The Clinton Administration said back in 1999: “Biomass will be for the next century what petroleum was for this century.” [1] But with expensive experience with money and performance, we now know that U.S. EPA’s E-15 ethanol plan is bad for our pocketbooks, environment and energy policy.

The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.

Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.…

“The authority of the President … to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads … [including] the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy.”

In preparing a list for MasterResource of federal energy policy reforms to free Alaska, and thus bolster America’s economy, I came across an Executive Order (E.O.) signed by the President last month with little or no fanfare. His new authority empowers him, in certain circumstances, to assume control over the energy industry—along with the rest of the economy.

Such executive branch power puts Congress and the courts in an inferior position.…

[Editor Note: Tomorrow’s post,”A Free Market Energy Vision,” explains the philosophy behind the Institute for Energy Research/American Energy Alliance.]

The New York Times is upset with “Big Oil,” including the advocacy group American Energy Alliance (AEA). This is evident in their Saturday opinion-page editorial, Big Oil’s Bogus Campaign, subtitled “Industry spends heavily to preserve tax breaks and blame Mr. Obama for rising gas prices.”

What is the philosophy behind AEA, what are the Times’s complaints, and what is a free-market response?

American Energy Alliance

The American Energy Alliance is the C4 (advocacy) arm of the C3 (educational) Institute for Energy Research. I am founder and CEO of IER.

AEA’s “About” section on its website reads as follows:

Founded in May, 2008, The American Energy Alliance (“AEA”) is a not-for-profit organization that engages in grassroots public policy advocacy and debate concerning energy and environmental policies.

“With only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices,” President Barack Obama said in his weekly address March 10. “Not when we consume 20% of the world’s oil.”

The claim is, if not blatantly false, at best grossly misleading. If the President didn’t know this, some advisors should be dismissed. If he did, he needs to accept the blame and formally correct it.

As Investors Business Daily explained,

… the figure Obama uses—proved oil reserves—vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities—enough to meet all the country’s oil needs for hundreds of years.

The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world’s proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration.