ICYMI: It’s Time for Real “Energy Action” (From The Daily Caller)

Oct 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 27, 2011

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
It’s Time for Real “Energy Action”
From The Daily Caller

By George Allen

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Two months ago, President Obama announced his latest stimulus proposal, which is a continuation of the same failed policies we’ve seen over the last three years — higher taxes to fund more costly government spending programs.

Absent from the president’s rhetoric was any mention of unleashing America’s energy resources, a proven way to create more than a million new, good-paying jobs here in the USA.

Virginia and the nation deserve better. With 9.1 percent unemployment and more than 14 million Americans looking for work, it is time for this administration to start viewing America’s energy resources as a blessing, not a curse.

One of the major components of my comprehensive, pro-growth plan for jobs — “The Blueprint for America’s Comeback” — is the aggressive pursuit of energy freedom by opening up access to America’s plentiful energy resources and taking control of our own energy destiny.

Fortunately, an opportunity exists for the president to take real action right now to strengthen America’s energy security and create jobs.

Earlier this month, I joined Governor Bob McDonnell and leaders from across Virginia in urging the Obama administration to approve the construction of an advanced pipeline linking Canada and the United States.

The Keystone XL Project will bring more than 700,000 additional barrels of domestic and Canadian oil each day to refineries in Texas. Construction alone will mean jobs for as many as 20,000 Americans, and related economic activity is projected to bring around 100,000 additional hires. Property tax revenues in states through which the pipeline passes could exceed $5 billion, meaning more resources for schools, roads and public safety. And the energy flowing through the pipeline will be from our closest neighbor and ally, not from an unstable and unfriendly foreign regime.

With so much to gain, why is the White House delaying? The Obama administration has yet to approve the permit needed for construction to begin. Bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C. are standing in the way of a project that would create thousands of new jobs, increase our long-term supply of affordable energy and generate revenues without raising taxes.

When it comes to energy, this is just the latest contradiction between the president’s words and his actions. Since 2008, President Obama has touted the job-creating promise of his energy agenda. Instead, we see misused taxpayer funds for unreliable, expensive energy schemes; higher fuel prices; blocked energy development of American coal, oil and natural gas resources; and continued high unemployment over 9 percent.

The good news is that America has the most plentiful energy resources of any country in the world. Our reserves and recoverable oil, natural gas and coal exceed the resources of such energy giants as Saudi Arabia, China and Russia.

Despite this bounty, our dependence on foreign oil is greater today than it was in the days of President Jimmy Carter’s gas lines. Federal bureaucrats continue to hold America’s energy resources “off limits,” and promising ventures like the Keystone pipeline are stopped at the Canadian border.
Read More:  http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/27/its-time-for-real-energy-action/

 

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It’s Time for Real “Energy Action” (Op-Ed from The Daily Caller)

Oct 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It’s Time for Real “Energy Action”

The Daily Caller

By George Allen

Thursday, October 27, 2011

 

Two months ago, President Obama announced his latest stimulus proposal, which is a continuation of the same failed policies we’ve seen over the last three years — higher taxes to fund more costly government spending programs.

Absent from the president’s rhetoric was any mention of unleashing America’s energy resources, a proven way to create more than a million new, good-paying jobs here in the USA.

Virginia and the nation deserve better. With 9.1 percent unemployment and more than 14 million Americans looking for work, it is time for this administration to start viewing America’s energy resources as a blessing, not a curse.

One of the major components of my comprehensive, pro-growth plan for jobs — “The Blueprint for America’s Comeback” — is the aggressive pursuit of energy freedom by opening up access to America’s plentiful energy resources and taking control of our own energy destiny.

Fortunately, an opportunity exists for the president to take real action right now to strengthen America’s energy security and create jobs.

Earlier this month, I joined Governor Bob McDonnell and leaders from across Virginia in urging the Obama administration to approve the construction of an advanced pipeline linking Canada and the United States.

The Keystone XL Project will bring more than 700,000 additional barrels of domestic and Canadian oil each day to refineries in Texas. Construction alone will mean jobs for as many as 20,000 Americans, and related economic activity is projected to bring around 100,000 additional hires. Property tax revenues in states through which the pipeline passes could exceed $5 billion, meaning more resources for schools, roads and public safety. And the energy flowing through the pipeline will be from our closest neighbor and ally, not from an unstable and unfriendly foreign regime.

With so much to gain, why is the White House delaying? The Obama administration has yet to approve the permit needed for construction to begin. Bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C. are standing in the way of a project that would create thousands of new jobs, increase our long-term supply of affordable energy and generate revenues without raising taxes.

