Becoming more independent from foreign energy
Image via WikipediaOil is close to $100 a barrel as the Middle East is imploding, and President Obama wants to raise taxes on domestic oil and gas producers. Such taxes would, if approved by Congress, make the country more dependent, not less, on imported oil. In the 2012 budget he sent Congress earlier this month, Obama proposed to raise $3.6 billion in 2012 and $46 billion over the next decade from tax increases on oil and gas, more than on any other industry.She is right.
The ostensible rationale is, as Obama put it, that "we are eliminating subsidies to fossil fuels and instead making a significant investment in clean energy technology -- boosting our investment in this high-growth field by a third -- because the country that leads in clean energy will lead in the global economy."
No mention, of course, of the distortion of investments to support Obama's goals "of the United States becoming the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and for us to reach a point by 2035 where 80 percent of our electricity will come from clean energy sources."
If America is to reduce use of imported fuels, it needs to raise domestic production as well as to conserve. This increases our long-term energy security, rather than harming it.
Every single additional barrel of oil produced in America is one barrel fewer that we need to import -- and as we produce more at home, we employ American workers and produce revenues for all Americans.
Energy production in the Gulf of Mexico is still stalled because of the BP oil spill last April. Last week Judge Martin Feldman gave the Obama Interior Department 30 days to act on drilling applications in the Gulf, writing in his decision that "not acting at all is not a lawful option."
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In 2007, 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, equivalent to 33 billion barrels of oil, or about 18 years of U.S. oil production, were found in the Haynesville Shale in northern Louisiana. Texas, Arkansas, New York, and Pennsylvania are also home to new gas fields.
Obama's new tax proposals, rather than leading toward energy independence, would drive oil and gas production abroad at a time when foreign markets are in disarray.
New taxes would make oil and gas in the United States uncompetitive, punishing domestic American oil and gas companies and benefiting countries with large reserves such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia. Does Obama really want these countries, all under fire for their neglect of basic human rights, to get richer at our expense?
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The administration's wrong headed policy of strangling domestic production because of the carbon phobia of Obama and Salazar is making the US a weaker country and also making us poorer. Their green energy dreams are not going to change the need for every drop of domestic energy we can find.
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