Slippery tactics: Obama declares war on oil Calls to end 'fossil-fuel' subsidies, impose new tax

from Jerome Corsi

President Obama declared war on oil and natural gas at the United Nations global warming summit, and he made the same pitch to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

"I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge," he told the U.N.

In the draft final communiqué, the G20 nations agreed to phase out government subsidies to such fuels in the "medium term," without specifying target dates, according to a report published by Bloomberg.

The G20 draft document also asked the finance ministers to keep working on the "climate finance" issue as part of the preparation for the global climate summit scheduled for Copenhagen in December.
The Environmental Law Institute estimated that in the U.S., the biggest fuel subsidies are tax breaks, the foreign tax credit and the credit for production of nonconventional fuels that added up to $72 billion over the seven year period studied, 2002 to 2008.

"Should Obama succeed, the end result will be tantamount to imposing a new tax on oil and natural gas production, with the outcome being that U.S. energy consumers will see energy price increases," Corsi warned.

"The Obama administration's budget request would strip essential capital from new American natural gas and oil investment by radically raising taxes on American production," Buddy Kleemeier, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the chief executive of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Company, told the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 10.

Corsi wrote, "Obama's actions are based on what Red Alert believes amounts to nothing more than 'junk science,' arguing that manmade carbon-dioxide emissions from the burning of oil and natural gas cause global warming."

He continued, "Unilaterally ending U.S. fossil fuel tax subsidies would have a seriously negative impact on the U.S. economy."

Approximately 85 percent of the energy that drives the U.S. economy still comes from oil and natural gas.

"Simply put, why the Obama administration would shut down 20 percent of our nation's oil production and 12 percent of its natural gas is unfathomable," wrote Barry Russell, president and chief executive of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

"Why it would seek to take away 25 to 40 percent of the capital that finds and produces American natural gas – half of which comes from wells developed in the last four years – is undecipherable," Russell continued. "Why it would choose to hand the nation's energy future to foreign leaders like Hugo Chavez, whose hatred for our country is as clear as the glistening spittle he spews in his anti-American speeches, is clearly a tragic miscalculation."

Yet International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol claimed an agreement by the G20 to eliminate subsidies on such fuels to fight climate change would be good news and should not take long to implement.

"This will improve energy efficiency and therefore energy security, lifting the burden on government budgets and reducing carbon dioxide emissions," Birol told the press.

Corsi said he believes Obama may be desperate for tax revenue to cover the projected trillion-dollar federal budget deficits the administration is planning to incur in the foreseeable future.

"Yet, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies as part of a global-warming ideological agenda seems a particularly strange way to stimulate the economy out of a recession," he wrote. "Eliminating tax provisions that encourage U.S. investment in oil and gas technology, exploration and production will certainly increase U.S. dependence on foreign oil, with the resultant negative impact on our already negative balance of international trade." ....