In the Pipeline: 2/13/13

It can’t be worse than what most University of Colorado students consume on a regular basis. Washington Times (2/12/13) reports: “Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper went to unusually great lengths to learn firsthand the strides the oil and gas industry has made to minimize environmental harm from fracking… The first-term Democrat and former Denver mayor told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he actually drank a glass of fracking fluid produced by oilfield services giant Halliburton… The fluid is made entirely ‘of ingredients sourced from the food industry,’ the company says, making it safe for Mr. Hickenlooper and others to imbibe.”

If past is prologue, we’re looking at four more years of this bait and switch. IER (2/13/12) reports: “WASHINGTON D.C. — IER President Thomas Pyle released the following statement in response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, given tonight before a joint session of the United States Congress: ‘Tonight, the president affirmed the renaissance in American manufacturing and recognized the promise of American energy. Yet he seems to misunderstand the reason that manufacturing jobs are coming back to America and why domestic oil and natural gas production are on the rise. These bright spots in an otherwise dark economic time have happened despite the president’s policies, and not because of them… The proof of his administration’s failure is that, despite federal lands and waters much larger than the combined private and state lands in the U.S., the CRS says 96% of this increase in oil production occurred on non federal lands. Something is very, very wrong with the president’s energy programs.’”

Great.  Now maybe the reelected brain trust can introduce a bill streamlining the development of actual energy on public lands. U.S. Senate introduces: A BILL…To promote the development of renewable energy on public land, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS. (a) SHORT TITLE. —This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act of 2013’’.

Even the WaPo understands that Obama shouldn’t have wasted billions on electric cars. Washington Post (2/11/13) reports: “President Obama repeatedly declared that, with enough federal aid, we can put a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. His administration has invested about $5 billion in grants, guaranteed loans — including $465 million for Tesla — and tax incentives to buyers… Yet Americans bought just 71,000 plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles in the past two years, according to GreenCarReports.com. That’s about a third as many as the Energy Department forecast in a 2011 report that attempted to explain why Obama’s goal was not preposterous.”