natural gas

LibertyWeek 36: We Go Green

by Richard Morrison on April 1, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist join Michelle Minton in welcoming you to LibertyWeek 36: The Green Episode. We begin our environmental adventure with an update on the high cost of renewable energy and the good news from the coal laboratory. We then pass on advice for drinking green in Beer News and celebrate the recent observance of Human Achievement Hour. This brings us to the featured interview with our distinguished colleague and author Steve Milloy – where we explore his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them and its targets, from the Audubon Society to Zero Population Growth. Finally we round out the program with a little Olympic News.

Alarmists turn blind eye to global warming benefits–again

by Marlo Lewis on March 23, 2009

in Energy, Global Warming, International, Natural Resources

Tomorrow, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the national security threats from melting Arctic ice. Greenwire (subscription required), the Online environmental news service, explains the rationale for the hearing:

 In a report last year, the European Commission warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must be prepared for an intensified “scramble for resources” as melting glaciers and sea ice open up previously inaccessible areas to exploitation. The report explicitly expressed concerns over “long term relations with Russia,” (ClimateWire, April 2, 2008).

Now, opening up ”previously inaccessible” areas to oil and gas development could also be a font of economic and national security benefits. One thing we know for sure about Arctic mineral resources–they aren’t owned by Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Venezuela, and never will be controlled by OPEC.

Yes, there will be competition for those resources, but since when is competition an automatic negative for the USA?

Clearly, there are opportunities here as well as risks–opportunities to create thousands of high-paying U.S. jobs, boost GDP by tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, and generate billions in deficit-reducing tax revenues and royalties.

More pertinently, exploitation of previously inaccessible resources could significantly diversify U.S. oil and gas–a longstanding objective of U.S. energy security policy.

But Gorethodoxy demands blind obedience by its votaries. Discussing the potential benefits of global warming is strictly verboten.

Democrats Poised for Yet Another Land Grab

by Richard Morrison on January 9, 2009

in Energy

In these troubled times, Congress’ plate is piled high with vital legislative priorities. Naturally, upon getting to work this week, the Senate is zeroing in on the most important of all: taking millions of acres of land that may yield a vast amount of natural gas and other mineral resources and locking them away from development forever. Take that, energy crisis!

Our very own Myron Ebell had something to say about this move in a press release today:

The Bingaman-Reid bill is full of bad provisions, but the worst are the ones that would prohibit oil and natural gas production on more than a million acres of federal land. Tens of millions of acres of federal lands in the West have already been withdrawn from mineral and energy production. The new Congress should be opening some of these areas, which would help increase domestic energy production and lower prices. Instead, faced with declining natural gas production and potential shortages in the near future, the first bill that Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the Senate to consider would take 1.2 million acres in Wyoming with high natural gas potential out of production.

I should also point out that property rights advocates like the Competitive Enterprise Institute have long opposed expanding federal land ownership, in part because of the federal government’s poor track record in managing the lands it already controls. Management strategies adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service have led to destructive wildfires, habitat loss, and the spread of pests and disease in large swaths of forest and range land throughout the Western United States. Over one hundred non-profit groups last November sent a letter to the Senate raising concerns about an earlier incarnation of the current legislation.

ADDENDUM: CEI adjunct fellow Bob Nelson has been writing about the deficiencies of federal land management for quite some time – his Forbes column from 2000 is an excellent introduction to the topic. In depth researchers will want to get a hold of a copy of his book, A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service (Rowman & Littlefield).