Gov. Palin: Obama is mistaken. Again.

"Who writes his stuff?"
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For the second time in three days, Sarah Palin used Twitter to call President Obama out for his misleading statements on U.S. domestic oil reserves and production. She tweeted late Sunday afternoon:

"Pres is mistaken. Again. Claims we control 2% world's oil & he 'boosts production'?Who advises him?Who writes his stuff?Why won't press ask?"

John Hinderaker explains the 2% deception:

That two percent figure is one that you hear all the time from liberals. It refers to the fact that the United States has only two percent of the world's "proven reserves" of petroleum. This is what a character in a Nabokov novel called a "doughnut truth"--the truth, the whole truth, with a hole in the truth. Here is the hole: there is no universal definition of "proven reserves," and "proven reserves" do not represent what Obama called "every single reserve available to us."

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Liberals like Barack Obama imply that America only has two percent of the world's petroleum, but that is completely false. We only have two percent of the "proven reserves" that are recoverable under current "government regulations" and at current petroleum prices. We could increase our proven reserves overnight by opening up new areas to exploration and development; ANWR is just one of many examples. And our proven reserves increase every time the price of oil rises.

Under American law, there is another category of petroleum in the ground called "undiscovered technically recoverable oil." I believe this category is also limited to areas that are legally available for development, but nevertheless, this category encompasses an enormous amount of energy...

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As for "boosting production," Obama is falsely taking credit for production growth which occurred over the last decade, even though he has only been in the White House for a little over two years, as Steve Maley points out:

Obama Administration policies had nothing whatever to do with the production buildup in late ‘09 into early 2010.

That production growth is due almost entirely to a handful of large deepwater fields, notably BP’s Thunder Horse, which came on production during that time frame.

”First oil” came on June 14, 2008. Since then, Thunder Horse has steadily ramped up its production by bringing on new wells. In March 2009, Thunder Horse produced close to 250,000 barrels per day (40,000 m3/d) oil equivalent in oil and natural gas from seven wells.

So Thunder Horse by itself accounts for almost all of that abrupt ramp-up in oil production.

Does Obama deserve credit?

Thunder Horse sits in 6,200 feet of water. The leases date from 1988 (Reagan) and 1994 (Clinton). The discovery well was drilled in 1999, and the platform was set in 2005, during the George W. Bush Administration.

Due to the Deepwater Moratorium/Permitorium and the shutdown of the Offshore Leasing Program, we have essentially stopped looking for the next Thunder Horse.

Instead, half the available rig fleet sits idle due to a lack of permits. The BOEMRE’s current permitting backlog is comprised of 270 shallow-water and 52 deepwater wells. The Obama Adminstration threatens to reject seven of the outstanding deepwater permits rather than comply with Judge Feldman’s order to approve them or show cause within 30 days.

Production elsewhere in the U.S. has also increased, but no thanks to Obama’s policies. It is industry ingenuity and competitiveness that has led the production growth, in the Bakken Shale of North Dakota, the Eagleford Shale of South Texas and in the Permian Basin of West Texas. This increase is driven by technology (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) and by product prices. None of these areas are primarily on Federal lands; they have excelled in spite of hostile Federal policies, not because of them.

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On Friday, Gov. Palin also criticized Obama's false claims about domestic energy.

- JP