Castro’s Revenge: Obama Bans New Drilling While Cuba Becomes Regional Player In Oil

As the Deep Horizon oil well continues to leak oil in to the Gulf of Mexico and Obama holds steady to his ban on new off shore  drilling (that may or may not include new drilling in shallow waters), lawmakers from the Gulf region are very unhappy with Obamas edict:

Bipartisan pressure is building on the Obama administration to reconsider its ban on new offshore drilling, with Gulf lawmakers decrying the moratorium as an overreaction to the BP oil spill that will compound the economic damage the disaster is inflicting on their states.

Lawmakers and industry groups warn that the moratorium could cost thousands of jobs and drain hundreds of millions of dollars out of the local economy. That’s on top of the billions of dollars studies predict could be lost from hits to the tourism and fishing industries along the Gulf. (emphasis added)

The article continues.

“Obviously we need to learn the lessons from this incident … but to completely shut down deepwater (drilling) and even threaten shallow water is a huge economic blow,” Sen. David Vitter, R-La., told Fox News on Friday. “And on top of the recession and on top of the hit that the oil is directly making on our economy, that is another big, big economic blow that is going to knock us down.”

And it not just those dastardly Republicans who want to kill the environment while chanting “drill baby drill” who are unimpressed with Obama.  Even Democrat Mary Landrieu is warning of long term effect of Obama’s poor decision.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., warned about the danger of a permanent flight of the industry from the region.

“If these big rigs ever leave the Gulf … it’s not like you can make those every day or every year. Some of them take years to build. If they leave the Gulf and go drill under long-term contracts off the coast of Africa, they’re not coming home any time soon,” she said. (emphasis added)

Obama’s decision to unilaterally stop the United States from exploring and drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico is not going to stop Mexico, Venezuela, Canada, India, Russia, China and other nations from drilling less than 70 miles off the coast of Florida.

Via money.cnn.com:

Call it Castro’s revenge. With Cuba’s leader sidelined by illness and its economy in shambles, a major oil find – estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey at 4.6 billion barrels, nearly two-thirds the amount in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – could give Havana a new lease on life. “Cuba could be a major regional player in oil,” says Jorge Piñon, an oil expert at the University of Miami and a former president of Amoco Oil Latin America.

So far Cuba’s oil production has been puny – just 68,000 barrels a day, compared with more than ten million by Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest producer. With help from the Soviet Union, oil was discovered in Varadero in 1971. Production stayed at about 18,000 barrels a day until Canada’s Sherritt International arrived in 1992 and started joint production with Cuba Petróleo. Currently Sherritt is responsible for almost half of Cuba’s production, entirely onshore.

In 2004, Spain’s Repsol YPF found signs of oil in deep water offshore. Last year India’s ONGC Videsh and Norsk Hydro of Norway joined Repsol to explore its six blocks. Separately, Malaysia’s Petronas won concessions for four blocks, reportedly after seeing fresh data from the Repsol-led consortium. ONGC also secured concessions for two more blocks. In January, Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA picked up rights to four blocks. China also has an exploration agreement with Cuba, and Chinese oil giant Sinopec has been leasing rigs to Sherritt and others. (emphasis added)

Of course, there is no risk of an oil spill from one any of these players. Right?

Guitar Wars: David Gilmour

“By the way, which one’s Pink?”

David Gilmour and Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett met as children in Cambridge and later, whilst studying at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, began playing guitar together. In 1965 they spent a summer hitchhiking and busking around the South of France before Syd joined Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright to form Pink Floyd, and David continued playing with his own band Jokers Wild, subsequently touring Europe with Flowers, and later Bullitt.

David was asked to augment the Pink Floyd line up as the singer and guitarist in 1967, only for Syd to leave the group five gigs later.

David’s guitar playing and song writing became major factors of Pink Floyd’s worldwide success during the 1970s, including his distinctive vocals and guitar playing on The Dark Side Of The Moon, the third most successful album of all time.

David Gilmour& Pink Floyd performing Run Like Hell:

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Check out some other great guitarists / performances @ The Resistance

Friday Night Links: The Shelby Edition

Be sure to check out these great posts:

Detroit Free Press poll: Majority of Michiganders oppose ObamaCare, including 69% of young people!

No U.S. Economic Recovery

New Game ~ Name the Naked Author!

Hollywood Hubris: Director James Cameron Offers to Solve Gulf Oil Spill, Is Ticked Off at “Morons” Who Turned Down His Offer

Australia reveals possibility of federal employee biometric program

Sarah Palin: When you take on the entrenched powers, they come after you

BREAKING NEWS: Gooch Campaign Issues Cease and Desist Letters To Cablevison and Comcast Over Anna Little’s Ads!

