‘That was me, people’ – Barack Obama, taking credit for oil production boom at Houston event
From Fox News
Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday took credit for the boom in U.S. oil and gas production, saying, “That was me, people.” Obama made the remark during at a gala for Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Texas, touting energy production under his administration.
“You wouldn’t always know it, but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole — suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”
On “Fox & Friends” Thursday, former Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister said Obama is correct that oil production increased throughout his two terms, but “he had nothing to do with it.”
“This was production in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, North Dakota, in particular. And these were all state decisions made with industry applications for permits. The federal government had no role,” Hofmeister said.
If anything, he argued, Obama tried to “frustrate” those efforts by taking federal lands off of the availability list, shutting down the Gulf of Mexico for six months, dramatically increasing the length of permits, and never approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.
“I would say that he was not a leader when it comes to energy, other than the Clean Power Plan, when he tried to remake the power generation industry without involving Congress, and the Paris accords — again without involving Congress.”
“So he can take credit for all he wants, but whether people believe him or not it depends on how much history do you really know versus how much history do you want to reinvent.”
