Obama Expected to Blame China, Iran, Higher Demand, Kitchen Sink In Today’s Speech on Gas Prices

Despite record gas prices Democrats killed another Arctic drilling project this month. This comes after Obama rejected the Keystone pipeline project. US gas prices at the pump have doubled since the Obama took office.

Gas Buddy

Barack Obama will blame Iran, China, higher demand and anything else he can think of today in his speech on high gas prices. Don’t expect him to bring up Keystone or spend too much time on his failed green policies in today’s speech.
Bloomberg reported:

President Barack Obama will try to head off the political impact of rising gasoline prices as Republicans vow to make the price at the pump an issue in the 2012 election campaign.

Obama plans events this week focusing on his administration’s efforts to expand domestic exploration and development of alternative energy sources to combat cyclical spikes in gas prices.

The price rise, driven in part by increased tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and higher demand as the U.S. recovery strengthens, is the one negative in recent economic data that have enhanced Obama’s political position. The cost of gasoline confronts voters daily.

“Gas prices will be the number one issue by summertime,” U.S. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republicans’ chief vote-counter, said in an interview.

Obama’s political team has been preparing to counter Republican attacks since the administration denied a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, White House officials said. The renewed focus on what Obama has described as an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy kicks off with a speech tomorrow at the University of Miami in Florida.

White House awareness of the political impact was illustrated yesterday when the president mentioned higher gas prices at a White House event promoting the extension of the payroll tax cut through year’s end.

#2 February 23, 2012 at 8:30 am
Greg commented:

The recent run-up in gas prices is not just oil production driven. A number of oil refineries are shutting down presently, the most notable the St Croix VI refinery which used to supply 3% of the eastern seaboard states need. They are shutting down because the EPA is requiring modifications that cannot be recovered over the life of the facility. Refinery shortages means not only high prices but also long lines
#3 February 23, 2012 at 8:32 am
Patty commented:

Truthfully, Obama coming out to blame CHINA, he and Immelt have given China the Kitchen sink.

As for Iran, where was he when the people in the streets were being fired at and killed asking for U.S. intervention and nothing from Obama.

Investigators were and may still be there and Iran has toured them through not inspections of Bomb Facilities.

________________________

Can Obama fib his way out of blame for record high gasoline prices?

As the First Lady and daughters jet off to a 16th vacation in three years, the rest of us can look forward to another glorious two weeks at Porchview when summer rolls around.”You’re going to see a lot more staycations this year,” notes Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. The reason for this pessimistic projection is the cost of gasoline, which is currently $3.53 a gallon, the highest it’s ever been for this time of year. Predictions place the price at the pump as high as $4.25 a gallon by late April.

So whose fault is the soaring prices? I’ll give you two guess whose fault it isn’t, according to the White House. In the face of criticism from Newt Gingrich, who on Sunday called the president “anti-energy,” Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday released an Interior Department memo that announced new drilling in the “resource-rich” Gulf of Mexico. That’s the same resource-rich Gulf where the Obama administration suspended deepwater drilling as part of its overreaction to a massive 2010 oil spill. And this is the same president who in January boasted opening “more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources,” conveniently omitting the fact that it had previously closed these resources to exploration.

But the president’s distortions don’t stop there. He also claimed during his most recent State of the Union address:

Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy. Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration…. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.

For dramatic emphasis, he added, “That’s right—eight years.” Unfortunately for him, that’s a claim that is easily verifiable. According to records kept by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the field production of crude oil has been fairly stable over the past eight years. Nevertheless, if you add the monthly totals for 2003, you discover that the nation produced 2,073,453,000 barrels. In 2010, the last year for which complete monthly records are available, the total production was 1,998,137,000 barrels. For 2011, data are available only through November. Still, if you sum the available figures, you derive a subtotal of 1,888,306,000, which means that in order to equal—never mind surpass—2003 totals, U.S. oil producers would need to have produced 185,147,000 barrels for December of 2011. But the last time the nation’s producers of crude oil turned out amounts approaching that many gallons was in 1999.

This exaggeration, however, is small potatoes when you consider that the lead time between oil production exploration is measurable in years and, not infrequently, decades. The production numbers the president is touting could easily be the result of drilling permits issued during the Bush or Clinton administrations. It is utterly fatuous and willfully duplicitous of the president to claim these successes as his own.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2012/02/21/can-obama-fib-his-way-out-of-blame-for-record-high-gasoline-prices/
#4 February 23, 2012 at 8:38 am
Barry S commented:

You left out Buuuuush in the blame list
#6 February 23, 2012 at 8:55 am
Missy8s commented:

Of course the “great teacher” Chairman O will blame evil capitalists and the free market system most of all.

