Obama mocked the GOP idea that drilling for oil would lower gas prices...
 

When Republicans suggested that fracking would lead to lower gas prices which would help Americans, Obama said this in 2012...

"They were waving their three-point plans for $2-a-gallon gas", Obama told a laughing audience during an energy speech in Washington. "You remember that? Drill, baby, drill. We were going through all that. And none of it was really going to do anything to solve the problem."

Atta boy, Columbo...

The trillion dollar stimulus bill will keep unemployment below 8%.

Obamacare will lower healthcare costs by $2500 a year for the average family

If you like your plan, you will be able to keep it

Drilling won't solve the problem (of high gas prices".

Atta boy, Columbo!!

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/01/2318...paign=Politics

Yup gas prices going through the roof! :) Yesterday in MA 58/106

so the GOP is taking credit for lower gas prices now ? All Boners worked on is his golf tan .. :yak5:

Not sure they are taking credit but I am certain BO is trying to take credit for something he was opposed to 2 years ago. I think opec not slowing production has more to do with it than the drilling. To be honest at current commodity price it should cost even less.
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Obama did not have much to do with this. The global economy is slowing down and the Saudis are crushing Russia, VZ, and to a lessor extent, US production.

Obama doesn't have a rational plan on the world stage. And this certainly does not have anything to do with it.

Not as good as Obama's golf tan 😀
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Careful Steve, thats kind of racist

wait ,,, GOP had an Idea ??? :rotflmao:

It might be, but I think Boner is actually darker than Obama ..

You beat me to it.... well done
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we were assured not too long ago by the anti-drill baby drill brigade that we would never see low oil prices again due to all sorts of factors that made it impossible....regardless of why it's happening and who gets credit...I imagine "most" Americans appreciate lower oil costs more than they appreciate billions in big government subsidies on Chevy Volts(have you followed the Volt?)

Many of the factors were out of our hands (global economy, younger folks not as inclined to drive and are moving back to urban areas where they use mass transit). However Pres. Obama has increased the CAFE standards (over the objections of the Repubs.). I'm using less gas bc of the higher milage my car is getting. Had the Pres. not pushed for the higher standards, pushing the car manuf. to increase the average miles/gal. we'd be using more gas. In addition, didn't he get some of the gas guzzlers off the road 6 years ago and wasn't there money for getting old appliances replaced and improving home energy efficiency?

What policies did he propose that have hurt fracking? I don't know of any that either helped or hurt fracking.

It's bush's fault
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I'm pretty confident in saying that there is no single American who uses more "oil" than O....he may have pushed for all of these things and not "hurt" fracking........

this explains a lot

NY Times : " President Obama has strongly endorsed the new(fracking) production as a boon to the economy and energy security. And the president, under intense criticism of his energy policies from Republicans and oil industry officials as he faces a re-election contest, has recently taken steps to ease government regulation of oil operations."


but none of the vehicles he drives in or flies on adhere to any of these standards and he certainly hasn't curtailed and of his own travel....pretty amusing when you think of it....

classic...

A squadron of 1,700 private jets are rumbling into Davos, Switzerland, this week to discuss global warming and other issues as the annual World Economic Forum gets underway.

The influx of private jets is so great, the Swiss Armed Forces has been forced to open up a military air base for the first time ever to absorb all the super rich flying their private jets into the event, reports Newsweek.

“Decision-makers meeting in Davos must focus on ways to reduce climate risk while building more efficient, cleaner, and lower-carbon economies,” former Mexican president Felipe Calderon told USA Today.

Davos, which has become a playground of sorts for the global elite, is expected to feature at least 40 heads of state and 2,500 top business executives. Former Vice President-turned-carbon billionaire Al Gore and rapper Pharrell Williams will be there as well; each plans to discuss global warming and recycling respectively.

I forgot tax credits for electric/hybrid cars which also lowered demand for oil.

So instead of listening to what conservatives are actually saying, I presume you let MSNBC tell you what we are saying?

We do have a few ideas...

