Death on a Friday Afternoon

Some time back I read about Maximilian Kolbe. He was prisoner 16670 in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in August 1941 when SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Karl Fritzsch was the Lagerführer (camp leader). Fritzsch, a soulless man, once placed a Christmas tree with lights on the roll call square. He forbade the prisoners, however, from singing carols. Under the tree were bodies of dead prisoners who were worked to death or froze to death while standing at roll call. Fritzsch called the bodies his presents to the living.

When an inmate allegedly escaped from the camp (there was no proof) Fritzsch randomly chose ten men to die of starvation, his favorite method of torture and execution. One of the men chosen was Franciszek Gajowniczek. Upon hearing the sentence, Gajowniczek began crying, “"My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?"

Kolbe stepped forward and asked to take Gajowniczek’s place. “I want to go instead of the man who was selected. He has a wife and family. I am alone. I am a Catholic (Polish) priest.” Besides, Kolbe contended, he was “elderly” and Gajowniczek young. In fact, at the time Kolbe was 47; Gajowniczek was 41.

Fritzsch quickly consented and Kolbe and the other victims were led off to the starvation chamber, Building 13. Kolbe was the last to die. Gajowniczek lived another 53 years to age 94.

Lagerführer Fritzsch never questioned why Kolbe would die for a fellow prisoner.

Throughout history people have given their lives to save others. Soldiers have thrown themselves on grenades to protect comrades. Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities around the theme of the killing spree called the French Revolution in which one of his characters took the place of another at the guillotine. But the best known substitutionary death took place over 2,000 years ago outside of the gates of Jerusalem.

In contrast to an almost commonplace knowledge of Jesus, whose execution and resurrection will be the center of worship in Christian churches this Sunday, we know almost nothing of the man who, by executing him, had such a profound impact on the world’s history from that point forward. Pontius Pilate, the archetypal Robespierre and Fritzsch,  is absent in recorded history before he came to Judea in 26 AD and is unremarkable during the history of his eleven-year rule as the fifth Roman governor of a third rate province in the Empire. That he was stationed in Judea speaks volumes about his insignificance in the Roman political constellation.

The historians Josephus and Philo, contemporaries of Pilate, describe a much harsher man than the weak-willed, fair-minded one that seems to be described in the Bible’s four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. From Josephus and Philo we learn that Pilate’s assignment in Palestine probably ended as a consequence of his vicious crackdown on a Samaritan messianic fanatic and his followers who armed themselves and intended to climb to a holdout on Mt. Gerizim. Pilate had his troops block their way, and in typical Roman fashion, there was a slaughter. He executed the leaders and killed or imprisoned the followers. Representatives of the Samaritan leaders, however, went over Pilate’s head to complain to Vitellius, the legion commander and governor of Syria, about Pilate’s brutality in the affair. Vitellius evidently outranked Pilate, because he sent a representative to Palestine to replace him, and sent Pilate back to Rome to explain himself. What happened to Pilate after that is lost in history. His life, at least as we know of it, consisted of only the eleven years in backwater Palestine, renown  primarily for ordering the death of Jesus.

In 1961, a stone plaque further confirmed the historical Pilate. It was found bearing his name in the ancient maritime city of Caesarea, the capital of Judea in Jesus day. Pilate lived in Caesarea Maritima and went to Jerusalem only when business called him there. The two-foot by three-foot slab refers in Latin to a Tiberium, a temple for the worship of Tiberias Caesar, the emperor during the time of Pilate and Jesus. The four-line engraving on the slab refers to Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea – the title by which the Bible refers to the man who ordered Jesus’ execution. We can only guess that the purpose of the slab was to identify the Tiberium and perhaps credit its construction to Pilate.

There also can be no doubt that the historical Jesus and the historical Pilate crossed paths in the former’s execution. Apart from the Biblical accounts of their encounter, there are many secular accounts. For example, the first century apologist for Judaism, Flavius Josephus, who was sympathetic with the Romans and whose disbelief in the deity of Jesus was renowned, nevertheless wrote of him in Antiquities of the Jews XVIII 3:3:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

                                   

Likewise, Cornelius Tacitus in his Annals, xv. 44, wrote: “Christus ... was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontious Pilate.” Lucian of Samosata, a rigorous historian, satirized the Christians in his Passing of Peregrinus and yet wrote, “(Christ was) the man who was crucified in Palestine.”

Crucifixion was undoubtedly the cruelest method man has ever devised to torture someone to death. It was an instrument of state terror whose origins in history are lost, but it’s known that Darius the Great, third king of the Persian Empire, used it in 519 BC to kill 3,000 Babylonian captives. Alexander the Great, the leader of the Greek Empire, brought the practice with him to Egypt and Carthage (modern Tunisia), and with their defeat of the Carthaginians, the Romans apparently learned of its practice. They perfected it to a form of torture and capital punishment that was designed to inflict maximum pain and suffering, and if desired, to prolong death for days. When the Thracian gladiator Spartacus led a breakout from the gladiatorial school around 70 BC, which subsequently developed into a slave revolt against the Roman Empire, their defeat was celebrated with the crucifixion of 6,000 of Spartacus’ followers.

