Last week, President Obama aggressively promoted the need for energy exploration — in China.
“Under the initiative, the U.S. and China will use experience gained in the United States to assess China’s shale gas potential, promote environmentally-sustainable development of shale gas resources, [and] conduct joint technical studies to accelerate development of shale gas resources,” the White House said in a statement. Obama’s boost for energy exploration in China comes three months after the U.S. government agreed to $2 billion in loans to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration in Brazil’s offshore Tupi oil field.
We’re pleased that Obama supports energy exploration, but why in China and Brazil, and not in the United States? Only a month ago, the Department of the Interior announced it would review Bush administration leases for domestic oil shale exploration. So far, in 2009 the Obama Department of the Interior offered fewer acres to be leased for energy exploration than in any other year on record.
Why doesn’t Obama “accelerate development” of energy resources back in America? Environmental concerns about domestic energy exploration are often cited, but energy companies have made great technological strides in reducing environmental risks. Developing economies, including Brazil and China, lack such safeguards. Domestic energy exploration would be a boon to job creation and economic growth, to say nothing of what new U.S. energy sources would do to reduce gas and utility prices for American families struggling to make ends meet.
Our overreliance on foreign sources of energy also warps our foreign policy, and not only toward terror-friendly oil exporters in the Middle East. A recent New York Times report questioned why Teodoro Nguema Obiang — the nephew of the murderous president of Equatorial Guinea, an alleged cannibal with his own skull collection — can legally visit his $35 million Malibu estate several times each year, despite a law prohibiting travel by corrupt diplomats. The answer apparently lies below the sea, amid Equatorial Guinea’s large offshore oil deposits.
Obama only exacerbates our dependence on foreign oil with his message that new energy sources are good, so long as they’re not in our backyard. The message may placate narrow-minded environmentalists, but it will not produce a coherent energy policy that promotes jobs, lower prices and more American-made energy.
