It’s been a
tough five years for anyone seeking a rational and production-oriented energy
policy from Washington. Department of
Interior leasing policies still block most oil and gas development on both
on-shore and offshore public lands, even as a multi-decade statutory drilling
offshore moratorium, expired in 2008. Today’s hydrocarbon boom relies on
private property, or on state or county lands.
EPA’s war on
coal is real, and it mobilized after a 2007 Supreme Court decision declared
that carbon dioxide, and other so-called “green house gases,” were actually
“pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. An oft-threatened regulatory storm began
after “cap and trade” legislation failed in an overwhelmingly Democrat
Congress. An endless
stream of grants and loan guarantees have flowed to failed developers of solar
panels, exotic batteries, electric cars, and a parade of cellulosic (non-food)
biofuel startups. And, even more loan guarantees and tax credits have flowed to
wildly expensive and intermittent solar and wind facilities, whose electricity
people are forced to buy because their local utilities, in some 30 states, have
to meet “Renewable Energy Standards” in their wholesale power purchases.....To Read More....
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