Sign of the Double Cross

August/24/2011 16:28PM
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Put yourself in the president’s shoes. On the big black bus tour you were confronted by a farmer who questioned you about regulations. Your response, since you are ignorant about these matters, was to tell the farmer, don’t believe everything you hear about regulations. Call your local farm agent to get the facts. Politico did just that. They got the runaround for 24 hours trying to get some bureaucrat to answer the question and help the farmer. Each call ended up with the respondent referring them to some other department. The final response, “we can’t help you.”

Even though you, the president, are still on vacation you need to reduce the political fallout from this and the regulation issue in general. You make yet another pronouncement that you will cut regulatory red tape. We are to believe you have made a connection between regulations coming down like rain in the Amazon in your administration and jobs drying up like the Sahara. Impressive, Mr. President.

Want a hint on where to begin, Mr. President? You have a serious problem with high gasoline prices. Your shut down of drilling following the BP mess in the Gulf has resulted in drilling rigs leaving the area for other parts of the world. Your DOE, EPA, and Department of the Interior minions have regulated energy to a stand still in this country. So, what better place to start?

In the oil business some of us referred to Exxon as the sign of the double cross, out of professional jealousy, and due to the twin exes in the logo. But, you, Mr. President have double crossed the Exxon folks.

Exxon discovered a little billion barrel find in the Gulf of Mexico on a lease they purchased from the government. The oil business is called exploration and production. After a potential well is discovered by exploration, time is spent engineering the production phase. With regulations for deep water drilling a moving target since the BP spill, changes need to be made in the engineering. Large amounts of capital must be dedicated to the project, partners need to agree on the plan, and equipment must be secured. This find is in very, very deep water and will be complex to complete successfully. It’s called the Julia field.

In 2008, a month before the 10-year lease expired, Exxon applied for a five-year suspension of production. Throughout the history of Gulf leases these have been routinely granted. BO, of course, before Obama. The Department of Interior denied the extension. Then they denied the appeal. So, Exxon sued. Along with their partner, Norway’s Statoil ASA, a 50% owner of the lease which has also sued the Department of Interior.

So there you have it. Once again, Obama can’t be trusted by business to do the right thing, the right thing ethically, and for the country. You have a US corporation paying taxes in the US on international profits, a company with best technology and track record to bring home a billion barrels of domestic oil, and Obama wants a bureaucratic pissing contest to stop progress.

How’s that for an example of how Obama plans to reduce regulation?

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