• Sanctity and preciousness of all human life
• Individual liberty
• Individual responsibility
• Letting our free market (the greatest provider of upward economic mobility in the history of human existence) do it's thing, subject to reasonable regulations
• Strong national defense
• Fiscal responsibility
• Charity to

our neighbors

That's our platform. I'm curious to know what you find objectionable or so lacking that you think we have no ideas. I'm all ears...

Average income for a person whu buys a Chevy Volt...wait for it...$170k a year. Why, exactly, do we need to give these people tax breaks, at the expense of everyone else? I thought Obama said that it was conservatives who want to give tax cuts to the rich, because of racisthatecrimeintolerant...

If its hybrid cars that are driving down the price of oil, why now? Hybrids have been around for quite a while now, no?

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/o...-buyers/72585/

"Had the Pres. not pushed for the higher standards, pushing the car manuf. to increase the average miles/gal. we'd be using more gas."

Talking about what he did back in 2009? Increasing mpg by 5% a year until 2016? yes, that cannot fail to reduce demand. I haven't heard many people speculate that this is causing the drop in gas prices, but there's no way to prove it.

"What policies did he propose that have hurt fracking? "

I don' think he did anyhting to hurt it, because he didn't have the authority to. He, and the Democrats in general, have done much to limit the exploitation of oil and NG on federal lands. Do you really deny that?

right..."tax credits for the rich" if roles were reversed....

the credits were not intended to reduce demand or oil prices, they were intended as an answer to "necessarily higher" energy prices ( and to prop up GM)

I presume that as more Americans drive more fuel-efficient cars, that will reduce our demand. But I'd also assume that our decreased demand is more than offset by increased demand in emerging economies like China and India. Is world demand for oil significantly lower than it was a few years ago?

And even though the credits weren't "intended" to lower prices, we can chalk that up to a fringe benefit of Obama's briliance.

Yes, agreed.

Anything any Pres does or doesn't do really only has a limited impact on gas prices. Demand from China prob. has the biggest impact on incr. prices from a few years ago and the current decr. prices.

I was thinking Al Gore
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Far more on the road now than in the past. And you and I will prob. drive either an all electric or a hybrid b/f we die.

The tax breaks were put in to help an industry get started. It has helped drive down the prices of hybrids/electric cars. Once an industry can stand on its own, tax breaks should be reduced. That is the arguement people make w/the oil & gas industry.

In principle, I agree that the tax breaks were given to the oil industry too. But everyone benefitted from that. With tax breaks on electric cars, the beneficiaries (so far) are rich tree-huggers who pay the insane premium for these cars, and the unionized auto workers who make them. Remind me again, which party to both of these groups overwhelmingly vote for?

And again, Paul...given that it's irrefutable fact that these tax incentives disproportionately benefitted the wealthy, isn't it dishonest for Obama to claim that conservatives are the ones that want to give tax breaks to the rich? Isn't that intellectually dishonest?

Good exchange...

The point in that the price is/has been coming down and eventually we'll all prob. drive hybrids or totally electric cars (or some other technology). So it will benefit all of us and hopefully will be a small part in breaking the back of OPEC.

Today's paper

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/bu...ll.html?ref=us

Behind Drop in Oil Prices, Washington’s Hand
JAN. 20, 2015

The New York Times
Eduardo Porter
Did the United States kill OPEC?
The plummeting price of oil since Saudi Arabia decided last fall not to cut production to counter rising supply elsewhere has fueled intense speculation about a downfall of the infamous cartel, once feared for its power to bend oil prices to its will.
Was OPEC’s biggest oil producer unwilling or just unable to stop an emerging glut? Does this mean oil will never again reach $100 a barrel — where the spendthrift governments of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries need it to be?
What’s missing from the discussion is an understanding of how the oil market got to this juncture and, notably, who brought it here.
The answer is surprising. It was the United States, mostly. Last year, the United States produced more oil than it had in 25 years, surpassing Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this story is that one of the main participants in this revolution is the American government.
Facing fears of a broad energy shortage, in the shadow of an embargo by Arab oil producers, the Nixon administration and Congress laid the foundation of an industrial policy that over the span of four decades developed the technologies needed to unleash American shale oil and natural gas onto world markets.

