The Obama administration is standing in the way of jobs, say several governors of states along the Gulf coast:
The governors of Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Alaska spoke Monday at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. Officials from Louisiana and Virginia also spoke.
They say a federal moratorium on offshore drilling after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and permitting requirements put in place after that, have made it difficult for companies to develop resources.
The governors say more drilling would create jobs, strengthen the nation’s economy and lower gas prices.
Drilling in the Gulf could make a huge difference for Americans in terms of both jobs and *fuel prices, which have been high throughout Obama’s terms and have been sneaking back up lately.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that as much as 90 billion barrels of oil and 398 trillion cubic feet of natural gas exist offshore from Alaska to the Atlantic, to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Coast. For perspective, the U.S. trucking industry – one of the largest consumers of gasoline and diesel – could fuel every single one of its trucks every single day for 101 years with the oil resources available in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.
In Texas, reliable oil and natural gas directly benefit growth and job creation in every sector of our economy – from computer fabricators in Austin, to the chemical plants in Beaumont, to the shipyards in Corpus Christi, to our world-renowned medical center in Houston.
Unfortunately, much of the OCS remains off-limits to development, and the outlook for future development of these areas remains murky. Current federal leasing plans, enacted in 2012, block development in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the mid and South Atlantic regions for the next five years, despite bipartisan support for the reinstatement of lease sales in these regions.
It’s the same old story, isn’t it? Five years on, the Obama administration is blocking actual progress in the name of its “progressive” politics. And we’re all supposed to be grateful just to bask in Obama’s awesome awesomeness.
*Supply and demand for low-information liberals. Getting oil out of the ground costs money. The more we get, the less it costs the average consumer to buy products made from it. The more we leave in the ground, the more those same products cost. Our economy is dependent on oil to function. More oil at a lower price means more jobs for all of us and more money in all our pockets.
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