As predicted in print by Steve Milloy more than a year ago, Shell Oil’s Arctic Ocean drilling permits have been blocked by the EPA.
Milloy’s March 31, 2010 column in Investor’s Business Daily stated:
Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.
So it was no surprise to read on FOXNews.com today that,
“Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.
A slipshod EPA permitting process — most likely intentional — set up the credulous Shell for failure.
Sad but entirely predictable.
What people don’t seem to get is that Obama wants expensive gasoline as a means of causing energy chaos (see Green Hell for more on this point). He doesn’t view high gas prices as an obstacle to re-election. He knows the election will be about personalities, not policies — or at least that will be his campaign strategy.
AND… it’s being stopped because an icebreaker 70 miles away could pollute some stupid little village.
In the mean time the morons that constitute the ‘undecideds’ and the ‘independents’ in America keeping mooing on about this and that. I actually talked to some Obumbles voters that are shocked… SHOCKED I tell ya, that those dirty rats in Big Oil are doing this on Obumbles watch. Not one of them remembers that he stood up and said he’d get $5 gasoline and that electricity rates would “necessarily” soar.
In the mean time the Chinese are drilling a few miles off Florida into pools that probably belong to us and the Russians will be drilling off Alaska and the archipelego for oil that, once again, probably belongs to us.
We’re so-o-o-o boned.
Two bits of info on this from Anchorage:
The state’s largest newspaper, a McClatchy rag that calls itself the Anchorage Daily News has not reported this story.
The Chukchi is thought to have 26 billion barrels of oil under it, more than 2.5 times what we have pumped down the Trans Alaskan Pipeline System over the last 35 years.
Would Chukchi Sea oil solve our problems? No, but it would be a heck of a good start. Cheers –
When the last lawyer is strangled with the entrails of the last environmentalist.
I see that the Administration is seeking to prosecute speculators and other fraudsters who are altering supplies, manipulating availability, and driving up gasoline prices.
When will the the indictments be handed down for Stephen Chu, Lisa Jackson, John Holdren, Carol Browner, Ed Markey, and Barack Obama, et al??