Oil at $30 a Barrel

The big fall off your chair moment during President Obama’s State of the Union address came when he proclaimed:

“We’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly sixty percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth. Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.”

Sure, Mr. President. Take a bow for the smashing success of the very domestic oil and gas industry that you have tried to destroy.

Even Mr. Obama couldn’t carry this off. The smirk on his face as he sang the praises of an oil and gas industry was unmistakable.

Right after Mr. Obama boasted of these low gas prices, he reverted back to form, by sermonizing:

“We’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy” — by which he means fossil fuels. Then the hammer came down: “I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.”

So 30 seconds after toasting lower gas prices he pledges to find ways to make gas more expensive.

The irony of the Obama war against fossil fuels is that the shale oil and gas revolution in America has saved Mr. Obama. During his first term, all of the net new jobs that were created in America came from oil and gas as fracking took off in Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama owed his reelection to the frackers, but instead he and his EPA have tried to shut them down.