By the time Jesus was born, Pax Romana – Roman peace – had reigned for almost 30 years. It spanned the rule of Caesar Augustus (27 BC) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD), a period of about two centuries during which there was virtually no internal discord. But the lack of discord was due to a large army that always stood ready to crush any form of civil disobedience with unbridled cruelty. It was the kind of “peace” which would have reigned had the Nazis won the WW II.

Into this peace were cast accusations that Jesus was subverting the nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king and thus a threat to the authority of the Empire. Initially, Pilate saw the matter as little more than a religious dispute and told the Jewish leaders to settle it themselves. They reminded him that under Roman law they couldn’t execute anyone, implying that Jesus was guilty of a capital crime. Only when the wily Jewish leaders accused Pilate of being no friend of Caesar, did he relent and order the execution, showing just how insecure he was in his position as a Roman Prefect.

Scourging was a legal requirement of Roman law before a victim could be crucified. Sometime the lash could be laid on lightly to prolong the suffering of crucifixion. Other times, the victim never survived scourging. The condemned was stripped naked. His (women were not crucified) arms were stretched up and tied near the top of a pole set in the courtyard of the praetorium where Pilate held court in Jerusalem. But the victim might alternately be pulled over a stump of wood or stone with outstretched feet and hands tied to the ground such that his back was arched for the torture. Either method was intended to expose the back to the full effect of the lash.

A flagellum, or short whip, consisted of a wooden handle with leather thongs of different lengths in which iron balls and sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied. One or two soldiers, called lictors, administered the beating, making sure that the back, legs, and buttocks were ripped open as the lash landed on the flesh and was jerked back toward the lictor. The iron balls were intended to inflict deep contusions. Continued lashing would rip through outer layer of tissue and begin tearing the skeletal muscles, producing ribbons of dangling bleeding flesh. Circulatory shock often accompanied the trauma and blood loss.

The gospel accounts of the flogging and crucifixion are remarkably benign because the writers apparently assumed their readers were already familiar with both so a lot of detail wasn’t needed.

Two types of crosses were used for crucifixion. One looked like a lower case “t” which is the Latin cross commonly worn as jewelry and shown in pictures of the crucified Jesus. Archeological evidence, however, indicates this almost surely was not the type of cross on which Jesus was crucified. Rather the “tau” cross, resembling an upper case “T” was prevalent in Roman Palestine and was likely the type of cross used.

Moreover, pictures showing Jesus carrying the entire cross on which he was crucified are wrong. The victim would only carry the patibulum or horizontal part of the cross for two reasons: first, the vertical part of the cross, the stipes, remained permanently in the ground and second, the patibulum would have weighed 75 pounds or so, whereas, the entire cross could have weighed over 300 pounds – more than the victim could have carried after being scourged. The scourging that Jesus received was so extreme, that he wasn’t able to carry even the patibulum, and Simon, a passerby, was ordered to carry if for him.

Aside from the taunts the victim heard from the crowd as he walked with his arms often tied to the patibulum, which was placed across the nape of his neck, he often walked naked to the place of execution and was crucified naked to add to his humiliation. After his scourging, the soldiers put a robe on Jesus and placed a crown of thrones on his head, bowing to mock him as the king he was accused to be. But before he began to walk the 700 yards to Golgotha, the place where crucifixions took place outside the city wall, the robe was taken off and his clothes were returned, suggesting that Jesus didn’t walk fully naked to the execution site. However, once crucified, his clothes were gambled for by the soldiers suggesting that he may have been naked on the cross.

Nakedness is significant because even today it is a humiliation for a Middle Eastern man to be naked among others, especially strangers. The courts martial and imprisonments associated with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq show the seriousness of this cultural violation.  Naked men there were forced to lie on each other in a pile. Touching each other while naked was humiliation enough but a female soldier was also present.

Medieval and Renaissance painters show the crucified Jesus with nails through his palms. Nails through the palms cannot support the weight of the victim and would strip out between fingers. Archeological remains of crucified victims show the nails were driven through the wrists, most often through the space between the radial and ulna wrist bones. Arriving at the execution site, the victim would be pushed to the ground, falling back on the patibulum tied across his shoulders. Any wounds that had clotted across the back would reopen allowing dirt to contaminate them further. Using iron spikes of 5” to 7” in length, a soldier skilled in crucifixion could find the spot in the wrist to drive the nail through without breaking a bone or piercing the radial or ulnar arteries. However, the nail would likely pierce the median nerve running up the wrist, causing bolts of unbearable pain to shoot up the arms. That and damage to tendons would paralyze the hand, forcing it into the shape of a claw.

