Overall, oil and gas production on federally controlled land is down by 40% since Obama took office.
So how is it possible that oil production can increase when the Obama administration is so overtly anti-oil?
Easy. As Gerard explains, there’s nothing they can really do to stop it.
While oil production is up, the increase relates almost entirely to investment and leasing decisions made before, sometimes long before, this administration came into office. The increase is also due to oil and gas development on private and state lands over which the administration has little or no control at all.
…while it’s true oil production in America is up, this is clearly in spite of Team Obama’s best efforts. Because the Founding Fathers limited the authority the federal government has on private and state lands, hundreds of small oil companies — not “Big Oil,” as environmentalists want you to believe — are able to drill for oil on private and state land, unencumbered by the heavy hand of Obama’s anti-oil agenda.
For him to take credit for this is like the crowing rooster who thinks it made the sun rise.
Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.
And no celebration of its two-year anniversary. I guess it wasn’t as much of a BFD as Joe Biden said it was. Or perhaps it is, but not in the way he thought.
The JOBS Act won a cloture vote in the Senate. There was a lot of fear that the Senate would muck it up with a lot of inhibiting requirements, but now it will go on for a vote.
SCOTUS has slapped down the EPA. It’s insane that this case even had to be brought in the first place.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s Scalia’s majority (actually, unanimous, that’s what I meant by “slapped down”) opinion. It should be noted that it was not just the EPA that was slapped down, but (once again) the Ninth District.
[Update a while later]
They get their day in court, but they may still lose. As noted in comments, they need a legal fund, though I suspect they’re getting pro bono support from free-market places.