Where Are My Keys?

Shovel ready, clean energy, and new jobs to boot!

So why isn't the Left jumping on the fracking bandwagon?

The benefits from shale energy development extend beyond where the natural gas and oil are being extracted. Beyond Pennsylvania, Texas, and North Dakota, jobs are being created. A Youngstown, Ohio steel plant is making pipe for natural gas rigs. Chemical companies have more natural gas feedstock and can pass savings to other industries that use their products. Low-cost natural gas is causing transportation companies and heavy vehicle makers to seriously consider it as a fuel.

Then there’s sand.

Hydraulic fracturing, the method used to extract shale gas, entails pumping sand, water, and additives thousands of feet into the ground to crack (fracture) the surrounding shale to release the gas or oil.

Drilling rigs need sand, lots of sand. In 2011, 28.7 million tons of sand was used in hydraulic fracturing according to PropTester Inc. and Kelrik LLC. And rigs need a type of sand that can handle tremendous pressure. That type is found along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reports that this demand has created a sand boom in communities there:

Over the past five years, a sand rush has taken hold in west-central Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota as mining companies seek out deposits of quartz sand suitable for “fracturing” shale rock to release oil and gas. Since 2007, over 40 frac sand mines have either opened or expanded their operations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and over two dozen new mines have been proposed. The sand ends up at the bottom of wells in shale oil and gas fields throughout the country, including the Bakken oilfields in western North Dakota and eastern Montana.

This boom has created jobs. Each frac mine employs 10 to 20 workers, and each processing plants employs 40 to 50 people. These operations also require truck drivers to move the sand from the mine to the plant then to rail terminals.

It's also helping boost tax revenues in and around the Cities where the fracking is taking place:

Local governments and taxpayers in rural areas also benefit from increased economic activity linked to mining. Chippewa Falls saw lodging tax receipts increase 23 percent between 2010 and 2011, in part because of overnight stays by mining company executives and their clients, according to city officials. And residents of the New Auburn area could see their school district mill rates drop by 40 percent or more over the next few years, as two new sand processing plants in the area start paying property taxes.

Certainly sounds like a win-win to me.

Innovation, leading the way..

This unique design of a "windmill" eliminates many of the problems associated with traditional wind towers:

 

The problem with wind turbines as an energy source are those darn towers and enormous blades. No one likes living under them, with people complaining that the stroboscopic effect of continuously sliced sunlight gives them headaches. Thus wind farms have to be tucked away in remote locations, which means trucking the construction supplies out to those remote locations to build them in the first place. And the construction isn't easy: The sites are of course chosen for their persistently strong winds, a crane operator's nightmare.

Altaeros Energies, a company developed out of MIT research, has been working on a rather brilliant solution: A floating wind turbine. By placing the blade inside a tethered, massive balloon, you can float the thing up to high altitudes (where the winds are five times stronger than what you get at the top of a tower), no construction necessary. And neighbors aren't likely to complain about a balloon 1,000 feet in the sky.

What you saw there was a scaled prototype, 35 feet in diameter. During the test run it arrived on-site in a dock attached to a trailer, then deployed, activated the turbine, and returned to the ground—all automatically. At its highest altitude of 350 feet, it successfully got the turbine to generate twice as much juice than it gets at tower height. We'd say Altaeros is one to watch.

Hey, what were folks on the Hill saying a decade ago?

 

Maybe President Romney will just sign an Executive Order on his first day of office, opening ANWR up.  As we have seen several times over the last 3 years, the Left is fine with extraordinary measures when the minority Party is obstructing things. 

Drilling? We're drilling! Sort of..

You know what's better than having "You" as your best customer?

Having the Taxpayers pick up the tab, naturally!

First Solar is an Arizona-based manufacturer of solar panels. In 2010, the Obama administration awarded the company $16.3 million to expand its factory in Ohio -- a subsidy Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland touted in his failed re-election bid that year.

Five weeks before the 2010 election, Strickland announced more than a million dollars in job training grants to First Solar. The Ohio Department of Development also lent First Solar $5 million, and the state's Air Quality Development Authority gave the company an additional $10 million loan.

