Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who may challenge the president next year, suggested that Obama is quietly cheering for even higher prices at the pump.
"The Obama energy policy to me seems very clear. It's to increase the cost of energy so Americans will use less of it," Barbour said at a conference organized by the Wall Street Journal. "When you shut in the Gulf of Mexico, and American domestic oil production goes down, to me that is bad policy for our country."
But White House spokesman Jay Carney said there's one problem with this line of argument: Domestic oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003.
According to the federal government's Energy Information Administration, U.S. oil production jumped nearly 3 percent last year, while oil imports fell. While the administration did suspend some Western drilling leases near national parks early on, the administration argues that oil producers still have 41 million acres in which to drill.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/10/134406134/rising-gas-prices-spur-calls-for-u-s-oil-production
see also -
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-obama-says-us-oil-production-last-year-was-/