Environmentalists against any government involvement in the fossil fuels business will hate this, of course. But the collaboration between government and business in pursuit of energy independence offers a valuable lesson for policy makers forging a strategy to fit the current energy imperative: reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change.
Many have remarked that the Arab oil embargo of 1973 weakened OPEC’s hold over the oil market by encouraging non-OPEC supply — from places like Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which came to market through a pipeline approved by Congress just weeks after the embargo. The embargo also encouraged development of nuclear energy and coal-fueled power. It prompted Congress to pass fuel economy standards.

By contrast, little has been said about the role the United States government played in developing new energy technologies. And yet for all the criticism aimed at the Obama administration’s efforts to address long-term energy challenges — and the derision over its failed investments in companies like Solyndra — the government’s most useful role might indeed be to support research and ventures that could deliver a low-carbon future.
“If there is one key lesson from the shale revolution, it is that public investments in technology innovation can bring a huge benefit for both the economy and the environment,” said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an advocacy group for sustainable development, in Oakland, Calif.
The Breakthrough Institute has done the most thorough investigation I’ve seen of how three decades of government subsidies for research, demonstration and production helped bring about the revolution.
Interest in shale deposits was driven by a search for gas, not oil.
But the oil embargo gave them a big boost. Congress passed the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, creating the Energy Research and Development Administration — which would soon become the Department of Energy.
This kick-started a period of heavy government investment in research and development to recover gas from shale. The agency provided funds for “directionally deviated” drilling, a precursor to the horizontal drilling used today. It subsidized the development of polycrystalline diamond compact bits to cut through the shale. It performed the first big hydraulic fracturing. Energy Department labs created a multi-well fracking test site.
Research at the Sandia National Laboratories into underground imaging — based on microseismic monitoring once used to detect coal mine collapses — was critical to map fractures and position wells.
George Mitchell, the shale fracking pioneer, got help from the government, including in the deployment of a horizontal well and microseismic mapping.
The government did not always get it right. In fact, research into fracking initially took a back seat to efforts to produce “synthetic fuels” from things like “oil shales” — which to date have delivered little in terms of cost-effective energy.
The government could also stand in the way. Price regulation was a significant barrier to investment into “unconventional” gas deposits until it was freed during the Reagan administration.
Of course, the government assistance would have come to nothing without private entrepreneurs who took risks and followed market signals. Fracking was mostly reserved for gas until gas prices started falling a few years ago, shifting producers’ efforts to oil, which could be exploited using similar technologies.
Yet Washington played a critical part in the story that led to oil’s recent fall.
According to Jim Hamilton, an energy economist at the University of California, San Diego, the world’s real income increased by nearly 28 percent from 2005 to 2013. To keep oil prices stable, supply would have had to increase by over 19 percent. But field production of crude increased by only 3.1 percent.
Supply was kept in check, in part, by unforeseen events: wars across the Middle East, attacks on oil infrastructure in Nigeria, sanctions on Iran. But OPEC’s big producers, like Saudi Arabia, did not increase production, either. Excepting the momentary swoon after the financial crisis of 2008, flat output from the cartel kept prices on the rise for more than a decade.
What brought the arrangement crashing down was American shale oil.
By 2013, the United States was already producing 3.5 million barrels of shale oil. Given the new American supply, high prices could simply not hold. “It was not feasible for the Saudis to defend $100 a barrel,” Professor Hamilton said. “It was a losing strategy. Fracking would have taken more of the market.”
A price of $45 a barrel does not portend a great future for American shale oil, which is comparatively expensive to produce. As investment in new shale production dwindles, oil prices are likely to recover.
But even if a bunch of shale producers are driven out of business, the industry — which can add or cut production more quickly in response to price signals — might still change oil markets for good, putting a ceiling on oil prices closer to $50 a barrel than to OPEC’s preferred $100.
“We probably won’t see $100 a barrel for a while,” said Jeff Colgan, a political scientist at American University who has studied the evolution of global oil. “Fracking does put a bit of a ceiling on the price.”
An important question is what this will do to efforts to combat climate change.
Just as the surge in natural gas from shale sharply reduced carbon emissions from the nation’s power plants, the plunge in oil prices offers a sobering reminder of the power of markets over policy.
Consider, for instance, that the White House’s middle estimate of the social cost of carbon — which measures the broad damage of putting it into the air, a starting point for debates over a carbon tax — is only about $43.39 per ton of carbon dioxide. That comes to about $18.66 per barrel of crude oil, a trivial sum compared with the significant price drop in recent weeks.
Oil’s swoon could feed directly through to bigger sport utility vehicle sales and more driving. It could blunt the political impetus to tighten fuel emissions standards.
But oil’s gyrations also offer an opportunity. “Reducing our heavy dependence on oil will require us to pay forward the huge return on our 40-year shale investments through a similarly long-term effort to accelerate the transition to fuel cell, electric or some other vehicles,” Mr. Shellenberger said.
The falling price of oil offers an opportunity for the government to raise the cash to do so.
Rock-bottom oil offers a great opportunity to increase the gasoline tax without damaging Americans’ purchasing power. Many Republicans — even those most dismissive of climate change — realize that cheap oil creates an opportunity to raise gas taxes without angering voters.
If enough such Republicans could be found (a risky bet), the swoon in oil prices could be leveraged into a boon in tax revenue that the government could use to pick some of the winners that will help solve the problem.

