That windmills could be a scam is shocking. Shocking.

Naturally, the green-lefty film critics are crapping all over this.

The other two senators are Ron Johnson (R-WI) and John Hoeven (R-ND). They’re making the case for how stupid it is not to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Perhaps lefties can gripe about the segment being biased, since nobody from the Natural Resources Defense Council or Sierra Club are on to argue with them.

The counter to that is putting a moonbat like this on against three U.S. Senators probably doesn’t help the enviros’ argument much…

Incidentally, this business of “strip-mining boreal forests” to extract oil from the tar sands in Alberta is so much idiotic propaganda.

Boreal forest, after all, isn’t anything magical. It’s a bunch of conifer trees in an area comprising over 3.1 million square kilometers. So far, in the tar sands they’d actually disturbed a grand total of 71,000 hectares of that as of a year ago.

And in case you’re not aware, one hectare is 0.01 square kilometers. Which means that 710 square kilometers had been disturbed as of a year ago.

Know what really disturbs the boreal forests in Canada? Forest fires. Forest fires consume about 28,000 square kilometers of boreal forest a year there. But as Wikipedia notes, those fires don’t really kill the ecosystem…

Since the emergence of the boreal forest after the Ice Age, a natural arboreal life cycle has emerged, whereby natural clearing mechanisms – fire, insects, disease and extreme winds – would kill off large tracts of trees and spark the necessary rebirth. New trees would grow in place of the burnt ones. Species like lodgepole and jack pine have resin sealed cones. In a fire, the resin melts and the pods open, allowing their seeds to scatter so that a new pine forest will grow within two decades. It has been estimated that prior to western colonization, this renewal process occurred on average every 75 to 100 years and created even aged stands interspaced with natural fire breaks. Fire continues to cause the greatest amount of forest disturbance because of the predominance of coniferous trees whose needles are more readily combustible than the leaves and bark of deciduous trees.

In other words, these aren’t exactly sequoias. They’re pine trees. Pine trees are easy as all get out to grow.

And it turns out that the companies who are “strip-mining the boreal forests” are growing pine trees when they’re done with the land…

There is no good argument against building the Keystone XL pipeline. The arguments against it are nonsense even if the false premises behind them are accepted – namely, that somehow the Canadians are going to stop producing oil from the tar sands because we’re not building the pipeline (they’ll just run a pipeline to Vancouver and put the oil on supertankers for China) or that some sort of permanent harm to the environment is behind done by clearing pine forests and peat bog which are easily replaceable.

Of course, we have a president who is pandering to Luddite extremists. He’s throwing in with people who believe that it’s somehow reasonable to force people to live in cramped cities and use public transportation rather than to engage in mining and manufacturing, and he’s siding with moonbats instead of average Americans.

Ask us who our choice is for the GOP nomination? Considering what we have now, any one of the candidates currently running is a massive improvement and a radical departure from the insanity currently prevailing in this White House.

Dominion’s Cove Point liquefied natural-gas terminal was originally built to receive natural-gas imports. But with the U.S. boom in natural-gas production, Dominion, Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG) and other companies have sought to modify their terminals to export natural gas abroad, where prices and demand are higher.

“With all the gas that’s available in this country now, particularly in this region, we think it’s likely the permit will be issued [and] we expect to have it later this year,” Dominion Chairman and Chief Executive Thomas Farrell said during a conference call with analysts to discuss fourth-quarter earnings.

Last autumn, the company applied with the U.S. Department of Energy to export up to 365 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the terminal, and has been in discussions with potential customers in Europe and Asia, and with U.S. natural-gas producers, about deals, Farrell said.

The facility in question is in Maryland, and it’s perfectly suited to hook up with the Marcellus and Utica natural gas fields in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. Dominion Resources expects that they’ll be able to load a billion cubic feet of natural gas a day at Cove Point when it’s all said and done. But Dominion’s plans are small potatoes compared to the other projects out there.

For example, Cheniere Energy has already announced plans to upgrade their Sabine Pass facility here in Louisiana to accommodate natural gas exports – specifically by gaining the capability to perform liquefaction of the gas. The upgrade was announced back in July…

“Once liquification is taking place and the plant expansion is operational Cheniere will be able to export to ships and import as well. Bottom line we will have one of the first bi-directional facilities right here in Louisiana,” said Gov. Jindal.

