(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)
There may be no more pro-Republican, anti-Obama industry than the fossil fuel extractors.
Oil execs are convinced that President Obama hates them and that if he could have his way he would ban fracking and make the post-BP drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico last forever.
They condemn Obama for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline that would help secure U.S. access to Canadian oil supplies.
Coal companies believe that the Obama EPA is seeking every avenue to put carbon-spewing coal-burning power plants out of business.
They all believe the president would eagerly resurrect some version of carbon cap-and-trade legislation that stalled in congress in 2009.
But hey, with the president winning re-election, isn't it time for the energy industry to let bygones be bygones and learn to love Obama? Or at least like him?
For some good perspective I called up Michael Webber, professor of energy policy at the University of Texas in Austin. After declining to reveal which way he voted today, Webber proceeded to explain to me all the reasons why the energy industry has nothing to fear from Obama. "They hate him, but he hasn't done a thing to hurt them. He hasn't stopped them," Webber says.
Webber gave me a little context. In recent decades, he explained, the Republicans and Democrats have usually had two opposing ideologies on energy. The Republicans have stood for high oil and gas production and high energy consumption (both Bush presidents were oilmen), while the Democrat policy has been lower oil and gas production and lower consumption (remember Jimmy Carter telling Americans to put on an extra sweater). Until just the last few years America's default energy policy has been the worst of both ideologies: low production and high consumption.
But that has changed during the Obama years. Since 2008 energy production is up, but consumption is down. Oil and gas production in the U.S. has zoomed to levels not seen in a decade, while overall energy consumption is down 10% or so. The boom in oil and gas drilling has been a rare economic bright spot for the nation, and one that President Obama has had no incentive to undo.
Despite environmentalists railing against fracking and the EPA investigating whether it pollutes groundwater, there's been no move toward federal regulation of it.
Amazingly, in the third presidential election, both Obama and Mitt Romney both voiced their belief that the United States could even achieve energy independence in the decade to come -- and that this was a good thing.
As for that Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium, Webber thinks the industry has come to terms with it. "You can't have 11 people die and millions of barrels of oil spill into the gulf and not accept that a temporary moratorium is justified," says Webber. "After all, even Ronald Reagan paused the space program after the Challenger explosion."
Webber thinks there's no chance that Obama would try to resurrect legislation pushing a carbon cap-and-trade program, at least not until California's own imminent experiment in cap-and-trade has been carefully watched. He does however think a carbon tax would be feasible, far less susceptible to fraud than a cap-and-trade scheme, and that it would not be the job killer that skeptics (like me) think it would be. A carbon tax would certainly satiate Obama's environmental base, which seems not to be placated by the fact that cheap, plentiful natural gas has already led to significant decarbonization by replacing coal in electric power generation.
As for the Obama administration picking favorites in handing out billions in taxpayer funds to failures like Solyndra? Will we be seeing more of such waste? Well, yes, says Webber. The federal government has agreed to guarantee tens of billions of dollars in loans to power utilities seeking to build the next generation of nuclear power plants. But you can't blame Obama for that -- the program was started by the second Bush administration.
And what about Keystone XL? Don't hate Obama for that either guys. Webber encourages us to remember that there were plenty of Nebraska Republicans who urged the president to reject the tar sands pipeline because of its route through the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region.
Will a second Obama administration approve a re-routed Keystone XL?
Or will he ban fracking, nationalize oil companies, impose a windfall profits tax and new 75 mile-per-gallon CAFE standards?
We'll see.
Meanwhile, if all you oil and gas guys are still nervous about four more years of Obama, it's time to take a trip to Colorado. I hear they legalized marijuana. And there's oil there, too.
