Obama's Permitorium -- And More To Come

I don't know how much more proof is needed:

Oil from the Gulf of Mexico as a proportion of U.S. output has fallen to a 14-year low as the shale boom shakes up traditional production patterns, reducing the impact of hurricanes on national supplies.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows that the Gulf will account for 21 percent of domestic output this year, the lowest level since 1998, based on Energy Department data. The Gulf represented 29 percent of production in 2009, the most since at least 1993.

Growth in output from shale-rock formations in the U.S., including the Bakken in North Dakota, has bolstered inland supplies. North Dakota pumped 609,000 barrels of oil in April, up 74 percent from a year earlier, according to department data. 

Now, if they can just regulate the heck out of fracking, the administration will have gone from "hope and change," to "change." All in less than four years. Actually two years: the spill was in 2010.

And, there's more to come: from Oil and Gas Journal.com -- today: 

Excessive and poorly conceived federal regulations threaten to stifle an onshore US oil and gas renaissance that is being made possible by hydraulic fracturing and other new technologies, state officials and producers told the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. States are better qualified and have worked with producers and other stakeholders to develop rules that are effective and economic, they said at field hearings July 13 in Edmond, Okla., and July 14 in Fargo, ND.

State regulators have repeatedly shown that they can move faster than a federal bureaucracy, noted Patrice Douglas, an Oklahoma Corporate Commission member, during the July 13 hearing.

Douglas noted that in the 2 years that the US Environmental Protection Agency spent studying hydraulic fracturing, the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations Inc. (Stronger)—comprised of state regulators, environmental groups, and oil and gas producers—completed reviews of five states’ fracing regulations and made recommendations that states, including Oklahoma, have implemented.

If one wants to see the US fail, one does not have to look far on how to do it.

And, then, of course we have this: a) oil supplies dropping; b) refinery activity increasing; c) consumer demand for gasoline rising ever so slightly; and, d) gasoline prices rising again. Just in time for the election.

And, this, this is almost bizarre. Almost? It is bizarre:

"President Obama tells entrepreneurs: "If you got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."