Money Tree, Jobs, and Parallel Universes

Ms Jackson needs more money to study safety of hydraulic fracking.

More study is needed to understand the ecological impacts of the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said Tuesday in an effort to get Congress to fund more research into the practice.

The agency is expected later this year to release a draft of a study looking at the drilling technique's impact on water quality. It recently requested about $8 million in additional funding from Congress to work with other government agencies on more research.

Just give her a blank check. It will save time for Congressional staffers.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Utica oil and gas will create 65,000 jobs, $5 billion for the state of Ohio.

It is really, really difficult for me to believe that Congress will let Ms Jackson shut down fracking the oil and gas industry in the United States.  

No wonder Ms Olympia Snowe felt senators were living/working in parallel universes.

An Inconvenient Truth -- Wow, Is It Ever!

From Yahoo!News:

President Barack Obama's Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu uttered the kind of Washington gaffe that consists of telling the truth when inconvenient. According to Politico, Chu admitted to a House committee that the administration is not interested in lowering gas prices. 

Chu, along with the Obama administration, regards the spike in gas prices as a feature rather than a bug. High gas prices provide an incentive for alternate energy technology, a priority for the White House, and a decrease in reliance on oil for energy. 

The Heritage Foundation points out that hammering the American consumer with high gas prices to make electric and hybrid cars more appealing is consistent with Obama administration policy and Chu's philosophy. That explains the refusal to allow the building of the Keystone XL pipeline and to allow drilling in wide areas of the U.S. and offshore areas. 

The consequences of the policy are not likely to be of benefit to the Obama administration. The Republican National Committee has already issued a video highlighting the spike in gas prices and the failure of the administration to address the issue.

Another lost decade. 

Another Blog Being Added to the Webroll

I am adding this blog to the list of websites linked at the sidebar at the right near the bottom.

Earlier today on CNBC a talking head suggests WTI (Bakken light) could "crash" to $80/bbl in the near future. This post provides the same rationale.

The comments to the first linked blog post are as important as the post.

Another SeekingAlpha Article on the Bakken

Updates

February 29, 2012: Chu admits the administration sees high gasoline prices as impetus for "going green."

Original Post

I did not write the linked article, but it sure sounds like I might have.

Sometimes I think my rants are are a bit too harsh coming from someone who did not want to "step on any toes" in this blog, but after reading the linked article, I feel a bit better.

Here's the opening:

Three years ago I wrote an article on Seeking Alpha entitled Energy Secretary Steven Chu Should Be Fired for NatGas Views. His comments on being "agnostic" about natural gas transportation proved he was absolutely clueless about American energy policy. The subsequent Solyndra scandal showed why Chu was agnostic about natural gas - he was too busy figuring out how to funnel tax-payer money to Obama supporters.

But Chu is a minor player and President Obama must ultimately take the blame for his own refusal to fully embrace natural gas transportation. The result is that we now have WTI over $100/barrel, gasoline prices are over $3.50/gallon (and heading higher), we again hear the drumbeat of another war in the Middle East, and of course, the fragile U.S. economy could very well be chopped off at the knees (again) by its nemesis: a reliance on foreign oil.

But worst of all, we still have no alternative to gasoline refined from foreign oil. With oil trading at some 40 times natural gas on an energy equivalent basis, it is simply astonishing that the U.S. government is not developing an energy policy to take advantage of the phenomenal development.

The article goes on to discuss the Williston Basin and mentions some investment ideas.

This may be one of the better "commentaries" from SeekingAlpha in quite some time. Enjoy.

Investment Opportunity in the Bakken

I got a personal note to the effect that a developer has several large tracts in one of the "larger" cities in the Bakken, one of them ready to "build out" and working on several other properties.  The developer asked me to put him in contact with an individual who had written me last April (2011) who was looking to invest in the Bakken.

I have done that.

But based on his note, it sounds like he is interested in partners with serious money (6-figures) who might be interested in partnering with someone ready to develop additional residential (?) property in the Bakken.

You now know as much as I do. If interested, I will forward your e-mail to this individual.