I don't know that the price has been coming down steadily as more hybrids are sold. It was north of $4 very recently, then dropped like a rock.

Not sure what to make of your NYT article, as they are about as reliable and objective as Sean Hannity, probbaly less so IMHO. Gives all the credit for droppping oil prices to the US Government. This, from a paper that wants a huge US government.

Paul, I can probably find articles suggesting that - to the extent that the price droip is driven by frakking - that the drop happened in spite of Obama, not because of Obama. The democrats are adamantly opposed to exploiting oil and gas that's on federal land, and that policy has given enormous power, and unimaginable wealth, to places that aren't as hesitant to exploit their natural resources. Some of those places are not very nice places.

We cannot know what the environmental impact would have been to drilling that did not take place. We absolutely know what some of the impacts have been as a result of our resistance. Not many of the impacts are desirable.

I'm no expert on such things...but it seems to me that the liberals have turned their backs on the potentiul benefits of tapping into our own natural resources. This gives power and $$ to places that have no such reservations, and some of those places have become problematic for us. We apparently did this based on the false assumption that widely available alternative energies were around the corner, and tree-huggers have been saying that for 40 years. All in the name of global warming, which may or may not exist. Can't make it up...

I meant the price of the hybrid cars.

From the article...

"the White House’s middle estimate of the social cost of carbon — which measures the broad damage of putting it into the air, a starting point for debates over a carbon tax — is only about $43.39 per ton of carbon dioxide. That comes to about $18.66 per barrel of crude oil, a trivial sum "

Crude oil is trading at what, $46.50 a barrel? And the author of your article is saying that a "carbon tax" of $18.66 per barrel - a tax of about 40% - is a "trivial sum"? A 40% tax to address a situation which may not exist?

If that's what he's saying, the author is bonkers. He'll also probably win the Nobel Prize.

Did I read that wrong? Sounds exactly like something our Bolshevik-In-Chief would support. God forbid we just let that savings get into the hands of the people...

What percentage of Americans drive hybrid or electric cars? Maybe 10%? How much can that possibly drive down our demand? And the price of oil isn't just based on US demand, it's based on worldwide demand. Is that lower than it was a few years ago?

All of the factors I mentioned affect the supply and demand. Pricing is based on both supply and demand.

Add solar and tax breaks that drove higher demand for solar which inturn lowered the demand for oil. I believe demand is down from a couple of years ago but higher then more than a couple of years ago.

