Last week, at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told Congress that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico “remained at an all-time high.” Salazar claimed: “In 2009 there were 116 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2010 in February, 120, in February 2011, 126.”
He was lying.
Energy Tomorrow blog reported:
Salazar’s numbers distort the true number of working rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. According to Baker Hughes:
- Four days before the Deepwater Horizon accident there were 55 rotary rigs actually drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
- On May 28, 2010, when the administration announced the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, there were 46 rotary rigs operating in the Gulf.
- Last week, 25 rotary rigs were operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
So the fact that there is an “all-time high” number of rigs in the Gulf ignores the fact that most of those rigs are not working. Claiming an increase in idle rigs in the Gulf as a success story is like claiming the job market is great because a lot of people are unemployed and available to work.
In the same hearing, the Secretary also claimed that “the production has remained at an all-time high” within the Gulf of Mexico and there is no way to actually make this true. The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration reports that production in the Gulf of Mexico is in decline, forecasting a decline of 250,000 barrels a day from Gulf production, due partly to the moratorium and restricted permitting. While the annual production figure for 2010 was greater than 2009, EIA’s month-by-month production figures show a peak in May of 2010, and a relatively steady decline since.
It’s getting to the point where you can’t trust a single thing these people say.
UPDATE: This is really sad but we all knew it was coming.
Barack Obama held a press conference today on American energy and repeated the same lie… “Oil production at its highest level in 7 years. Oil production from federal waters in Gulf at an all time high… So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality. We are encouraging offshore exploration and production.”
