Former Shell CEO Blasts Obama: His Attempts to Increase Domestic Oil Production “Has Been Nil, Nada, Nothing”

Back in September John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil and founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, warned that China’s increased consumption of oil would have an impact on global gas prices.

This weekend Hofmeister blasted the Obama Administration for prohibiting oil and gas production in the United States.
FOX News reported:

Nationally, gas prices are $3.53 a gallon, up 25 cents since Jan. 1, and likely headed to $4.25 a gallon by late April. Republicans have demanded more oil production at home, as well as building the Keystone XL pipeline across the middle of the U.S. to allow oil from Canada to reach Texas refineries.

Obama rejected the plan, but one of his spokesmen, Robert Gibbs, said the president is looking to increase domestic energy production.

“Just on Friday, the Department of Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic. The president has increased our fuel efficiency and energy efficiency standards so we do use less energy, which will help drive down the price,” Gibbs said. “Our domestic oil production is at an eight-year high, and our use of foreign oil is at a 16-year low. So we’re making progress.”

But John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil and founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, told Fox News that oil production today is only 7 million barrels per day when it used to be 10 million per day.

Hofmeister warned that the global economy is in “the crosshairs” of a precarious situation in which China is growing its demand for oil each year by millions of barrels per day and turmoil in the Middle East is creating “some of the most unpredictable, volatile, geopolitical situations” in the world.

Global oil demand, meanwhile, is expected to increase by another 1.5 percent to 89.25 million barrels a day in 2012, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“The failure of the United States of America, the world’s largest consumer, to adopt government policies to enable domestic production to increase and meet these conditions has been nil, nada, nothing, and that is unfortunate for American consumers,” Hofmeister told Fox News.

“We know where the oil is but the government has to allow the companies to get the oil,”
he said, charging the Obama administration with being “anti-drilling,” as demonstrated by the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP spill in 2010.

The average price of gas this month so far is $3.49 a gallon — up 21 cents since the beginning of the year — and $1.60 more per gallon than when Obama took office in January 2009.

When you fill up your gas tank this week and every week you can thank Barack Obama and democrats for the record amount you are spending at the pump.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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