"Pricing is based on both supply and demand. "

I get that, I really do. And I agree 100% that things like tax breaks for rich people to drive electric cars, and for solar panels, will result in a slight reduction for US demand. But the price-per-barrel of oil is based on global supply and demand, not US supply and demand, isn't it? Maybe I'm wrong there. Do Americans pay a different price per barrel than people in other countries?

Here's a chart I found on worldwide oil consumption by year, and that line is only going in one direction.

http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx

An interesting article. I particularly like the last sentence in which it is admitted that government does pick winners. Also the previous mention that market forces are more powerful than (government)policy.

The article tries to connect successful progress to government tax and "investment" policy. It seems very persuasive, except that the connection is not expanded to include what were the causes, or connections, which made it seem necessary for government to intervene. Inside the small bubble of an immediate "problem" (x) and a possible quick fix, especially a government fix (g), one can be trapped in the perception that, indeed, fix "g" should solve problem "x." what is not seen or discussed is how similar fix "g" solutions helped create problem "x."

When government policies intervene in market forces causing the cost of production to rise above a competitive level, and, therefor, it becomes more economical to produce in other countries, it will then require government "investment" (mucho government bucks) to make up the difference in order to restore production here. An unnecessary inflationary distortion of the market created by government intrusion. Which also causes a rise in consumer costs either in higher prices or in higher taxes.

So then, government, in order to stimulate production, picks a winner. But that distorts the evolution of possible competing producers, especially those who would replace the "winning" product with something different. So, guess what. When an idea surfaces in the market place which would be better than what current "winners" are producing, the cost for bringing new technology to production has been so inflated by government investment and regulation that the government must now pick a new winner and "invest" big bucks again.

And, so, therefor, all costs--production, research, capitalization--are inflated, usually beyond internationally competitive costs. And government becomes even more pervasively involved in the economy. To the point where it seems that the economy cannot grow, or even survive, without the large hand of government assisting or even driving it.

When the automobile started to become feasible as a mass market commodity, it was done so without government "investment." Actually, the federal government at the time had not yet acquired the power to intervene in the market that it has now. If it had, it could have picked winners then--who would it have chosen? Would it have tried to bolster the horse and buggy as more eco-friendly. Or would it have invested in steam or electric power rather than petroleum? We might have had electric cars being mass produced long ago if it had. Interesting. However, the federal government then was more into choosing itself as the winner. So it constantly increased its power, and did so by waging an invested war against capital entrepreneurs under the pretext of helping the poor and the middle class. The government viewed its command and control of the economy as its primary "investment" in the marketplace.

So the economic war between private enterprise and government escalated, with the resulting inflation of costs, to the point where we are today. Entrepreneurship, without government assistance of some kind, either direct grants or tax breaks or preferential regulation, is still possible, but far less probable. The market is far less dynamic, evolutionary, for that, and so moves more slowly in more narrow dimensions and at greater costs.

So the article can say “If there is one key lesson from the shale revolution, it is that public investments in technology innovation can bring a huge benefit for both the economy and the environment,” but it doesn't say why it is so necessary to have such public investments. It doesn't say that before the federal government got so involved in "investing" in the private market, the market had already been investing in itself at far lower costs. And that market grew and evolved in unimaginable ways. And it created higher standards of living--even throughout the battle between private and public investment and production . . . until recent years.

There is a reverse relationship now developing wherein as government control and regulation grows toward some tipping point of private domain being converted to public domain, economic stagnation for so-called "middle" classes is more prevalent, even to the point where the middle class is said to be disappearing. And a point is increasingly being reached where government "investment" is not only necessary, but the sole driving force of economy. The point will eventually be tipped into the complete socialization of the economy.

This, of course, will reduce the "class structure" to "the people," the government, and the government cronies. The so-called fight for the middle class is really the fight against it. The middle class has traditionally been the class which fought government. The poor relied on government, the rich were in bed with the government, the middle class was the working and consuming class which the other classes depended on for a revenue base. By making the government the revenue base, the middle class is no longer needed. Population can be controlled by contraception and dependence on government largesse doled out in government prescribed quantity and quality. And the cronies will be left on an isolated float of shrinking ice.

