The President held his event in Cushing, Oklahoma this morning announcing an expedited review of the southern half of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will move oil from Cushing to refineries at Port Arthur, Texas (in all likelihood raising gas prices in parts of the Midwest). And as Oklahomans listened and Native American protesters demonstrated in an actual cage, the President bragged about things that I would argue should not be the stuff of bragging.

The President correctly clowned Ed Henry for that absurd question yesterday about whether he secretly wanted gas prices to rise to bring about a renewable energy revolution. “Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go up even higher,” Obama asked. “Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?”

TransCanada, the company trying to build the Keystone XL pipeline, has split off a domestic pipeline from the one that crosses a national border, moving to begin work on a pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas. The segment from Canada down to Cushing, however, will need a separate permit application and could take years to get approval. But the White House seems on board for the Cushing-to-Port Arthur segment, which does not require State Department approval.

Correcting Thomas Friedman can keep anyone busy. Today he is excited about the prospect of the United States joining the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. That sounds like a great idea for a country that imports close to 9 million barrels of oil a day.

A “level playing field” sounds inherently fair, so why should domestic solar manufacturing have to suffer for the sins of legacy energy production?

War has broken out between West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania over who can give away more tax dollars to Shell Oil.

When I turned on the TV last night, I wanted to stand up and cheer. While watching President Obama’s State of the Union address, I felt much like I did when I watched his 2008 acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver. OK, that’s not true–not hardly. Reality has not been kind to Obama’s rhetoric, after all. But when Obama got to the energy section of the speech, I found much to applaud, not unlike in 2008. . . with some obvious caveats for his praise of dirty, dangerous, failed or flat-out fictional forms of energy production.

Small hints have been dribbled out to journalists ahead of tonight’s State of the Union Address, which in an election year invariably signals an attempt by an incumbent running for re-election to set the terms of the debate, to state what they will campaign on throughout the year. Looks like the focus will be on tax reform, housing, energy, but how will this President go to confront an obstructionist Congress and his own instincts?

I’m saving my “What to Look for in 2012″ listicle for tomorrow, but one of the issues that may not make the list, but which is terribly important, is the battle in the states over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. 2011 was the year when this issue finally bubbled up to the surface (pardon the pun) and into the consciousness of the public. The critically acclaimed Gasland came out in 2010, but anti-facking forces benefited this year from some scientific revelations. Independent studies for the first time identified fracking as a cause of methane contamination and water pollution, and late in the year, the EPA agreed in a case in Wyoming.

As part of the omnibus spending bill, the federal government will delay enforcement of new regulations for increased energy efficiency in light bulbs. Republicans claim that this delay, achieved through blocking Energy Department funding for enforcement through Fiscal Year 2012, will “save” the incandescent light bulb, but in reality incandescent bulbs were never banned. And light bulb manufacturers put a lot of money and effort into meeting the standard, so they oppose the delay altogether.