Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu has decided to walk-back his 2008 comments about European gas prices.  You do remember those comments, don’t you?  Back in 2008, just weeks before being named Obama’s Energy Secretary, Chu told the Wall Street Journal, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” and said he supported gradually increasing gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more efficient cars.  We are talking about a Nobel Peace Prize winning scientist.  It’s hard to imagine that this man would flippantly say something like that without understanding the consequences of what that would mean for our economy.

But now, Dear Ruler is in a bind.  Higher gas prices are taking a toll on his poll numbers.  Apparently Chu was not pressured by Obama to recant his previous comment, but one always has to wonder.  Chu simply says that he “no longer share[s] that view,” saying that higher gas prices would slow the “recovery.”  He said, “Right now there is real hardship that Americans are suffering at the gasoline pump. We have gone through a terrible recession and a worldwide recovery, but the recovery is fragile and so, as I’ve said, another spike in gasoline prices could put that recovery in jeopardy.”  Ah so if it wasn’t for the “fragile recovery” Chu would still be in favor of raising gas prices on Americans? 

If the goal of weaning Americans off of oil is to make us consume less oil, Obama has done a stellar job of that already by ensuring that millions of Americans are unemployed.  People who aren’t working aren’t in need of cars to get them there and gas to fuel their trips to and from work.  So we have less oil consumption, and yet oil prices are still high.  We also have increased oil production, and yet oil prices are still sky high.  However, the source of this production remains a contentious debate.  Obama’s chief mouthpiece Jay Carney insists that conservatives are wrong when they say that oil production increases have only taken place on private lands with leases secured prior to 2009.  Carney says that production on public lands and waters has increased by 12% over the last three years.  I have no idea where he gets that statistic.  What I do know is that the very reputable Heritage Foundation says that oil production on federal lands is down 40%.  So now it seems as though we are playing a game of he-said-she-said.  There are so many people who are so very good at picking apart Obama’s lies and half-truths, we’ll just wait for them to vet this particular statement.   

But what I do find laughable is Jay Carney’s assertion that Obama “has a very clear record of aggressively pursuing domestic oil and gas production.”  For this I must turn to part of my handy Oil Cheat Sheet.  Read this and then tell me if you still believe that Obama has a “clear record of aggressively pursuing domestic oil and gas production.”

• Immediately after taking office in 2009, Obama canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah.
• In January 2010, Obama issued new regulations making it more difficult to develop energy resources on federal land.
• After the BP oil spill, Obama needlessly instituted, not one, but two outright drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico.
• After rescinding his outright offshore drilling ban, Obama then refused to issue any new drilling permits in the Gulf, a policy that the Energy Information Administration estimated would cut domestic offshore oil production by 13% that year.
• In 2010, Obama issued the lowest number of onshore leases since 1984.
• In 2011, Obama held just one offshore lease sale in all of fiscal year 2011. President Bush’s energy plan called for five.
• So far in his presidency, Obama has leased less than half of the offshore acres that President Clinton did.
• Obama is also blocking access to 19 billion barrels of oil in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, another 10 billion barrels estimated in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast, and another 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve..
• Obama’s budget wants to exclude the oil and gas industry from the Section 199 manufacturers’ tax deduction. All other industries get to keep this tax break.
• Obama’s budget proposes raising royalty rates for onshore oil and natural gas leases. This $27 billion tax hike will be passed directly to consumers at the pump.

This administration can’t claim to be with the environmentalists and with the drilling lobby all at the same time.