This is not necessarily by accident. Many would say it is a good and necessary thing.

The price is based on supply and demand and our price is prob. the same as others (ignoring taxes and transportation costs, etc). But if you lower demand (any where in the world) the resulting supply/demand relationship will reset. So if every car in the US now gets 10 extra MPG, then the demand will not be as high. If China is using more oil/gas at the same time as our cars are getting more MPG, the demand may be going up or down (whatever factor is larger). So while I assume the link is showing increasing demand, it would have been higher if our cars were getting lower MPG and if our houses where less energy efficient. Add in less demand bc of solar, wind, nukes, etc (US and all over the world) and add in increased supply b/c of fraking and you end up at an all together different price. We are the world's largest consumer of oil and we have used less and less over the last few years. Partly as a result of incr. supply in gas but partly as a result of (mainly) more fuel efficient cars.

Isn't that the point of Jim's thread?

yep...shocking that a Progressive Think Tank is in favor of leveraging a swoon in oil prices into a boon in tax revenue that the government could use to pick some of the winners .......

too funny!

Worldwide demand for oil (if the chart I posted is accurate) is higher than it's ever been, yet the price has plummeted in recent weeks. That tells me that the recent price drop probably isn't due to an absolute decrease in demand, because there is no drop in demand. Demand is up (though not up by as much as it might be, thanks to insanely expensive yet fuel efficient cars), yet prices are down.

Which is why some economists believe th edrop is due to supply. Some believe that OPEC is keeping supply insanely high, in order to drop th eprice down, to levels so that frakking becomes un-profitable.

There is no absolute drop in worldwide demand to explain th eprice drop. So it's more likely due to increased supply. Does Obama deserve credit for th esurplus in supply? I can't see how...

I've already said he doesn't deserve the credit for the increase in supply but he deserves some credit for the decrease in demand as a result of his policies being put into place. Pricing is based on 000s of different things. Anything that changes makes a difference. Supply and demand are not monolithic??? they both have many components.

So you say that...

(1) the price of oil is influenced by worldwide supply and demand
(2) Obama did not do anything to increase the supply

So far, so good...

Here's my #3...
(3) Since worldwide demand is higher than it was last year, the price drop must be due solely to the increase in supply, which Obama deserves no credit for.

Now, I'll concede that without those new cars getting slightly better mileage, worldwide demand, and thus prices, would likely be a tick higher than they are now. But that's not the same thing as saying he had anything whatsoever to do with the current price drop, which seems to be a result of excess supply, which has at least something to do with frakking, which liberals would stop in a nanosecond if they could.

huh?

"U.S. oil demand reversed course in dramatic fashion in 2013, as the nation's growth in crude consumption outpaced perennial leader China for the first time since 1999"

"The same upward trend can be seen in 2014. Oil and petroleum products use through April is 1 percent higher than last year, according to EIA. In addition, California—which by itself accounts for 11 percent of the nation's gasoline use—has had nine straight months of higher year-over-year gasoline consumption, according to data from the state board of equalization data."


the reduction in demand was the result of a crappy economy...you remember..the one he inherited...so I guess we can't blame him for the crappy economy but he gets credit for the reduction in demand due to the crappy economy?....doubt the current booming economy and lower oil prices will result in lower demand, good thing we have all those average Joe's driving Volts around...does he get credited/blamed for the higher demand now that his policies have created a booming economy(just ask him) and higher demand?


http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20...tpacing-chinas

American consumption of oil also rose last year, by 390,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 percent, to 18.9 million barrels a day. The agency increased its estimate of American oil use in the final quarter of the year,

"Despite the 2013 increases, oil use in most developed countries remains well below the levels of 2007, the last pre-recession year. The United States is estimated to have used 8.5 percent less oil in 2013 than it did in 2007, while demand is down by about 25 percent in Italy and Spain, European countries that were hard hit by the euro area’s problems. Germany stands out, with 2013 usage equal to that of 2007."



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/bu...asts.html?_r=0