Wow, The Ohio Permitorium

Update

Read this story in light of the story below. Poverty stats stun census bureau; folks just hanging on, and the president kills another shovel-ready 200,000-job opportunity.

Original Post

Just days after killing Keystone XL, the President has killed another shovel-ready, 200,000-job opportunity:

President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly "will focus solely on how it could affect forest land," the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, "and not how it could affect groundwater."

This is truly incredible. Unprecedented.

The area already has nearly 1,300 oil and gas wells in operation.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015.

"The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production," House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. "It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil."

Let's see what Chesapeake shares are doing:  down about 1.2 percent.

I assume polling in Ohio suggested that the president could lose the state by a margin of votes equal to the number of environmentalists opposed to drilling.