The Sabine Pass project is a $6 billion investment and it’s expected to be up and running as an export terminal by 2015. While Cove Point will export Marcellus gas, Sabine Pass will export Haynesville Shale product to the world market. And Sabine Pass will export up to 2.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day when it’s fully operational.

In total, there are nine companies in front of the Department of Energy seeking permission to set up LNG export facilities and move natural gas to foreign consumer markets in places like Europe and Asia – if all the permits go through as much as 12 percent of current natural gas production could be headed overseas. The Europeans are desperate to find a supplier of natural gas not named Russia, as the gangster mentality of Moscow has made for problems not just economic but political as well. And in Asia, a lack of domestic supply makes for hungry customers.

In fact, world natural gas prices are significantly higher than here in America. A few charts to peruse…

As you can see, prices for natural gas in Japan and Europe are rising and greatly outpace domestic prices here in America.

And in Europe, demand will only rise – particularly as the Euros allow environmentalist fear-mongering to poison their coal and nuclear power industries. This chart projects a major shortage of natural gas going forward unless another supply is found…

Meanwhile, domestic natural gas prices are in the dumpster – and there isn’t much indication they’ll improve in the near term…

Natural gas’s worst start to a year since 2001 has the most accurate forecasters predicting further price declines as surging U.S. shale production threatens to overwhelm the nation’s storage facilities.

Prices may drop below $2 per million British thermal units (Btu) for the first time since 2002 amid the prospect of stockpiles exceeding storage capacity in October, according to Bank of America, Barclays Capital and Prestige Economics.

Inventories will probably end March at 2.15 trillion cubic feet, an all-time high for that time of year, Bank of America says.

“If we exit the winter with such high levels of inventories, there’s a real risk of gas prices coming down very sharply in the fall,” said Francisco Blanch, the head of commodities research at Bank of America in New York and the most accurate forecaster of U.S. gas ranked by Bloomberg in the eight quarters ended Dec. 31. “Gas production has to come down,” he said in a phone interview Jan. 13.

Current prices aren’t that far from $2 as it is…

Gas production grew by a record 4.5 billion cubic feet a day in 2011, the Energy Department said in a Jan. 10 report, while demand lagged behind at 920 million.

Natural gas for February delivery rose 2.9 cents to $2.554 per million Btus on Tuesday in New York. Gas, which is down 44 percent from a year ago as warmer winter weather saps demand, fell to $2.231 on Jan. 23, the lowest price since February 2002.

And of course the development of fracking and horizontal drilling, and the opening of shale gas as a resulting abundant energy resource, means either a fizzling of an industry which could be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of American jobs or a major glut in domestic supply which will have to be remedied in some fashion.

There are several ways to use all this extra natural gas.

First would be to develop it as a transportation fuel, and that’s probably the best solution. By getting an increasing segment of the nation’s vehicle fleet to run on compressed natural gas (or LNG, depending on the size of the vehicle) you replace imports of foreign oil, create price competition between the oil refiners and natural gas producers to the benefit of the consumer (competition which might be best analogized with that between cable companies and DirecTV) and reduce scarcity in the energy market since our natural gas supply looks virtually inexhaustible at present.

Second would be to build natural gas power plants on virtually every street corner. Which makes quite a bit of sense, given that natural gas is a much cleaner-burning fuel than coal and costs about the same – here’s a graph to demonstrate that…

What’s more, the cost of building a natural gas power plant is about half that of a nuclear plant, according to Exelon Corp. CEO John Rowe.

The problem with both of these two solutions is that they’ll both take time. The permit-approval-construction process for a natural gas power plant requires years of lead time, and it’s impossible to know when a transition away from the current gasoline-dominated transportation fuel market into something which includes natural gas would get underway.

But exporting natural gas, which is the third major option, is something which can be done rather quickly – and, for the natural gas producers now sitting on more product than they can move, and who are currently scaling down operations as prices take a dive in America while they climb in the rest of the world, quite profitably.

