With America on the verge of achieving energy independence in the next five years by dramatically expanding domestic energy production, why should anyone be surprised that it’s Big Oil money that’s out to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline to prevent competition.

Most Americans were stunned when the U.S. State Department on January 18th denied the Keystone XL building permit to construct a 1,661 mile pipeline through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas in an election year. The media blamed the rejection on opposition from environmental activists, such as Robert Redford, who commented: “Canada wanted to send the dirtiest oil on the planet through the heart of America so that they could access export routes.” But polls demonstrated the promise of 6,000 unionized construction jobs and lower energy costs fostered 67% support to build the pipeline and only 25% against.

For the last three years, the mantra of the Obama Administration, the United Nations and the Agenda 21 “sustainability” crowd had been the coming of “Peak Oil”, the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction would be reached, then the rate of production would terminally decline and the prices would rise exponentially. This justified more money worldwide for the first time being invested in alternatives versus traditional energy sources to generate electricity. Projects for wind, sun, water and biomass captured $187 billion, while only $157 billion went into coal, oil and gas. Unfortunately for “sustainable” investors, this was before the realization that “fracking” and other new technology was drastically increasing U.S domestic energy production, causing the price of gas to be cut in half. Based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration data,; wind now costs 50% more, photovoltaic 300% more and solar almost 500% more in comparison to burning natural gas to generate electricity.

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On “Meet the Press” Sunday, David Gregory asked Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, “Should government be playing venture capitalist to try to prop these interest–industries up [referring to Solyndra]?”

Plouffe’s answer: “Well, let’s step back for a minute. We have to win this race, you know, we–if we don’t win the clean energy race in terms of technology, innovation, and jobs, and cede it to other countries, we’re not going to have the century–we need this. It’d be like us ceding the automotive industry race or the Internet and computer race.” [emphasis mine]

What pure balderdash!  I am sure that Henry Ford would not be happy to hear that the White House was taking credit for his successes – like inventing the assembly line. The success of the American automotive industry and Internet was not because the government subsidizing Henry Ford or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs; it was because private investors saw the value of their ideas.

David Gregory’s question goes to the heart of our economic train wreck. Where in the Constitution does it state that Congress should be playing the role of venture capitalist and funding one business over another? What authorizes the government to fund one particular business – whether it’s Solyndra or Exxon – with everyone else’s money?

Ethanol producers receive billions in government subsidies. What does it accomplish? It increases the price the farmers pay to feed their livestock, devours huge quantities of the corn supply (more than 40%), and increases the price of corn for American families and families around the world. How crazy is that – a government subsidy that drives up the cost of food? (more…)

In this week’s video, I lay out the connection between big unions and big gas prices. I don’t quite have Glenn Beck money, so don’t expect an appearance from the chalkboard. It really is interesting to see just why liberals feel the need to extend the federal gasoline tax. Who’s at play here? Big Oil? Nope. Big Pharama? Get real. Big Unions? Ding ding! That’s where the money is, folks. Also, I fear munchkins.

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The cry for America to wean itself off foreign oil is well founded. After all, we get our oil from a backward region of the world where anti-Americanism is institutional and academic. Since America possesses an abundance of natural resources, with real potential for a boom in energy production, those cries strongly resonate. A current estimate of natural gas in America is 2,047 trillion cubic feet. That is enough to power our nation for the next 100 years.

A study by the Congressional Research Service claimed that America’s supply of recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal is the largest on the planet. Furthermore, we have the ability to tap into an estimated 165 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Even with the current rate of consumption, our supply of oil is enough to fuel the country for at least the next 75 years. Even if we currently lack the infrastructure, the potential exists. And with the injection of revenue and capital investments from a nation as rich as ours, industry technology and innovation would increase likely lowering prices on extraction and production.

