This is what happens when you elect a Democrat as President

Democrats are dominated by intellectual elites, government employees and the poor. They are hostile towards anything that smacks of traditional development . Good examples are single family homes, new pipelines, oil production on government land, new power plants and now existing energy infrastructure like hydroelectric, coal and the Alaska pipeline. But if course Barack Obama looks down on us bible and gun clinging rubes. The sneers in the faculty club are epic. 

As the WSJ  observes:

The pity is that in his ANWR announcement Mr. Obama didn’t express as much concern for Alaskans as he did caribou. An estimated one-third of Alaskan jobs are oil-related, and the oil industry accounts for some 85% of state revenue. Shutting the pipeline would be a terrible blow to the state. New Gov. Bill Walker has said he may accelerate oil and gas permitting on state lands to compensate. Yet the vast majority of the state’s untapped reserves are below federal lands that Mr. Obama is now blocking.

The ANWR land grab is another classic of executive overreach. Congress in 1980 passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, a grand compromise that put vast tracts under protection, in return for a clause declaring “no more” wilderness designations in Alaska unless approved by Congress. Yet the Interior Department plans to use the President’s recommendation of a new ANWR wilderness designation as a license to lock up the land.

The decision also ignores the environmental protection that is possible in light of new drilling technology. Most of the refuge is already protected as wilderness, yet Mr. Obama’s order includes the 0.01% of barren, coastal wasteland that was up for drilling discussion. Innovations like directional drilling would allow the industry to tap those vast reserves with minimal surface impact.

In his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama again claimed credit for falling gas prices, but the truth is that every advance in oil and gas drilling has come without his help or despite his opposition. Mr. Obama may figure he can get away with this now that oil prices have fallen and the need for new oil supplies seems less urgent. His power play is nonetheless a blow to U.S. energy security, and an especially nasty blow to tens of thousands of Alaskans.