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Sen. John McCain has also has used this inflated, incorrect figure.
And even the AP went after the McCain/Palin campaign for wildly exaggerating Alasaka's energy resources and impact on US markets:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin, Alaska's governor, say her state's production of one-fifth of the country's domestic energy supply is an important credential to put them in the White House. Their figure is inflated.
THE SPIN: Palin and the McCain campaign repeatedly have claimed her status as governor of an energy-producing state as a national security credential, most recently in the interview with ABC News anchor Charles Gibson. But Palin has been sloppy in how she states her argument that Alaska is a major player in the energy market.
In the interview, she claimed the state "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." McCain, too, has said Palin is "in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply." More recently, Palin modified her claim to "20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas."
THE FACTS: The statements are exaggerated, some wildly so, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
FactCheck.org also called out Palin on her evasive statements whenever she is asked about climate change:
When Gibson accused Palin of flip-flopping her stance on the causes of global warming, Palin denied her position had changed on whether humans are partially responsible. But that doesn't quite jibe with what she's said in the past...
The Energy plans of the McCain/Palin Campaign are dangerous, irresponsible and destructive. The heavy oil from Alberta is the crack cocaine of oil production. If it is allowed to expand, an expansion of oil shale extraction in the United States will followed. And then the rest of the world will follow our lead and the addiction to oil will only end when an accelerating climate crisis destroys life and civilization as we know it.
It doesn't have to be this way. And it won't be if we defeat John McCain in November.
Barack Obama is on record as being against the production of dirty oil from Alberta's tar sands:
Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would break America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil if he is elected U.S. president - and one of his first targets might well be Canada's oilsands.
A senior adviser to Obama's campaign told reporters it's an "open question" whether oil produced from northern Alberta's oilsands fits with the Democratic candidate's plan to shift the U.S. sharply away from consumption of carbon-intensive fossil fuels.
"If it turns out that those technologies don't advance . . . and the only way to produce those resources would be at a significant penalty to climate change, then we don't believe that those resources are going to be part of the long-term, are going to play a growing role in the long-term future," said Jason Grumet, Obama's senior energy adviser.
The remarks amount to a shot across the bow of Alberta's oilsands industry, which is planning to boost production from 1.3 million barrels a day to 3.5 million barrels over the next decade.
This is yet another reason we must work as hard as we can to defeat McCain and elect Barack Obama on November 4, 2008.