Never mind the fact that he is deliberately manipulating prices to enrage his violent mindless base before the election.

This is the financial crisis the proglodyte terrorist left has always wanted to create in order to collapse the entire global economy in order to replace it with global communism.

2008 wasn’t good enough to convince Americans that his was is “the only way”.

Now he’s going to punish us with deadly riots instigated by his private army #OWS for our “sins” against his “omnipotence”.

This has always been about creating an atmosphere of hatred against the free market system, now comes the societal chaos and bloodshed.

Just as “dear leader’s” terrorist mentors Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dhorn and Frances Fox-Piven have planned from day one.
#7 February 23, 2012 at 8:58 am
Valerie commented:

The write-up in advance of this speech sounds very much like the President is prepared to make some very large concessions to the Republicans and the TEA Parties. I suggest they call him on it.
#8 February 23, 2012 at 9:00 am
Valerie commented:

Uhh, perhaps this is what’s driving the speech. Maybe somebody in BO’s camp saw this.

https://www.newt.org/donate/etenergyaddress/
#9 February 23, 2012 at 9:04 am
Jim commented:

Higher demand my a$$!! The Gulf of Mexico is stacked up with tankers that have no where to go with their loads!
#10 February 23, 2012 at 9:19 am
Ryan commented:

Maybe he’ll follow his press secretary’s lead and offer an orwellian elaboration on how it wasn’t him, but the Republicans that killed the Keystone pipeline
#11 February 23, 2012 at 9:24 am
More Liberty commented:

We all knew this was coming. he will most likely release some of our strategic reserves. We need to start researching his comments regarding such actions when Bush did it.
#12 February 23, 2012 at 9:26 am
Liz commented:

IMPEACH. Holder too, the accomplice.
#13 February 23, 2012 at 9:28 am
Andreas K. commented:

Demand is correct. However, it goes both ways. Supply and demand. And when a country is sitting on oil reserves, but doesn’t use them, well… that’s either stupidity or willful ignorance with intention to harm.

EU countries love the high oil prices. Well, not so much the people, but when you consider that, for example, in Austria the price you pay at your gas station consists mostly of taxes (more than 50%) and you then get to pay 20% VAT on it, too, well, it’s pretty obvious who loves those high oil prices.

Governments will do anything to squeeze more money out of us. And it doesn’t matter who’s running the show. Left or Right, they don’t care. It’s easy money, that’s all they care about.
#14 February 23, 2012 at 9:51 am
Militant Conservative commented:

Obama is setting himself up for a Carter sized

Ass whooping by whomever his opponent is.

America hates to fail. Even the welfare queens.

Powder is dry
#15 February 23, 2012 at 9:55 am
tommy mc donnell commented:

if obama were going to tell the truth he say these higher prices are the result of my energy policies and exactly what i wanted to happen.

andreas k…its not government its politicans that want all the money.
#16 February 23, 2012 at 10:02 am
Finncrisp commented:

If you have a 20% market positon, you really can’t control the price. Economics 101. Moreover, if you have a sitting president whose stated position is to drive us out of the oil business and collapse our capability, this view shows America has no resolve to compete as public policy. America was built on cheap energy, it was our PUBLIC POLICY to have cheap energy. Not anymore. As long as the Government stands firmly in the way of exploration and production, we cannot flood the world market with product and force prices down. Right now, our economy is so weak, in spite of the glowing reports, we have more than we can use locally. Taxing exports would shrink production and drive unit costs up further.

There is no alternative to lower prices except a roaring economy and policies that foster unfettered production. This president wants neither.
#17 February 23, 2012 at 10:05 am
Taqiyyotomist commented:

And G.W. Boooooooshhhhhhhh!!!

And the Jooooos!!!