When it comes to energy, this is just the latest contradiction between the president’s words and his actions. Since 2008, President Obama has touted the job-creating promise of his energy agenda. Instead, we see misused taxpayer funds for unreliable, expensive energy schemes; higher fuel prices; blocked energy development of American coal, oil and natural gas resources; and continued high unemployment over 9 percent.

The good news is that America has the most plentiful energy resources of any country in the world. Our reserves and recoverable oil, natural gas and coal exceed the resources of such energy giants as Saudi Arabia, China and Russia.

Despite this bounty, our dependence on foreign oil is greater today than it was in the days of President Jimmy Carter’s gas lines. Federal bureaucrats continue to hold America’s energy resources “off limits,” and promising ventures like the Keystone pipeline are stopped at the Canadian border.

  
Click here to read more

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The George Allen Record – Energy Independence – September 8, 2006

Sep 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

From the floor of the United States Senate, on September 8, 2006, George Allen delivered his Strategic Plan for Energy Independence outlining a five-point approach that would lessen our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. Allen’s plan details the need for accelerated exploration and development of America energy resources as well as fostering education, innovation, and entrepreneurship in energy.

“For America to be free and independent, for America to remain the masters of our own destiny, we must declare our independence from the Middle East, and other hostile sources of foreign oil,” stated Allen.  “We must commit every effort and resource to the achievement of this national purpose.  We have the resources to do it, the resources underneath our land and water, and the best resource of all, the ingenuity of our free, creative minds.”

As gasoline prices and our dependence on foreign oil increase, Virginia needs a Senator who will fight for commonsense energy policies that encourage entrepreneurship, innovation, and safe exploration of our natural resources. Unleashing America’s energy resources will not only put us in control of our energy destiny, but it has the potential to create two million or more new jobs, add over one trillion dollars to the revenue side of the Treasury’s balance sheet without raising taxes, promote national security, and help preserve our quality of life.

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RTD: Va.’s declining communities: Southwest fights population losses

Aug 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I spent last week in Southwest and Southside Virginia talking with families and businesses about how we can bring jobs back to these areas  struggling in this terrible economy.   This Administration’s punishing energy policies have hurt these once thriving coal communities by increasing costs and destroying jobs.  I would embrace Virginia’s abundant resources and allow the hard-working men and women of Russell county to produce the energy we need to power our country.  Reviving Southwest Virginia starts by getting Washington out of lives and businesses.

Va.’s declining communities: Southwest fights population losses

Richmond Times Dispatch

By Wesley Hester

August 14, 2011

DANTE — Nestled in the verdant mountains of Russell County, the tiny town of Dante was once a thriving coal community, its narrow main street bustling with business.

“Honey, this town boomed,” says Terri Fields, 53, born and raised in this hamlet more than 300 miles west of Richmond. “We had a theater, barbershops, restaurants — you name it.”

Now Dante is a shell of its former self; businesses shuttered, streets empty, many of the $20,000 to $30,000 homes lining Straight Hollow Road deteriorating or abandoned. Even the one remaining shop, the post office, could soon be closed.

“Then we won’t have nothing,” says Fields, who works part time as backup postmaster. “N-O-T-H-I-N-G, with all capital letters. And that’s sad — it really is.”

Dante is symbolic of a larger problem: Southwest Virginia is slowly dying.

According to new census data, nearly every county in the far western portion of the state — 18 in all, including Bath and Highland to the north — has recorded more deaths than births in the last decade, a phenomenon known as natural decrease. Fourteen counties in the region have lost overall population.

In the last decade, 82 percent of Virginia’s population growth has occurred in the “urban crescent,” encompassing the state’s three major metropolitan areas — Northern Virginia, central Virginia and Hampton Roads — where more than two-thirds of Virginia’s residents now live.

That magnetic pull, based largely on jobs, has left other regions struggling to keep pace economically and demographically, growing the chasm between the commonwealth’s haves and have-nots and increasing pressure on leaders to find balance.

“The people who migrate are younger, and they move out of the rural areas for educational or job opportunities. And when they move, they bring their families or start their families in these destinations,” explained Qian Cai, director of the Demographics and Workforce Group at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

Southwest Virginia is a stark example, where many of the once-plentiful manufacturing plants have either relocated or folded and the coal industry is slumping, in part because of increasingly stringent environmental regulations.

“It’s a dying industry,” said Bobby Hilton, a coal worker with Wellmore Energy Company headed home from a long shift at a mine in mountainous Dickenson County.

