Marathon Pundit: Obama flip flops on offshore drilling expansion

This spring the Obama Administration proposed an aggressive expansion of offshore drilling. Now they've flipped flop-flopped. There will be no new offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least five years.

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After the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, the administration put an offshore drilling moratorium in place that cost 20,000 jobs.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) spoke out recently about Obama's war on fossil fuels:

This administration has failed to use every opportunity they've been provided to reassure the (oil and gas) industry that they actually believe they have a future in this country.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a chilly prediction:

This is an admission of further impotence, and not just in reforming a regulatory structure that Obama wants to expand across the entire economy. It's a gesture of impotence on Obama's part in defending any centrist moves to challenges from his hard-Left base, to which he's caving with this new seven-year moratorium. When gasoline starts hitting $4 a gallon again, Obama will have much more criticism to handle as a result of this policy reversal.