And TEABAGGERS!!!!!
#18 February 23, 2012 at 10:08 am
proudredneck commented:

Its always someone else’s fault…….here’s 10 things you should know about high gas-prices ….http://blog.heritage.org/2011/02/23/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-high-gas-prices-and-obama%E2%80%99s-oil-policy/.
#19 February 23, 2012 at 10:12 am
lizzy84 commented:

“It’s all coming together now.”
Barack Hussein oBama
#20 February 23, 2012 at 10:55 am
Patty commented:

Obama Takes Credit for Shale Gas Drilling in Election Year

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this week (We Don’t Need More Foreign Oil and Gas), Obama supporters and long-time Democrat flacks John Podesta and Tom Steyer tried to make the argument that we don’t need Canada’s oil (and natural gas) because we now have enough of our own, thank you very much. Apparently Obama is getting heat for his disastrous decision to pander to environmental extremists and reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would not only have brought cheap Canadian oil to the U.S. (at a time of record-highs for oil), but also would have brought more U.S. oil to the U.S. from North Dakota’s Bakken field.

Messrs. Podesta and Steyer’s opening sentence said:

In the hubbub around the president’s decision not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the United States, Americans missed the big picture.

Translation: You’re too dumb to understand The One’s decision on this important matter. We’ll explain it to you.

We then get this choice paragraph:

Under President Obama’s leadership, we appear to be at the beginning of a domestic gas and oil boom. After a four-decade decline in oil production, the U.S. is now producing more than half of our oil domestically. This can free us from our addiction to foreign-sourced barrels, particularly if we utilize our dramatically larger and cheaper natural gas reserves. Natural gas now costs the equivalent of less than $15 per barrel, versus the $100-plus barrels we import from the Middle East.

Breathtaking chutzpah. Obama had nothing to do with the present “boom.” One could argue that Dick Cheney has had more to do with the current boom than anyone else—Cheney used to be CEO of Halliburton, which is the number one provider of hydraulic fracturing services in the U.S. In fact, the Obama administration has repeatedly interfered with natural gas and oil drilling. His rogue EPA is trying to either regulate, or shut down, hydraulic fracturing in this country! He disallowed any new offshore drilling after the BP disaster, driving drilling platforms away from our shores. Funny how election year conversions work. Look around and find an issue that will be popular with the voting public, and latch onto it as your own, even if a) you don’t believe in it, and b) you didn’t have a thing to do with it.

Pro-drillers welcome Obama’s lip service to shale gas drilling and we should take every advantage of it, but make no mistake, Obama and his ideological supporters like Podesta and Steyer still hate fossil fuels, including natural gas. Just read the rest of the op-ed where they get down to the topic they really love—“clean energy”—and how America is a leader in clean energy and everything will be butterflies and pink unicorns when we finally all convert to solar and wind. Oh! And it will benefit you “middle class” people by giving you nice, middle class manufacturing jobs (since you were too stupid to stay in college) to make all those solar panels and wind mills. Doesn’t the brilliance of The One just dazzle you?

The really interesting part of Messrs. Podesta and Steyer’s op-ed are the responses to it. Be sure to read them here: A Badly Distorted Discourse on U.S. Energy Policy

http://marcellusdrilling.com/2012/01/obama-takes-credit-for-shale-gas-drilling-in-election-year/

If he is re-elected then he has no need to worry about another election and watch the lies and our freedoms be taken away further. Please don’t re-elected this person again
#22 February 23, 2012 at 11:48 am
Blacque Jacques Shellacque commented:

Obama Expected to Blame China, Iran, Higher Demand, Kitchen Sink In Today’s Speech on Gas Prices

I’ll wait for a transcript.

No need to hear the jerk’s voice if I don’t have to…
#23 February 23, 2012 at 11:59 am
democraps suck commented:

anybody who actually thinks odumbo gives a rats A$$ about lower gas prices is a moron…where was this so called action 3 years ago…all a political ploy…he could care less about america
#24 February 23, 2012 at 12:28 pm
squeaky commented:

would a gazzillion tankers parked off the coast be useless if the oil can’t be refined?
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/01/line_east_coast_refinery_shutd.html
and not all crude is the same…sweet vs sour with sour being more expensive to process
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2005/08/sweet_and_sour.html
#25 February 23, 2012 at 1:10 pm
squeaky commented:

the guy who acknowledged that his policies would drive up the cost of electric now wants us to believe that his political brand has no connection to the steady rise in cost of gas? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqHL404zhcU
#26 February 23, 2012 at 1:15 pm
B.O. commented:

“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
#27 February 23, 2012 at 2:35 pm
tarpon commented:

Be right, just blame Obubber