Bob McCarty Writes

Thanks to President Barack Obama, who seems to be doing everything he possibly can to destroy the nation’s fossil fuels industries, there may be a solar-powered, made-in-Japan, robotic rickshaw in your future.

The latest attack on “Big Oil” came today when Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar used this news release today to announce his department will hold an oil and natural gas lease sale for the Central Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf.

Though quick to point out that the sale will offer nearly 36 million acres and could produce up to 1.3 billion barrels of oil and 5.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Secretary Salazar conveniently left something very important out of his announcement (i.e., the fact that lease terms have been made significantly shorter).

According to Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, a group which represents some 400 firms in the oil and natural gas industry, today’s action stands as one more impediment to the development of the domestic oil and natural gas necessary for the American economy to prosper.

“We wrote to Secretary Salazar three days ago reminding him that this administration has set up a series of roadblocks that discourage the investment necessary to increase domestic energy supplies, create well-paying American jobs, and provide additional government revenues at a time when we desperately need all of them,” Gerard said in a statement this afternoon. “The shortening of lease terms does nothing to guarantee more discoveries but rather takes away from companies the flexibility necessary to operate in an extremely challenging and risky environment.”

Am I surprised by Secretary Salazar’s announcement today?  Not at all.

To understand why, read the post I published yesterday about the many energy-related promises broken by President Barack Obama.

To read other BMW posts about the nation’s oil and natural gas industry, click here.