The object of crucifixion was to suffocate the victim. Therefore, after nailing both wrists to the patibulum with enough slack to avoid pulling the arms taunt, the patibulum would be hoisted up atop the stipes and dropped into a mortise and tenon joint. The victim’s feet would be pulled up so the knees were bent, and with the left foot overlapping the right, a spike would be driven through arches. The soldier-executioner would do this without breaking metatarsal bones, allowing the victim to push up on his nailed feet in order to breathe. However, the medial and plantar nerves would be crushed causing agonizing pain in the legs when the victim pushed against his feet.

At this point the victim would be fully crucified and the death struggle would begin. As he sagged, it put more weight on the nails in the wrists. Unbearable pain would race through his fingers and up his arms because the nails would press the median nerves. The median nerve passes through the carpal tunnel, and if you’ve ever had the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome, multiply it by ten thousand to understand what a crucified man felt.  

In order to relieve the pain in his arms, shoulders, and neck, the victim would unconsciously push up on his nailed feet to take weight off of his wrists. Doing so would scrape his already shredded back on the rough-hewn stipes, inflicting more pain by opening the wounds, which ran horizontally. But shifting his weight to his nailed feet ripped at the nerves running through the metatarsal bones. It would also rotate the wrists on the nails, rubbing nails against nerves and inflicting excruciating pain. The victim would raise and lower himself between these alternate positions trying to relieve his pain. But he would also begin to have trouble breathing. He would find that he could only inhale with his weight on his wrists with arms fully outstretched. He could only exhale by raising himself allowing him to flex his arms, rotating his wrists, but even then he had to force the air out of his lungs by flexing his diaphragm. Only during the exhalation was Jesus able to speak from the cross.

As muscles fatigued from lack of oxygen, the onset of cramps began, making it harder with each attempt to push up and exhale. Hanging by his wrists, the victim could only inhale and panic would set in. Shallow respiration would cause a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood and fluid would accumulate in the lungs, making breathing more difficult. Intermittently, the victim would push up to gasp for breath but rapidly fatiguing leg muscles would fail from spasms. Inadequate respiration would lead to further multiple failures – fluid in the pericardium, making it harder for the heart to pump, and inadequate oxygenation, which raises the heart rate. Congestive heart failure would begin. The loss of tissue fluids, kidney failure, and the compressed heart would produce searing thirst, which caused Jesus to cry out “I thirst!” His body at that point was in extremis with enough strength to push and exhale out his last words, after which he died – most likely due to asphyxia.

The two thieves who were crucified on each side of Jesus had not died when the soldiers broke their shin bones with a heavy club to prevent them from pushing up to breathe. Asphyxic death would have come to them within minutes.

In his book Night, Elie Wiesel wrote of the gallows deaths that he and other prisoners were forced to witness when at 15 years of age he was interred in his first Nazi concentration camp. One incident involved a Dutch Oberkapo – an overseer who was himself a camp prisoner but one with special privileges. The Dutchman had a small servant boy who was given extra food in return for serving the Kapo. These boys, called pipels, were often used for sex by Kapos, but there’s no indication this was true for this boy, whom Wiesel said had the face of a sad angel.

When a nearby power station was sabotaged, the SS found a trail leading to the Dutch Oberkapo. He was tortured for weeks but revealed no names of collaborators, so he was then shipped off to Auschwitz not to be heard from again. The pipel was left behind, tortured, but he too did not speak. He was sentenced to hang along with two adults found with weapons.

Returning from work, Wiesel and the other prisoners were summoned to roll call to witness the execution.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him. This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him.

The victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. "Long live Liberty!" cried the two adults. But the child was silent.

"Where is God? Where is He?" someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.

Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. "Bare your heads!" yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. "Cover your heads!"

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive...

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed. Behind me I heard the same man asking: "Where is God now?"

And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is he? Here he is – he is hanging here on this gallows. . . "

But Wiesel was wrong. God was not dead. His silence means neither absence nor impotence. God wept the day those three people were hanged because that’s who God is.

For now we must accept the evil in the world. It is not mankind’s invention. It has a father and some have chosen to follow that Evil One. While 9/11 and the Holocaust are dramatic examples of his evil, more pernicious though less dramatic examples of it permeate life in a thousand disguises because a deluded “enlightened” and “tolerant” society have made it acceptable.

At the beginning of time a cosmic struggle between good and evil began. Throughout the Bible it is spoken of beginning in Genesis when God foretold its outcome. Satan would wound but not kill his redeemer. And true to his word, the apparent defeat of a death on a Friday afternoon gave way to the victory of Easter Sunday.

Life is a microcosm of that drama. When it seems like evil is winning, we should remember that we’ve yet to see the end of the story.

Important Notice

Dear Readers,

It’s come to my attention in the past couple of weeks that the feed from my blog has been interrupted.  This interruption has prevented you from receiving my blog posts.

