The latest anti-fossil missile rolled out for launch in President Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget would add a $10 federal “fee” to the price of every barrel of domestic oil at a time when competing and hostile nations are hell-bent to drive struggling American producers out of business. Included are the Saudis, OPEC, Russia, and Iran, along with North Korea as an arms trade beneficiary.
The new tax would add about 24 cents per gallon to the price of gasoline which will be bad for consumers, for businesses, and for local, state, and national economies.
The revenue would be used to further subsidize such green dreams as consumer price-prohibitive, anemic and unreliable wind and solar energy, low-demand electric cars and charging stations, and likewise unaffordable high-speed rail systems.
A White House memo reported by the Wall Street Journal states that the proposed oil tax would provide “a clear incentive for private-
sector innovation to reduce our reliance on oil.” As Sen. John Barrasso (R, WY), a member of Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, observes. “This is not the time to add costs to American energy production — or to shut it down altogether. Doing so will only help our adversaries and make us and our allies more dependent on them.”
Not only more dependent, but also less secure in a dangerous world. For example, while the Obama Administration along with its EPA and an alphabet soup of other surrogate agencies busy themselves contriving more and more regulatory horrors on the petroleum and coal industries, economic sanctions have now been lifted to allow Iran to once again export oil.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that Iran presently has 30 to 50 million barrels of oil sitting offshore in tankers, plus lots more additional crude oil stored onshore ready to go.
Iran also has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas, and is building a liquefied natural gas export plant that is now about 40% complete. Their officials are actively lining up LNG contracts throughout Europe and can likely begin shipping within about 2 years.
Like Iran, Russia has much to gain from weakened U.S. oil and natural gas competitiveness. After invading the Ukraine in part to seize control of natural gas facilities they now appear eager to start a price war with the U.S. in order to gain a tight grip on Europe’s market. Gazprom already has the capacity to flood EU demands. Doing so would help them build a sufficient market share to deter profitable construction of U.S. LNG projects.
Russian and Iranian oil and natural gas fortunes, in combination with depletion of ours, pose unambiguous threats not only to America’s energy security, but to our military security as well.
You can bet that a lot of that freshly released $150 billion of Iranian oil money will be used to pay for the $8 billion they are going to spend purchasing state-of-the-art Russian Sukhoi SU-30SM fighter jets and S-300 anti-tank missile defense systems as reported by Russian and Iranian military officials. That doesn’t include Russian-supplied warships, diesel submarines, gunships, T-90 tanks, and coastal defense systems that are believed also to be up for sale to Iran — according to a report in the Russian business daily Kommersant … all in flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council prohibitions.
Then there’s also a matter of just how much of that freed-up Iranian sanction largess will wind up in North Korean military coffers. Center for Strategic and International Studies scholar Larry Niksch told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee last July that North Korea may receive upwards of $2 billion to $3 billion annually.
Numerous U.S. and foreign press reports detail military weapon collaborations between the two rogue nations dating far back to 1993. Included are exchange visitations of nuclear and rocket scientists, and $500 million in Iranian financing for North Korea’s nuclear program in return for nuclear technology.
Continuation of current Obama Administration policies which tax fuel, delay granting of LNG export permits, and prevent drilling on federal land will only benefit America’s economic and military security adversaries.
According to Investor’s Business Daily, Hillary Clinton was caught on tape promising a supporter that the end of fossil fuel Hil 
development on public lands is “a done deal.” Those public lands account for 22% of American crude oil and 16% of our natural gas. So does 41% of U.S. coal.
Hillary has promised that we can expect her election to extend and expand Obama policies … on steroids. The good news here is that a Republican White House win plus a hold on Congress won’t let that happen. The seriously bad news is that a complacent and uninformed national electorate will likely guarantee that it does.
NOTE: This article first appeared at: http://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/obama-oil-saudi/2016/02/29/id/716579/#ixzz41hYBRpBY