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President Obama announces that his administration will temporarily stop blocking drilling for oil
Howard Richman, 5/15/2011

Here is a selection from the AHN summary of his announcement:

Obama has instructed the Department of Interior to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. He also ordered a “speeding up” of evaluations of oil and gas reserves in the Mid- and South-Atlantic Ocean.

Also part of the plan is opening new leases in the Gulf of Mexico and providing incentives for oil companies to develop their unused leases “both on and offshore.”

Obama said that oil companies will now have more time to meet higher safety standards, and he is extending drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico that were impacted by the moratorium imposed by the Obama administration following the 2010 DeepWater Horizon oil spill.

His statement does not address the steps taken by his administration to stifle natural gas and coal production, just oil. He is saying that "oil companies will now have time to meet higher safety standards."

Once the political pressure is off, his agencies will go back to their policy of stiffling drilling for oil, using safety as the excuse. In the meantime, his administration will continue to stifle the extraction of natural gas and coal, using safety considerations as the excuse.

His administration's long-term policy is to use safety considerations as an excuse to stiffle the development of fossil fuels. It wants to raise the costs of fossil fuel energy in service to the outmoded theory that carbon dioxide concentrations cause climate change.