration and production on federal or federally-controlled lands have gone down precipitously. In the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, the protection of mosquito hordes is more important to the energy President than exploiting the postage-stamp sized proposed drilling site which would release billions of barrels of oil. In the Gulf of Mexico, Obama uses the BP spill as his excuse to cripple oil exploration and production. And when it comes to importing Canadian shale oil, he has neutered that by phony environmental concerns which were fully addressed and solved with the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama’s Secretary of Energy is appearing before Congressional committees to answer questions about why the Obama administration thinks that domestic production has no effect on prices at the pump. Even though Secretary Chu has back-pedaled on his radical views about raising gas prices artificially to European levels, his other answers have been totally inadequate. How less production means higher prices is a total mystery to him. Ditto for higher gasoline taxes meaning higher prices at the pump.

It will be interesting to follow Obama on his “Ain’t I Great on Gasoline?” tour. Americans tend to be very good BS detectors, and I suspect this will be no exception.