The President’s Actions, and Rising Prices

Is President Obama the “anti-energy” president, as former Gov. Pete Du Pont argues in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal (sub. required)? Certainly, in the areas that matter most – oil and natural gas development – a case can be made from the infographic below that the president’s policies haven’t helped.

Administration Oil Strategy Contributes to Price Increases

By “matters most” we mean the sources that current supply more than 60 percent of the energy we use – and which will continue to supply nearly 60 percent of the energy we use for the next quarter century, according to the Energy Information Administration.

That’s not knocking other energy forms, because we need them all. It’s recognizing this energy reality: Our economy runs on oil and natural gas – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

In that context the president and his team should acknowledge that energy reality – by protecting and enhancing the energy sources that play the leading role supporting our economy. Here, this president and his administration often appear to be doing the opposite.

As the graphic shows, the president basically is pursuing an off-oil policy: delaying or canceling development on federal areas onshore and offshore, proposing punitive tax increases on America’s energy producers, threatening new layers of unnecessary regulation and rejecting key components like the Keystone XL pipeline. The president claims credit for oil and gas production (that belongs to others), while pursuing policies that actually put a drag on future oil and gas development, potentially jeopardizing America’s overall security.

Meanwhile, as the lines at the base of the graphic show, prices for crude oil have risen steadily since 2009, boosting costs for gasoline and diesel.

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