Nearly two years after an explosion on an oil platform killed 11 workers and sent millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, deep water drilling has regained momentum in the gulf and is spreading around the world.

For a time after the BP spill, the drilling moratorium ordered by the Obama administration caused a decline in gulf production, but a reversal has occurred. Forty rigs are drilling in the gulf today compared with 25 a year ago.  BP has five rigs drilling in the gulf, making it one of the most active drillers there. That is the same number BP operated before the accident, and it plans to have three more rigs drilling in the gulf by the end of the year.  The Energy Department recently projected that gulf oil production would expand from its 2011 level of 1.3 million barrels a day to two million barrels a day by 2020.

BP and other oil companies are intensifying their exploration and production in the gulf, which will soon surpass the levels attained before the accident after a one year drilling moratorium. Drilling in the area is about to be expanded in Mexican and Cuban waters, beyond most American controls, even though any accident would almost inevitably affect the United States shoreline. Oil companies are also moving into new areas off the coast of East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean after a string of huge discoveries of natural gas.

President Obama, while in New Hampshire last Thursday, countered Republican charges that he was to blame for the rising pain at the pump. “We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and approved more than 400 drilling permits since we put in place new safety standards in the wake of the gulf oil spill,” Mr. Obama said.

 “We need the oil,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the Rice University energy program. “The industry will have to improve and regulators will have to adjust, but the public will have to deal with the risk of drilling in deep waters or get out of their cars.”

The expansion of deep water drilling is happening despite accidents in offshore fields, though none have compared to the BP spill.   A well operated by ConocoPhillips and a Chinese state company leaked more than 3,200 barrels of oil and fluid into China’s Bohai Bay last June, producing a 324-square mile slick.   A comparable spill occurred last November from an appraisal well in Brazil’s Campos basin operated by Chevron. Federal investigators threatened fines and even prison terms for Chevron officials, but a federal judge declined to grant an injunction suspending Chevron’s Brazilian operations and those of the oil rig contractor, Transocean, the company that owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon for BP.

Exploration in deepwater fields remains dangerous because of high temperatures and high pressure when drilling 6,000 feet or more under the sea floor, and accidents continue to occurl. Nevertheless, the Obama administration reached an agreement with the Mexican government to open a new tract to offshore drilling, some of it in water more than 6,000 feet deep, despite persistent questions about the strength of Mexican oil industry regulation.

“The Republicans and the oil industry are maintaining the speed-over-safety mentality that led to the BP disaster in the first place,” said Mr. Markey, who has been critical of the Obama administration’s response to the spill and to what he called a dangerous overuse of chemical dispersants in the gulf. “We now understand the lessons, but Republicans have blocked all new safety laws,” he said. “Not one has been put on the books.”

Yet Republicans argue, loudly, that Mr. Obama is not doing nearly enough to expand drilling. The Republican majority in the House has passed legislation to speed lease sales on public lands while pressing to open the Atlantic and Pacific coasts — which have been largely politically untouchable since the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 — to extensive oil and gas development.

Mr. Romney, who said last week that he had named a billionaire oil industry executive, Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, to lead his team of energy advisers, has said he would relax regulations and speed the permitting process.

Palm Beach County zoning commissioners allow construction on Florida's first wind turbine farm near Belle Glade by voting 6-0 for wind turbines at the 12,900-acre site. "We need more wind engines throughout our country" said Zoning Commissioner Sherry Hyman hoping the wind farm will spark more energy sources like it, not only around Florida but around the country.  The plan now will go before the county commission.  Wind Capital Group, a St. Louis company, would build 114 to 124 wind turbines for $350 million to convert the wind blowing off Lake Okeechobee into 200 megawatts to power 55,000 to 65,000 homes.  The turbines would be 300 feet tall. George Gentile of Gentile Glas, Holloway, O'Mahoney and Associates, speaking on behalf of the Wind Capital Group, said the construction of the wind turbines will create 200 to 300 construction jobs and 15 to 20 permanent jobs once the turbines are running.

