E.P.A. = Extreme Political Activism

On April 25, 2011 Shell Oil Corporation announced it was dropping it’s efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic Sea off the northern coast of Alaska. This decision comes after 5 long years of jumping through the governmental hoops of massive regulations, careful, tedious exploration and the expense of investing over 4 billion dollars in the project. So just what caused Shell to accept the massive monetary losses and drop the project? Was it due to the fact that they couldn’t find enough oil there to make a profit? Apparently that is not the case, as there are an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil just sitting there waiting for extraction. Could Shell’s reason for dropping a 4 billion dollar project be that there is no demand for all of that oil in the U.S. today? With current gasoline prices over $4.00 a gallon across the nation that hardly seems like a valid reason to not extract that domestic oil in the Arctic Sea. Supply and demand are what drive gasoline prices, no matter who tells you anything different.

So why is Shell being forced to accept 4 billion dollars in losses in pulling out it’s drilling operations in the Arctic Sea near Alaska? The answer to that question can be found in 3 simple little letters: EPA , as in the infamous Environmental Protection Agency. Just do not try to get an exact answer from Obama appointee Lisa Jackson, the current EPA administrator, as she refuses to answer phone calls or emails to explain this ludicrous decision by her four radical Democrats on the board that denied an “air quality permit” for Shell to drill in the region. So much for accountability in our government once again from an Obama appointee. They have a pattern of making radical decisions, and then refusing to explain them to the very people who pay their salaries. I offer this article from FoxNews as proof  of just who is behind this ludicrous decision, and how they refuse to tell the people why they have made such a blatantly extreme decision.

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling. (emphasis mine)

After 5 years and 4 billion dollars, the Democratic extremists on a panel for the EPA have denied the extraction of 27 billion barrels of our very own oil for… wait for it…the fact that ice-breaking vessels burn fuel, and therefor emit pollution. Does this mean that every ship traveling in our waters will be shut down also because they all burn fuel of one type of the other. No, this only means that the evil capitalists at Shell Oil will be stopped from producing millions of dollars of oil for U.S. consumption because they ‘gasp’ did not include the emissions from the ice breaking ships in their total environmental impact figures for air quality control. If crab fishermen in Alaska get stuck in the ice this year, does this mean that the ice breaking ships will be told to let them sit there and freeze to death until Lisa Jackson’s radical EPA board checks their emission statements too? There is no difference there.  These people on this EPA board, including Lisa Jackson are extreme activists, hypocrites and liars, period. From the prior linked Foxnews article we see who they really are:

The EPA did not return repeated calls and e-mails. The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. Members are appointed by the EPA administrator. Alaska’s Republican senator thinks it’s time to make some changes. (emphasis mine)

There you have it, an EPA board which includes an appointed political activist lawyer, all of them Democrats, has denied Shell Oil the rights to extract the oil in the Arctic Sea due solely to the emissions of the ice breaking ships. Will Lisa Jackson and this board write the refund check to Shell oil for the billions of dollars they are out of due to this environmental extremist board’s decision ? No I,m not talking about a check drawn on the taxpayers account here, but instead a personal check drawn on the accounts of these five people who bear responsibility for this nonsense. Maybe that would make them think twice before trying  a politically motivated stunt like this the next time they get asked to make a decision that will affect every single tax paying American citizen.

Steve Maley, over at Redstate.com also makes a very good point about the main agenda behind this decision here, in which he shows us the ultimate motive behind this action, shutting down the Alaska Pipeline:

But the real motivation, the real prize, is the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. The design throughput of the pipe is in excess of 2 million barrels of oil per day; recent throughput is around 600,000 barrels per day. At some limiting rate (I’ve heard 200,000 barrels per day), the cost to operate the line will exceed the value of operating it, and it will be shut down.  Pipeline shut-down is the ultimate goal of the environmental movement. Not just ANWR, but any new development must be stopped so that TAPS dies an early and unnatural death.

Since the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to de-fund the domestic terrorists over at the EPA, only to be denied by the career politicians in the U.S. Senate, I think we need to remember these Senate tyrants in 2012, and replace them with some people who will actually protect U.S. citizens from this kind of blatant abuse of power.