This should, therefore, be a no-brainer. Believe it or not, it’s actually controversial…

One of the strongest arguments in favor of drilling for Marcellus and other shale gas in the U.S. is that it provides a cheap alternative fuel for Americans—a “home grown” energy source that benefits everyone. It’s a simple and undeniable fact: Cheap energy translates into economic prosperity for all citizens. Cheap energy makes it easier for businesses to produce goods and services, and that means jobs.

Energy companies often make the “cheap domestic energy” argument when talking about the benefits of shale gas drilling—rightfully so. But when those same companies then start exporting natural gas, well, it’s a tad hypocritical. Exporting leads to less supplies here at home, and less supplies means higher prices. Energy companies will argue we have more than enough—an excess of natural gas—and by exporting they create more jobs here at home. But others (like MDN) are not so sure that argument holds up, especially for a nascent industry with huge potential to transform the energy picture here at home.

The primary groups screaming about the potentiality of natural gas exports are utilities who’d like to keep the natural gas producers under their thumbs…

There’s little doubt that exports will cause the price of natural gas to rise. The debate is whether the rise in gross domestic product and gas field employment might offset the negative effects of higher domestic energy prices.

“I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that question, which we think argues for slowing down these (export) facilities,” said Dave Schryver, executive vice president of the American Public Gas Association, a trade group for municipal gas utilities.

“Until you have a strong, accurate view of what the impact is going to have on consumers, it’s premature.”

Naturally, this is likely to be a higher-profile issue as time goes by and politicians get involved, and given the track record of those politicians in resorting to demagoguery every time strategic issues of energy come up it’s inevitable that something which ought to be obvious result in the market – we have all this natural gas, so until we find out a way to profitably use it here we’ll just export what we don’t need to folks who will pay top-dollar for it – you can bet this issue will become distorted.

And that’s not necessary. A smart energy policy could all but wipe out our trade deficit, make our energy costs (to include transportation) a fraction of what the rest of the world must pay, make this the friendliest country on earth for manufacturing and insulate us from price shocks on the global market.

We haven’t had a smart energy policy for decades, though, so nothing can be taken for granted.

Pennsylvania’s motto is: The Keystone State. This is because of its fundamental importance to the colonies as an entity in the in the 1600s. It was a center for commerce, energy production and became the site of the fledgling United States’ capitol and seat of government for a short period of time. Its symbol is the Keystone as it’s represented in the construction of bridge or structure supporting an arched doorway.

The Keystone is more than an emblem; it’s representative of its ability to create the solidity and solidarity of its link holding things together passively, yet dynamically when used properly. It accepts the pressures exerted by opposing forces and spreads the load responsibility BACK toward its genesis. If you want to understand what it looks like look at the front of a popular brand of ketchup.

Barack Obama has decided to NOT permit the Keystone XL Pipeline project. This is sad. This is regrettable. This is a STUPID act committed by a STUPID man proclaiming his STUPID dogma takes precedence over men and women needing jobs. It’s proof positive this STUPID presidential imposter has NO idea how to produce jobs.

We endure his lack of leadership in an economy showing all the signs of an 1812 warship trying to combat a 21^st Century Aircraft carrier: it’s sluggishly slow, it’s technocratically inferior and its inability to compete is quickly becoming evident as the seas of world economic contest grow more and more hazardous. As he tries so hard to emulate the tragedy of European economic policy, any and all efforts to launch lifeboats are quashed because this guy thinks he walks on water so we all should be able to. His political posturing for a weather gauge is moving this windjammer across the bow of disaster.

The Keystone XL program would have produced hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs for Americans particularly challenged by Obama’s poorly crafted economic policies and ignorance of their failing implementation. Jobs would have been created on both sides of the U.S. / Canadian border. The economy would have improved. The people supported it. The unions supported it. Republicans supported it.

But Obama wanted to appease his tree-hugger complainants and advance HIS agenda. He catered to the whims of people believing the program would be bad for the environment. It’s true; it’s going to be really bad for the political environment he and his opponents dwell in, covers pulled tightly over their heads, so as not to be aware of the economic perils lurking under the bed they’ve all decided they want to share: partisan politics.

