In the Pipeline: 7/25/12

You have to hope that at some point, Governor Romney will start talking about this. WSJ (7/24/12) reports: “President Obama may not want to exploit the energy buried in Canada’s Alberta oil sands, but China sure does. Think of Monday’s $15.1 billion offer by China’s state-owned Cnooc to buy Canadian energy giant Nexen as a post-Keystone XL Pipeline bid to replace the U.S. as Canada’s biggest energy investor and market.”

This is what regressivity looks like outside of an economics classroom. Herald Sun (7/24/12) reports: “This would scare them to death really. “Electricity is such a basic need. When prices threaten things like proper heating, especially on cold nights when you’re sick, it can make life miserable.”

Again, please make sure to think of this next time you are tempted to argue that Republicans are uniformly better than Democrats on energy issues. Triple Crisis (7/23/12) reports: “Even though Congress was sold the RFS on the promise of energy independence, those “other biofuels” do not have to be produced in the United States. (In fact, mandating U.S. sourcing could have been subject to a WTO challenge.) Brazil’s sugarcane-based ethanol is considered advanced, with a GHG-reduction score of 50% despite widespread concerns about a range of other social and environmental impacts.”

I would like to meet the person who thinks (or thought) that this Administration was ever going to let Shell drill in the Beaufort or Chukchi.  And I would like to play poker with them. National Journal(7/23/12) reports: “A series of mishaps and bad breaks appear to be making a dent in Shell’s goal of starting five exploratory wells by mid-July—two in the Beaufort Sea and three in the Chukchi Sea on Alaska’s northern coast. Now, assuming the Interior Department approves final permits in the next few weeks, the earliest Shell can begin drilling is mid-August.”

The internet?  Nope.  Hydraulic fracturing?  Not so much.  Millions of businesses?  No. WSJ (7/22/12) reports: “A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.””

This is an email that went out from Arthur Brooks yesterday.  He runs AEI, which, as you may be aware, is currently working with a fairly questionable group (including Mr. Carol Browner) on ways to impose a new energy tax on unsuspecting American citizens.  Those guys should probably make up their mind – more production or more taxes; it will be difficult to have both. Locker Room (7/24/12) reports: “We stand to gain a great deal more from America’s shale revolution than simply jobs. Cheap and abundant energy is the lifeblood of any prosperous society. Energy use is so routine we often don’t think of all the ways we depend on it. When energy prices rise, it’s the poor who suffer the most as the cost of powering their homes, buying food and filling their gas tanks increases.”