Obama's Dry Humping October Surprise

That's (sort of) how Chris Horner describes it.  But first, the news excerpt:

The Obama administration is preparing to end the ban on deep-water oil and gas drilling imposed after the BP oil disaster in April, lifting it more than a month ahead of schedule.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is set to make the official announcement during a conference call at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

“There have been meetings on this in the last few days — suffice to say, I think we are getting close to having in place something that would likely allow us to lift the moratorium,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday.

To which Mr. Horner replies, "Oh, REALLY?":

In light of DOI's record on shallow water permitting , the prospects for deepwater permits remains grim. In the shallow water (where there has NEVER a moratorium), energy producers have been pursuing permits for over 4 months and have seen an approximate 90% drop-off in permits compared to pre-Deepwater Horizon. Ask yourself what business can afford to see a 90% drop-off in activity? Hence--- the de facto moratorium. Currently 24% of the shallow water rigs have been "stacked" with more to follow and 4 deepwater rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico.

The deepwater moratorium is just being replaced with a blanket of uncertain regulation. Two interim final regulations were placed with the Federal Register last week, but many more are forthcoming. Recall, last week Bromwich referred to forthcoming rulemakings for the OCS as a "dynamic regulatory environment." A "dynamic regulatory environment" is the OPPOSITE of certainty, which is what Gulf Coast energy producers need to be able to get back to work. In some ways, increased regulation is even worse than taxes because at least taxes come after a business has made some sort of profit. With excessive regulation, ultimate profitability is less certain and overseas investment (and the jobs that go with it) are more economic.

In short, the Regime isn't ending the drilling ban at all, just burying it under an avalanche of bureaucratic smoke.  Or, put another way, they're doing now what, from their propaganda point of view, they SHOULD have done in the first place, when such propaganda might have had the effect they're belatedly and clumsily going for as a last-minute, desperation "Hail Mary" gimmick.

And "make no mistake," the latter is all this is, because if resuming full scale energy exploration in the Gulf was truly what this was about, they'd have lifted the ban two months ago:

A study conducted by Barack Obama’s own hand-picked commission showed that not only was the blanket moratorium no longer needed, it was never necessary in the first place.  When did they tell the White House of these conclusions?  Almost two months ago, in late August.

At the time, the White House insisted that more research was needed before they would lift the moratorium.  The only data that has changed since then has been provided by the pollsters, not the scientists, and that points to political catastrophe not just in the Gulf but around the nation.

The White House always viewed Armus as another crisis they could exploit toward ramming through their cripple & tax anti-energy crackdown.  They didn't get that (though it's still a possibility in the Lame Duck ambush, and they're bulldozing ahead with imposing it by presidential decree next year), but their moratorium has "achieved" the next best thing: crippling for years if not permanently an entire segment of American domestic energy exploration capability and leaving our offshore oil and natural gas resources fallow for the ChiComms and Uncle Hugo to plunder at their leisure.

It serves as a redundant, and therefore even more useful, reminder that the electoral ass-kicking his party is going to absorb in three weeks is only going to finish stripping away any lingering pretenses that Barack Obama isn't the radical, Marxist-Alinskyist, authoritarian dictator he has always aspired to be.  He's not going to accept the verdict of the American electorate; he's going to PUNISH us for our disloyalty and disobedience and quite literally hold us hostage economically against his own re-election and his party's congressional restoration in 2012.

Buckle up, because if anything, the ride will get even more turbulent after November 2nd.