Ha! I bet you didn’t know this when you heard Mr. Romney recently say he was going to solve our energy dependence problems. I didn’t either. He said we just had to drill more wells, which would solve not only our energy dependence, but add jobs as well. Uuhh, OK!

By Javier Blas, Commodities Editor | The Financial Times | August 31, 2012 8:47 am

“Drill, baby, drill!” was the rallying cry for more US crude production and a reduction on imports popularised by Michael Steele, a former deputy governor of Maryland, during the Republican party convention in 2008.

But four years later, as he addresses the Democratic convention next week ahead of the presidential election, Barack Obama can claim that he is – by a length – the real driller. During his presidency, the US has witnessed more drilling of oil wells than under any other president in 25 years.

According to the US Department of Energy, since Mr Obama was inaugurated in 2009, energy companies have drilled 58,350 wells in the US, the highest for any presidential term since the first four years of Ronald Reagan between 1981 and 1985, when companies drilled 71,319 wells.

Of course, Mr Obama had help: the development of a technique called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – has allowed companies to access hydrocarbon deposits previously considered uncommercial. And the high oil prices of recent years have channelled billions of dollars into boosting production.

The private sector – and not the US federal government – is responsible for the record of drilling that Mr Obama could boast about. Yet, he has avoided the pressure from the green and left flanks of his own party to regulate the shale boom.

Mr Obama’s drilling record is significantly better than that of recent Republican presidents. During the years under George Bush senior, companies drilled 38,564 wells. And his son George W. Bush was no better, with just 32,581 oil wells during his first four years in office. The numbers improved during his second term, with 54,189 oil wells.

US voters appear to appreciate the drilling figures for this presidency. A recent Gallup poll gave Mr Obama a13-point edge over Republican candidate Mitt Romney on energy. Pollsters asked voters who they trusted more on energy, regardless of their political affiliation: 53 per cent said Mr Obama, while 40 per cent supported Mr Romney.

Such approval could come in handy as the White House faces rising petrol prices again. The average US retail price for regular petrol this week reached $3.776 per gallon, nearing the $4 level that is seen as a traditional “panic” threshold.

But the price surge at the pumps – just as drilling rises and domestic US oil production climbs to a 14-year high – reveals the limitations of the “drill, baby, drill” strategy. After all, oil is a commodity traded internationally and the US is fully exposed to global trends, such as falling production in the North Sea and the rise in Asian demand.