Environmentalists object to the impact on the environment.  Roy Schneider of the Audubon Society of the Everglades cautioned the zoning board to be patient before making any commitments to ensure the Glades' natural beauty.  "I do wish you would be cautious about making plans that are so long-term and expensive," Schneider said. "We are all supportive of clean, renewable energy sources, we all want more jobs. "The question is what kind of jobs and is doing this for the long-term for the good of our society? Going toward this as a more cautious and conservative measure might be a good idea."  Robin Saiz, director of project development for the Wind Capital Group, said the firm is collecting data to determine how to protect birds.  Gentile denied that the farm would produce a disturbing amount of noise.  "A normal conversation is anywhere between 50 and 60 decibels; 100 meters from the wind turbine we are at the 50-decibel level," Gentile said.  "The sound and noise coming from the new technology is well within range of normal activities."

I just got a fascinating demonstration of the work that some of you are doing at the College of Engineering.  And let me say at the outset, we need more engineers.  So I could not be prouder of those of you who are studying engineering. 

It was fascinating stuff.  I understood about 10 percent of what they told me. But it was very impressive.  And the work couldn’t be more important, because what they were doing was figuring out how our buildings, our manufacturers, our businesses can waste less energy.  And that’s one of the fastest, easiest ways to reduce our dependence on oil, and save a lot of money in the process and make our economy stronger.

So some cutting-edge stuff is being done right here at the U.  Now, that’s what I’m here to talk about today.  In the State of the Union, I laid out three areas where we need to focus if we want to build an economy that lasts and is good for the next generation, all of you.   We need new American manufacturing.  We’ve got to have new skills and education for America’s workers, and we need new sources of American-made energy.

Now, right now we are experiencing just another painful reminder of why developing new energy is so critical to our future.  Just like last year, gas prices are climbing across the country.  This time, it’s happening even earlier.  And when gas prices go up, it hurts everybody -- everybody who owns a car, everybody who owns a business.  It means you’ve got to stretch a paycheck even further.  It means you’ve got to find even more room in a budget that was already really tight.  And some folks have no choice but to drive a long way to work, and high gas prices are like a tax straight out of your paycheck.

You know there are no quick fixes to this problem.  You know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.  If we’re going to take control of our energy future and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year -- when the economy starts getting better, world demand starts increasing, turmoil in the Middle East or some other parts of the world -- if we’re going to avoid being at the mercy of these world events, we’ve got to have a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.  Yes, oil and gas, but also wind and solar and nuclear and biofuels, and more. 

We need to keep developing the technology that allows us to use less oil in our cars and trucks, less energy for our buildings and our plants and our factories -- that’s the strategy we’re pursuing.  And that’s the only real solution to this challenge.

Now, it starts with the need for safe, responsible oil production here in America.  We’re not going to transition out of oil anytime soon.  And that’s why under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.  That’s why we have a record number of oilrigs operating right now -- more working oil and gas rigs than the rest of the world combined. 

Over the last three years my administration has approved dozens of new pipelines, including from Canada.  And we’ve opened millions of acres for oil and gas exploration.  All told we plan to make available more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.

Last week, we announced the next steps towards further energy exploration in the Arctic.  Earlier this week, we joined Mexico in an agreement that will make more than 1.5 million acres in the Gulf available for exploration and production, which contains an estimated 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

So we’re focused on production.  That's not the issue.  And we’ll keep on producing more homegrown energy.  But here’s the thing -- it’s not enough.  The amount of oil that we drill at home doesn’t set the price of gas by itself.  The oil market is global; oil is bought and sold in a world market.  And just like last year, the single biggest thing that’s causing the price of oil to spike right now is instability in the Middle East -– this time around Iran.  When uncertainty increases, speculative trading on Wall Street increases, and that drives prices up even more. 

So those are the biggest short-term factors at work here. 
Over the long term, the biggest reason oil prices will probably keep going up is growing demand in countries like China and India and Brazil.  I want you to all think about this.  In five years, the number of cars on the road in China more than tripled -- just in the last five years.  Nearly 10 million cars were added in China in 2010 alone -- 10 million cars in one year in one country.  Think about how much oil that requires.  And as folks in China and India and Brazil, they aspire to buy a car just like Americans do, those numbers are only going to get bigger. 

