The Environmental Lobby makes it nearly impossible to explore domestically, forcing Big Oil to lobby for more lax restrictions and more leeway in offshore drilling.

The end result is what we have today. Big Energy makes its money in the artificial scarcity and increased costs of more radical and environmentally hazardous operations. The environmentalists will gain more power in steering energy policy and government-funded (read: taxpayer-funded) alternative and green energy schemes (which is a good overall endeavor, but at this point solar and wind energy are insufficient replacements for oil and coal for mass energy production, and should be funded by the private sector).

And of course, the politicians benefit from all the lobbyist attention and the grandiose perception of their own importance and worth.

A side story. I have a friend that does logistics for a company that designs and builds trenching machines for powerline construction as well as powerline construction itself. Most of their work nationwide was large-scale wind farms.

During the Bush years his company was working all over the United States and had a healthy and growing work force. It was reasonably assumed that once a “green-friendly” president and congress had won the election their work would only increase.

Since last year they’ve laid off half of their well-paid work force and are struggling to remain afloat. Even domestic alternative energy development has ground to a halt due to the massive bureaucracy and endless wait for government assistance and approval for what should be the realm of private enterprise and good old American capital investment and risk-taking.

The truth is that there is very little Mr. Obama (or, for that matter, any other government bureaucrat) can do at this late stage on this issue other than to “hold people’s hands” and offer government resources to help mitigate its effects.

That’s because, with a few notable exceptions, politicians and politically appointed bureaucrats are usually NOT engineers. They simply DO NOT have the engineering expertise in the oil business to apply the required engineering solutions to solve this massively complex engineering problem. Indeed, the last time I checked, Mr. Obama was a lawyer by degree, not an engineer.

Mr. Obama’s chance to have any real impact on this issue was completely lost LONG before he took office and long before this incident occurred. That’s when “Drill, Baby Drill” without also putting proper safeguards (like a mandatory second relief well for all such exploratory drilling) became US Government policy. As with the banking crisis, our gormless (not to mention hopelessly corrupt) politicians decided to put the “fox” in charge of guarding the “hen house” in the offshore drilling business as well. And we are now seeing the sad results of those decisions.

Turning that notion around is not going to be easy. Indeed, just like every other issue he faces, there are well-funded (not to mention highly entrenched) constituencies in the US Congress that absolutely WANT all that inherently risky (and largely unregulated) offshore drilling to continue unabated.

As I’ve said, by comparison, the “dirty” Canadian oil sands keep looking cleaner and cleaner all the time. Fortunately, there’s enough oil up there to keep the US (and a good chunk of the rest of the world) well supplied for several decades to come. Here’s hoping all of our stupid “homeland security” paranoia doesn’t kill THAT “golden goose” as well.