Ranger from the North

As I explain at some length in my book Energy Victory, during World War II, the American strength in oil production was a decisive advantage for the Allies. Airplanes, ships, and tanks all ran on oil, and we controlled the supply. Because we were so rich in oil, we had no compunction whatsoever deterring us from bombing the Third Reich’s oil refineries or sinking the Japanese tanker fleet, and by doing so, we brought the enemy to their knees. In contrast, today, we are afraid to strike the Islamists for fear that our actions might endanger their petroleum output. The Kharg Island oil terminal handles 80 percent of Iran’s oil exports. An air raid on this extremely flammable facility would bankrupt the regime, thereby putting an end to its nuclear bomb project — and probably its existence. But we are not prepared for the economic consequences, and so must refrain, even as the terrorists continue to pour ever more bomb-usable, highly enriched uranium from their centrifuges.

# posted by Ranger @ 10:50 AM 0 comments

The mandate cannot be justified, either, under the Constitution’s grant of authority to Congress to make all laws “necessary and proper for carrying” its legitimate powers “into execution.” The mandate is not necessary to execute Obamacare’s insurance regulations. It is necessary only to stop some of their unwanted effects. Obamacare requires insurers to offer the same policies at the same prices to the sick and the healthy alike. Absent a mandate, that regulation will cause insurance premiums to rocket skyward. But regulatory folly cannot itself be a source of additional constitutional authority. Nor can a blunt command to citizens be a “proper” method of executing a regulation.

# posted by Ranger @ 10:29 AM 0 comments

I can understand why Obama is furious about the politics of oil, but frantically doing derrick photo-ops simply looks desperate and cynical. Far better would be to explain to the American people why his team once wanted higher fossil-fuel prices and why that was or is wise or is no longer true; and, why he has radically curbed new leasing on federal lands, and why that is wise or at least once was wise from 2009-12; and why tapping the reserve or getting other foreign nations to pump more is helpful in a way additional American production would not have been; and why he will insist on budget discipline and restore balance in the purchasing power of overseas dollars.

If he can’t do that, then he should not wonder why most fault him for their spiraling gas bills.

# posted by Ranger @ 7:25 PM 0 comments

Item by item, we are seeing the fantasies of academics and community organizers overtaken by the reality of a quite unforgiving material world — and the reality of wanting to hang onto power by being reelected.

# posted by Ranger @ 7:12 PM 0 comments

Bakken. Marcellus. Utica. These three short words represent not just the country's enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, but also one of the biggest divide between President Obama and Mitt Romney, the likely opponents in November's presidential contest.

Obama and his team at the Environmental Protection Agency and his allies in the United States Senate have done all that could be done to slow down the exploration and development of the vast and mostly untapped ocean of energy beneath the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Dakota and Montana.

Like the president's permitorium in the Gulf and his veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, this is the anti-energy administration, the Solyndra gang, the "sons of Gore" club.

Despite the widespread and growing repudiation of the alarmism of the global warming fanatics and the revelation of the anti-science agenda that drove the manipulation of the warming enthusiasts' pubic pronouncements and private manipulations, still the anti-carbon bias of Team Obama is deeply embedded throughout the federal government.

Despite the job growth that is waiting to explode upon full-fledged endorsement of and backing for vigorous production wherever oil and gas is found, still the president obstructs.

Want to get a glimpse of what the country's energy boom could bring? Google "Shell ethane cracker plant" and review the competition among Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia for the location of the $2 billion facility.

This will be just the first of such facilities and the jobs that will go into the construction and operation of such a plant are a desperately needed boost for a region that is just now beginning to feel the effects of the country's and the world's deep need for energy.

Need more evidence of the potential of the natural resources of the country to power the second American century? Try researching French oil and gas pipeline company Vallourec, which has made a huge investment in a steel pipe factory in Youngstown, Ohio, with another on the way. That's what happens when the world finds energy: It goes to where the energy is and develops it, employing the people in the region and those who want to move there.

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple gave the GOP weekly radio address Saturday, and in it he stated bluntly that the Obama administration is "killing energy development" in the country.

Dalrymple was talking specifically about the president's war against the Keystone XL pipeline but the point is true across the country, from the new deposits in the old Rust Belt, south to the Gulf Coast and north to the Canadian border.

The Keystone XL pipeline "would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast, which would not only benefit North Dakota but the rest of the country," Dalrymple argued, adding "it's the common sense thing to do."

Commons sense has never been the long suit of the anti-carbon environmentalist absolutists, many of whom now occupy key positions in the Obama administration, including in the Oval Office. It is a theology of sorts: that new carbon-based energy development simply delays the dawn of the Solyndra-led golden age of green energy.

That theology is holding back the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs directly connected to the production of energy, and millions more that will flow from the reinvigorated economies adjacent to the deposits.

Governor Romney would do well to employ those three words -- Bakken, Marcellus and Utica -- in every speech and not just in the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, but everywhere in the country as he explains how energy equals not just explosive job growth but energy independence.

# posted by Ranger @ 8:34 PM 0 comments

Ethnic politics have always been a facet of American politics. But recently the frightened Obama reelection campaign seems to be going to unusual lengths to appeal overtly to voters by virtue of Obama’s race — a sort of retrograde tribalism that Obama in 2004 promised that we would transcend.

What are we to make of the coach of the Chicago Bears, Lovie Smith, announcing on a campaign video, “I have the president’s back and it’s left up to us, as African Americans, to show that we have his back. Also join African Americans for President Obama today.” Does Coach Smith mean that “as African Americans” one has a duty to support the president by virtue of his race rather than his politics alone, or his politics as they relate to the welfare of African Americans? Are those African Americans who oppose Obama, then, doing so “not as African Americans”? Are whites and Hispanics who support Obama doing so because he is also half-white or as “not African Americans”?

And is the coach of the Chicago Bears now starting a precedent that the coaches of all NFL teams shall endorse particular political candidates (e.g., “I have Senator X’s back and it’s left up to us, as (fill in the blanks: white, Latino, Asian) — Americans, to show that we have his back.”), in hopes that their own races and team loyalties will sway voters? If so, Lovie Smith should read Procopius on the Nika riots and the volatile intersection between sport, faction, and politics.

These sorts of Byzantine blue vs. green tribal loyalties become creepy when our president is encouraging well known Americans to state them so overtly. And, of course, it is only a matter of time now when some will, in counter fashion, publicly state that they are voting against Obama as a matter of racial politics in the way that others are voting for him on that very basis — or perhaps because they also don’t like the Chicago Bears.

Again, the Obama-Smith strategy is a suicidal path for any multiracial society that has hopes of transcending tribalism.

# posted by Ranger @ 8:12 PM 0 comments

The Permian Basin of West Texas is experiencing an oil boom, leading some of the region’s top oilmen to predict that Texas oil production will double within five to seven years.

Oil drillers over the last eight years have found that the dense oil rock of the basin surrounding Midland and Odessa responds well to hydraulic fracturing, releasing lush yields. Total oil production last year in Texas averaged more than 1 million barrels per day for the first time since 2001.

“Right in the basin, we could get up to 2 million barrels a day,” Jim Henry of Midland-based Henry Resources told The Dallas Morning News for an article in its Sunday’s edition.

“I’ve been totally surprised by the amount of oil we’re finding out in the shale zones,” Scott Sheffield, chairman and chief executive of Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources Co., told the newspaper.

“We have 30 billion barrels of new oil discoveries,” said Tim Leach, chairman and CEO of Midland-based Concho Resources. “It can be hard to get your mind around that.

Drillers also worry about the prospect of tax increases and limits placed on land use by the presence of such endangered species as the dunes sagebrush lizard.

# posted by Ranger @ 7:04 PM 0 comments