Remember that line in the first full paragraph: “…it accepts the pressures exerted by opposing forces and spreads the load responsibility BACK toward its genesis”. This will prove true because the cowards running the Republican Party have kowtowed to the petulant whims of this reality challenged theorist so they could posture as being the people’s true representatives.

John Boehner has dropped his speaking voice a little deeper into the well so it almost sounds sincere when he says the Keystone Project may be moved to China; and he says that’s a bad thing.

NO Spit (sic) John. What did you do to help keep it here? What did you and the Republicans do with a spoiled brat political adolescent holding a hand-grenade daring you to do something? Did you pull the trigger and stop him. Or did you wait as he sat idly by and waited until you Republicans attached a rider to a bill needing approval just so they could say you got one over on the opposition.

He pulled the pin and BANG! now America eats the shrapnel. Some protector you Republicans are. Petty political parasites lurk on both sides of the aisle. You deserve derision and disgust.

These pressures WILL be exerted backward AGAINST BOTH opposing forces to spread the load responsibility BACK toward its genesis.

Concerned citizens in this country will see to it you dumb basses.

Thanks for listening.

The Department of Energy has released revised estimates of natural gas reserves which show an increase of almost 62 percent over the last ten years. These new reserves are cheaper to extract due to the lowered costs and increased productivity of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Since the last quarter of 2009, there have been almost two hundred thousand jobs created directly from the exploration and mining of natural gas. This in turn has contributed to the creation and stability of hundreds of thousands of related jobs in other sectors.

Cheap, reliable natural gas has the potential to spur construction of plants for chemicals, fertilizers, steel and other industries which will continue to grow our economy. For example, two projects in my home state of Louisiana are currently being developed due to the cheap price of natural gas. A plant to be built by Nucor will soon begin to convert iron ore pellets and natural gas into iron capable of being used in steel mills. Another project, by Dow Chemicals, seeks to invest $5 Billion in the Gulf Coast Region to build new plants, and upgrade or reactivate others. The low price of natural gas is extremely attractive to these companies and will result in high paying manufacturing jobs for US citizens.

States known for energy production are not alone in taking advantage of the natural gas boom. In fact, some of the states hit hardest by the recession have seen a resurgence of economic activity because of the development of shale gas technology. A new $650 million steel plant in Ohio has been built to provide steel tubing for fracking. Jobs across the Midwest are being created due to the exploration of the Marcellus Shale, centered in Pennsylvania. In addition, Shell is planning on investing $2 billion in the construction of a new petrochemical plant to manufacture value-added products in this area. It is estimated that this plant will generate approximately $16 billion dollars worth of additional investment in a part of the country that is in need of an economic boost.

The availability of natural gas has caused a sharp reduction in price for electricity generation which in turn is lowering costs on both residential and commercial power bills. The five large regional utilities that serve Pennsylvania and New Jersey have reduced their gas prices on bills by 37 to 52 percent since December 1, 2008 as supply has risen and costs have declined. The reduction in price has meant annual savings of hundreds of dollars to consumers in those areas. These costs savings are real and allow hard-working Americans to have more money to spend after accounting for their basic necessities. Low electricity prices are also allowing the United States to be more competitive in the global marketplace. A Brazilian firm, Santana Textiles, is currently building a $180 million denim plant in Texas as opposed to Mexico after citing electricity costs up to 30 percent lower in the US due to the widespread availability of cheaper, natural gas-based electricity.

The economic successes of domestic gas development and fracking are plentiful. A low cost, reliable energy supply is what American manufacturers need to compete in the global marketplace and create jobs here in the US. Those that seek to limit the success of natural gas as a way to jumpstart the “green” economy, or who seek to stop fracking through overregulation, risk cutting off energy resources our economy demands and eliminating the subsequent jobs so many Americas need.

The natural gas revolution over the past five years has seen great success in an economy where productivity still lags. Supporting this development by allowing industry and states to lead is the best way forward to encourage job growth and investment.  Our country’s economic opportunity will not lie with artificially higher energy prices to support the development of a “green” economy; it will be in the promise of low, stable energy prices that encourage manufacturers to continue investing in the American worker.

Rep. Bill Cassidy, M.D., represents the 6th Congressional District of Louisiana in Congress. This article originally appeared at TheHill.com.