So what does this mean for us?  It means that anybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or just isn’t telling you the truth.  

And young people especially understand this, because I think -- it's interesting, when I talk to Malia and Sasha -- you guys are so much more aware than I was of conserving our natural resources and thinking about the planet.  The United States consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil -- more than 20 percent of the world's oil -- just us.  We only have 2 percent of the world's oil reserves.  We consume 20; we've got 2. 

And that means we can’t just rely on fossil fuels from the last century.  We can’t just allow ourselves to be held hostage to the ups and downs of the world oil market.  We've got to keep developing new sources of energy.  We've got to develop new technology that helps us use less energy, and use energy smarter. We've got to rely on American know-how and young engineers right here at the U who are focused on energy.  (Applause.)  That is our future.  And that’s exactly the path that my administration has been trying to take these past three years. 

And we’re making progress.  That's the good news.  In 2010, our dependence on foreign oil was under 50 percent for the first time in over a decade.  We were less reliant on foreign oil than we had been.  In 2011, the United States relied less on foreign oil than in any of the last 16 years.  That's the good news.  And because of the investments we’ve made, the use of clean, renewable energy in this country has nearly doubled -– and thousands of American jobs have been created as a consequence. 

We’re taking every possible action to develop, safely, a near hundred-year supply of natural gas in this country -- something that experts believe will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.  We supported the first new nuclear power plant in three decades.  Our cooperation with the private sector has positioned this country to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries that will power the next generation of American cars -- that use less oil; maybe don't use any oil at all. 

And after three decades of inaction, we put in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history for our cars and pickup trucks -– and the first standards ever for heavy-duty trucks.  And because we did this, our cars will average nearly 55 miles per gallon by the middle of the next decade.  That's nearly double what they get today.  (Applause.) 

Now, I remember what it was like being a student.  You guys probably have one of those old beaters.  Who knows what kind of mileage you guys get.  (Laughter.)  I can tell you some stories about the cars I had.  I bought one for $500.  (Applause.)  But by the middle of the next decade, you guys are going to be buying some new cars -- hopefully sooner than that.  And that means you’ll be able to fill up your car every two weeks instead of every week -– something that, over time, will save the typical family more than $8,000 at the pump. 

And it means this country will reduce our oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels a day.  That's not only good for your pocketbook, that's good for the environment.  (Applause.)

All right, but here's the thing -- we've got to do more.  We've got to act even faster.  We have to keep investing in the development of every available source of American-made energy.  And this is a question of where our priorities are.  This is a choice that we face.

First of all, while there are no silver bullets short term when it comes to gas prices -- and anybody who says otherwise isn't telling the truth -- I have directed my administration to look for every single area where we can make an impact and help consumers in the months ahead, from permitting to delivery bottlenecks to what’s going on in the oil markets.  We're going to look at every single aspect of gas prices, because we know the burden that it's putting on consumers.  And we will keep taking as many steps as we can in the coming weeks. 

That's short term.  But over the long term, an all-of-the-above energy strategy requires us having the right priorities.  We've got to have the right incentives in place.  I'll give you an example.  Right now, $4 billion of your tax dollars subsidize the oil industry every year -- $4 billion.  They don't need a subsidy.  They're making near-record profits.  These are the same oil companies that have been making record profits off the money you spend at the pump for several years now.  How do they deserve another $4 billion from taxpayers and subsidies? 

It’s outrageous.  It’s inexcusable.  And every politician who’s been fighting to keep those subsidies in place should explain to the American people why the oil industry needs more of their money -- especially at a time like this. 

I said this at the State of the Union -- a century of subsidies to the oil companies is long enough.  (Applause.)  It’s time to end taxpayer giveaways to an industry that has never been more profitable; double down on clean energy industries that have never been more promising -- that's what we need to do.  (Applause.)  This Congress needs to renew the clean energy tax credits that will lead to more jobs and less dependence on foreign oil. 

