Click on WORD or PDF for full content
John Fund says counter Putin with natural gas exports.
Post-Crimea, everyone suddenly recognizes that Russia is a potential geopolitical menace to the West.
But for years the Obama administration has completely failed to use the U.S.’s boom in energy production to increase its security and that of its European allies. Frustrated members of Congress from both parties now want to force the White House to stop delaying a full two dozen permits for the export of America’s abundant natural gas.
Ukraine depends on Russia for more than two-thirds of its natural gas, and Russia is already raising prices steeply. Thirty-four percent of Europe’s gas came from Russia last year. Indeed, it was in part Ukraine’s reliance on Russian energy that pushed now-deposed Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych to abandon a scheduled trade deal with the European Union in favor of discount natural-gas prices from Russia, among other inducements from Putin. That turnaround led to the street protests that toppled Yanukovych last month.
So far the administration, under pressure from its environmental allies, is exhibiting no sense of urgency on an issue that should be a no-brainer. “Its slow-walking of liquefied natural-gas plant permits is of a piece with its failure to approve the Keystone pipeline and get new trade deals done,” says James Lucier, an energy analyst with Capital Alpha Partners in Washington. “It’s all a sign of just how disengaged from the rest of the world the Obama folks have become.” …
Christopher Helman in Forbes says even the NY Times understands the opportunity our oil and gas boom has become. Will president ‘pipeline dither’ figure it out?
The hand-wringing over what to do to help Ukraine has had a very positive impact on the U.S. oil and gas industry. Politicians like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are seizing on the crisis to call for a lifting of the ban on U.S. oil exports — the better to counterbalance Russia’s petro-influence. While the Wall Street Journal this morning wrote that western politicians are working on a variety of options to help “loosen Russia’s energy stranglehold on Ukraine” including “larger exports of U.S.-made natural gas.”
Nevermind that the U.S. currently exports no natural gas in the form of LNG because new liquefaction plants won’t be completed until late 2015. The bigger point was made by economist Ed Yardeni in his morning note today: “By invading Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin may have succeeded in resolving the debate in the U.S. about whether or not we should export natural gas and crude oil.”
Yardeni noted this New York Times editorial over the weekend as proof positive that the Obama administration (and the rest of the left-leaning side of the political class) now embraces U.S. energy exports as a potentially powerful political tool. When even the New York Times editorial board defies the anti-fracking lobby to conclude that “natural gas exports could serve American foreign-policy interests in Europe” it indicates that LNG exports are something we can all agree on. …
We think we have stultifying bureaucrats? Walter Russell Mead says regulations are killing fracking in the UK.
The mood is downright gloomy at the Shale UK conference this week, where various stakeholders in the country’s fledgling industry are bemoaning a lack of progress in tapping the countries estimated 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas trapped in shale. Despite having some of the thicker—and therefore easier to drill—shale in Europe, faulted stratigraphy, stunted support infrastructure, and a byzantine regulatory environment are preventing Britain from imitating America’s shale success. The FT reports:
Exploration is expensive and it is easy to spend more on drilling a well than the value of gas that comes out of the ground. Drilling costs are significantly higher in the UK than the US. The nascent supply chain and long licensing process are largely to blame.
“It’s a lot slower than in the US,” says Francis Egan, Cuadrilla chief executive. “We have to apply for eight or nine permits for each exploration well.” …
Ron Fournier, certified member of the left media, posts on Diane Feinstein’s accusations of CIA congress spying.
They spied on you. They lied to the Senate. They seized telephone records from the Associated Press and considered criminalizing investigative journalism at Fox News. What else can the U.S. intelligence community do to destroy its credibility, curb civil liberties, and ultimately undermine U.S. security?
Spy on Congress.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat bravely challenging a Democratic White House, accused the CIA of searching computer files used by her staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee to review the CIA’s now-defunct interrogation programs, …
Peggy Noonan posts on Feinstein in her blog.
