Obama’s ‘None Of The Below’ Energy Policy Exposed, Say Lawmakers – OpEd
By Jim Kouri
Members of the House of Representatives on Thursday released a report entitled, “None of the Below: The Truth About President Obama’s Actions Against Domestic Energy Production.”
The biting report vividly describes the actions President Barack Obama’s minions at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior have taken to restrict or regulate into nonexistence the production of oil, natural gas, and coal.
“This report details numerous specific rules and regulatory actions advanced by the Obama Administration which will severely restrict the development of abundant and reliable energy resources,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA).
“While President Obama says he supports domestic energy production when he’s staging a photo op for a pipeline he didn’t help build, his actions, and the actions of his radical appointees, undermine his rhetoric,” Issa noted.
According to the report, after denying a Presidential Permit from the U.S. Department of State for the Keystone XL Pipeline, President Obama staged a photo-op in Cushing, Oklahoma, in March to announce he was “fast-tracking” the southern leg of the Keystone project, the Keystone Gulf Pipeline running from Cushing to Port Arthur, Texas.
“Such an assertion was at best inaccurate and at worst disingenuous,” the report concludes. “[T]he southern leg does not even require a Presidential Permit from the U.S. Department of State, and the applicable permitting process was effectively complete. The Presidential Memorandum issued in conjunction with the event – which directed no specific action and explicitly stated it did not change any existing law – was little more than a press release.”