US Energy Production is Up, But Down On Federal Land

US fossil fuel production is up sharply in the USA but it's all from private (and State) lands, not Federal Land.

The Obama administration has worsened the oil and gas permit process which has slowed down energy production on Federal lands.  I believe it's intentional.  And it's worked!  After all Obama has said repeatedly that he wants oil prices (and pump prices) to rise to justify his favored energy alternatives.  Those alternatives are only economically justified when compared to very high oil prices.  I bet that Obama is actually annoyed that the US-led energy boom has led to cheap natural gas prices that are 3 to 4 times cheaper than in Europe.  He would deny any of this, of course.  He would simply dismiss this as right wing "talking points."

See my blog: US Energy Revolution Shows Fallacy of Central Planning.   US energy production is strongly up. 

Overall Energy Production Mostly Due to Fracking Revolution

As overall energy production is rising, it is all due to state and private land production.  Overall energy production is falling on Federal lands.  From Carpe Diem blog;

There's good reasons for this difference.  States manage their resources much more effectively than the Federal Government.  But, does the Federal Government do anything well?   About the only thing the Federal Government does efficiently is writing checks as in the Social Security system.  Just about anything else is ineffective, costly, inappropriate, and never-ending.

State Permitting Process Versus Federal Permitting

The Obama Administration has increased the bureaucracy regarding oil and gas permitting on Federal lands compared to the States.  There are stark differences now between the effectiveness of US States and the Federal Government in the regulation of Oil and Gas.

From the Heritage Foundation regarding the difference between the States and Federal permitting:

North Dakota processes a permit in an average of 10 days.[4] Other states have similarly short time frames: Colorado’s average is 27 days (and improving),[5] Ohio’s average is 14 days,[6] Texas’s average is five days (expedited permits are two days),[7] and even California is seven days and by law must be processed within 10 days or the permit is automatically approved.[8]

The average application for a permit to drill on federal lands was 307 days in 2011—a 41 percent increase since 2006—because of an increasingly complicated application process. In 2011, it took industry an average of 236 days just to submit the permit application and the Bureau of Land Management another 77 days to approve the permit.[10]

Other hurdles that industry faces when attempting to drill on federal lands include the environmental analyses required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the legal challenges from anti-drilling advocates create additional unnecessary delays. From lease sale until actual production, drilling on federal land can take up to 10 years, as opposed to one or two years on private and state-owned lands.[11]

Leftists and their supporters will flatly ignore, deny or vilify these facts and this blog as "right wing talking points."  But it is the Left that are the deniers.  And they deny the obvious truth that the Federal Government  is usually ineffective and even harmful.