Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and senior managing director of the Financial Services Group at Gilford Securities.

The Obama administration is continuing a ban on offshore drilling in favor of offshore wind farms at a time when gasoline threatens to reach $5 per gallon – an economic nightmare the American public might well see develop in 2011, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

With OPEC targeting $100/barrel oil as OPEC oil ministers gathered last week for a meeting in Cairo, 2011 may see oil challenge the $148/barrel all-time high reached in July 2008.

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"No amount of spin will win the Obama administration gains in public approval if gasoline tops $4 per gallon or threatens to reach $5 per gallon," Corsi wrote.

OPEC members Iran, Venezuela and Libya have weighed in favor of the $100/barrel target, rejecting Saudi Arabia's preference for prices centered at the $75 level, the level that oil has traded above since September.

The end of 2010 has seen oil prices climb above $90/barrel, as Red Alert predicted at the end of the third quarter 2010.

Earlier in December, the Obama administration reversed policy, announcing a ban on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast that is expected to continue for at least seven more years.

Ironically, in March, less than one month before the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf, Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had promised to open up the eastern Gulf and parts of the Atlantic coast to offshore oil and natural gas exploration.

For more information on rising gasoline prices in 2011 and offshore wind initiatives, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation."

Red Alert's author, who received a doctorate from Harvard in political science in 1972, is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and (with co-author John E. O'Neill) "Unfit for Command." He is also the author of several other books, including "America for Sale," "The Late Great U.S.A." and "Why Israel Can't Wait." In addition to serving as a senior staff reporter for WorldNetDaily, Corsi is a senior managing director in the financial-services group at Gilford Securities.

Disclosure: Gilford Securities, founded in 1979, is a full-service boutique investment firm headquartered in New York City providing an array of financial services to institutional and retail clients, from investment banking and equity research to retirement planning and wealth-management services. The views, opinions, positions or strategies expressed by the author are his alone and do not necessarily reflect Gilford Securities Incorporated's views, opinions, positions or strategies. Gilford Securities Incorporated makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability or validity of any information expressed herein and will not be liable for any errors, omissions or delays in this information or any losses, injuries or damages arising from its display or use.