Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

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24 October 2012

Why Obama Did Not Answer Romney's Oil Drilling Permits on Federal Land Question

When Obama claimed that oil production was up due to his policies, Romney pointed out that the Obama administration has been approving many fewer permits than Bush had.  Obama evaded a direct response to the number of oil drilling permits he was approving.  He was really doing a most obvious bit of squirming to avoid answering the issue.  Romney correctly pointed out that oil production was up only because it had gone up greatly on private land while going down on federal land and offshore. 

Update of Chart originally posted, since the original chart not only was not plotted with a zero baseline, but also had proportionality problems with the length of the bars.  In other words, it was incompetently plotted.  This chart, provided by Dr. Francisco Santiago, is accurate:

[The original bad plot of the permit situation from a CFACT report is shown below:


Note that the baseline in this graph is not zero.]

The failure of the Obama administration to approve more oil drilling permits will cause increasing decreases in oil production from federal lands for some time after permits approved rises under Romney.  It will take awhile for production to catch up with an increase in permits, so this problem will be with us for awhile.  This was a missed opportunity to provide Americans lower gasoline prices, which we know is contrary to the Obama policy that high gasoline prices are desired.

1 comment:

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

My friend Dr. Francisco Santiago pointed out that in addition to the non-zero baseline of the Fox News chart, the remaining portion of the bars indicating permits were not proportional to the number of permits. The plot was inaccurate and misleading. I have replaced it with the accurate plot he sent me. I am leaving the Fox News plot in so that they will be properly embarrassed. Perhaps their art rendering people believe they have artistic license with the data.

Thank you very much Francisco.