Obama's Gas Mask

January 24, 2012 JThis is a test

Energy is widely rumored to be one major focal point of the president’s State of the Union speech tonight – so be prepared to have your head spinning around on a swivel and keep all sharp objects safely out of easy reach. The gas production out of the president may rival what we’re seeing from the Bakkan formation.

According to one report, the Great and Powerful Obama will order an increase in natural gas production, though how that will be accomplished while his activist EPA is scouring the land, looking for any tenuous reason to justify a federal crackdown on hydraulic fracturing – the technique, vilified by Obama’s green friends, without which the shale gas revolution would not be happening. And how that natural gas will make its way to market, at home or abroad, is another mystery, since Obama’s green friends have taken to opposing almost any pipeline (including natural gas pipelines) that doesn’t carry wind to wind farms. Now they’re even trying to choke-off potential U.S. natural gas exports, by attempting to block use of American ports that might serve as a shipping point. Promoting more natural gas production would put the President crosswise with Gang Green — something that his derailment of Keystone XL shows he isn’t willing to do.

But what’s really galling about this “initiative” is that natural gas production will continue to increase irrespective of whether Obama waves his magic wand, because much of the production is happening on private and other non-federal land, which can’t be locked-away by Washington. Increasing access to federal lands would certainly help production, but the interesting (and wonderful) thing about the natural gas revolution is that it can’t be confined to, or bottled up on, federal land. These vast new energy reserves cross such boundaries, diminishing the federal government’s influence and leverage.

Washington, Obama’s EPA and fossilfuelphobes in the green camp will do their damndest to regulate fracking to death. But their ability to strangle it in its crib is in this case lessened, because the boom doesn’t depend on access to federal lands.

Trying to take credit for something that’s happening despite Washington is typical Obama.

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