The powers that be, however, have a different view of these potentials. It is not a misunderstanding or differing arithmetic. Rather, it is ideologically and politically motivated. Democrats continuously marginalize America’s potential for domestic energy production. Their law makers, with the help of Obama’s pen and rhetoric, have declared war on energy. They chose to tax “Big Oil”, limit oil production and exploration, revoke leases for inland production and financially backbreaking businesses to drill on federally owned land. Democrats decry record profits made by the oil industries as evil and mislead the country to believe they are only leveling the playing field between consumer and producer. In actuality, the Earth-Democrats are engineering a sinister plan for blowback. A person who possesses even an elementary understanding of macroeconomics would know these added costs will simply be passed on to the consumer. Since the days of horse and carriage are long gone, and Americans still rely on oil and gas to commute and move produce across a country roughly the size of Europe, the market will survive out of necessity. That is until taxes on gas and mileage go up. The word is sabotage.

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This story might slip right past you. It’s understandable, considering most Americans have no idea of the context or how it happened that the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is now set for 20 years in Iraq, thanks to a deal just inked between the Iraqi government and Communist China. The Iraqis originally selected America’s Exxon-Mobil. I’ll wager you probably didn’t know that. You’ll want to read on. But brace yourself.

It’s the classic American political tale of self-loathing crafted by the usual suspects. With its government firm and its security at its post-surge best, the Iraqi government needed to quickly bring its oilfields online. It desperately needed the revenues. The summer of 2008 saw oil prices above $100 per barrel and Americans were paying $4 per gallon at the pump.

The best in the business – the best in the world – is Exxon-Mobil. And the government of Iraq turned to America’s Exxon-Mobil to bring undeveloped and underdeveloped fields online to rejuvenate its own revenue sources and ween itself and its people off of American aid.

But three American Senators would have none of it. Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) sent a public letter to the Bush administration’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, imploring her to derail the Iraqi deal. (See: ‘In China We Trust’: Senators Closed Door to US Oil Investment In Iraq.) As the Senate troika stated, “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even great danger.”

You see, these three American Senators insisted that Iraq shall have no revenues until it passed an oil revenue sharing law that met their distant standards. Or at least, Iraq should have certainly had no additional revenue. Their letter was dismissed out of hand in Washington. But in Iraq, the desired consequences of the letter took hold. The Iraqi government became spooked as the reportage of the letter turned, as one would expect, into wrangling and infighting by those seeking to leverage it to their advantage in the hotly contested revenue sharing process.

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E&E Daily reports that, speaking before a lobbying group gathered to promote more ethanol-style boondoggles (but for windmills), “Sen. John Kerry is predicting widespread support from electric utilities, chemical companies and Big Oil as he enters his seventh month of closed-door negotiations on a comprehensive energy and climate bill that still hasn’t made its way into public view.”

Along the way Kerry says some very silly things as putative lead author of this, the Senate’s cap-and-trade bill now being styled as an “energy” bill on the heels of a memo by pollster Stanley Greenberg that the public weren’t buying “cap-and-trade” or “global warming”. As quoted by E&E:

“Ironically, we’ve been working very closely with some of these oil companies in the last months,” Kerry said, referring to BP, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. “And I want to tell you they’ve acted in good faith and they’ve worked hard with us to try to find a way to get us to a solution that meets all of our needs. And I believe, when we roll out a bill, and we will very, very soon, we’re going to have a unique coalition.”

Actually, Baptist and Bootlegger coalitions are not remotely unique, as Kerry presumably knows full well. But this whole setup has been telegraphed for some time, and I detail the whole scam, just in time, here.

The truth is that Kerry’s partner in drafting this bill, BP, lost the plot some years ago in its zeal to pretend it was “Beyond Petroleum” (check its balance sheet to see the reality). Working closely with none other than Enron, BP focused on getting the Kyoto treaty and cap-and-trade schemes with subsidies for their otherwise failing wind and solar boondoggles. Along the way BP chased out their most talented people by telling them the future lay elsewhere.

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