When Barack Obama emerged as a serious contender for the presidency, he offered a core menu of curing everything by increased federal intervention in health care, education, and energy. Whenever new problems arose that lessened the urgency of earlier concerns, Obama has crafted assertions that his original prescriptions will also resolve the new difficulties. In energy, this has involved extending his program to new, even more dubious projects. He also has a habit of incessantly repeating the same tired arguments in the vain hope that his skill at persuasion will win the day.
His March 30, 2011 energy speech and accompanying Blueprint are typical. About the only differences between these and his June 15, 2010 speech on energy were more bad ideas. He added to the panic-driven slowdown in offshore oil and gas drilling permits, now rationalized as a prudent response; a post-Japan crisis review of nuclear power; and another for new methods of producing natural gas. For no good reason, he argued that Brazilian oil development needed U.S. government support despite the long history that successful oil development in some of the most backward countries in the world has occurred without major U.S. government aid. (In fact, the aid offered was an Export-Import Bank loan and thus more an exercise in crony capitalism than a useful move.)
Otherwise Obama continued to display the central characteristic of his philosophy — that he and his advisers possess such superior insight that they can guide the average American to better decisions. This is precisely the Progressive error that has led to the present political mess and the cause of the dramatic 2010 shift in the composition of the U.S. House of Representatives. Whenever concerns arise that he has overreached, he claims that he was doing the sensible thing.
His Blueprint constitutes Exhibit A in the case against this interventionism. It is essentially a list of the many mandates that Obama has achieved or desires, ranging from high-speed rail to micromanaging the design of every new building in the United States. This list is dominated by the many provisions of the infamous stimulus bill that indiscriminately threw money at every favored area including energy. Obama seems to believe that seeing where the money went will counteract the outrage at ill-conceived, unnecessary, and counterproductive spending. At least to energy specialists, what actually appears is resounding proof that the voters were right — every idea is bad.
The speech also showcased Obama’s talent at making dubious assertions. Many have commented that he does not deserve the credit that he seems to claim for the rise in U.S. oil output. The very long lead times, which Democrats traditionally use to oppose expanded oil-and-gas leasing, imply that the rise was facilitated by actions in prior administrations. An even greater whopper was his intimation that the existence of many undeveloped leases suggests that no rush exists to lease and license more. The more obvious criticism is that his cumbersome licensing policy contributes to the inability to develop. Less apparent is the likelihood that many of those leases proved, after further examination, to be unattractive while more promising areas are being withheld from leasing.
He similarly selected the most misleading possible way to understate U.S. oil-production potential. He indicated correctly that the United States has only 2 percent of world “proved” reserves of oil. What he ignored is that proved reserves cover only already-known sources and wild methodological differences among countries in how this is calculated make cross-country comparisons dubious. (This situation was worsened by 1970s hysteria. The highly efficient existing U.S. system was replaced because it was run by the supposedly untrustworthy industry. The government created its own far more expensive and far less satisfactory system.) The more reliable measure of actual production shows an 8.5 percent U.S. share in 2009. Neither measure satisfactorily indicates what really matters — the potential efficiently to add production. Obama thus adds to his prior unjustifiable aim to reduce petroleum use by also misstating the petroleum potential. Substantial oil imports remain desirable for the U.S. because of the underlying economics. Nevertheless, the federal government has imposed undesirable restrictions on oil and gas production.