As many media outlets have pointed out, the one issue most notably absent from President Obama’s inaugural address this week was jobs. With unemployment at 7.8 percent and the economy and jobs still topping the list of Americans’ greatest concerns, it’s baffling why the President chose not to mention this in his first speech of his second term.  

Even more baffling, is why the Obama Administration continues to block good-paying jobs that could be created through new American energy production on public lands and waters. Jobs in the oil and natural gas industry rose more than 6 percent last year, and are up 27 percent since 2008, largely due to the expansion of natural gas production on private and state lands.  

But instead of replicating this model on public lands, the Obama Administration is closing areas, proposing new regulations, and delaying projects – jeopardizing thousands of American energy jobs.  For example: 

• The Obama Administration implemented a 5-year offshore drilling plan that places 87 percent of offshore areas off-limits and cancelled the Virginia offshore lease sale, the first sale proposed in the Atlantic in nearly 30 years.   Tens of thousands of jobs could be created by opening more of America’s offshore for energy production.

• President Obama, through Executive Order, has proposed a new National Ocean Policy, which includes mandatory ocean zoning and could cause significant economic harm to a wide-range of sectors including agriculture, commercial and recreational fishing, construction, manufacturing, timber, marine commerce, mining, oil and natural gas, renewable energy, recreational boating, and waterborne transportation, among others. 

• The Obama Administration is re-writing a coal production regulation, the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, which could cost 7,000 jobs and cause economic harm in 22 states.

• The Obama Administration is moving forward with hundreds of Endangered Species Act listings this year as a result of a mega-settlement agreement between the Department of the Interior and litigious environmental organizations. One such proposed listing, the Lesser Prairie Chicken, would affect five states and cost jobs by blocking both traditional and renewable energy production. 

• The Obama Administration is moving ahead with implementation of new, burdensome hydraulic fracturing regulations on federal and tribal lands. 

• The Obama Administration has delayed permits in National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and proposed a plan to put over half of the reserve off-limits to energy production. 

•  The Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing new regulations on Arizona’s coal-fired Navajo Generating Station, which employs hundreds of Navajo and Hopi tribal members.

• The Obama Administration continues to block the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would support the creation of 9,000 jobs.

• The Obama Administration’s proposal to restrict solar development to a limited number of “zones” in the Southwest means that more than 90 percent of prospective federal solar lands are closed to timely solar development.

• After four years in office, the Obama Administration has yet to hold a single offshore wind lease sale or see the construction of a single wind turbine in our Outer Continental Shelf. 

President Obama has offered no plan for job creation in his second term and instead is moving forward with the same anti-energy, job-destroying policies that harm our economy.