The potential of a sustained, all-of-the-above energy strategy is all around us.  Here in Miami, 2008, Miami became the first major American city to power its city hall entirely with solar and renewable energy.  Right here in Miami.   The modernization of your power grid so that it wastes less energy is one of the largest projects of its kind in the country. On a typical day, the wind turbine at the Miami-Dade Museum can meet about 10 percent of the energy needs in a South Florida home, and the largest wind producer in the country is over at Juno Beach.  Right here at this university, your work is helping manufacturers save millions of dollars in energy bills by making their facilities more energy efficient. 

So a lot of work is already being done right here, just in this area.  And the role of the federal government isn’t to supplant this work, take over this work, direct this research.  It is to support these discoveries.  Our job is to help outstanding work that’s being done in universities, in labs, and to help businesses get new energy ideas off the ground -- because it was public dollars, public research dollars, that over the years helped develop the technologies that companies are right now using to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock. 

The payoff on these public investments, they don’t always come right away, and some technologies don’t pan out, and some companies will fail.  But as long as I’m President, I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.  Your future is too important.  I will not - I will not cede, I will not give up, I will not cede the wind or the solar or the battery industry to China or Germany because some politicians in Washington have refused to make the same commitment here in America. 

With or without this Congress, I will continue to do whatever I can to develop every source of American energy so our future isn’t controlled by events on the other side of the world. 

Today we’re taking a step that will make it easier for companies to save money by investing in energy solutions that have been proven here in the University of Miami -- new lighting systems, advanced heating and cooling systems that can lower a company's energy bills and make them more competitive. 

We’re launching a program that will bring together the nation’s best scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to figure out how more cars can be powered by natural gas, a fuel that’s cleaner and cheaper and more abundant than oil.  We’ve got more of that.  We don’t have to import it.  We may be exporting it soon. 

We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance -- algae.  You’ve got a bunch of algae out here, right?  If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right. 

Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.  And that means greater energy security.  That means lower costs.  It means more jobs.  It means a stronger economy. 

Now, none of the steps that I’ve talked about today is going to be a silver bullet.  It’s not going to bring down gas prices tomorrow.  Remember, if anybody says they got a plan for that -- what?

We’re not going to, overnight, solve the problem of world oil markets.  There is no silver bullet.  There never has been. 

And part of the problem is, is when politicians pretend that there is, then we put off making the tough choices to develop new energy sources and become more energy efficient.  We got to stop doing that.  We don't have the luxury of pretending.  We got to look at the facts, look at the science, figure out what we need to do.

We may not have a silver bullet, but we do have in this country limitless sources of energy, a boundless supply of ingenuity, huge imagination, amazing young people like you -- (applause) -- all of which can put -- all of which we can put to work to develop this new energy source. 

Now, it’s the easiest thing in the world to make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices.  What’s harder is to make a serious, sustained commitment to tackle a problem.   And it won’t be solved in one year; it won’t be solved in one term; it may not be completely solved in one decade.  But that’s the kind of commitment we need right now.  That’s what this moment requires. 

So I need all of you to keep at it.  I need you guys to work hard.  I need you guys to dream big.  I need those of you who are a lot smarter than me to figure out how we’re going to be able to tap into new energy sources.  We’ve got to summon the spirit of optimism and that willingness to tackle tough problems that led previous generations to meet the challenges of their times -– to power a nation from coast to coast, to send a man to the moon, to connect an entire world with our own science and our own imagination. 

That’s what America is capable of.  That's what this country is about.  And that history teaches us that whatever our challenges -– all of them -– whatever, whatever we face, we always have the power to solve them. 

This is going to be one of the major challenges for your generation.  Solving it is going to take time; it’s going to take effort.  It’s going to require our brightest scientists, our most creative companies.  But it’s going to also require all of us as citizens -- Democrats, Republicans, everybody in between –- all of us are going to have to do our part.

If we do, the solution is within our reach.  And I know we can do it.  We have done it before.  And when we do, we will remind the world once again just why it is that the United States of America is the greatest country on Earth.  

Thank you, everybody.  God bless you.  God bless America.


Full Report   http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/02/23/remarks-president-energy