Here again is the problem of surveillance professionals operating within a highly technologized surveillance state: If they can do it they will do it. If they are able to take an action they will sooner or later take it, whether or not it’s a good thing, even whether or not it is legal. Defenders of the surveillance state as it is currently organized and constituted blithely argue that laws, rules, traditions and long-held assumptions will control or put a damper on the actions of those with the power to invade the privacy of groups or individuals. They are very trusting people! But they are wrong. You cannot know human nature (or the nature and imperatives of human organizations) and assume people will refrain from using the power at hand to gain advantage. And so we have to approach surveillance state issues not from a framework of “it’s OK, we can trust our government” but “it’s not going to be OK, government agencies give us new reasons each day to doubt their probity, judgment and determination to adhere to the law.” …
In an article more appropriate for yesterday’s discourse on Russia, David Harsanyi says Russians get the government they want.
… the more Putin undermines liberal institutions the more popular he becomes. The people who vote for the presidents of Russia and the United States view are unrelated, emerging from distinct historical, moral and ideological perspectives. So expecting people — even people given a vote — to act in what we consider a logical manner, is a waste of time. While we, for example, may be confused about the harsh fate of Pussy Riot!, only 5 percent of Russians believed that the punk/activist band didn’t deserve serious penalties for its actions. Actually, 29 percent believed that the band should have been sent into forced labor, while 37 percent believe they should be imprisoned.
So the Russian government controls the country’s three main television channels, and at the end of 2013, Putin replaced the national news agency with a new and more compliant version. This undermines the free press, of course, but the ugly fact is there doesn’t seem to be much anger about it. In recent years, the Kremlin has imposed limits on protests, criminalized libel, and censored political material on the internet. It has banned the work of nongovernmental organizations (typically aimed at fostering more transparency in government), frozen the assets of human rights groups that receive funding from U.S. citizens, and jailed the political opposition. Occasionally a dissident dies of poisoning.
But the reversal of once promising liberal reforms in Russia is not the result of an undermining of democracy. It happened with the full consent of the electorate. In Russia’s first presidential election, in 2000, Vladimir Putin, who had previously been made prime minister, won 53 percent of the vote. In 2004, he won 71 percent of the vote. In 2008, his lackey Dmitry Medvedev also won in a landslide. In 2012, Putin returned to the presidency in a landslide election with a parliament dominated by members of his party, giving him virtually one party rule.
Sadder still, Putin may be a better choice. …
Paul Mirengoff posts on the GOP win in FL.
Republican Dave Jolly has defeated Democrat Alex Sink in the special congressional election in FLA-13. The margin was 48.5 to 46.5.
This was a closely watched election in which the Democrats invested lots of money and effort (Jolly was significantly outspent) and recruited a prominent candidate — their former nominee for Governor. Although the seat has been held for years by a popular Republican, Obama carried the district in 2012, albeit very narrowly, as did Sink herself in her 2010 run for governor. I discussed the numerous advantages Sink possessed in this post.
The race will be viewed by Republican operatives as a harbinger of things to come in this cycle. That view doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch. Sink will not be the last Democrat who sinks under the weight of Obamacare.
UPDATE: Dave Wasserman, the editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report and certainly not a Republican operative, says “If Dems couldn’t win an Obama congressional district with a solid candidate against a flawed R, expect a rough November.”
Jennifer Rubin has more.
David Jolly eked out a win with less than 50 percent of the vote over now two-time election loser Alex Sink in a special election for Florida’s 13th Congressional District. We should not make more of it than there is, but here are some specifics regarding this election:
• Obamacare played a huge part in the race; Democrats who think it won’t be the primary issue in November may be deluding themselves. (And, unlike the Democratic incumbents who will be on the ballot, Sink didn’t vote for Obamacare.)
• American Crossroads spent $500,00on Jolly’s behalf. American Action Network also spent $500,000. Another mainstream group YG Network spent six figures as well. Tea party groups did little, if anything. Perhaps they aren’t much help in the trenches.
• That said, the money came out about even when all third-party activity was counted. Neither side left the candidate to fend for himself or herself. …