Obama’s Keystone Kops
March 20, 2013 by John Myers
“The only way to break this cycle of spiking gas prices — the only way to break that cycle for good — is to shift our cars entirely, our cars and trucks, off oil.” — President Barack Obama, speaking at the Argonne National Laboratory on March 15
President Barack Obama has finally brought Congress together with one common goal: to oppose his ruinous energy policies. Perhaps he can unite grass-roots Americans the way no one has since King George III.
On Thursday, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that would give Congress the sole power to approve TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project. It is essential to America’s national security in that it channels Canada’s vast oil sands to refineries and ports in Texas.
Senators John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced the measure, which proposes to ensure the construction of the 800,000-barrels-per-day pipeline.
It is no surprise that the President is fighting back. White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters last week that since the pipeline will cross international borders, the decision for its approval belongs with the State Department. This is the latest example of how the President usurps the democratic process and seizes extraordinary powers, all for the good of the environmental movement.
The $5.3 billion Keystone pipeline has become the battleground for Canada’s oil sands. The combatants are the Greens and the realists. The latter understand that for the foreseeable future America needs secure supplies of petroleum and not the fantasy of windmills and electric cars.
The Greens continue to resist and insist the pipeline will expand the oil sands projects in Western Canada, leaving a dangerous carbon footprint upon the world.
The Problem with Pelosi
Not only would the Keystone pipeline greatly decrease America’s dependency on Mideast oil, but it would also create tens of thousands of new jobs at a time when unemployment lingers close to 8 percent.
Not so, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and environmental activist who continues to argue that the Keystone pipeline will not deliver many jobs.
“It just is amazing to me that they can say [Keystone would create] ‘tens of thousands of jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil,’” said Pelosi at a press briefing on Capitol Hill last week to oppose the bipartisanship in the Senate. “The oil is for export and the jobs are nowhere near that.”
The Keystone pipeline may not employ as many people as Pelosi does for her hairdos, clothes and facelifts; but at least it is a start. Contradictions from Pelosi abound. If she visited Saudi Arabia as opposed to any Western democracy like Canada (America’s most reliable ally and energy source), the women’s rights advocate would have to cover her face with a scarf and she couldn’t drive around in her gas-guzzling Chevy Suburban.*
Pelosi, Obama and green advocates continue to recklessly tie the Nation’s future to Islamic oil producers like Saudi Arabia, home to most of the 9/11 hijackers.
The chart below gives you an indication of Canada’s oil wealth. It doesn’t even include Canada’s oil sands reserves. If those figures are included, Canada has oil reserves five times larger than Saudi Arabia.
Incompetency Or Conspiracy?
In November, columnist Ezra Levant summed up Obama’s energy strategy in the Toronto Sun:
Barack Hussein Obama announced America’s new energy policy: He prefers Saudi conflict oil shipped in on tankers over Canadian ethical oil in a pipeline.
It’s a bizarre decision for the president of a country with 9% unemployment, that could use the thousands of well-paying jobs that will be created building the state-of-the-art pipeline.
It’s not just jobs and the property taxes that the pipeline will pay in perpetuity. It’s the energy security. There’s no risk of a Gadhafi-style revolution in Canada.
There’s no need to spend $1 billion on a Pentagon mission to secure Libyan conflict oil, with friendly Canada to the north.
But in some ways, Obama’s decision isn’t surprising. He has adamantly opposed drilling in northeast Alaska, though his own administration estimates that would provide an additional 800,000 barrels a day, almost as much as America imports from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.
Obama doesn’t much like drilling in the Gulf of Mexico either — his moratorium there caused many deep-water rigs to move to other countries, costing more than 100,000 lost jobs in states like Louisiana, jobs that won’t come back for years.
I cannot fathom how the President is so ignorant of America’s energy and job needs. He continues to ignore the best interests of the Nation he swore to protect. Could it be there is something nefarious afoot in the Obama White House?
The party line was repeated Friday by Obama spokesman Josh Earnest, who declared that supporting projects such as the Argonne National Laboratory, where Obama was touring, is more important to America than petroleum.
The Argonne lab is just outside Obama’s home base of Chicago. Researchers there are working on advancing batteries for electric vehicles. It is part of Obama’s pledge to wean cars and trucks from oil.
The President has as much engineering expertise as I do, and I would wager that he has a lot less understanding of energy. Despite this, he has brazenly urged the establishment of a $2 billion clean energy fund over the next 10 years. How? Obama will redirect royalties the Federal government receives from offshore drilling along the Outer Continental Shelf toward research for electric vehicles, the very cars that I have derided.
Against all reason, the President continues to embrace Green energy while marginalizing Texas tea. He is robbing Peter to pay Judas.
So around and around we go with Obama, our vaulted leader who is in Jerusalem today kicking off his Mideast tour. He proposes to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and ease tensions in a region that sits atop two-thirds of the world’s conventional oil reserves and is on the brink of anarchy.
What Obama either doesn’t understand or understands all too well is that America’s national security needs are tied to petroleum. Without a lifeline from the Canadian oil sands, the inevitable will happen: the Mideast will explode while the U.S. economy, under the yoke of $10 per gallon gasoline, will implode.
In the end, the greatest threat to America may reside inside our borders at the very head of our government.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
Editor, Myers’ Energy & Gold Report
*Editor’s Note: Carma Globale reported in 2009 that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was driven around Washington in a Chevy Suburban. The website was unable to find out what vehicle she drove.
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