If you are reading this post via email or RSS, we can all be assured the problem is fixed.

To catch you up, here are some posts you may have missed, click on the titles below and then the link to it.

James Q. Wilson’s Broken Windows, March 10, 2012

“… I have Israel’s back,” March 17, 2012

Obama’s Energy Misleadership, March 24, 2012

Obama’s Energy Misleadership, Part Two, March 31, 2012

Hopefully, the repaired feed will provide uninterrupted service in the future beginning with the post this coming Saturday around 4p. If not, send me a notice at my gmail account and we will keep working on it.

Thanks for reading and referring the blog to your friends!

Bill Franklin

Obama’s Energy Misleadership Part Two

(continued from last week’s blog)

In his February 27 weekly address, Obama acknowledged “pain at the pump” as gas marches toward $4 per gallon, and went on to say this:

Now, some politicians always see this as a political opportunity. And since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling. We hear the same thing every year.

Well the American people aren’t stupid. You know that’s not a plan – especially since we’re already drilling. It’s a bumper sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. It’s a strategy to get politicians through an election.

Drilling isn't a plan?

Obama has auctioned off only half the number of leases during his administration compared to the previous Democrat administration of Bill Clinton. With gas prices rising, he continues to restrict federal lands to oil and gas production calling drilling a “bumper sticker solution.”  In 2008, when President Bush lifted the executive drilling moratorium that applied to most of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the price of oil immediately dropped more than $9 per barrel.  Since oil is a globally traded commodity, markets closely follow the decisions of policymakers to determine what future supply will look like. Did a $9 per barrel price drop make opening the OCS for drilling a “bumper sticker solution”?

Nevertheless, Candidate Obama dismissed the Bush move, saying "it would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years. Offshore drilling," Obama said, "would not lower gas prices today, it would not lower gas prices next year and it would not lower gas prices five years from now." And yet, prices came down.

In the first weeks of his administration, almost before he had even had time to get his Oval Office desk arranged, President Obama canceled Bush’s opening of OCS.  Choking off production on federal land was always a priority of Obama from the moment of his swearing in.

Obama continued.

You know there are no quick fixes to this problem, and 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 avoid these gas price spikes down the line, then we need a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy – oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels, and more. We need to keep developing the technology that allows us to use less oil in our cars and trucks; in our buildings and plants. That’s the strategy we’re pursuing, and that’s the only real solution to this challenge.

Rather than go full bore on the one asset in which we clearly have world superiority – fossil fuels – Obama considers wind, solar, and bio-fuels as viable energy sources. Why make using less oil in our cars, trucks, and buildings with the abundance of energy we already have?

Obama’s fixation on green energy lost the American taxpayer a half-billion dollars in the Solyndra boondoggle. [See my blog It's Not Easy Being Green, September 24, 2011]. Ignoring the disastrous $40,000 Volt, he is still calling for a million electric cars by 2014 and further calling for fuel economy standards that will take decades to impact consumption due to the number of cars now on the road.

Gas prices are up 93% since Obama took office, giving us a glimpse of just how well the green energy approach works Supported by decades of subsidies, wind power today provides only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% from coal, 22% from natural gas, 19% from nuclear power and 7% from hydroelectric. Wind turbines generally operate at an efficiency of only 20% compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear power plants.

So, Obama blabs on …

Now, we absolutely need safe, responsible oil production here in America. That’s why under my Administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. In 2010, our dependence on foreign oil was under 50% for the first time in more than a decade. And while there are no short-term silver bullets when it comes to gas prices, I’ve 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.

Permitting? When he has denied more permits than the last five presidents?

And yeah, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. Obama had nothing to do with it. As I noted last week, improvements in fracking and the increased production on private land explains the increase. Production on federal land has decreased because it’s hamstrung by prohibitions and regulations. Only 2.2% of federal offshore land is currently leased for production. The 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve would require leasing 2,000 out of 19 million acres. Obama refused.

Obama rescinded 77 oil and gas lease permits in Utah and has held up production on others in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming – called the Persia of the Plains – which holds over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, the largest oil shale deposit in the world!

Leases in the US western states on federal property are down 44% and permits for new well drilling are down 39% since Obama took office according to the American Petroleum Institute.

As if this weren’t enough, Obama in January refused to allow Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline to cross our shared border and provide oil to refineries in Texas. The XL pipeline would have had the capacity to move 830,000 barrels of oil per day – including oil produced in North Dakota and Montana – to Texas. It would have provided 20,000 direct jobs and possibly hundreds of thousands indirect jobs to build this $7 billion private project in a time of record Obama unemployment.

In another tip of the hat to environmental radicals, Obama claimed he didn't have time to evaluate the XL pipeline – an odd statement since the request has been around since September 2008, almost four months before he became president. He was able to cancel the Bush OCS drilling permits within a week of taking office and he pushed through a massive stimulus bill within the first month of taking office, but he had no time to study the XL pipeline in a time of over 9% unemployment.

Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi covered Obama’s back by saying the pipeline had no value to the US. Remarkable. "This oil was always destined for overseas,” she said. “It's just a question of whether it leaves Canada by way of Canada, or it leaves Canada by way of the United States." This airhead doesn’t grasp the fact that the refiners at the end of this pipeline don’t export crude oil, they export its high value petro-products and create a lot of jobs in the process.

Finishing up his speech, Obama concluded:

But over the long term, an all-of-the-above energy strategy means we have to do more. It means we have to make some choices.

Here’s one example. Right now, four billion of your tax dollars subsidize the oil industry every year. Four billion dollars.

Imagine that. Maybe some of you are listening to this in your car right now, pulling into a gas station to fill up. As you watch those numbers rise, know that oil company profits have never been higher. Yet somehow, Congress is still giving those same companies another four billion dollars of your money. That’s outrageous. It’s inexcusable. And it has to stop.

A century of subsidies to the oil companies is long enough. It’s time to end taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s never been more profitable, and use that money to reduce our deficit and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Because of the investments we’ve already made, the use of wind and solar energy in this country has nearly doubled – and thousands of Americans have jobs because of it. And because we put in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history, our cars will average nearly 55 miles per gallon by the middle of the next decade – something that, over time, will save the typical family more than $8,000 at the pump. Now Congress needs to keep that momentum going by renewing the clean energy tax credits that will lead to more jobs and less dependence on foreign oil.

It’s hard to know where to start with this bit of demagoguery.

Here’s a guy who has run trillion dollar deficits every year he’s been in office and he’s fuming over four billion dollars in oil company subsidies. Here is a guy who wasted $500 million taxpayer dollars on just one of his green energy projects, Solyndra, not to mention all of the other subsidized green projects that have done nothing to compete viably against fossil fuels.

Obama’s attack on tax “subsidies” for oil companies reveals his real agenda. Subsidies for oil companies have always served as an incentive for oil companies -- like copyrights and patents -- to take the risks associated with exploration and production and to expand the nation’s access to energy. The oil companies pay the highest effective tax rates of any American industry when special federal and sales taxes at the pump are taken into account.  Eliminating subsidies would single out oil companies for punitive taxing which would reduce the incentive to engage in exploration risks.

In his State of the Union address this past January, Obama had this to say about his energy policy:

Over the last three years, we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I'm directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now -- right now -- American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years. That's right -- eight years. Not only that -- last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years.

As I’ve already said in this blog, Obama had nothing to do with increased oil production.

When he said, "I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil-and-gas resources," to undiscerning ears that sounds like Obama is finally getting on the right side of the domestic energy issue. But the operative word in his announcement is “potential.”

Let me explain. Last year the Interior Department severely restricted the number of places where leases would be sold. No drilling on the Atlantic coast, for example. No drilling in most places. Drilling would only be allowed in these severely restricted places and Obama is restricting offshore drilling to 75% of these places. It’s like saying, “of the 100 places you could drill if you had a choice, Interior has limited drilling to one place and I’m opening up 75% of that one place for drilling.” It’s a shell game.

Even then, it’s an empty offer. Offshore drill rigs cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. If they aren’t drilling and pumping oil, they can’t be used for sunbathing. Therefore, when Obama shut down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater explosion, the owners of those idle rigs were losing millions of dollars each month. Predictably, they moved them to Brazil, the coast of Africa, and other locations at great expense just to get them back into production.

When Obama allows Gulf drilling – if ever and assuming he remains the President, which I hope not – those rigs won’t be rushing back to the Gulf until their contracts are over. Moreover, it is more profitable for them to stay where they are if there is work nearby than to move them again at great expense, measured in millions of dollars. As long as Obama is the President with his known bias against fossil fuels, no rig owner will return to the Gulf and risk another shutdown.

The Gulf of Mexico is a parking lot of rigs waiting to go elsewhere. Of 51 platforms there now, only 21 are under contract and only 15 actually drilling, a utilization of only 4%. The utilization in rest of the world is 83% and in Europe and the Mediterranean it’s 96%. Fourteen rigs have left the Gulf during the past two years and more are scheduled to leave soon. The Gulf provides 30% of our domestic production. With reduced production equipment, this will impact energy independence and gas prices. Obama’s policies have probably wrecked the Gulf economy for decades. And when I say Obama’s offer is an empty one, it’s because he can offer to open areas for drilling when there are no rigs to do it!

As if that weren’t enough, many of our refineries are under economic pressure. Unlike rigs, they can’t move. If they can’t be profitable they shut down and the work force scatters. But high crude costs, more exacting fuel standards, environment regulations, and foreign competition are taking their toll on our older refineries. Two will close this summer in Pennsylvania. Since 2008 the Northeast has been losing refinery capacity. When these two close, the total will be 700,000 barrels less per day going to market.

