In recent weeks, President Obama weeks has gotten one of his campaign tactics from 2008 turned against him.

In 2008, candidate Obama would regularly blame the two “oilmen” in the White House as the cause of high gas prices.

Yet, now that the price of gas, which has risen from an average of $1.85 when he took office to $3.65, is rising rapidly and he is facing criticism from his Republican rivals, President Obama does what he always does and blames everyone but himself.”

President Obama does what he always does and blames everyone but himself.

He even goes so far as to say that under his administration, the oil and natural gas industries have never produced or drilled as much.

Surprisingly this is true.However, Obama fails to acknowledge that the person who made this possible was his predecessor, George W. Bush.

It is interesting that this is the one area that Obama doesn’t give Bush credit for, considering the terrible economy, high unemployment and the dicey foreign policy situation are the result of Bush’s policies, according to the President.

However, the record level of energy production is the one issue that can actually be traced entirely to Bush.

During his presidency, the rate the government gave oil and natural gas drilling and exploration permits was the highest in recent history.

Bush’s goal was to reduce foreign oil dependency through increased domestic production.

Now that most of these facilities have come online, our foreign dependence on oil has gone down considerably.

Bush would have liked for the amount of domestic drilling to increase even more.

However the Democrats fought him every step of the way and so the government still does not allow drilling in ANWR, large parts of the Gulf and off of other coastlines, where billions of barrels of oil are located.

Since Obama has been in office, the rate that the government gives permits to drill or even to explore has fallen precipitously.

Obama has blocked the Keystone pipeline and refuses to allow more exploration on federal lands.

His claim that his administration has increased oil production is frankly laughable. This is especially problematic because it is the one sector of the economy that is booming.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs in the past decade have been created in the energy industry. This is because of the discoveries of new deposits of oil and natural gas.

Shale oil has been discovered all over the country. North Dakota especially is booming.Its unemployment rate is only 3.7 percent and it now produces more oil than any state but Texas and Alaska.

Unfortunately, Obama remains completely unsupportive of this energy revolution. Harold Hamm is the billionaire owner of Continental Resources, the oil company developing the North Dakota oil fields.

Hamm told Obama that the energy revolution in North Dakota could be repeated across America and that the United States has enough energy resources here at home to challenge OPEC’s supremacy.

Obama waved him off saying: “Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.”

It is ridiculous that the President would want to limit the growth of any American industry because of some technology that might reduce demand sometime in the future and considering only 7,000 Chevy Volts were bought last year (and a lot of them by the government). It appears as if that point is a long ways off

There is an energy revolution going on in America.

The millions of people who work in this industry are excited about it.

Yet, this revolution is being undermined at every step by the President in favor of his friends in green energy, who have a mixed track record at best.

The President runs around the country claiming he wants to bring manufacturing and industry back to America.

Mr. President, it’s here already in the form of the energy industry, and it would be nice if you got on board.

Andrew Fiepke is a sophomore majoring in finance, French and markets and culture.