This article is based on a post by John Hinderaker at Power Line yesterday. I would also like to add the information that according to Representative John Campbell of California, there is a petition going around the House of Representatives to authorize drilling in ANWR as soon as gasoline hits $5 a gallon. We live in interesting times.
The President stated, "So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political soundbite, but it doesn't match up with reality."
Power Line reported these statements by the Institute for Energy Research:
"The President's anti-energy policies are a man-made disaster. Try as he may to deflect responsibility away from his own policies, President Obama can't escape from the simple fact that the actions of his administration have dramatically slowed down domestic energy production. As a consequence, his policies are directly responsible for increasing gas prices.
"In 2007, an analysis from the federal government's Energy Information Agency (EIA) predicted that domestic offshore production would be 717.9 million barrels in 2010. As a result of the Obama Administration's policies, it was 600 million. Likewise, the projected onshore production was 132.9 million barrels. Under Obama, it was only 114 million.
"Under President Obama's policies, federal land and water production in 2010 was 136.8 million barrels less than was predicted in 2007, or a 16% drop from what was expected.
"Oil production on federal lands is expected to dramatically decrease as a consequence of President Obama's anti-energy policies. In 2011, EIA estimates that oil production in the federal Gulf of Mexico will fall by 15 percent. In 2012, it will fall by 26 percent from the 2010 production high water mark."
The President stated, "All these actions can increase domestic oil production in the short and medium term. But let's be clear: It is not a long-term solution. Even if we started drilling new wells tomorrow, that oil isn't coming on-line overnight. And even if we tap every single reserve available to us, we can't escape the fact that we only control 2 percent of the world's oil, but we consume over a quarter of the world's oil."
Well, that depends on how you count.
The Institute for Energy Research writes:
"In a recent report, CRS [the Congressional Research Service] said that the U.S. has 19.1 billion barrels of proven reserves, which is the number President Obama cites as 2% of the world's oil. CRS, however, showed that between our proven reserves and oil predicted to be found, there is likely to be a combined 164.1 billion barrels, or 8.5 times as much as the president alleges. And this figure doesn't include oil shale, which has recoverable reserves of 1 trillion barrels, according to DOE."
Mr. Hinderaker at Power Line concludes:
"The United States controls vast energy resources--the above numbers don't include our unparalleled coal deposits--but environmentalists, supported by the Democratic Party, have hobbled our economy and our job growth much as the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver with a million bureaucratic regulations.
"With respect to energy, Barack Obama is a fraud. In reality, he is a tool of the environmentalist, anti-growth, anti-wealth Left. But he cannot go before the American people and try to defend policies that are deliberately designed to make us all poorer, so he has to pose as a sort of Sarah Palin in drag. All the while, he is doing everything he can to prevent America from developing its own energy resources, employing many thousands of people in high-paying jobs, boosting our economy, and ending our reliance on the Saudis. If the Obama administration were not a disaster on so many fronts, its energy policies alone would dictate that it be replaced in November 2012."
How long will it be before the American voters realize they are being lied to?
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