Jindal: Obama’s politicized energy policy

In a guest editorial featured in the The Wall Street Journal, Gov. Bobby Jindal says the criticism President Barack Obama has been getting from Republicans regarding his administration’s failure to adopt a comprehensive energy policy doesn’t go far enough. “I believe that critique lets the president off too easily,” Jindal says. “His administration does have a national energy policy—it’s just a subservient by-product of his radical environmental policy. This administration willfully ignores rational choices that would lower energy prices and reduce U.S. reliance on foreign energy sources.” In 2011, the average annual prices of a barrel of oil and a gallon of gas were higher than at any time in the last 150 years, Jindal says. “While the president is quick to tell anyone who will listen that domestic oil production is higher today than at any time since 2003, that’s not the whole story,” the governor says. “The truth is that today’s production levels are not based on anything this president has done, but on the decisions made by private companies before he took office. And much of this production is taking place on private land.” Jindal says the president should focus on increasing domestic energy sources and on decreasing the cost of that energy to consumers. “That starts with implementing a clear strategy of increasing energy production in all sectors—including the hydrocarbon sources abhorred by the left—and by providing the kind of long-term regulatory certainty that private capital demands before investment,” he says. Read the full editorial here.