Jeff Bingaman: “a week or so ago I came to the floor to talk about the general issues of gasoline prices and domestic energy production.…”

“a week or so ago I came to the floor to talk about the general issues of gasoline prices and domestic energy production. I believe it is important for us to use accurate facts as we are talking about our energy challenges and we work on energy policy issues. Only by using actual facts can we identify policies that will hopefully bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. So I would like to focus on a particular aspect of our domestic production; that is, production on federally owned land. This is something which has been the subject of a lot of political discussion, both out on the Presidential campaign trail and to some extent in the Senate. Let me first comment with respect to the price of gasoline and the impact of domestic production on the price of gasoline. This chart, which I put up before, ``U.S. oil production and gasoline prices during the period 1990 through 2011,'' I think, makes the point very well. That point is that the price of oil is set on the world market. What we produce domestically does not have a significant effect on that market. So the red line on the chart represents increases and decreases in domestic production of oil and the blue line represents the price of gasoline. Clearly, there is not a lot of correlation between those two. It is worth looking again at this chart because I think it makes the point that as U.S. production has increased from 2009 to the present, oil prices have also increased.…”