In January, Hess announced it would close its refinery operation in the Virgin Islands. This facility is a large supplier of gasoline, heating oil, and jet fuel to the Northeast.

The East coast had 12 refineries in 2010 in the middle of the Obama administration. Now there are eight. The global refining system can take up the slack, but unfortunately they are in the wrong places – outside of the US where they don’t hire Americans or help our economy.

If the Gulf Coast refineries could expand access to Canadian crude, they could become world-class with a competitive advantage in the world. Their production of low-cost natural gas combined with currently installed processing technologies would put US refiners in a strong position to expand their access to markets throughout the Western hemisphere and into Europe. By canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama essentially killed this opportunity.

But wait! There’s more.

The EPA is finalizing rules that would require drill rigs to capture natural gas emissions rather than burning them off as you might have seen in photographs. As I mentioned near the beginning of last week’s blog, production of oil and gas on private and state properties have been beyond the regulatory reach of Obama who only had the authority to restrict use of federal lands. If successful, this would be the first time the EPA has tried to regulate energy production on private and state land under the heavy hand of the Clean Air Act. Once again the administration has tried to disguise its agenda by saying the capture rule will pay for itself since the captured gas could be sold. But the industry, which makes its living by knowing such things, says the cost of capturing emissions will far outweigh the economic value.

The EPA also plans to implement “Tier 3” standards for vehicles and gasoline. This would increase the cost of gasoline by 25 cents per gallon, increase the price of cars, and shut down as many as seven more refineries, decreasing gasoline supplies from domestic refineries by 15%. Other punitive EPA regulations will further reduce gasoline supplies.

So far the opponents of fracking on the Left have not been able to make the case that it contaminates ground water. Researchers, notably those at the University of Texas, have proven that fracking procedures are not a harm to drinking water. But the EPA has been drawn into an investigation of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, the Permian Basin in Texas where the feds seek to protect an endangered lizard, and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. Combined, private and state land drilling in these areas now make up about 40% of the nation's land-based oil output. And they are beyond the federal government’s reach. But if the EPA can make the case for contamination, it can reach into drilling operations on private and state lands and shut down the principal technology that has made recovery so productive – fracking – and thereby further reduce domestic oil and gas production.

And there you have it. Either Obama is incompetent in solving America’s energy problems or, since he is allegedly the smartest person to hold the office, he knows precisely what he is doing and is pandering to radical environmentalism to accomplish his vision of a transformed America reliant on green energy.

There’s no arguing that affordable energy is the lifeblood of a strong economy. The abundant supplies of energy reserves in North America are our best hope for creating jobs, reviving our economy, and becoming once again the world’s leader in energy production – fully independent of foreign sources. Yet these possibilities are increasingly blocked by the interference and growing burden of heavy-handed government regulatory agencies. This has made the people’s property an ideological hostage and caused a 40-year decline in energy production.

The American people deserve better. Whether they believe that will be revealed this November.

Obama’s Energy Misleadership

Oil had been seeping to the surface of the ground in an area of northwestern Pennsylvania since the Seneca Iroquois occupied the region. They used if for medicinal purpose, which the white settlers did also as they gradually displaced the original occupants.

Among them was Samuel Kier whose oil supply exceeded demand so he began looking for alternate uses to medicinal applications. He sent samples of the stuff to Professor James Booth who was a chemist at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a primitive research organization named after Benjamin Franklin, the colonial era scientist and inventor. Booth cooked the samples in a still and discovered its by-product was suitable for lighting. He provided this information to Kier, who in a short time was able to create a still and a lamp to burn this early form of kerosene.

The product came to the attention of a New York lawyer in the 1850s who arranged financial backing to commercialize the venture, since the competitive artificial light sources of the time were whale oil and candles. Edwin Drake was hired to drill a well – a curious choice since his entire work experience was in railroading. But Drake was all too attracted to the annual salary of $1,000 and the opportunity to be the general manager of whatever outcome the venture produced. By sheer dumb luck, he walked the fields surrounding the village – by then called Titusville – and picked among the puddles of oil in the fields the only spot where oil would be found at a shallow depth.

Since water continued to fill the hole as Drake and his helpers drilled, they came up with another fortuitous idea – using a white oak log to drive a cast iron pipe casing into the hole which prevented the aquifer from filling the drill hole. On Saturday, August 27, 1859 work had stopped at 69 feet and everyone expected they would have to drill another hundred or so feet to find oil. The next morning, the casing was filled with oil. The news spread quickly and opportunists moved in to lease nearby properties and start drilling operations. The oil was pumped out using the same hand-operated device that was employed to pump water from wells. The gooey substance was then poured into barrels and carted off to distilleries by teamsters.

