May 9 (Bloomberg) — Mitt Romney, campaigning amid oil rigs dotting the landscape in Colorado, said President Barack Obama’s policies have hurt U.S. energy output and that regulation of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas should be left to states.
“The president tries to take credit for the fact that oil production is up,” the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee told supporters against the backdrop of an oil rig outside Fort Lupton.
“I’d like to take credit for the fact that when I was governor, the Red Sox won the World Series,” he said, referring to the team’s 2004 title. “But neither one of those would be the case. It was not the president’s policies that led to oil production being up.”
Romney said that while oil and gas industry employment has grown during Obama’s presidency, wind-energy jobs have declined. He also criticized Obama’s January decision to reject a TransCanada Corp. proposal to build an oil pipeline through environmentally sensitive parts of Nebraska.
“We have energy resources in this country and we have to take advantage of them,” Romney said, adding that he would push for more oil drilling along the U.S. coastline. He said hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, should be “regulated at the state level.”
An Obama campaign spokeswoman defended the president’s record. “President Obama has aggressively pursued an all-of- the-above energy strategy,” Lis Smith said in a statement. He helped “expand domestic oil production, incentivize research and development for clean coal, nearly double the production of renewable energy, and encourage natural gas production.”
Falling Gasoline Prices
Complicating Romney’s line of attack is the recent decline in gasoline prices, reducing the energy issue’s political punch. Regular gasoline at the pump, averaged nationwide, fell 1.3 cents to $3.75 a gallon yesterday, according to AAA. Prices are down 18.6 cents since reaching a 2012 high of $3.936 on April 4.
Before Romney’s event, he was asked by a Denver television affiliate about his views on a civil union measure that failed in the Colorado legislature.
“When these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” he told KDVR-TV. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital-visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.”
Primary Victories
Romney’s appearance in Colorado came a day after he won primary victories in Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia that moved him closer to officially clinching his party’s nomination.
He now has more than 900 of the 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination, according to the Associated Press.
Though Obama carried Colorado on his way to winning the presidency in 2008, winning 54 percent of the vote, the state remains in play for both parties. Romney is seeking to blunt the push in the state from Democrats, who held their national convention in Denver four years ago and have courted Colorado’s growing Hispanic population.
With the nation’s fifth-fastest-population growth from 2010-11, Colorado needs to create a steady stream of jobs just to stay even with the influx of workers. Its largest employers include Molson Coors Brewing Co., which has a headquarters in Denver.
Jobless Rate
Colorado’s jobless rate in March was 7.8 percent, below the current national average of 8.1 percent and down from 9 percent in November 2010. It is still above the 6.6 percent recorded in January 2009, the month Obama took office.
How to deal with illegal immigrants is a pressing issue in the state. Hispanics in 2010 accounted for 21 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau.
The most recent nationwide Gallup daily tracking poll, completed May 7, shows Romney with 47 percent support and Obama backed by 44 percent. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.