After First Solar pocketed this $17.3 million in government grants and $15 million in government loans, Ex-Im entered the scene.

In September 2011, Ex-Im approved $455.7 million in loan guarantees to subsidize the sale of solar panels to two wind farms in Canada. That means if the wind farm ever defaults, the taxpayers pick up the tab, ensuring First Solar gets paid.

But the buyer, in this case, was First Solar.

A small corporation called St. Clair Solar owned the wind farm and was the Canadian company buying First Solar's panels. But St. Clair Solar was a wholly owned subsidiary of First Solar. So, basically, First Solar was shipping its own solar panels from Ohio to a solar farm it owned in Canada, and the U.S. taxpayers were subsidizing this "export."

First Solar spokesman Alan Bernheimer defended this maneuver, saying this really was an export, pointing out that First Solar paid sales taxes on the transaction.

But this subsidy undermines the arguments for Ex-Im's existence. Ex-Im, whose authorization expires May 31, is supposed to be a job creator, helping U.S. manufacturers beat foreign manufacturers by having U.S. taxpayers backstop the financing.

"It is critical that we encourage more American companies to compete in the global marketplace," Ex-Im Chairman Fred Hochberg said about the First Solar deal, saying the subsidy "will boost Ohio's economy, create hundreds of local jobs and move us closer to President Obama's goal of doubling U.S. exports by the end of 2014."

The implication here is that First Solar was "competing" with foreign solar panel makers in order to sell solar panels -- to First Solar.

And we wonder why results from The Obama Stimulus are flat?  We wonder why unemployment remains high?  We wonder why so many people have dropped out of the labor force?

Disgusting.

Looks like the elephant has a better plan..

Keep the pressure on, Republicans..

11 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with Senate Republicans to get the Keystone Pipeline going (remember when having just one Republican crossing the aisle was considered "bipartisan support"?).

President Obama praised the Finance Committee after the vote and said he wanted to "particularly thank" Snowe, citing her "for both the political courage and the seriousness of purpose she's demonstrated throughout this process."

Snowe's vote allowed Obama to claim the bill has bipartisan support.

Keep bringing this measure to the floor, and as gas continues to get more expensive, and jobs continue to be scarce, more Democrats will come to their senses and listen to their constituents.

A record no President wants to hold..

Winter gas prices are at their highest point.  Ever.

That was then, this is now..

President Obama and Candidate Obama have differing views on gas prices:

When gas prices hit $4 a gallon in 2008, candidate Barack Obama said it was due to previous failed energy policies. Now that prices are heading still higher, President Obama calls it progress.

Already, pump prices are higher than they've been in previous years, suggesting they will top $4 soon and possibly reach an unprecedented $5 this summer.

President Obama is starting to notice the political implications. So he sent Robert Gibbs — now a top campaign adviser — out to tell the public not to worry.

"Just on Friday, the Department of the Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic," Gibbs said Sunday. "Our domestic oil production is at an eight-year high, and our use of foreign oil is at a 16-year low. So we're making progress."

"Progress" isn't exactly how Obama described the country's energy picture in 2008, when gas prices were closing in on $4 a gallon. Then, it was a clear sign of "Washington's failure to lead on energy," which was "turning the middle-class squeeze into a devastating vise-grip for millions of Americans."

"For the well-off in this country," Obama said in May 2008, "high gas prices are mostly an annoyance, but to most Americans they're a huge problem, bordering on a crisis."

In August that year, he declared rising energy costs to be "one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced" and that gas prices "are wiping out paychecks and straining businesses."

Read the whole thing.

This should do wonderful things to gas prices..

Iran tells the UK and France, "No oil for you!"

It sure is a good thing that Obama allowed so many new leases to be explored in our own backyard his first day in office.  Now, three years in, we are only seven years away from bringing that oil to market, and not starting from Day One of a ten-year project.

Oh wait, you mean we wastedthe last three years (and the next one), and won't be able to begin the ten-year countdown until a Republican is in the White House?

Thanks, Democrats!