Don’t you just love the smell of desperation in the afternoon…

Your Marxist Moron of the Day

Mark Steyn told you so

State Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Corrupt Capitalism, Syndicaliam, Corporatism… Obamaism

Another assault on our checks and balances

State of the unions-part four

Paul McCartney Doesn’t Realize Bush Bashing Is So 2008

It seems Paul McCartney is a little out of the loop and doesn’t realize all the cool kids stopped Bush bashing in 2008:

Paul McCartney was given the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by President Obama last night at the White House on the behalf of the Library of Congress. In true liberal fashion Sir Paul didn’t waste the opportunity to bash former President Bush:

“After the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.”

I guess Sir Paul doesn’t realize that President Bush read three books per week during his time at The White House. Nor does he realize that these books were on very heavy subject matter; he wasn’t reading Sue Gafton novels that one can finish in a day or two (not there is anything wrong with Gafton books).

Paul should stick to music and stop with the pathetic political swipes.

Besides, President G. W. Bush had much better taste in music.

Guitarist-singer Brian Setzer plays with his orchestra Thursday evening, June 29, 2006 in the East Room of the White House, during the entertainment following the official dinner in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to the United States.

Speaking of Brian Setzer:

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If you get a chance, go see Brian Setzer’s Christmas show. It’s fantastic.

Tuesday Night Links: The Motocross Edition

Some excellent reading for a Tuesday night:

The Age of Leviathan Democracy

America at a Crossroads

When I said the media hated Israel…..

I meant dinosaurs like Helen Thomas, who, I think first condemned Moses when he parted the Red Sea. Check out the video at Hot Air and note how Thomas accuses Israel of deliberately massacring innocents. Good grief!

Human-animal hybrids in life vs. death struggle

This is the Tolerance of the Left: Intimidation, Harassment, and Threats

Revolting.

Video of Pro-Abort Nancy Pelosi: I must pursue public policies “in keeping with the values” of Jesus Christ, “The Word made Flesh.”

State of the unions-part two & State of the unions-part three

Ambassador Bridge Owner Gets Double-Tapped

Global Cooling: La Nina, Solar Minimums and Volcano’s… Oh My!

Based on real science and actual, you know, data it seems we are heading in to another cold spell. Via Pajamas Media:

In a cosmically ironic twist of fate and timing, nature may be set to empirically freeze any and all anthropogenic global warming talk: a blast of Arctic cold may encase the earth in an icy grip not seen for 200 years.

This is not alarmist fantasy or 2012 babble — several natural forces that are known to cause cooling are awakening simultaneously, raising speculation of a “perfect storm” of downward pressures on global temperature. These forces let loose one at a time can cause the Earth to cool and can bring about harsh winter conditions. If they all break free at once, the effects could be felt not just in the coming winter, but year-round, and for several years to come.

First up, La Nina:

Since autumn of 2009, we have been under the influence of a moderately strong El Nino. El Nino is a warming of the water in the Pacific Ocean along the equator from South America to the international dateline. El Nino’s warm water adds vast amounts of heat and humidity to the atmosphere. The result is a warmer Earth and greatly altered weather patterns around the world. The current El Nino is predicted to fade out this summer, and frequently after an El Nino we see the development of La Nina, the colder sister of El Nino. La Nina’s cooler waters along the equatorial Pacific act to cool the Earth’s temperature.

And about that Solar Minimum:

We have just exited the longest and deepest solar minimum in nearly 100 years. During this minimum, the Sun had the greatest number of spotless days (days where there were no sunspots on the face of the sun) since the early 1800s. The solar cycle is usually about 11 years from minimum to minimum — this past cycle 23 lasted 12.7 years. The long length of a solar cycle has been shown to have significant short term climate significance. Australian solar researcher Dr. David Archibald has shown that for every one year increase in the solar cycle length, there is a half-degree Celsius drop in the global temperature in the next cycle.

Using that relationship, we could expect a global temperature drop of one degree Fahrenheit by 2020. That alone would wipe out all of the warming of the last 150 years.

Volcano’s… Oh my:

Magnus Tomi Gudmundson is a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, and an expert on volcanic ice eruptions:

There is an increasing likelihood we’ll see a Katla eruption in the coming months or a year or two, but there’s no way that’s certain. …

From records we know that every time Eyjafjallajokull has erupted, Katla has also erupted.

The reason this is ominously significant is that these giant eruptions can change the weather on a planetary scale for years. Mount Laki, another large volcano in Iceland, has a history of producing climate changing eruptions. In the early summer of 1783, Laki erupted, releasing vast rivers of lava. The explosive volcano also ejected a massive amount of volcanic ash and sulfur dioxide into the air — the eruption was so violent that the ash and sulfur dioxide were injected into the stratosphere, some 8 miles up. This cloud was then swept around the world by the stratospheric winds. The result was a significant decrease in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface for several years.

That reduction in sunlight brought about bitter cold weather across the northern hemisphere. The winter of 1784 was the coldest ever seen in New England and in Europe. New Jersey was buried under feet of snow. The Mississippi River froze all the way down to New Orleans! Ice was reported in the Gulf of Mexico. Historical records show that similar conditions existed during the following winter.

This convergence of events that have proven in the past to drive down temperatures (and notice that none of these are man made events) should put a damper on all the man made ‘global warming’ hysteria.