(This is a guest post, authored by the inimitable Saintseester.  This is thoughtful analysis.  Please, do read.)

For the first time, this afternoon, I heard about the Obama campaign’s efforts to combat misinformation by organizing a “Truth Team,” and via informational websites, one of which is called KeepingHisWord.com.   In the interest of investigating all channels of information available to me, I meandered over right away.  The first article at the top of the page (February 11, 2012) was titled: Reducing Our Dependence On Foreign Oil.  According to a quote in the banner section, then President-elect Barack Obama was committed to reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

To show that Obama has kept his promise, the short article references research published this week indicating that foreign oil imports have fallen by an average of 1.1 million barrels a day, and are now at their lowest levels in 16 years.  They even reference a site that has this cool graphic:

It just happens that this very lovely graph illustrating our President’s policies profound impact on the importation of crude oil can be found on the site: BarackObama.com.

So, I became curious.  Because the article the Obama camp gave me did not have many other facts or data, I hopped on over to the EIA website and found that I could retrieve a spreadsheet with the historical prices of U.S. gasoline.     Let’s plot that just for fun, okay?  I used the spreadsheet provided by EIA, and plotted the overall average gas price for the entire country for regular gasoline.

Some observations on this plot.  The red line shows when Obama took office.  Gas prices stayed below $2.00 per gallon for a decade leading up to mid 2005 (Katrina).  We all remember the pain as the gas prices rose dramatically, peaking over $4.00 per gallon (100%  rise) in late 2008.

That plummet in gas prices came at the same time the economy crashed.  Remember, the whole world economy was affected, not just ours.  When that bubble burst, world demand for oil crashed, thus causing a plummet in oil price and a corresponding plummet in gas prices here.   After the inauguration, the price again climbed steadily and as of this writing is projected to be over $4.00 again in the spring.

Now, bear with me as I superimpose the average monthly importation of oil over this gasoline price plot.

The green highlight shows that our demand for oil remained fairly steady from 2003 until a couple of months before our economy crashed in October 2008.  At that point, oil imports started falling off (when gas was peaking around $4).   THIS is the evidence our administration is touting as “lessening our imports.”   Yes, our imports fell by nearly 5% (yep, only 5%), which I argue is not due to GOOD policy.  No, I argue it is due to a BAD economy and high gas prices.

Again, just for funsies, I superimposed the unemployment rate (range 3.9% -10.1%) over the graph.  When our economy crashed, unemployment steadily climbed at the same time our importation of oil declined.  Not a coincidence.

So, did Obama keep his promise of reducing our dependence on foreign oil?   Yes, but not really in a good way, and only by accident.   The Democrat policies have kept the gas prices high, unemployment very high, and the combination equals less people able to buy as much gas as they used to, and therefore, we just don’t need quite as much oil.    Reduction in foreign imports, indeed.

So, remember this, when someone from the Truth Team starts telling you all about the promises Dear Leader has kept.

The raw data I use about gas and oil consumption is found on the U.S. Energy Information Administration website (www.eia.gov), also referenced in Obama’s graphs.  The unemployment figures come from the U.S. Department of Labor.