Parsing the President’s Ironic Energy Speech

Last Thursday in Florida, President Barack Obama grossly misrepresented his record on energy policy in a speech delivered at the University of Miami.

The President first bemoaned the effect of rising fuel costs on average Americans, saying that, “high gas prices are like a tax straight out of your paycheck.” His apparent empathy is belied by his support for a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme, which makes gas more expensive by design.

Then the President disingenuously took credit for rising oil and gas production in America. While it’s true that there has been a recent increase in production, it occurred despite this Administration’s anti-energy policies. As explained by the Institute for Energy Research, “The reality is that oil production on federal lands is falling, while production on private and state lands is rising.” To put it another way, production is increasing where the President doesn’t have the authority to stop it.

After misattributing to himself credit for increasing oil production, President Obama touted his record on pipelines, telling the audience that, “Over the last three years my administration has approved dozens of new pipelines, including from Canada.” He failed to mention his unpopular refusal to approve the Keystone XL, a 1,700 mile, shovel-ready pipeline from Alberta to Texas that would create thousands of construction jobs, stimulate tens of billions of dollars in business spending, and generate billions of dollars in tax revenues.

Finally, the President pitched an “all of the above” energy strategy. The primary problem with this approach, as my colleague Chris Horner has noted, is that it draws no lines to exclude the uneconomic. By embracing “all” energy sources, taxpayers are on the hook for green energy boondoggles that can’t exist without subsidies.