With the national average for a gallon of gas at $4.25 on and rising rapidly, and President Biden’s decision to ban Russian oil set to make things worse, CNN’s Ana Cabrera was either desperate or foolish to step into the breach during Wednesday’s Newsroom to defend him with oil production numbers from 2020 – aka still the Trump presidency – to claim the U.S. was pumping out enough oil. She even argued we weren’t THAT dependent on foreign oil.
Cabrera began her “crude reality” fact-check (thinking they’re being clever) by declaring they needed to “cut through the clutter” and dispel the “misinformation going around about who or what is responsible”The soaring gas prices.
But after declaring that “no one person or entity is in control of the price of gas,” she did her best to suggest Biden was doing everything he could. This included her arguing the United States was NOT “too dependent on foreign oil.”
“In reality, the U.S. actually produces much more oil than it imports,” she claimed. “For the last couple of years, the United States has been the world’s top oil producer. Topping Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, and China.” Her proof? The graph below shows the U.S.’s oil production in 2020, compared with other countries.
That’s right! She used production numbers from Trump’s last year in office to claim the U.S. was still leading in 2022. And that’s not the only way Cabrera played number games with the dates.
As part of that argument, she compared oil production from Trump’s FIRST YEAR in office (2017) to the first couple of months of 2022:
It is true that the U.S. has been producing more oil than it did in 2020. This is evident as Trump was able to produce 9.3million barrels per day during his first year. The U.S. will produce 12.3 million barrels of oil per day, according to experts. This is a record production level that is expected to be broken next year.
This conveniently left out the fact that Biden had reduced domestic oil production for 2021. It was included with graph. She also tried to use projected numbers for the rest of 2022 AND 2023 to suggest Biden’s energy policies were “on track to hit a new record next year.”
These projections, however, are not possible at the moment and likely would be made in response to public anger.
While the U.S. is now energy independent, Cabrera supported the importation 1/3 of U.S. crude oil under Biden’s first year. “Last year, the U.S. produced more than 11 million barrels of crude oil per day. And while importing around just 6 million per day,”“She said. It was not mentioned how much oil and gas we exported.
Then came her analysis of the criticism regarding Biden kneecapping domestic production by killing the Keystone XL pipeline, of which she claimed aid from the construction was “up for debate but unlikely.”
Omitting how construction would likely have been completed by now if it wasn’t for then-President Obama and now Biden, Cabrera wrote off critics, saying, “the XL pipeline wasn’t expected to be operational until next year at the earliest.”
She also didn’t seem to understand that increasing how much oil can get to refineries meant there was more getting to demand:
The Keystone pipeline, if approved by the government, would have a third benefit: it will lower current prices. This is a debateable claim, however it’s unlikely. KeystoneXL was an extension of an existing pipeline. This would have allowed oil to be transported from Canada through Nebraska via a kind of shortcut. An existing pipeline would then transport oil from that point to the Gulf Coast refineries. And this moving some – about 830,000 barrels of oil out of Canada every day.
There was no discussion of if those pipelines along the gulf were already “existing” with the idea that the Keystone pipeline was on the way.
This number game in defense of Biden was made possible by lucrative sponsorships from Carvana, Liberty Mutual. You can find their contact information here.
You can find the transcript below. To read it, please click on “expand”.
CNN Newsroom
March 9, 2022
Eastern, 1:40:49(…)
ANA CABRERA Let’s get to the point.
The first is to recognize that there are many factors which affect the gas price. It is tied to oil prices, which are controlled by a number of factors, including non-OPEC supply, demand and trade.
Let’s now get down to the lies. One false claim is that the US has a lower oil production. It’s false. In reality, U.S. crude oil production actually increased from 2020. You can see that Trump was producing 9.3million barrels of oil daily in his first year. The U.S. will produce 12.3 million barrels of oil per day, according to experts. This is a record production level that is expected to be broken next year.
The United States may also be too dependent upon foreign oil, another common claim. In reality, however, the U.S. produces more oil than it imports. The United States produced over 11 million barrels per day of crude oil last year. Even though the country imports around 6 million barrels per day, it produces more than 11 million barrels of crude oil every day. The United States is the top-producing oil country in the world for the past few years. China, Russia, Canada and Saudi Arabia are the other top oil producers.
The Keystone pipeline, if approved by the government, would have a third benefit: it will lower current prices. This is a debateable claim, however it’s unlikely. Keystone XL would have been an extension to an already operating pipeline. It would have served as a sort of shortcut and would have taken oil from Canada’s Tar Sands all the way up to Nebraska. An existing pipeline could transport oil from that point to the Gulf Coast refineries. And this moving some – about 830,000 barrels of oil out of Canada every day.
Although it would not have been U.S. owned oil, the supporters of the pipeline claim that purchasing more oil from Canada today is preferable than buying oil from Russia. The XL Pipeline wasn’t due to become operational before next year.
(…)
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