About 4,500 barrels of oil were recovered from that field in 1859, and by 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, production had reached three million barrels. The petroleum industry was born. Fortunes were made by almost everyone in oil – except Drake who had neither patented his techniques nor controlled production by buying or leasing the surrounding land. Imposing business management and controls on the nascent industry would come from John D. Rockefeller in the 1870s with the formation of his Standard Oil Company. Drake would die in poverty.

Since 1859, America has been on the verge of depleting its supply of fossil fuels several times, if you believe federal government predictions.

The Bureau of Mines said in 1914 that our oil reserves would be gone by 1924. They weren’t, so in 1939 the Interior Department said oil reserves would be depleted by 1952. They weren’t, even though we had fought World War II, so in 1951 the Interior Department tried again and said we would run out of oil in 13 years – in 1964. Wrong again. Then in 1970 the world’s “proven” oil reserves were estimated to be 612 billion barrels. Unfortunately, 767 billion barrels of consumption later, there was still an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels in the ground. The Middle East oil embargo struck as did the pathetic picture of Jimmy Carter in 1977 forecasting in a televised speech that we would use up all of the world’s oil reserves by the end of the 1980s. But by 2006 almost 700 billion barrels had been pumped and proven reserves were then estimated at 1.2 trillion barrels.

When an apocalyptic preacher predicts a date for the end of the world, he’s called a kook. When a political flake predicts a date for the end of oil, he’s called an environmental conservationist. Both hate to see the world march on past their doom dates.

The reason that “proven” reserves become unproven by the evidence of consumption is that the technology for finding reserves is constantly improving – so there is more there than thought when less sophisticated tools were used in the past. Additionally, the technology for retrieving fossil fuels is constantly improving so some reserves were not counted in the past because the cost of getting it out of the ground exceeded its value in the market. With better retrieval techniques, we can go back and recover fuels the old tools could not, and we can count them in the reserve inventory. Therefore, in 1980 the US had an estimated 30 billion barrels of reserves. Thirty years later, we had consumed almost 80 billion barrels and still had more in the ground than the original estimate.

Despite record rates of consumption, with the advent of industrialism around the world, especially in China and India, world oil reserves are 15 times greater than they were in 1948 when records began to be kept. World coal reserves have increased 75% in the last 20 years and world gas reserves have increased 400% in the last 30 years. At the present levels of consumption, the world has 45 years of known retrievable oil in the ground, 63 years of gas, and 230 years of coal.

Proven or known reserves are “proven” because their volume has been verified by sophisticated sampling, often in anticipation of recovery – i.e. wells are being drilled or soon will be drilled. Potential reserves are “potential” because they are not scheduled for immediate recovery, therefore less sophisticated sampling has been done to map their exact volume but the amount of reserves is generally well known. The potential world reserves of oil at present consumption rates will supply the next 114 years, whereas gas will supply 200 years, and coal, 1,884 years.

Possible reserves are called “possible” because the likelihood of finding fossil fuel in their underlying geology is high but few drill cores have been sunk because recovery is far back in the production queue.

This distinction in “proven” versus “potential” versus “possible” is important to understand because one of the statistics Obama likes to trot out is that America has 2% of the world’s reserves but consumes 20% of the world’s consumption, ergo domestic drilling is a fool’s errand. Not true, and since he’s the smartest president to hold the office, he probably knows that or ought to know that.

Here’s vanilla vintage Obama in campaign-speak at the University of Miami last month:

So what does this mean for America? It means that anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about — or isn’t telling you the truth. The United States consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves. That means we can’t just rely on fossil fuels from the last century.

Isn’t telling the truth? Let’s talk about truth in oil. There are 400 billion barrels of crude in US reserves that could be recovered today using existing drilling technologies, according to the US Department of Energy – for those living in Palm Beach county Florida, that Department is part of the Obama administration. A Rand Corporation study found that the Green River Formation in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado hold about 800 billion barrels of oil shale in "technically recoverable" reserves, which means these reserves are recoverable with existing technology. Green River holds more than triple the known reserves of Saudi Arabia. When you add the two, the US has 1.2 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research. But there’s more. The possible US reserves are estimated at 2.3 trillion barrels. The truth is the US is awash in oil as this figure clearly shows.

Obama’s “2% of the world’s oil reserves” refers only to 22 billion barrels of proven reserves which are essentially in production now. It ignores potential and possible reserves. That’s like saying I only have $5.25 in money, meaning that’s what’s in my pocket. But that ignores the hundreds of dollars I might have in bank accounts and the thousands in untapped potential credit. Now who’s telling the truth?

The US, Canada, and Mexico – presumably friendly neighbors – possess oil reserves that exceed all of the oil that has been consumed in the world since the first well in Titusville was drilled over 150 years ago. Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of reserves. Stated differently, at present consumption levels, North America has 250 years of oil reserves. It has 175 years of natural gas reserves, more than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan – combined. And coal? North America has enough coal to generate electricity for 500 years – more than Russia, China, Australia, India, and Ukraine combined.

