By Jennifer Dlouhy
During a tense exchange on energy policy in Tuesday’s presidential debate, Barack Obama insisted that domestic oil production is up under his watch.
But the issue is far from black and white.
While the U.S. is harvesting more oil from within its own borders, much of the surge in domestic crude production is coming from private lands, not federal tracts under the government’s control — a disparity Mitt Romney highlighted on the Hofstra University stage.
“The president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land,” Romney said. “As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.”
But Romney’s not telling the full story either.
When it comes to domestic oil production, the issue has a lot more nuance than comes across on any debate stage.
The federal government’s Energy Information Administration that the amount of oil harvested and sold from federal and Indian lands and waters climbed to 4.3 quadrillion BTU in 2010 — up from 3.3 quadrillion BTU in 2008, when Obama was elected to the White House. That also represents a climb from 2009, when 3.7 quadrillion BTU of crude oil was harvested from federal and Indian lands.
The EIA stats lend credence to Obama’s assertion that “we have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years.”
Oil industry leaders also have argued that current production reflects leasing decisions made years before Obama took office.
And even so, oil production on federal lands hasn’t stayed at 2010′s high level. According to the EIA, in 2011, the number took a dive — down to 3.7 quadrillion BTU of oil produced and sold from federal and Indian lands.
The decline can at least partially be blamed on a slowdown in offshore drilling in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
After the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Obama administration imposed a five-month moratorium on most deep-water exploration. Permitting of shallow-water drilling projects also slowed for a time after offshore regulators imposed new drilling rules in the wake of the disaster.
Although Gulf drilling has essentially rebounded — with rig counts and permits near pre-moratorium levels — it took years to get to that point.
The United States with a decline that began in August 2006. The decline in foreign oil imports has been attributed to the United States’ economic woes, which reduced demand, as well as fuel economy standards and more domestic production.
On the presidential campaign trail, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have vowed to break the United States free of foreign oil, offering a pledge of at least North American “energy independence.”
Romney’s energy plan promises “North American energy independence by 2020,” largely by expanding offshore drilling, relaxing environmental regulations and putting states in control of permitting energy projects on federal land within their borders.
Romney also has pledged to approve the Keystone XL pipeline that would deliver Canadian oil sands crude from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Obama administration officials say they are set to make a decision on the controversial pipeline proposal early next year.
“I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure,” Romney said during the debate. “And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada, taking advantage of the oil and coal we have here, drilling offshore in Alaska, drilling offshore in Virginia where the people want it. Those things will get us the energy we need.”
Obama, meanwhile, has highlighted an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy, which would combine support for renewable fuels and alternative power with domestic oil and gas production. Obama also has broadly touted the promise of newly available natural gas supplies — a message he repeated on the debate stage Tuesday night.
“Gov. Romney will say he’s got an all-of-the-above plan, but basically his plan is to let the oil companies write the energy policies. So he’s got the oil and gas part, but he doesn’t have the clean energy part.” Obama said. “And if we are only thinking about tomorrow or the next day and not thinking about 10 years from now, we’re not going to control our own economic future. Because China, Germany, they’re making these investments. And I’m not going to cede those jobs of the future to those countries.”