Sarah Palin and something she knows best - Oil

A couple of days ago, I posted an entry about the Transalaska Pipeline as part of my Alaskan Daily Digest. What prompted that post was an email that day about ACES (Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share) which is the oil and gas tax production reform that Sarah Palin championed while in office. In the article was this statement:

"In an April 23 analyst presentation, ConocoPhillips’ top executives in Houston made a point of acknowledging Alaska production tax credits as being a significant component in the company’s profit."

This is important to Alaskans because we hold a share in the monies derived from oil production in our state. That is the reason that each Alaskan resident receives money from the Permanent Fund Dividend, and we are in much better shape financially than many other states in the US. We own a share in our resources.

Last night, Sarah Palin made a statement regarding our current administration's plan to send two billion dollars of our tax money to Brazil so they can drill off shore. Please read her statement:

YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL

Today's Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That's all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I'll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: "Drill, baby, drill." Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a "win" for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can't say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

- Sarah Palin

There are two things I see here, plain and simple:

1) Sarah Palin knows a whole lot more about gas and oil production than our current administration, and how vital it is to our economy, and...

2) Sarah Palin certainly has a better grasp on economics, especially global economics, than our current community-organizing president.

Look to the building of the Transalaska Pipeline in the 1970's. Thousands of jobs were created and it lead to an economic boom in Alaska. Oil continues to flow from that pipeline and continues to provide oil to the United States today. Why can we not move forward and expand oil and gas production, tapping into as yet untapped resources in Alaska and other parts of the United States?

Alaska and other parts of the country have the resources we need. It boggles the mind why we would continue to purchase our energy resources from countries that don't even like us. Even more mind boggling is why, when our economy is in the worst shape it has been in decades, we would support oil production in Brazil (which leads to jobs for them and money for them) over our own resources and our own country?

Is this what the president meant by "shovel ready?" Maybe - Problem is, it's another country's shovel.