With gasoline prices marching north, President Obama next week will take a break from worshipping the sun and putting his finger to the wind when he actually highlights energy projects that provide lots of energy.
The White House is desperate to repair the damage being done to Obama’s campaign by the price at the pump, and aides have suddenly begun portraying him as a great apostle of oil and gas drilling.
In what may go down as one of the worst political blunders of his presidency, Obama late last year bowed to environmentalists’ pressure and rejected the Keystone pipeline’s route through part of Nebraska, delaying by at least a year a major new source of oil just as gasoline prices started going through the roof.
Wednesday, he’ll be in Carlsbad, New Mexico to inspect oil and gas production fields located on federal lands.
Obama will be in Oklahoma Thursday – yes, Oklahoma – to “discuss his Administration’s commitment to improving and supporting the infrastructure that helps us leverage our domestic resources,” the White House said.
I assume these are code words for the infrastructure to get fossil fuels out of the ground, since he sure ain’t going to Oklahoma for votes. He’s more likely to strike oil.
According to ABC News, Obama will staging a photo op in Cushing, Oklahoma, which is on the Keystone pipeline project’s “southern route,” of which the administration approves.
Of course, the two day trip also features a solar facility and a meeting with people conducting “some of the country’s most advanced energy-related research and development.”
But the White House is clearly eager to show that Obama loves the non-advanced stuff too, since that’s what the country is going to be running on for the foreseeable future.