All of which is bullshit. Obama doesn’t want that pipeline built because his masters among the environmental kook lobby don’t want it built. Those clowns believe in global warming and they think that somehow if Keystone XL isn’t built the Canadians won’t be able to expand oil production out of the tar sands in Alberta. Which is breathtakingly absurd given that the Canadians have already said if the pipeline doesn’t go south to Texas, it’ll go west to Vancouver and deliver syncrude to tankers headed for China.

And when the Chinese buy oil, it’s no longer fungible. China has a mercantilist policy on oil; once they buy it, it’s off the market. It goes for their consumption; not for resale.

Naturally, the reaction has been pretty brutal. A sampling from a few Louisiana sources…

“This announcement comes as a huge disappointment, not only for the state of Louisiana, but for the entire country. This project has the potential to generate over 20,000 jobs for our national economy, in a time where unemployment numbers have reached record levels.” That’s from Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. Briggs continued, “The Obama administration touts the importance of becoming less dependent on foreign oil, so a decision such as denying the Keystone XL project completely contradicts their stated position.”

Rep. Rodney Alexander wasn’t happy, either.

“After months of delaying a decision on the future of the Keystone XL pipeline, the administration finally revealed its sobering choice to block the energy project.

“This worthy initiative sought to create thousands of well-paying jobs, and it would have provided another source of energy from a friendly and reliable trade partner. Shutting the door on Keystone, unfortunately, shuts the door on these major aspirations for our country. Once again, the president is caught putting politics over our economy and energy security.”

And then there was Sen. David Vitter’s reaction…

“The president’s decision to reject Keystone XL is infuriating to many of us who have been fighting to create real private sector jobs. Lately the only jobs Washington seems to know how to create are more government jobs. Even the president’s own ‘jobs council’ recommended the country should reinvigorate the economy through more domestic energy production including expediting pipeline permits. But again, the stubborn environmentalist agenda is being recklessly placed before job creation, economic growth and national security.”

Rep. Bill Cassidy…

“President Obama’s own economic advisors believe that pipeline construction is critical to the creation of America jobs. Yet, the Obama Administration has decided to reject the advice of their own experts at the expense of the American worker.

“The rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is a loss for our economy and our energy security.  The construction of the pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct, blue collar American jobs and more than 100,000 indirect jobs.  It would cut in half the amount of oil we import from the Middle East and Venezuela, decreasing the cost of gasoline.

“House Republicans will continue pushing the Obama Administration to reconsider this decision and do the right thing for American workers.”

Elsewhere, the reaction’s even worse. You get the drift.

One wonders whether today’s announcement is anything new. Remember that Obama had initially delayed a decision on Keystone XL until after the election; that was seen as an act of pure political cowardice, and a sign that there was no way he would approve it since if he was going to do so the smart answer would be to build it immediately and get the 20,000-50,000 direct and indirect jobs it would create up and running in time to brag on his economic record.

What happened between then and now? Well, Bill Daley – who was seen as one of the best pro-business guys the Democrat Party could find – became an ex-chief of staff. It’s worth theorizing that Daley was the one standing in the way of a full rejection of Keystone XL amid the left-wing fantasists populating the Obama White House and maybe he managed to at least keep the project alive as long as he could. But once Daley was gone Obama was free to jump off a political cliff with the enviroloons.

It’s also worth asking whether maybe this decision shouldn’t split the union movement down the middle. If you’re a union member working in the private sector, what do you have in common with public sector union people in light of this decision? How does somebody who’s in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (an AFL-CIO affiliate), who would have gotten a tremendous amount of work out of Keystone XL, look at Richard Trumka and see him as an effective advocate for that cause? How does a Teamster look at Kid Jimmy Hoffa and his lockstep support of Obama and the negative result for jobs the Keystone decision creates and say Hoffa has their best interest at heart?

Obama just shaved off whatever Reagan Democrat support he might have had left. An unforced error, to be sure.

Here’s a thought, since the political stupidity of blocking this pipeline is all but legendary.

Maybe what the GOP ought to do, since Obama is now asking for a trillion-dollar debt limit increase AGAIN, is to deny that debt limit increase without a reversal of this Keystone XL decision.

