VITTER: Truth about Obama’s energy claims

VITTER: Truth about Obama’s energy claims

...when Mr. Obama says oil production is up, he’s right - and utterly misleading. It’s up because of private-sector activity on nonfederal land that Mr. Obama and the federal government have very little say over (though they’re trying to change that in significant ways). Almost everywhere they play a major role, production is down. 

Obama claim: Oil production on federal land and offshore is up since the president took office. This is another very interesting Obama manipulation of the data and again, utterly misleading. 

Oil production on federal property did increase in 2009 and 2010. This was a result of leasing and permitting decisions made by the President George W. Bush’s administration, not Mr. Obama’s. In contrast, the fall-off from the leasing and permitting actions of the Obama administration is very significant, as noted above in the 2011 figures. It’s projected to get even worse in 2012 and beyond. 

That’s because Mr. Obama’s five-year lease plan for offshore is half of what the previous plan was - moving us in the wrong direction. And permitting in the Gulf of Mexico is still more than 40 percent below levels prior to the BP oil spill. 

Obama claim: “America only has 2 percent of the world’s oil.” This is the real grandaddy of all Obama energy statistics. 

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. We are the single most energy-rich country in the world, bar none.

Mr. Obama bases this statement on our nation’s “proven reserves.” But the president’s own Energy Information Administration has stated that proven reserves is “not an appropriate measure for judging total resource availability in the long-term.” It’s a very narrowly defined universe because more than 90 percent of our U.S. energy resources have been placed off-limits by the Obama administration. 

For example, according to the Institute for Energy Research, the “[U.S. Geological Survey] estimates that unconventional U.S. oil shale resources hold 2.6 trillion barrels of oil, with about 1 trillion barrels that are considered recoverable under current economic and technological conditions. These 1 trillion barrels are nearly 4 times the amount of oil resources as Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves.”