Former President Barack Obama sure likes spiking footballs that others scored touchdowns with.
While talking at Rice University’s Baker Institute, Obama decided to take credit for the fact that America became one of the top oil producers in the world.
Obama: “Suddenly America is the largest oil producer, that was me people … say thank you.” pic.twitter.com/VfQfX1SR0x
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) 28 November 2018
“I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris Accords because, Look, I know, I know we’re an oil country and we need American energy,” Obama said, “And, by the way, American energy production. You wouldn’t always know it, but it went up every year I was president. And that whole, suddenly America’s like, the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people…”
Obama continued by proclaiming that he did great things for the economy while he was in office and said that he should be thanked for it.
“It’s a little like sometimes you go to Wall Street and folks will be grumbling about anti-business and I said, “Have you checked where your stocks were when I came into office, where they are now? What are you talking, what are you complaining about? Just say thank you, please. Because I want to raise your taxes a couple percent?”
Red State reports:
The reality is, however, that Obama essentially lucked into the oil boom experienced by the U.S. as a result of many fracking projects that happened across the nation. Much of what brought America to its position was the work of private companies drilling on private land. This coincided with an oil price increase of 96 percent when Obama took office according to the Energy Information Agency.
According to Hank Berrin over at the Daily Wire, who first reported this information, Obama had little to no control over the success in the oil industry America experienced thanks to outside factors and drilling happening out of his already limited control:
By 2016, gas prices had dropped, but as Grist noted, “Gas prices are currently low because of softening demand abroad and increasing supply — much of it American oil from the fracking boom. Obama has no control over the former and only limited control over the latter, since it’s mostly happening on private land.”
Another fact to consider: it was George W. Bush who stimulated production; early in his tenure the Bureau of Land Management, which controlled roughly 239 million acres of public lands, issued leasing and drilling permits at an unprecedented rate in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
In short, Obama is echoing his old “you didn’t build that” statement, and proclaiming that he is the one that made other people’s success possible, if not taking credit for it altogether. This is rich, given that it was Obama who did what he could to make sure the Keystone pipeline ran into one problem after another.
H/T redstate.com