Remember Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement last October that the administration was finally lifting the moratorium on oil drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico – “we’re open for business”? I recall feeling cautiously optimistic at the time, but…turns out it was just another sham. One year later, drilling permits have slowed by 86%. As usual with the Obama Administration, the rhetoric may impress, but the reality tends to depress.
 
In his post at the American Thinker; Obama’s Interior Chokehold on America, Jim Adams explains:

Eleven months after the Secretary’s announcement, drilling in the Gulf remains near a standstill. The government has used every stall tactic imaginable to delay permits and other administrative approvals that would help our economy and put hundreds of thousands back to work.

 
In what Americans for Prosperity(AFP) is calling the “Permitorium”, applications for drilling permits are bogged down by complex new regulations and endless bureaucracy. While taxpayer dollars are being flushed down the green energy toilet, our oil rigs are operating at half capacity.
 
ODS(Offshore Data Services) -Petrodata monitors world-wide oil rig operations and reports the weekly “fleet utilization rates”. For the week of September 23rd, the rates were:
• 51.7% – U.S. – Gulf of Mexico
• 80.5% – South America
• 87.9% – Europe/Mediterranean Sea
• 77.8% – West Africa
• 85.7% – Middle East
• 82.1% – Asia/Australia (excludes India)
 
With rigs barely running at 50% of their potential, we can only wonder what would happen if Sec. Salazar’s Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) were closed for business.
 
It would be bad enough if the harmful effects of the “Permitorium” were localized to the Gulf, but of course they impact our entire economy. Adams cites a study by Quest Offshore Resources:

The study’s authors found that for every industry job tied to operations in the Gulf, three non-industry jobs are reliant in sectors such as manufacturing, construction and real estate. And for every three Gulf Coast workers, there’s one American employed elsewhere — in New York, Michigan, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and nearly every other state.
 
The Quest study also came to a distressing conclusion: Had the Administration truly lifted the moratorium last October, the industry would have created nearly 190,000 more jobs in the U.S. over a three-year period. That would have meant 8,500 additional jobs in California, where unemployment currently flirts with 12 percent; 10,000 more jobs in Pennsylvania and Ohio, manufacturing-dependent states; and in the President’s home state of Illinois, a total of 3,000 jobs.

Compounding the economic disaster is the loss of state and federal revenues that would otherwise be generated if the oil drilling industry were allowed to operate at full capacity. As The Foundry reports:

Not only is the anti-drilling agenda costing jobs and economic hardship in the Gulf region, but it’s preventing billions of dollars from coming into the federal government’s coffers because of decreased royalties, lease sales, and rent fees. Yesterday(9-28-11), Senator David Vitter (R–LA) wrote to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and BOEMRE director Michael Bromwich urging the need for more action in the Gulf:
 

“We would like to bring to your attention the steep decrease in revenue from bonus bids that result from zero Outer Continental Shelf lease sales in FY2011. In FY2008, revenue from bonus bids on offshore leases was approximately $10 billion. For FY2011, the amount is $0.”

 
And then there’s the expense of a fill-up – which directly affects each and every one of us. With the price of gasoline tracking down along with the drop in the stock market over the last week or so, it’s easy to forget that the cost per gallon has doubled since 2009. Higher fuel prices drive up the bottom-line operating costs for every business. And those higher costs are unavoidably reflected in higher prices for all consumer goods and services.
 
And yet, as AFP reports: “the Congressional Research Service says the United States has the world’s largest endowment of recoverable oil, natural gas, and coal.” Just. Sitting. There… While the economy tanks.
 
Hey Mr. President!
Want to create jobs and grow the economy? “DRILL HERE; DRILL NOW!”
 
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Related:
Some good news out of ~
North Dakota ~ Where a recent oil boom is fueling job growth, and confidence in Obamanomics is way down. Yesterday’s LA Times article, “North Dakota isn’t feeling the slump”, reports the following:

This state epitomizes a problem the Obama administration may face even if it is able to turn the economy around by 2012: People have suffered in this recession, and even when back on their feet, they have long memories of what they lost along the way.

 
And Alaska ~ Alaska Oil Creates Pennsylvania Jobs. A great example of how energy production can fuel job growth in other business sectors.