As Oil Prices Rise, EPA Attempts to Shut Down Alaska Pipeline

While Comrade Obama lays the groundwork for Soviet-style show trials to blame the people who provide us with gasoline for the cost of their product, here’s an example of why prices won’t be coming down so long as liberals have their “boot on the neck” of the energy sector:

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. …

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby […is] especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. …

The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245… The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project.

The arrogant ecototalitarians at the EPA are well past even pretending to be reasonable. Their open intention is to destroy the domestic energy sector, in keeping with Barack Hussein Obama’s campaign promise to make energy prices “skyrocket.”

At stake is an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil. That’s how much the U. S. Geological Survey believes is in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean. For perspective, that represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed down the Trans Alaska pipeline throughout its 30-year history. That pipeline is getting dangerously low on oil. At 660,000 barrels a day, it’s carrying only one-third its capacity.

Production on the North Slope of Alaska is declining at a rate of about 7 percent a year. If the volume gets much lower, pipeline officials say they will have to shut it down.

The EPA is using fumes from an icebreaker at the far end of nowhere as an excuse to shut down the Alaska pipeline. Patriots have to ask themselves: who is likely to inflict more damage on this country, al Qaeda or the EPA?

The appeals board, like all things federal under Obama, is a farce:

The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.

That is, the board is a rubber stamp for Obama’s anti-energy agenda.

In a depraved act of sabotage, liberals elected a hard left extremist who insolently told us up front that he would destroy our standard of living. They deserve the economic disaster that’s beginning to unfold. The rest of us don’t.

obama energy prices
It’s not by accident.

On tips from Wyatt’s Torch, Byron, and G. Fox. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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