Energy Policy

Or lack of one. First, of course, President Obama has decided to reject the Keystone XL pipeline project. It’s not as if we needed more jobs or a secure source of energy from a friendly, neighboring country.

President Obama, denouncing a “rushed and arbitrary deadline” set by congressional Republicans, announced Wednesday that he was rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive project that would have stretched from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in Texas.

Obama said that the Feb. 21 deadline, set by Congress as part of the two-month payroll tax cut extension, made it impossible to adequately review the project proposed by TransCanada. But he left the door open to the possibility that a new proposal might pass regulatory muster.

Raising the stakes in a bitter election-year fight with Republicans, President Obama on Wednesday rejected a Canadian company’s plan to build a 1,700-mile pipeline to carry oil across six U.S. states to Texas refineries. (Jan. 18)

 “This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” the president said in a statement.

It’s all the Republicans’ fault for rushing him. Sixty days is just not enough time. Of course, it would only take me about sixty seconds to decide to go with it. I suppose this is to appease the environmentalists. But even so, this decision makes little sense. If we don’t buy the oil, the Canadians will sell it to China. Which country has the better environmental record?

Then there is this articleI read in The Hill.

Dems propose ‘Reasonable Profits Board’ to regulate oil company profits

By Pete Kasperowicz – 01/19/12 10:20 AM ET

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding “a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.

The bill would also seem to exclude industry representatives from the board, as it says members “shall have no financial interests in any of the businesses for which reasonable profits are determined by the Board.”

According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads to a profit of between 100 percent and 102 percent of a reasonable profit. The windfall tax would jump to 75 percent when the profit is between 102 and 105 percent of a reasonable profit, and above that, the windfall tax would be 100 percent. The bill also specifies that the oil-and-gas companies, as the seller, would have to pay this tax.

Kucinich said these tax revenues would be used to fund alternative transportation programs when oil-and-gas prices spike.

“Gas prices continue to rise, creating a hardship for the American people,” he said. “At the same time, oil companies are making record profits gouging their customers. This bill would tax only the excess profits and create forward-thinking transportation alternatives.”

Because we wouldn’t want to give the oil companies any incentive to provide better services for their customers. These six Congressmen are so ignorant of basic economics they shouldn’t  be allowed to vote, much less sit in a position where they can make important decisions about the future of our country.

I am beginning to suspect that that the Democrats really don’t want us to have any energy at all, except whatever we can get by fairy dust and unicorn farts.

 

Related articles

• Fox News Insider: President Obama Issues Statement on the Rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline (ctom1985.wordpress.com)
• Keystone XL Pipeline Would Increase Oil Prices in Midwest (desmogblog.com) I suppose for some that’s a feature not a bug.
• Can We Call the Keystone Cops? (freedomfighterusa.wordpress.com)
• Victory! Obama rejects permit for Keystone XL pipeline. (magpiegazette.wordpress.com) How awful of “Big Oil” to want to sell their product to the public. This has to be stopped!

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Tags: Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Keystone Pipeline, Keystone XL