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Too often, people sacrifice facts and truth in favor of promoting an ideology that they wish to be correct. This is even more troubling since today, in the age of social media, this misinformation goes viral in a matter of days, without anyone bothering to fact-check any portion of it. As we seek to promote factually correct and well-reasoned discussions, we also at times try to counter this misinformation. For this blog post, we have selected an example from a post by Occupy Democrats that has had more than 300,000 Facebook shares, and that apparently no one had bothered to fact check. (See the image associated with our blog post). In this blog post, we address one exemplary line item from the picture posted by Occupy Democrats, and will address the other figures of the picture in future posts.
The picture by Occupy Democrats cites a number as U.S. “oil barrels imported” during the “last Bush year” (without disclosing how the number is arrived at) and compares it to “today” (the post was dated September 22, 2015). The numbers as presented demonstrate that the United States imports much less oil “today” than it did during the “last Bush year.” In context, the post then appears to insinuate that this drop in U.S. oil imports should be credited to President Obama and his policies. Such a conclusion is factually incorrect, as explained in detail below.
Today, US is the largest oil producer in the world after surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. As a result, U.S. does import less oil today than it did seven years ago. However, this surge in U.S. oil production is not because of President Obama’s policies, which as explained below, reduced U.S. oil production where implemented; rather, this surge is DESPITE President Obama’s policies.
The Federal government, i.e., President Obama, regulates oil production, including by exploration and leasing policies, on federal land only. On these federal lands, oil production has in fact decreased by 6% due to President Obama’s policies. The increase in U.S. oil production has been on private land (which is not run or controlled by the federal government) and because of scientific advances such as fracking. Interestingly, opposing this increase in oil fracking in the U.S., which has a higher cost of production compared to traditional methods, is at least one of the reasons Saudi Arabia significantly increased its oil production so as to reduce the prices and drive these higher cost producers out of business. (Notably, this reduced oil prices initiated by OPEC and Saudi Arabia that have contributed to lower gas prices in the US are also not attributable to President Obama’s policies). Back to the point, not only has President Obama not contributed to the advancement in oil fracking and increased U.S. oil production, Democrats in fact tend to oppose oil fracking all together. (See, e.g., state of New York has banned oil fracking). Amazingly, however, Democrats, including President Obama in his State of the Union address in 2015, do not hesitate to take credit for the results of the very policies that they hinder and/or oppose, and for which, they scold Republicans. (See also, Article on energy job creation in U.S. oil producing States )
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