Keeping Michele Bachmann Honest on Gas Prices
Robert Rapier, an engineer who works in the energy business, corrects Bachmann’s ludicrous simpleton-think about energy:
[…] Bachmann proposes to achieve not only something that Obama has failed to do, but something that Bush failed to do for most of his second term until a biting recession brought gas prices crashing down. It’s also something political leaders around the world failed to do, so it was not limited to policies in the U.S. But maybe that’s how she plans to do it: Send the economy into a deep depression. That would likely mean a return to sub-$2 gasoline.
The honest truth, though, is that the places in the world where gasoline is under $2/gallon tend to be oil-exporting countries that subsidize the price of gasoline for consumers. Given that the U.S. imports more oil than any other country, subsidizing consumers is out of the question. […]
But given the context of her later clarifying statements, it is clear that Bachmann believes that we can achieve $2/gallon by simply producing more:
“What Barack Obama has done is lock up America’s eneregy reserves. […]
There are many problems with those statements. First, shale oil has been right around the corner for over 100 years. It isn’t going to be unlocked by $2/gallon gasoline when it wasn’t unlocked by $4/gallon gasoline. […]
Second, the Bakken oil field has significantly increased production while Obama has been in office. In Bush’s last month in office, monthly oil production in North Dakota (where most of the Bakken production is taking place) was 6.3 million barrels. The most recent cumulative monthly production was 11.2 million barrels. Shall we credit Obama? Well, I certainly don’t, but neither do I blame him for current gas prices. But if Bachmann wants to cite statistics based on when Obama took office, certainly actual oil production should be an important one. And for that matter, not only has North Dakota production almost doubled since Obama has been in office, but oil production for the country as a whole has risen. […]
What about Bachmann’s comment on natural gas? […] In 2011 production has reached an all-time record of over 1.9 trillion cubic feet.
Conclusion: Dishonest or Yet Another ‘Energy Dummy’?
So what are we to make of this? I think very few people are going to give Obama credit for increases in oil and gas production. In fact, those production increases are a function of high oil prices and of the development of shale gas technology — not any sort of presidential mandate. Presidents simply don’t control oil prices. [emphasis added] […]
Be sure to check out the whole blog entry by Robert for the details.