◼ Speaker Boehner's Press Office: CLAIM: “Today, America is number one in oil and gas. ... And thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family this year should save $750 at the pump.” (President Obama, State of the Union Address, January 20, 2015)
FACT: The Obama administration has suppressed energy production on federal lands, while Republicans have consistently pressed for a true all-of-the-above energy policy to help create jobs and address costs for working families.
- Republicans have consistently supported increasing American energy production as a way to lower gas prices, while President Obama is on record supporting increasing gas prices in order to reduce Americans’ dependence on oil. And when the foundations for today’s lower prices were being laid a few years ago by the private sector in states like North Dakota and Texas, President Obama was insisting that increased production would never result in lower prices.
- President Obama’s pick for Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” At the time, that meant $7-9 per gallon.
- From 2009 to 2013, oil production on non-federal lands increased 61 percent while falling six percent on federal lands. Similarly, natural gas production has seen a 33 percent increase on non-federal lands, but a 28 percent drop on federal lands, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
- According to the Institute for Energy Research, “In 2013, even though the federal government is the largest landowner in the country, federal lands produced 25 percent of the fossil fuels produced in America, down from 36 percent a decade ago.”
- Factcheck.org challenged a similar claim made by the president in last year’s State of the Union Address, determining that “the remarkable boom in U.S. oil production is chiefly the result of new drilling technology…and not of any government policy.”
- President Obama’s five-year leasing plan bans energy development on 85 percent of America’s offshore areas and provides for the fewest number of new lease sales ever offered in a plan since the process began in 1980, says the House Natural Resources Committee. The committee also notes that “onshore, the Obama Administration has had the four lowest years of federal acres leased for energy production – going back to 1988.”
- Speaker Boehner’s five-point vision for resetting America’s economic foundation calls for a true-all-of-the-above energy policy, as Republicans have advocated for for years. As Boehner notes, America’s energy boom is “driving real growth” in areas that have embraced increased oil and gas production, like Youngstown, Ohio, resulting in lower unemployment rates and higher wages for middle-class workers.
Only because Republicans stayed unified, and rejected Obama's cap and trade carbon tax, was the shale oil and natural gas boom able to produce the astounding results we are all enjoying today.
◼ President Obama was not shy about taking credit for low gasoline prices, touting the booming oil and natural gas production that has occurred under his administration. - Daily Caller
Since 2009, domestic oil production has gone from only 5 million barrels a day to more than 9 million barrels per day thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling. The U.S. is now set to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer — the country has already beaten out Russia as the world’s top natural gas producer.
But virtually all of the increased oil and natural gas production has come from private and state lands, where Obama has no jurisdiction over approving drilling permits. Meanwhile, oil production on federal lands has floundered under Obama. From 2009 to 2013 oil production on federal lands fell by 11 percent and natural gas production fell by 28 percent.
