From HumanEvents:

How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch project—three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project.

The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization. If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.

Two men with insight into the process are SunPower rooter Rep. George R. Miller III, (D.-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and his SunPower lobbyist son, George Miller IV.

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Even as the Obama administration postures on behalf of deficit reduction and job creation, it continues to advance policies that undermine energy production in the Gulf region and lower federal revenue, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has pointed out in his correspondence with top officials in Washington D.C.

Most recently, in a letter addressed to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich, warned of a severe revenue fall off attached to declining energy lease sales.

“Under the Obama administration’s management, revenue from our offshore lease sale program has gone from $10 billion to nothing in just three years,” Vitter said. “Revenue cannot be generated from sales that do not happen, and jobs cannot be created on leases that private industry cannot acquire. We’re in a severe fiscal crisis and we’re facing significant economic challenges related to job creation, yet the administration continues to neglect our offshore resources.”

In fiscal year (FY) 2008 revenue from bonus bids on offshore leases was approximately $10 billion, but for FY 2011 that amount is down to $0, according to Vitter’s letter. “Revenue cannot be generated from lease sales that do not occur, and jobs cannot be created on leases that private industry cannot acquire,” he continued.

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Ten oil rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico since the Obama Administration imposed a moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling in May 2010, according to documentation the Pelican Institute obtained from Sen. David Vitter’s (R-La.) office.

The ten rigs named in the document are: Marinas, Discover Americas, Ocean Endeavor, Ocean Confidence, Stena Forth, Clyde Bourdeaux, Ensco 8503, Deep Ocean Clarion, Discover Spirit, and Amirante. The rigs have left the Gulf for locations in Egypt, Congo, French Guiana, Liberia, Nigeria and Brazil.

“This highlights the problem we have with losing domestic energy production as a result of the drilling moratorium and the slow permitting,” David Kreutzer, a research fellow in Energy Economics and Climate Change at the Heritage Foundation, said. “We must also keep in mind that the impacts are not instantaneous, the rigs may be idle for a while, but once they move it’s going to be difficult to move them back once they are drilling in say Nigeria or Brazil.  The oil companies must have confidence they can move forward with their drilling plans and to know these plans won’t be revoked. Only certainty will bring them back.”

Although federal officials announced they were lifting the restrictions last October, a “de-facto moratorium” remains in effect that stifles energy production and undermines large and small businesses in the Gulf region, industry officials have argued. (more…)

There seemed to have been a collective sigh of relief across the country. After over two years of waging war on domestic energy production which helped to boost gas prices over four dollars/gallon ($4.58 in my neighborhood), President Obama announced a new energy plan that would allow an increase and acceleration of domestic energy production.

Well…that’s until one examines his words. That’s when you realize that the POTUS left himself enough “outs” to make his plan worthless.

I am directing the Department of Interior to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, while respecting sensitive areas, and to speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid and south Atlantic.  We plan to lease new areas in the Gulf of Mexico as well, and work to create new incentives for industry to develop their unused leases both on and offshore.

Oh great! Finally drilling at ANWR? Not on your life. The National Petroleum Reserve is not ANWR it’s next the desired drilling area.  Kind of  like telling a new president that instead of the White House he would have to live at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The President didn’t mention drilling in ANWR, he said “respecting sensitive areas,” which was a signal to the important environmentalist constituency, that he did not mean ANWR

The map above describes the ANWAR situation. ANWR sits within a 20 million-acre refuge (the size of South Carolina), but thanks to advanced technology like directional drilling, the aggregated drilling footprint (the dot pointed to by the arrow) would be less than 2,000 acres (about one-quarter the size of Dulles Airport). This is like laying a 2-by-3-foot welcome mat on a basketball court.

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One week ago, I shared the text of a message Interior Secretary Ken Salazar sent to all employees of his department two weeks after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster began in the Gulf of Mexico. It was provided to me by a friend who works for DOI.

Today, I share the text of his most-recent “Secretary’s Priority Message” about the ongoing disaster which includes some decidedly anti-Big Oil rhetoric. See if you can spot it below:

From: Secretary_of_the_Interior@ios.doi.gov [mailto:Secretary_of_the_Interior@ios.doi.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 2:16 PM
Subject: Secretary’s Priority Message – Deepwater Horizon

( NOTE TO SUPERVISORS: Please ensure that all employees without e-mail access receive a paper copy of this distribution.)

Dear Team,

I write to thank you for your hard work and service to our Country. Over the last 21 days, many of you have put in long hours, with little sleep, as you help our Nation respond to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and spill. I extend my heartfelt appreciation.

As we continue to work hard to address and resolve the oil spill in the Gulf, we must not hesitate from making changes and reforms we know are needed. This incident has made it clear that the public servants of the Minerals Management Service deserve more tools at their disposal, more resources, and an organizational structure that fits the missions that you are being asked to carry out. I am proud of the reforms we have already made together – from broadening MMS’s portfolio to include offshore renewable energy production to simplifying royalty collections – but the time has come to make even more fundamental reforms.

Earlier today, I announced to our colleagues in the MMS a set of changes that we as a Department must undertake to strengthen our oversight of the companies that develop energy in our Nation’s waters.

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In an e-mail message to employees two weeks after an explosion rocked BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar continued parroting the Obama Administration lines about “being on the job from Day One” and about BP being responsible.

“From day one, we have been anticipating and preparing for the worst case scenario,” Secretary Salazar writes in the e-mail’s opening paragraph. “Thirteen days into this event, the situation is still dangerous.”

I find it telling that the action words in Secretary Salazar’s message are “anticipating and preparing” instead of acting, fixing, resolving or, if he had wanted to be honest — hoping.

In the fourth paragraph, he writes, “BP has a massive oil spill for which they are responsible,” —–even though no official investigation report has reached that conclusion.

Below, I share the full text of the message:

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If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance.  In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan.  The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration.  The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies.  Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

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