Report: Oil production on federal lands falls, again

America’s domestic oil-and-gas production is going bananas, and it’s largely thanks to advances in technology and expanded drilling on private and state-owned lands.

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President Obama, however, is pretty fond of implying that the credit for the oil-and-gas industry going gangbusters belongs mostly to his policies. For much of 2012, he deliberately misused statistics that made it sound like “oil production is the highest it’s been in eight years” and “we’re importing less and less oil” was all him, and as recently as his last State of the Union he was insisting that “my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits… In fact, much of our newfound energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together.”

No. A thousand times, no.

Via the Daily Caller:

report by the Congressional Research Service shows that oil production on federal lands took another dip in 2012, while overall U.S. oil production has exploded due to increased production on private and state lands.

“All of the increased production from FY2007 to FY2012 took place on non-federal lands, causing the federal share of total U.S. crude oil production to fall by about seven percentage points,” according to the report. “Overall, U.S. natural gas production rose by four trillion cubic feet (tcf) or 20% since 2007, while production on federal lands (onshore and offshore) fell by about 33% and production on non-federal lands grew by 40%.”

Since President Obama took office, oil and natural gas production on private and state lands has increased. In 2009, non-federal lands produced 3,487,800 barrels of oil per day which grew to 4,580,800 barrels per day last year. Non-federal lands produced 16,233 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2009 and expanded to 20,242 billion cubic feet in 2012.

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It was a good effort to spin the facts, but you just got called out. Tough break.

“Where the states have been in charge, we have seen energy development boom in a safe and responsible way, but under federal control we have seen a sharp decline in production. A web of red tape and a backlog of delayed permits are blocking important energy production opportunities on federal lands,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, said in a Tuesday statement.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | December 16, 2024
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