President Obama Plays The Blame Game On Energy Policy

I am beginning to think I need to be able to do this writing thing full time, just to keep up with the swiftly moving world of news and politics. I am not sure how I missed this one, but it is worth looking at. One of the biggest concerns right now for most Americans is the high cost of their energy, be it their electric or natural gas bills, or the amount of money it now takes to fill up their automobile, just to drive to work every week. In case you haven’t noticed, energy prices are continuing to climb. To be fair about this, there is a multitude of reasons for this climb, not the least of which is our country’s lack of a good energy policy, which should be designed to move us away from our dependency on foreign sources of oil. That has already been discussed, more than once and at many other places besides Political Realities. It appears now that the blame game is in full swing and President Obama came out in full force in a news conference last Friday, March 11. He had no hesitation in blaming the oil industry itself for the lack of domestic oil production.

If you examine the remarks the President made during the news conference, you will find more than one piece of “information” that he is trying to pass off as factual. As with anything related to politics, the facts are always in question, and this is no exception. Here is one of those facts is this statement, taken directly from the text of the remarks on the White House website.

There is more we can do, however. For example, right now, the industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres –- both offshore and on land –- where they aren’t producing a thing. So I’ve directed the Interior Department to determine just how many of these leases are going undeveloped and report back to me within two weeks so that we can encourage companies to develop the leases they hold and produce American energy. People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner.

Honestly, does President Obama really believe that statement, or is it something he says because it makes his side of the debate look better? When you examine what he said, looking at the actual facts of the situation, you will find it to be very misleading, if not outright false. It has never been easy for oil companies to get permission to drill and explore for oil and other sources of energy and it has become even less so since Obama took office. He has cancelled many existing oil and gas leases and put them under review. Once such instance was shortly after he took office, when he cancelled 77 leases in Utah. After the reviews were complete, not a single one of those leases were reinstated. One year later, he cancelled 66 leases in Montana, ostensibly as part of his war on global warming. All of this, yet he wants to take leases away from the companies who “aren’t using them”. Am I the only one who thinks that is more than a bit unusual?

When I started doing the research for this post, I found out rather quickly that I was not the only one thinking along these lines. For example, let’s look at the Natural Resources Committee in the House of Representatives and see what they have to say about the spin the Obama administration is putting on the high cost of energy.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 10, 2011 – This week, under mounting public pressure as gasoline prices near the $4 mark, the White House published a blog post touting increased domestic oil production. The Administration was in full SPIN mode, taking credit for actions that were put in place before they took office and ducking forecasts of declining U.S. oil production caused by their own actions that have blocked American energy production.

SPIN: “Oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003.”

RINSE:

• The Obama Administration’s actions have caused domestic energy production to decrease.

• In 2007, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected total 2010 U.S. oil production on federal lands to be 850 million barrels. Today’s actual production on federal lands is 714 million barrels, a 16 percent decline from what was projected. If it wasn’t for the Obama Administration, the U.S. would be producing more energy.

• This is why FUTURE projections show a decline in U.S. production and an increase in imports. On March 8, 2011 the EIA published new projections that show a decline in total U.S. crude oil production of 110,000 barrels per day in 2011 and 130,000 barrels per day in 2012.

• Finally, the White House does not explain that the vast majority of increased production is occurring on private lands, not public. For example, North Dakota alone produced almost 120 million barrels of oil in 2010, compared to just over 20 million in 2003. The majority of North Dakota’s production is on private land. This begs the question, why are we not using our federal lands to create American jobs and produce American energy resources to lower prices?

SPIN: “Onshore oil production from public lands has also increased over the last year, from 109 million barrels in 2009 to 114 million barrels in 2010.”

RINSE:

• The slight increase in onshore production from federal lands is due to lease sales approved by previous Administrations—not the Obama Administration.

• Since taking office, the Obama Administration has slowed onshore energy development on public lands and issued fewer leases.

• In 2008 there were 2,416 new oil and natural gas leases issued on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land spanning 2.6 million acres. In 2010, under the Obama Administration, the number of new leases issued dropped to 1,308 and acres leased dropped to 1.3 million.

• The total onshore acreage leased under the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010 are the lowest in over two decades, stretching back to at least 1984.

SPIN: “From 2008 to 2010, oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf increased more than a third – from 446 million barrels in 2008 to an [sic] more than 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.”

RINSE:

• Once again, the Obama Administration is attempting to take credit for actions they had nothing to do with. The strong production in the Gulf was due to leases issued in 1996-2000 under the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act – long before President Obama took office.

• The Obama Administration’s actions, such as imposing a de facto moratorium, are causing energy production to decline in the Gulf of Mexico. EIA shows a 300,000 barrel per day decline in current Gulf production and a projected Gulf decline of over 150 million barrels of oil in 2012.

As you can see, the spin on the reasons behind the high costs of energy is in full swing. Everywhere you look, there is irrefutable proof that the policies of the current administration have done nothing to increase domestic oil and gas production and in fact, have done much to hinder it. To claim anything else is to deny the facts that are right in front of us all. That’s what we get when we have a President who is so focused on certain parts of his agenda (can anyone say clean energy?) that he doesn’t care how it affects the rest of us.

I am not surprised this is happening, as Obama is nothing, if not a full-blown politician. This is how he has always worked, twisting the facts to fit his view of how things should be. It is worth noting that the media is not helping matters in the least. Remember how they decried the high price of gasoline while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were running things? They insisted it was because they were “oil men”. Now that they are gone, it isn’t so much fun to throw the blame at President Obama. While it may be standard operating procedure, it doesn’t mean that we have to sit idly by and watch it happen. I, for one, am not buying the load of straw the man in the White House is selling.

About LD Jackson

Larry Jackson has written 1455 posts in this blog.

Founder and author of the political and news commentary blog Political Realities. I have always loved to write, but never have I felt my writing was more important than in this present day. If I have changed one mind or impressed one American about the direction our country is headed, then I will consider my endeavors a success. I take the tag line on this blog very seriously. Above all else, in search of the truth.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2011 at 8:08 pm and is filed under News/Politics. Tags: Democrat, Domestic Oil Production, Drilling Ban, Energy Policy, President Obama, Republican