Hilton blames the industry’s decline largely on the Environmental Protection Agency. “I’ll put it blunt, they’re worried about trying to save tadpoles, we’re worried about eating,” he said.

State Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, D-Russell, agreed, saying that he often feels that the EPA “would shut everything down if they could get away with it.”

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AP: Federal Judge Throws Out Obama Drilling Rules

Aug 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is good news for all the people of Virginia who believe we should be allowed to develop the plentiful energy resources off our coasts, without the federal government standing in the way. Families and businesses in Virginia are struggling with high fuel costs.  It’s time we take control of our own energy destiny by unleashing our energy resources.  Doing so would create more than a million jobs, increase our supply of affordable energy and keep our money here in the USA. 

Federal Judge Throws Out Obama Drilling Rules

Associated Press

August 12, 2011

A judge on Friday threw out Obama administration rules that sought to slow down expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on federal land.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of a petroleum industry group, the Western Energy Alliance, in its lawsuit against the federal government, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The ruling reinstates Bush-era expedited oil and gas drilling under provisions called categorical exclusions on federal lands nationwide, Freudenthal said.

The government argued that oil and gas companies had no case because they didn’t show how the new rules, implemented by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service last year, had created delays and added to the cost of drilling.

Freudenthal rejected that argument.

“Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury,” she said. “Those injuries are supported by the administrative record.”

An attorney for the government declined to comment but Kathleen Sgamma, director of government and public affairs for the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, praised the ruling.

“She completely discounted the government’s argument that the harm was speculative,” Sgamma said of the judge.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 allows the BLM and Forest Service to invoke categorical exclusions and skip new environmental review for drilling permits under certain circumstances.

The circumstances include instances where companies plan to disturb relatively little ground and environmental review already has been done for that area. A categorical exclusion also can be invoked when additional drilling is planned at a well pad where drilling has occurred within the previous five years.

Categorical exclusions were widely used throughout the West — especially in the gas boom states of Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — until last year.

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More Counterproductive Regulations from the Obama Administration

Aug 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

President Obama’s push for stringent and burdensome government regulations mandating fuel economy is the wrong approach to efficiency and conservation.   These regulations would mean higher costs for businesses and families and hurt job creation. This Administration’s counterproductive energy policies are punishing the men and women of Virginia by restricting access to our plentiful resources.  Instead, we need to unleash our American sources of energy, creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs and more affordable energy, to keep money here in America and generate billions in revenues – without raising taxes. 

Obama Announces Fuel Standards for Big Vehicles

Associated Press

By Darlene Superville

August 9, 2011

Fire trucks and concrete mixers, semis, heavy-duty pickups and all trucks in between will, for the first time, have to trim fuel consumption and emissions of heat-trapping gases under new efficiency standards announced Tuesday by President Barack Obama.

The White House said the standards will save businesses billions of dollars in fuel costs, help reduce oil consumption and cut air pollution. The standards apply to vehicle model years 2014 to 2018.

Three categories of vehicles are affected. Big rigs or semis will have to slash fuel consumption and production of heat-trapping gases by up to 23 percent. Gasoline-powered heavy-duty pickups and vans will have to cut consumption by 10 percent, or by 15 percent if the vehicles run on diesel fuel.

The standards also prescribe a 9 percent reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for work trucks, which include everything from fire trucks and concrete mixers to garbage trucks and buses.

In a statement, Obama said people who build, buy and drive medium and heavy-duty trucks support the new standards.

Obama had planned to unveil the standards at a trucking business in Virginia, a state crucial to his re-election hopes. But the trip was canceled Tuesday without explanation and Obama met privately at the White House with industry officials. He then flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to pay respects to 30 U.S. troops killed over the weekend in Afghanistan. Their remains were flown to the base.

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Washington Times: Gas Prices Up Despite Use of Reserves

Aug 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is another example of how Washington doesn’t get it.  If Virginians want to explore and develop energy off our coastline, the federal government shouldn’t stand in our way.  Isn’t it time for America to take control of our own energy destiny?

 

Gas prices up despite use of reserves

The Washington Times

By Kara Rowland

August 7, 2011

More than a month after the Obama administration said it would tap the country’s emergency oil reserve to try to combat supply disruptions in the Middle East, gas prices at the pump actually have risen 10 cents.

President Obama had hoped the move, coming at the onset of the summer driving season, would temper the loss of supplies due to the ongoing civil war in Libya. Working with international allies, the U.S. said on June 23 that it would release 30 million barrels of oil over 30 days, while other countries with strategic reserves agreed to release another 30 million, in staggered sales during July.