Straight-up blackmail Obama on Keystone XL.

Why not? The majority of the public wants that pipeline built. The majority of the public wants the borrowing to stop.

It’s an election year. Tie the two together, and turn up the heat on him. If there’s a partial government shutdown, so be it.

The fact is, there won’t be. Obama will cave at the first sign of GOP strength. Because the more irritated the public would be over a partial shutdown, the worse it is for him. Even if Congress bears the brunt of the blame, the approval ratings for Congress are so bad they really can’t even get worse. But while folks hate Congress, they generally like their Congressman. And there are still a lot more Republican districts than Democrat districts; that’s just the way it is.

Obama can’t afford a Mexican standoff on the budget while he’s running for re-election. He’s vulnerable on this because he knows the public is against him on Keystone XL. Worse for him, there are lots of Democrats out there who will abandon him on Keystone XL. And that ain’t good.

It would be brazen, cynical, hardball politics to blackmail Obama on Keystone XL. But he’s earned that treatment in spades. Give it to him and make him choose between dispiriting his environmental kook campaign donors and looking like an anti-American incompetent. He’ll scream bloody murder about it, and he’ll look weak in doing so.

Folks don’t vote to re-elect weak presidents.

On this day in 1901, a drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, produces an enormous gusher of crude oil, coating the landscape for hundreds of feet and signaling the advent of the American oil industry. The geyser was discovered at a depth of over 1,000 feet, flowed at an initial rate of approximately 100,000 barrels a day and took nine days to cap. Following the discovery, petroleum, which until that time had been used in the U.S. primarily as a lubricant and in kerosene for lamps, would become the main fuel source for new inventions such as cars and airplanes; coal-powered forms of transportation including ships and trains would also convert to the liquid fuel.

Crude oil, which became the world’s first trillion-dollar industry, is a natural mix of hundreds of different hydrocarbon compounds trapped in underground rock. The hydrocarbons were formed millions of years ago when tiny aquatic plants and animals died and settled on the bottoms of ancient waterways, creating a thick layer of organic material. Sediment later covered this material, putting heat and pressure on it and transforming it into the petroleum that comes out of the ground today.

In the early 1890s, Texas businessman and amateur geologist Patillo Higgins became convinced there was a large pool of oil under a salt-dome formation south of Beaumont. He and several partners established the Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company and made several unsuccessful drilling attempts before Higgins left the company. In 1899, Higgins leased a tract of land at Spindletop to mining engineer Anthony Lucas. The Lucas gusher blew on January 10, 1901, and ushered in the liquid fuel age. Unfortunately for Higgins, he’d lost his ownership stake by that point.

Beaumont became a “black gold” boomtown, its population tripling in three months. The town filled up with oil workers, investors, merchants and con men (leading some people to dub it “Swindletop”). Within a year, there were more than 285 actives wells at Spindletop and an estimated 500 oil and land companies operating in the area, including some that are major players today: Humble (now Exxon), the Texas Company (Texaco) and Magnolia Petroleum Company (Mobil).

Spindletop experienced a second boom starting in the mid-1920s when more oil was discovered at deeper depths. In the 1950s, Spindletop was mined for sulphur. Today, only a few oil wells still operate in the area.

Spindletop was a long, long time ago. Also yesterday, the Institute for Energy Research came out with a report detailing exactly how far we’ve come since the heady days of Lucas’ strike. Rather than oil, we’re a nation running on hot air instead…

The interior department announced Tuesday that oil and gas lease sales on public lands increased 20 percent in 2011, generating more than $250 million in profits for taxpayers.  The fact, however, is that oil production on federal lands, lease sales, and revenue have drastically declined during the Obama administration.

“The American people need only to check their electric bills or the price they are paying at the pump to see just how well the Obama administration’s energy policies are working. Today’s announcement by the interior department that lease sales are increasing is misleading and disingenuous. The president promised to make energy prices “skyrocket,” and so he has. The American people deserve the facts about this administration’s anti-energy agenda, not more propaganda from Ken Salazar,” said IER Senior Vice President Dan Kish.

