One of the many Republican Big Lies is that Barack Obama has waged a “war” against fossil fuels in this country. Is this true? Of course, right wingnuts will never believe environmentalists or Democrats like myself, but what about the right wing, big-oil-funded American Enterprise Institute (AEI)? Courtesy of AEI, here’s Obama’s supposed “war on fossil fuels” graphically illustrated to show you its true horror (snark).
First, check out this one!
Whoa, wait a minute here, what’s going on?!? That’s right, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “U.S. crude oil production for the lower 48 states is estimated to have reached a 23-year high in July of 5.865 million barrels per day…the highest monthly production of crude oil in the lower 48 states in more than 23 years.” And if that’s not strong enough evidence for you of President Obama’s insidious “war” on oil, what about the fact that, as AEI explains, “Over the last year, we’ve seen one of the largest annual increases (17%) in domestic oil production (for the lower 48 states) in the history of monthly EIA oil production data going back to 1973.” But what else would you expect from this socialist/commie/pinko/whatever they’re calling him these days? Heh.
Now, good right wingnut that you are, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “yeah, but I bet that commie Obama took all the revenue away from the oil industry to fund his socialist schemes, so that they couldn’t create real American jobs!” Except…whoops! (See the “flip” to “flip out” even more! LOL)
That’s right: as big oil-funded AEI explains, “Over just the last two years, employment in the oil and gas industry for drilling-related jobs has increased by more than 23% to 195,500 jobs in July, which is the highest level for those jobs since early 1988, more than 24 years ago.”
OK, well, but…but…but, Obama’s waging war on other fossil fuels, right? Like coal, for instance, where we all know that production and exports have…whoops, it turns out that U.S. coal production actually increased in both 2010 and 2011, with coal exports in 2011 and 2012 running far ahead of what they were in 2008, Bush’s last year in office. Yeah, that “war” on coal is really killing it, huh? (note: to the extent that coal-fired power plants have shut down, it’s almost ALL a result of low natural gas prices, which have caused utilities to switch from coal to natural gas. Damn capitalists!).
Oh, and speaking of natural gas, Obama has killed that too…not!!! In fact, U.S. dry gas production is up from 20.2 trillion cubic feet in 2008 to 23.0 trillion cubic feet in 2011, and up sharply again during the first five months of 2012, year over year. Again, evidence of Obama’s….well…oh forget it.
By the way, for those who would claim that the natural gas and oil boom was all “built” by the private sector, I’d point out that the main technologies responsible for this boom – horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), 3-D mapping, etc. – is actually the result of “more than three decades of government subsidies for research, demonstration, and production.” In other words, we all “built this,” together, our tax dollars at work. Not that right wingnuts will ever admit it, of course, but it’s true nonetheless. Also true: Barack Obama has presided over one of the greatest booms in U.S. energy production – oil and natural gas, solar and wind as well – in history. Heckuva job waging that war against the stuff, huh? Lucky he’s so incompetent. Heh.
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