And prices at the pump did dip, at first, from a nationwide average of $3.61 down to $3.55, according to AAA. But by last week, they had rebounded and the price per gallon stood a dime higher than when the administration first made its decision.

“Although it helped initially to pull down prices it was probably too little,” AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John Townsend said, pointing out that the nation consumes as much as 20 million barrels of oil a day. “This is just a drop in the bucket.”

Prices may be about to see some relief, though for unwelcome reasons. Last week’s stock market drop and fears of the lingering sour economy have already begun to put downward pressure on oil, which analysts said will translate to lower pump prices — potentially trumping even the administration’s oil release.

The Obama Energy Department had resisted calls earlier this year to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but reversed course in June, saying its release of 30 million barrels from the nation’s emergency stockpile was intended to address an estimated loss of 1.5 million barrels a day of light sweet crude in Libya. The department said it has met that goal.

“We believe that the coordinated release of 60 million barrels of oil by partners around the globe, the majority of which will continue to enter the market over the coming month, has played an important role in addressing the oil supply disruption resulting from the situation in Libya,” Energy spokesman Damien LaVera said. “The United States will continue to closely monitor oil market conditions and is prepared to take further action if needed.”

Even as the administration cited the need to manage supply disruptions in its June 23 announcement, it nevertheless noted that prices were “significantly higher” ahead of the summer driving months of July and August than they had been prior to the Libyan unrest.

For its part, the International Energy Agency — a group representing 28 of the world’s top oil-consuming countries — in late July decided against releasing additional supplies into the market, citing a rise in OPEC oil production despite the situation in Libya.

Established in response to the 1973-1974 oil embargo, the SPR is stored in underground caverns along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf coasts. Presidents have the authority to access it at their discretion.

Prior to this summer, the U.S. last tapped the SPR in response to Hurricane Gustav in 2008, though that action was technically an “exchange” because the oil companies later resupplied the stockpile after the disruption. The most recent emergency sales were after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and amid the 1991 Gulf War.

The latest drawdown, which officials expect to be completed by the end of August, will leave the SPR with about 700 million barrels.

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We have enormous energy opportunities right here in Virginia

Aug 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

How many of you think it’s time we created jobs, increased revenues and kept our money in America by unleashing our plentiful energy resources? We have enormous energy opportunities right here in Virginia. I have long supported developing these resources to create thousands of new jobs and help us take control of our own destiny.

Click Here to read “Offshore drilling in Virginia is an economic winner” from the Richmond Times Dispatch

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Gas Prices Back on the Rise

Aug 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We all know Virginia families are struggling to meet their budgets with gas prices still approaching $4 a gallon in many areas. How many of you have had to make difficult decisions this summer about family trips? How many of you have had to change the way you do business because of the rising cost of fuel? I would like to hear your stories and how high gas prices are effecting you.

Click Here to read NBCWashington: Gas Prices Back on the Rise

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The George Allen Record – Deep Water Drilling Off Va Coast – July 31, 2006

Jul 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

On July 31, 2006, George Allen supported a bill that opened portions of the Gulf of Mexico for energy leasing and introduced an amendment empowering Virginia to pursue deepwater exploration for oil and natural gas off its coastline as well. Under Allen’s amendment, Virginia would have shared 37.5 percent of revenues from lease sales and production royalties, as do the Gulf Coast States under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.  

“We have to move forward with a comprehensive 21st century energy independence policy focused on energy production, innovation, and diversity. When we do that, we will see lower gas prices for American consumers. We will see more jobs for American workers and a stronger, more competitive and safer America in the world,” stated Allen in a speech on the Senate floor. He explained that his amendment “gives the people a choice – and I sincerely believe that the people of our State will choose to allow deep-water exploration, once they are armed with the facts and understand the opportunities, not only for the future of Virginia, but of America.”

According to an estimate by the U.S. Department of Interior, Virginia’s Outer Continental Shelf has over 130 million barrels of recoverable oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. With gasoline prices near $4 a gallon this spring, George Allen continues to advocate common-sense energy solutions, including the Virginia Outer Continental Shelf Energy Production Act of 2011.  This bill would restore lease sales off Virginia’s coast that were cancelled by the Obama Administration.   Allowing safe energy exploration and production off the coast of the Commonwealth would not only help increase America’s energy security, but also create thousands of jobs and generate millions in new revenue that could be used to improve roads and transportation infrastructure for future generations.

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