Drilling Plan Opens New Areas But Halts Alaska Sales

By Kara Rowland and Stephen Dinan - April 1st, 2010 - The Washington Times

President Obama's new offshore drilling plan opens up some new areas for oil and gas exploration but also cancels some Alaska lease sales planned for the next two years, putting billions of barrels of oil out of reach for now.

The long-awaited plan, announced Wednesday, expands drilling opportunities off the coast of the southern Atlantic seaboard, in the Gulf of Mexico and some parts of Alaska, but halts other future sales in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort seas that drilling advocates say could account for far more oil than the new areas the president proposes to open up.

As usual where this President is concerned, anything that he does has an element of deceit in it. The left wing radical President placates his extremist base by stopping already planned oil sales that they oppose. He is also able to screw over the state of Alaska in the process, getting some psychic satisfaction out of indirectly opposing the hated Sarah Palin.

The areas that he is supposedly opening up will take many years longer to bring to production, and Obama actually has the option of doing with those exactly what he is doing with Alaska in this round, waiting until the leases are about to be executed several years down the road and simply stopping the process again. His plan is clearly delay, delay, delay...

This entire public relations effort is really a dodge to stall the production of oil here in America to appease Obama's environmental wacko supporters. It is not intended to actually increase oil production here in America - to either reduce our imports or lower our costs. Obama and his radical left wing environmental supporters still oppose that. Nothing but green energy will be permitted in any serious way as long as Obama is President.