Fact: More Oil Drilling Under Obama Than Under Bush

NO! That can’t be right! Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are pushing the drill baby drill fallacy as our only Savior and Rick Santorum is walking around with an oily rock in his pocket, blaming the steep price if oil on President Obama.

The drill baby drill crowd don’t want you to know this. And they are making empty promises that if elected, they will drill more oil and bring down the price at the pump to $2.00 a gallon.

But the facts are here for all to see.

Under President Obama, there have been more Oil drilling permits issued and more Oil drilling than was done over the last decade.

According to a report on Energy, ” President Obama has opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration and we now have more working oil and gas rigs than the rest of the world—combined.”

And this domestic oil production has led to a less dependency on foreign oil imports. In the three years since this president took office, dependence on foreign oil has steadily decreased, lower now than the eight years Bush held office.

So its obvious to everyone with a brain that drill baby drill is not an effective policy position for any sensible party to have, yet, Republicans continue harping the phrase, ignorantly disregarding the facts.

Our reality is simple. We live in a world where the price of oil is determined by market speculators, by oil producing countries, by the supply chain and the ease at which the product get to the market and by the growing demand for oil by nations like India, Brazil and China, where demand tripled over the last five years.

The President has been right all along, we cannot drill our way out of this problem. It involves a more inclusive and and modern strategy. Yes, drilling should be a part of that strategy and it is. But we must concentrate on other resources like clean energy that will further reduce our appetite for fossil fuel.