The lies are blatant. For starters, the White House claims that oil leases on federal lands went up 20 percent last year. That’s nominally true, but it’s a laughable statement none the less. If your score drops from, say, 100 down to 10 and then you increase it to 20 you can say you’ve doubled your score – but you’re still a disaster.

And that’s a good way to describe what the Obama administration has done to the federal mineral lease program…

Yes, it’s fair to note that every president since Reagan has been a disaster when it comes to utilizing federal lands to promote domestic energy production. And after a four-year bump during his term, George W. Bush oversaw a precipitous decline as well – so he’s not blameless either.

But Obama tanked the lease program like no other president in American history. Now he wants to take credit for taking his foot off the brake after his offshore moratorium became a political football.

There’s more. Obama is bragging about bringing in $250 million in lease sales, a figure he says is up 20 percent from last year. But guess what’s down from last year – oil production on federal lands. In 2010 it was 112 million barrels; last year less than 98 million. That’s a 13 percent drop.

And then there’s this graph showing what’s going on offshore over the last four years.

That’s more than $9 billion in lost revenue per year thanks to a diminution of drilling leases offshore since Obama took office. Don’t issue leases, and you’re unlikely to see much long-range growth in production or revenue from royalties, are you?

And then we have this, in response to a claim the administration is making about how it’s opening up more land for oil and gas exploration…

One could make the argument that since the federal government has a finite amount of land available to issue leases on, it’s a matter of time before you’ll start to see numbers like these come down.

Except when you’ve put all of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, plus the Eastern Gulf, off limits to drilling, which we’ve done since the Carter administration if not before, it makes that reckoning come considerably sooner.

But that’s not what’s going on here. The Obama administration isn’t issuing leases, period. It went an entire year without a lease sale for the Gulf; that was unprecedented since the industry began drilling there. Little surprise those numbers are so puny.

Meanwhile, it’s January – which isn’t exactly peak driving season – and we’ve still got $100 oil.

Given that, you’d expect a full-scale program aimed at getting oil from federal lands and offshore seabeds – not just to boost the economy but to get the revenue from lease sales and royalties into an empty federal treasury.

But that would be what you’d do if you actually wanted to improve the condition of the American people instead of living out a left-wing ideological fantasy on the taxpayers’ dime.

Tangipahoa isn’t the first place the wells are going up. Penny Font at the Baton Rouge Business Report had a piece late last month about the activity in the Felicianas as the oil patch begins to work the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, and they’ve been executing mineral leases in Avoyelles Parish since the summer.

The Tuscaloosa Marine Shale play stretches from the Sabine River to the Pearl River, in a swath that runs from a the area around I-10 up through Rapides Parish. Alexandria and Hammond both look like they might end up as oil boomtowns as a result of the Tuscaloosa Marine, which supposedly contains both oil – to the tune of seven billion barrels of black gold – and natural gas.

A map…

The really interesting thing is, as big a deal as this play is, it’s really only one of four oil and/or gas plays affecting Louisiana.

Everybody knows about the Haynesville Shale, and how big a deal it is; Haynesville is the number-one producing natural gas play in America at present, even though production out of it is nowhere near what it could be if natural gas prices were to rise.

And most folks know that oil and gas in the central Gulf of Mexico off our coast is present in staggering proportions.

But there’s a fourth play out there. Another map…

There aren’t any estimates of how much product the Brown Dense Shale holds, but folks in North Louisiana are even more excited about it than Haynesville – because while Haynesville is just natural gas, Brown Dense has oil as well – and that makes it a good bit more economic to produce.

The long and short of this is that practically regardless of where you live in Louisiana you should be a big fan of the oil and gas industry – because in the next decade this state has the potential to be one of the greatest energy producers in the world – and that’s not hyperbole. The riches Louisiana stands to reap from these oil and gas finds give us another chance at transforming from an economic weakling to a leader; we had that chance during the oil boom of the 1960′s and 1970′s, and promptly blew it thanks to crooked politicians and stupid policies.

Maybe we’ll do better this time.

But in any event, it’s in our interest to get the federal government out of the way and get this product out of the ground. Folks from Tanigpahoa to Morehouse to DeSoto and beyond sure could use a little prosperity.