Free Republic

Energy: As the House passes a bill to open up offshore drilling, the Senate holds another show trial of oil executives showing why people blame them, not the administration, for high gas prices. Last week they fought back. Summoned for what Sen. Orrin Hatch labeled a dog-and-pony show, executives of Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP America and Chevron appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and, in often-heated exchanges, indicated their days as whipping boys are over. The hearing was called ostensibly to support the Democrats' Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, a bill with no chance of passage....

Leadership: Making jokes about remembering what it was like to pump gas or speaking at a foreign-owned wind turbine plant does not ease the pain at the pump that has been orchestrated by the White House. President Obama found time on the eve of a possible government shutdown to dine with the Rev. Al Sharpton, address his National Action Network Annual Gala and make quips about an energy crisis America finds increasingly unfunny. "I don't pump gas now, but I remember what it was like pumping gas. ... I remember the end of the month (paying bills) .. . I...

Energy Policy: President Obama wants to cut oil imports by a third after telling Brazil he wants to be their best customer. Cellulosic ethanol won't cut it, and neither will talking out of both sides of your teleprompter. In a Georgetown University address that echoed President Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war" speech in 1977, the president on Wednesday outlined his plan to reduce oil imports by one-third over the next decade. Carter, too, set the goal of reducing oil imports by a third through conservation, increased fuel efficiency, more use of ethanol and other alternative energy sources, and the...

While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we'll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!? His "What, me worry?" presidency has given both Americans and our allies plenty to worry about. But in the process of making nice with Brazil, Obama made a mind-boggling announcement that should make even his most loyal supporter cringe: We will help Brazil develop its offshore oil so we can one day import it.Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create...

Energy Policy: Our interior secretary plans to reinstate the offshore drilling moratorium struck down by a federal judge. But if deep-water drilling is so unsafe, why are we helping Brazil drill nearly three times as deep? Maybe Secretary Ken Salazar can explain why Britain and others can safely drill in the North Sea and no other nation has suspended its offshore drilling. Yet there he was Tuesday saying he'll reissue a reworded moratorium that will make it clear to dunces like U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman why offshore drilling is unsafe. As with health care reform and other issues, the...

Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs. Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign...

The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling. When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy Policy: Ignoring peak-oil Cassandras, BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.The world is running out of oil and good riddance. That's the environmentalists' mantra. But since the first well was drilled near Titusville, Pa., 150 years ago, the prophecy has gone unfulfilled. Trouble is, those darn greedy oil companies keep finding the stuff. Oil has been produced in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled by Kerr-McGee Corp. in 1947. Some of the wells are...

Insert photo caption or credit hereThe Wall Street Journal reported this week the Obama administration will invest $2 billion (or more) in drilling off the shores of Brazil, of all places. The same Dem-wits who will do anything to keep us from drilling off our own shores are now investing $2 billion in a Brazilian oil company? The question is why? It’s a POLITICAL PAYOFF TO GEORGE SOROS is why. The liberal rabble-rouser has 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares. Once again mainstream media has turned a blind eye to newest of Obama scandals. The Lone Conservative says...

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Brazil, long proud of its push to develop renewable energy and wean itself off oil, has a bad case of fossil-fuel fever. An enormous offshore field in territorial waters -- the biggest Western Hemisphere oil discovery in 30 years -- has Brazilians saying, "Drill, baby, drill," while environmentalists fear the nation will take a big leap backward in its hunt for crude. There has been virtually no public debate on the potential environmental costs of retrieving the billions of barrels of oil, a project one expert said will be as difficult as landing a man...

President Obama has opposed any expanded oil drilling off American shores largely on environmental grounds, turning a deaf ear to conservative cries of "Drill, Baby, Drill." But now Obama may start hearing cries of "foul" after the U.S. Export-Import Bank promised Petrobras, Brazil's state-owned oil company, $2 billion in loan guarantees to help finance lucrative drilling off the shores of Rio De Janeiro. Some see a contradiction in an executive branch agency, independent but with board members appointed by the president, facilitating abroad the very kind of energy exploration Obama opposes domestically.

Major new offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico will soon be a reality. The big question is whether Americans will be part of it. Brazil, China, India, Norway, Spain and Russia have all signed agreements with Cuba and the Bahamas to initiate exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico within the next two years. So the prospect of seeing Russian oil rigs 45 miles off the Florida Keys -- where American oil companies are now forbidden to drill -- is a very real possibility.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the...

RIO DE JANEIRO — Faced with the world’s most important oil discovery in years, the Brazilian government is seeking to step back from more than a decade of close cooperation with foreign oil companies and more directly control the extraction itself. The move is part of a nationalistic drive to increase the country’s benefits from its natural resources and cement its position as a global power. But it could significantly slow the development of the oil fields at a time when the world is looking for new sources, energy and risk analysts said. This month, Brazil’s government said it wanted...