Salazar Exaggerates Obama’s Record on Energy Production

...But even production increases on federal lands, such as those touted by Salazar as part of the reason for the reduced oil importing figures do not comport with the facts available, which show that oil production on federal lands has decreased between fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011 by 11 percent. Natural gas production has decreased by 6 percent in the same one-year span. It is down nearly 27 percent from fiscal 2009. Meanwhile, oil and gas production have increased by 14 percent and 12 percent, respectively, on private and state-owned land. Moreover, even as Salazar mocked a “drill, baby, drill” approach to domestic production, the EIA noted that it was increased production from drilling in “deepwater Gulf of Mexico and the Bakken formation [that] brought decades of contraction in domestic oil production to a sudden halt, and even led to a rebound.” Yet the administration has remained resistant to projects like the Keystone XL pipeline. On an his watch, Salazar made the controversial decision to cancel 77 leases in Utah after they had already been sold at an auction in December 2008. Salazar boasted that solar and wind energy had more than doubled since Obama took office, but EIA numbers from 2009 to 2011, the last full year available, show that the solar and wind contribution to the production of energy has only increased from 10.7 percent to 14.5 percent as a total of all renewable energy. When it comes to overall energy production from all sources, the share of solar and wind has increased from 1.1 percent to 1.7 percent...more