First an apology to those who have commented on this blog.  Thank you for your interest and feedback.  I found your messages after some a confused and extended search – some were aging in a remote folder I had neglected.  My attempts to respond have in some cases kicked back as undeliverable.  You might try again if you did not receive a response.

One inquiry merits an examination here – my assertion that Obama energy policies were anti-oil and gas when during his tenure production of both rose and for the most part growth was vigorous. 

The fact is that production on state and private land experienced ALL the growth while production and leasing on federal lands was desultory at best.  The shale plays responsible growth in crude production are centered on private lands in North Dakota, west Texas, Oklahoma, and the east central US Marcellus/Utica plays in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia where federal land holdings are negligible.

True that production growth is evident in the deep Gulf of Mexico, but those resources are developed across decades and a single administration rarely has a major impact, at least the Obama administration didn’t.  What that administration did do was place oil and gas exploration off limits in prospective provinces in Alaska, all of the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, despite advocacy by some states, and passed executive orders dramatically increasing regulation and cost of emissions monitoring and leasing, attempts to limit fracking and revisions to Onshore Orders making them dramatically more restrictive.

Perhaps the most galling of the administration poses, was to claim credit for the growth in production while pandering to its enviro-extremist base with volumes of regulations, guidelines, mandates and assorted other sticks in the spokes.  In coming posts, misadventures at EPA and the BLM will be examined.  These are of a pattern – similar in subterfuge and dissembling to Fast and Furious, the IRS/Lois Lerner debacle, the VA and the Pandora’s Box of horribles experienced in the past eight years.  No question there is plenty of blame to go around – on both sides off the aisle, but several episodes in the service of “keeping it in the ground” merit retelling – stay tuned.