End Drilling Moratorium and Create Jobs, Mr. President

Tonight we will learn of the new jobs plan from President Obama as he addresses a joint session of Congress. I have a suggestion for him: Mr. President, if you want to create immediate jobs and promote our country's energy independence, end the backlog of useless paperwork and bureaucracy created under the guise of a oil and gas drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico.

HERE

is a simple explanation of the current environment faced in the oil and gas drilling industry trying to work in the Gulf of Mexico.



The President of the American Petroleum Institute is confident in the claim that lifting the moratorium will result in thousands of jobs and billions in revenue.

All he has to do is say the word and I promise you this industry will immediately go to work,” said API President Jack Gerard, speaking at an Energy Jobs Summit hosted Wednesday by the Hill newspaper.

Mr Gerard put forth some action that President Obama can take immediately.

Mr. Gerard outlined steps that President Obama can take on his own, without waiting for energy legislation to work its way through a gridlocked Congress. They include: an expansion of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico; opening up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); allowing companies to tap reserves in some sections of the Rocky Mountains; and embracing the vast natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from upstate New York as far south as Kentucky and contains trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.

The bottom line is this - the moratorium hasn't been lifted because the oil and gas drilling companies have complied with the unnecessary burden of excessive paperwork and now the bureaucracy created to handle that excessive paperwork can't handle it at all. Government paper pushers are not a substitute for experts in the field.

If the Obama administration would stop trying to deliberately destroy the oil and gas drilling industry in our country the jobs creation and economic growth would be immediately felt. It's time for common sense, not strident and inefficient ideology.