Appearing on NBC’s Meet The Press this Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich attempted to shift blame away from oil companies for rising gasoline prices. Asked by host David Gregory how he would attack President Obama given positive news about the economy, Gingrich falsely claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency has a plan to “raise the price of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon”:

His policies have consistently, I think, weakened the country. He has an Environmental Protection Agency proposal that would raise the price of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon. There are very few Americans who want to see the price of gasoline raised by government to 25 cents a gallon.

Watch it:

Gingrich’s claim was generated last July by the oil industry’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute. On behalf of API, oil industry consulting firm Baker & O’Brien analyzed a proposal by the auto industry’s lobbying arm, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, for “a single national (excluding California) summertime gasoline specification that they referred to as National Clean Gasoline (NCG).”

According to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, their proposed National Clean Gasoline standard would cost about one to 5 cents per gallon, while cutting smog and other air pollution by 10 to 20 percent. The oil-approved Baker & O’Brien study argued — using a proprietary and opaque methdology — that the proposal “could boost the cost of making gasoline by up to 25 cents per gallon and could shutter up to seven U.S. refineries.”

The EPA has been working on a plan to require cleaner new passenger vehicles and cleaner, low-sulfur gasoline – a move that could cost less than a penny a gallon. Reducing the sulfur content of gasoline would make every catalytic converter on the road today more effective. Every car in America would emit fewer smog-producing emissions. In fact, reducing sulfur is the single quickest and most effective step that EPA could take to reduce smog levels from coast to coast.

In summary, Gingrich’s claim that the EPA has a proposal to raise the price of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon ignores a number of facts. The proposal to which he’s referring came from the auto industry, not the EPA. The charge that the auto industry’s clean-gasoline proposal would increase prices by 25 cents per gallon is based on an oil-industry study that gave costs five times higher than other analyses. The EPA’s actual proposal for cleaner gasoline would have significant health and economic benefits for Americans with minimal effect on gas prices.

(HT Frank O’Donnell)

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources committee and the former chair of the disbanded Global Warming and Energy Security committee, has applauded the decision to drop the “bad idea” of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have made the United States a “middleman” for the “dirtiest oil on the planet”:

The Keystone pipeline was never and will never be a key part of U.S. energy policy, and has instead become a distraction from real attempts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. This pipeline would have taken the dirtiest oil on the planet, sent it snaking across the Midwest in an already-leaky pipeline, only to be exported to foreign markets once it reached the Gulf Coast.

The United States shouldn’t be used as a middleman between the dirtiest Canadian oil and the thirstiest foreign markets, when what the American people get in return is environmental risk and higher gas prices. This pipeline was a bad idea from the start, and this is the correct decision in the end.

As Markey mentions, the main effect for Americans of the Keystone XL pipeline would have been higher gas prices as Canadian oil was diverted to the international market.

Conservatives would have you believe that President Obama has led “nothing short of a war on American energy,” as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in May, repeating a common refrain. “Obama is waging war on American energy,” GOP presidential front runner Newt Gingrich agreed. Fellow candidate Rick Perry said Obama’s “draconian” energy policies don’t let Americans create energy “and sell it to the world.” “All of this killing of our energy supply,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), perhaps the industry’s biggest apologist in Congress. Of course, when conservatives say “energy,” they mean oil and fossil fuels, as they themselves have led a real war against American clean energy.

But like many conservative attacks on the president, the war on American energy is a fiction. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, U.S. exports of fossil fuels “are soaring” and the U.S. is on pace to be “a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years”:

According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.

That the U.S. is shipping out more fuel than it brings in is significant because the nation has for decades been a voracious energy consumer. It took in huge quantities of not only crude oil from the Middle East but also refined fuels from Europe, Latin America and elsewhere to help run its factories and cars. [...]

The reversal raises the prospect of the U.S. becoming a major provider of various types of energy to the rest of the world, a status that was once virtually unthinkable. The U.S. already exports vast amounts of coal, and companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. are pursuing or exploring plans to liquefy newly abundant natural gas and send it overseas.

This is, of course, good news, even though much of it has to do with the faltering U.S. economy, which has driven down demand for fuel. But the new data also demonstrates the absurdity of conservative energy policy, which starts with the (baseless) assumption that domestic fossil fuel production is too low and follows that it must be incentivized with taxpayer dollars and licenses to pollute and bend labor safety rules in order to increase output.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil production is up, despite Obama’s mythical war against the industry. American drivers have seen little benefit from this, however, because prices are set in a global market, where quickly developing countries are driving up demand and thus prices. So increasing production here would have negligible impact on prices as American refineries would just ship their product abroad where it could fetch higher prices.

After the spiking of the Keystone XL pipeline by the Obama administration, the tar sands industry moved quickly to open an alternate route from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. With the announcement of the pipeline deal, U.S. oil prices spiked, on the expectation that Canadian tar sands crude would no longer be locked in the Midwest market. ConocoPhillips sold its stake in the Seaway Pipeline, which connects Texas to Oklahoma, to Enbridge Inc. Enbridge plans to alter the 200,000 barrel-per-day pipeline so that it can take Candian crude from Oklahoma to Texas:

The sale of an oil pipeline running from Oklahoma to Texas upended U.S. energy markets Wednesday, sending the price of crude surging above $100 a barrel as America copes with the promise and pitfalls of its new energy boom. Enbridge Inc.—which bought a 50% stake in the Seaway Pipeline—announced it would reverse the direction of the flow, allowing more crude to move south from oil storage in Cushing, Okla., into the world’s largest refinery complex along the Gulf Coast.

Every analysis has been that giving Canada access to Gulf Coast refineries would increase prices for Americans. TransCanada estimated its 700,000 bpd Keystone XL pipeline would increase oil prices by about $6.55 a barrel in the United States.

Despite the facts, the fiction that building the Keystone XL pipeline would benefit American oil consumers has been popular among proponents.

Sen. Grassley (R-IA) claimed the Keystone XL project would “reduce prices at the pump for consumers.” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said the pipeline would “lower gas prices.” Energy chair Fred Upton (R-MI) claimed expediting the pipeline would “lower energy prices.” Natural Resource Committee chair Doc Hastings (R-TX) claimed Keystone XL would “lower gasoline prices.” Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) said it would “help reduce energy prices.” Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) said his vote to approve the pipeline “reduces the cost of gas and boosts the economy.” Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) complained that “delaying the pipeline will hurt American energy prices.” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) said the pipeline would mean “lower prices.” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) said the pipeline would help “stabilize prices at the pump for Michigan families.” Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) claimed it would “lower gas prices.” Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) said the pipeline would help “hold down future price increases.” It would “help reduce the burden of high gas prices on American families,” claimed Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA). Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) said it would “lower the price of fuel for all Americans.”