Fact checking Barack Obama's Gilf Oil Spill speech

Newsbusters have done a fine job, here's a few extracts:

'Also intended to promote the "clean energy" cause was Obama's misleading statement that "Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America." In fact, as the Heritage Foundation notes, China "will account for nearly 45% of oil demand growth in the next five years, receives 70% of its energy from coal already, and is projected to nearly triple coal capacity by 2030."

...

Obama also misrepresented the state of the oil industry itself. He claimed that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean - because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."

"This howler," writes John Hinderaker at Power Line, "is a favorite canard of Democratic politicians":

As is so often the case, they are relying on the public's ignorance. Most people don't realize that in the U.S., oil isn't counted as part of our "reserves" unless it is legally available for drilling. Thus, ANWR, to take one of many examples, isn't counted toward the total "reserves." The U.S. government could cause our reserves to skyrocket overnight by opening new areas, on land and in shallow water, to drilling. But the U.S. is the only country in the world that has deliberately chosen not to develop its own energy resources. No one else is that dumb.

So the reason oil companies drill a mile beneath the water is not that there are not ample supplies of crude in other parts of the United States, but rather that the federal government does not permit drilling in so many of those areas.'

Odd I don't remember the BBC or any other British media outlet pointing out these inconvenient truths.