So what’s the flap about the US being so energy-dependent on oil imports from countries, most of which don’t like us? It’s called radical environmentalism – the ideology that pits humans versus the planet and believes in the long run that the planet would be better off without humans or at least without their messy ways.

Perhaps you’ve seen the Nissan LEAF television commercial which show short clips of people doing everyday things – brushing their teeth, using their coffeemaker and microwave, using their cell phone, turning on their computers – except all of the devices are gasoline-powered and belch out smoke and soot when they are turned on. Then a background voice asks what if everything ran on gas. The camera quickly cuts to a green leafy street and we see a man walking up to his car. He pulls the charging plug out of an efficient tony vehicle revealing that what appeared to be a parking meter was in fact a charging outlet. The commercial ends with the contra question, “… then again, what if everything didn’t [run on gas]?

Innovation for the planet, the commercial claims – a great car for a green planet. You can see the commercial here.

Notice the subliminal imagery of the belching smog and its equally subliminal connection to human health. The beautiful lie, however, is that electricity must be generated. We can’t dig it out of the ground or snatch it out of the air. And 86% of our electric power is generated by facilities whose motive power is oil or coal. The equally beautiful lie is that we live in an “either-or” world. We can have this or that but not both. The world of radical environmentalist has no “ands” in it – no this and that. It’s inconceivable to them, for example, that we could drill in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve and recovery the oil reserves there without disturbing the environment or the wild life there.

Despite all of the environmental roadblocks that were thrown in the way of achieving energy independence – whose chief patron is currently in the White House – this country managed to achieve a milestone last year. We were a net exporter of petroleum products. How? Two ways.

First, most of the production occurred on private land rather than federal land, euphemistically called “public” lands. Second, the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made recovery more productive in terms of cost and yield. Fracking has been used for 60 years, but it is getting increasingly sophisticated in allowing energy companies to drill horizontally and recover gas and oil from up to a mile from the well. It involves pumping millions of gallons of water and sand to break open rocks, tapping energy-rich shale formations that were irrecoverable or overlooked in the days of conventional drilling. Using the fracking methodology in over one million wells, the energy industry has recovered seven billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas with no harm to the environment.

The other reason for achieving last year’s milestone is that the Obama administration has no control over private and state lands where there are substantial oil and gas deposits. A side-by-side comparison of oil and gas production on private versus federal land shows that since Obama took office, oil production has decreased on federal property while it has increased on private and state property. The increase in the latter offset the decrease in the former. Fracking helped make private and state land production more effective and that helped the country become a net exporter of petro-products last year.

States like North Dakota and Pennsylvania contain large deposits of oil-rich shale which also included locked-in gas reservoirs. These are known as the Marcellus and Bakken deposits. North Dakota will produce 16 million barrels of oil this year thanks to the pro-energy policies of its government. The Heritage Foundation reported that drilling in North Dakota is growing at a record pace, making North Dakota “the poster child for what can happen when we unleash free enterprise and allow states to develop and commercialize their resources.” North Dakota unemployment is 3.4% – the lowest in the country.

Because of its energy economy, North Dakota hiring and wages are causing a mass migration to the state by people in search of jobs. There a person can make $15 an hour serving tacos, $25 an hour waiting tables and $80,000 a year driving a truck. Under the surface of North Dakota lies the Bakken formation, estimated to have reserves of between 4 billion and 24 billion barrels of oil. So unless energy prices collapse, the state’s economy will remain strong for years.

Watford City is located near the center of the Bakken formation. Normally there are 3,000 permanent residents. Now there are 6,500. Most are looking for oil field jobs which pay an average of $70,000 and with overtime, up to $100,000. Jobs in the local economy are having to pay more just to hold on to their staff. For example, entry level jobs in grocery stores, convenience stores and banks are paying $12 an hour. Housing is booming, as is the public infrastructure needed to support the population boom, paying those who do this kind of work wages they haven’t seen in years.

The economies of Alaska, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Texas are not far behind. Their common denominator with North Dakota is energy production.

This boom is not likely to be reproduced on federal property where about 70% of our country’s known oil shale exists. The federal land deposits contain five times the amount of oil in the Saudi reserves. In a free market, these reserves would be the first recovered because of their high quality. But the Obama administration has closed most of the land to drilling on the ludicrous assertion that shale oil has not been proven technically and commercially viable. Say that with a straight face.

Assuming open access to federal lands were possible, all of the federal regulations applied to oil and gas development simply make it more expensive than producing on state or private land. Yet Obama’s chief of the Bureau of Land Management, in recent testimony before Congress, stated that it is considering making recovery on federal land even more expensive. Onshore production royalty rates are to be increased 50% -- a curious move when Obama recently “promised” the American people that he “would do everything in my power” to bring gasoline prices down. 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating so let’s sample a little Obama pudding – next week.

Stay tuned.