Last night in his SOTU Address (transcript here) Barack Obama told Americans that oil production is the highest it’s been in eight years.
Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy. Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my Administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right – eight years. Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.
Now lets look at the facts.
The AP reported:
Imports have dropped over the years, especially from oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. But the president’s assertion that foreign oil imports are the lowest in the past 16 years may not completely be true. The United States imported more petroleum in 2010 than it did in 2009, according to the EIA. And total imports in 2010 – including that of oil and coal – were lowest in 13 years.
And the American Petroleum Industry explains that the production gains the country is seeing now date to a process that started up to a decade or more ago.
More from Energy Tomorrow: This timeline also has implications for future production, given current federal data that show leasing acreage on federal lands at its lowest point since 2001 – declining from 47 million acres in 2008 to 38 million acres in 2011 – and that the number of leases in effect also has declined.
And after he nixed the Keystone Pipeline last week it should be evident to everyone that Barack Obama is no friend of American energy producers and could care less how his energy decisions affect the middle class.
UPDATE: The Institute ot Energy Resources has more on Obama’s dishonest speech.