Obama Administration Caves to Oil/Gas Lobby

In a significant concession to the oil industry, the Obama administration has reversed course on new regulations for hydraulic fracturing.

Companies will, for the first time, have to reveal the composition of fluids used in the fracking process but only after they have completed drilling, instead of 30 days before a drilling well is started as the administration previously proposed.

The change to the rule followed a series of meetings at the White House with lobbyists representing oil industry trade associations and individual major producers like ExxonMobil, XTO Energy, Apache, Samson Resources and Anadarko Petroleum. The Office of Management and Budget reworked the rule to address industry concerns about overlapping state regulations and compliance costs.

Production of domestic oil and natural gas has surged in recent years as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have opened new fields and allowed renewed production from formations that had seemed depleted.

President Obama has strongly endorsed new production of domestic oil and natural gas as a boon to the economy and energy security. Under intense criticism of his energy policies from Republicans and oil industry officials alike, the president has recently eased government regulation of oil operations.

Last month he ordered the streamlining of federal regulation of natural gas drilling, while the Environmental Protection Agency revised air quality rules for oil and gas wells giving drillers extra time to comply and lowered their costs.

Industry officials praised both moves.

The Interior Department estimates that 90 percent of the 3,400 wells drilled each year on public and Indian lands use hydraulic fracturing, in which large volumes of water, sand and chemicals are injected under high pressure into shale rock formations to stimulate the flow of oil and gas.

The process has raised concerns all across the country about contamination of groundwater, well integrity and the treatment of the tainted water that flows out of wells during and after fracking operations.

 

Obama “I Deserve a Second Term”

President Barack Obama said Sunday that he deserves to remain in the White House for four more years, even though the economy has been shaky throughout his first term in office.

“I deserve a second term, but we’re not done,” Obama said during a pre-Super Bowl interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, who noted that Obama said in 2009 that if the economy hadn’t fully recovered by 2012, he would be a one-term president.

“When you and I sat down [then], we were losing 750,000 jobs a month,” Obama said. “Now we’re creating 250,000. We’ve created 3.7 million jobs over the last 23 months. We’ve created the most jobs since 2005, the most manufacturing jobs since 1990. But we’re not finished.”

The president also said he needs another term to boost manufacturing, energy and job training and that he also needs more time to ensure the country’s “return to old-fashioned American values,”.

“That means, for example, regulations that ensure that Wall Street is following the rules same as Main Street,” the president said. “But we’ve made progress. And the key right now is to make sure we don’t start turning in a new direction that could throw that progress off.”

While going from shedding 750,000 jobs a month to creating 250,000 is a good thing, it is hardly anything to brag about. Creating half a million jobs less per month than we were losing is an incredibly mediocre recovery especially considering that we spent at least a trillion dollars on said recovery. Obama’s green jobs initiative has been an abject failure and his administration has absolutely refused to prosecute any of the big banks for their role in the economic collapse despite mounds of evidence of criminal behavior. Add to that Obama’s signage of NDAA allowing for indefinite detention of American citizens, his attempt to negotiate an extension of troop presence in Iraq beyond 2011, his re authorization of the Patriot Act and secret assassination list that allows the President to kill whom ever he wants, including Americans, without due process.

Does Obama “deserve” another term? Absolutely not, but lucky for him his supporters are more interested in cheerleading than policy and the GOP leadership is too busy flying over the cuckoo’s nest.

Obama administration refuses to offer any proof that Awlaki was involved with terrorism..

Every once in awhile someone in the media does there job and asks the tough questions. These are the moments in which you get to see the narrative get thrown off course and some empty suit squirm. Check out the media briefing below in which White House press secretary Jay Carney gets tripped up by his own nonsensical statements and refusal of the Obama administration to justify the killing of an American citizen accused, not officially of course, of being involved in terrorism.

 
via Youtube user “MOXNEWSd0tCOM”