Facts are stubborn things, it’s been said, and numbers, such as they are, often betray the annoying habit of speaking for themselves. No one knows this better than Interior secretary Ken Salazar, who earlier this month was made aware that his agency had earned itself the distinction of having leased fewer acres of onshore energy lands than any in modern history.

Now, in his defense, it should be noted the contest was not exactly a run-away: Back in 1989, scarcely one million acres (of the 650 million owned by the federal government) were put up for lease by the administration of George H. W. Bush, doubtless in response to the tragedy in Alaska involving the Exxon-Valdez in March of that year.

Twenty years later, the administration of Barack Obama has found a way to dip below that historical nadir – all the more impressive considering there’s no Exxon-Valdez to demagogue, no $10 oil to take for granted, and no measurable progress heretofore in converting billions of dollars in taxpayer (foreign and domestic) money into real jobs for real American workers.

The folks over at the Institute for Energy Research did all the leg work on this one – all the numbers, charts, and graphs you’ll need to fully appreciate just how poorly this Interior Department performed in 2009 relative to past years are available for download here. And we’d also commend to your attention a great white paper out of Denver written up by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (IPAMS).

As you’ll see, the numbers, such as they do, speak for themselves. And so does Secretary Salazar. Unfortunately, instead of admitting to the American people that his agency could have done a better job at leveraging America’s enormous energy potential into jobs and revenues for the American people, this is the slop we get instead:

“We believe that our oil and gas leasing program is robust … But you wouldn’t know it if you listened to the untruths coming out of” oil and gas industry groups.

Salazar said repeated attacks have “all the flavor and deception of election-year politics” … He added that companies’ shareholders do not want industry trade groups to behave like an arm of a political party and said companies should choose a better path, to engage constructively and honestly with federal agencies.

Get all that? It’s not HIS agency’s fault that fewer acres were leased in 2009 than in any year in recent history. It’s not HIS agency’s fault that less than one-tenth the amount of bonus bid receipts were netted from energy producers in 2009 than were collected in 2008. It’s not HIS agency’s fault that it decided to outright nullify existing, legal leases to 77,055 acres of energy-rich land in Utah. No. It’s industry’s fault. And the man’s recriminations don’t end there:

“But Salazar said the department has leased a significant number of properties and noted that there are “huge undeveloped oil and gas acreages” that are under lease but not producing oil and gas.

“Large parts of the public domain have been made available,” Salazar said. “Those places are not being developed, yet we continue to make more of our public domain available for oil and gas development.”

Ah, yes: The 68 million acres canard – the last redoubt of the shameless politician. By now, you know how it goes: Oil companies are squatting on millions of acres of unused land, representing billions of barrels of oil; they aren’t producing any of it, part of a worldwide conspiracy to drive up prices; and naturally, policymakers have an obligation to compel these bad-boy producers to produce – by threatening to take away their leases before they come due.  

Thankfully, the 68 million acres talking point – a favorite of Mr. Salazar, stretching all the way back to his service in the Senate – has been about as thoroughly discredited as a talking point can get. More on that here. But before we go, we have one simple request of Ken Salazar: Mr. Secretary, please don’t pee on our leg and tell us it’s industry’s fault. And stop trying to convince the American people that your agency hasn’t played a material role in denying billions of barrels of American energy from reaching the people who own it.

You’ve heard the argument before; by way of Mad Libs, it tends to go something like this: [Insert state] only has [insert number] billion barrels of oil available for production right now, which only represents [insert number] years of consumption at current rates. So therefore: We shouldn’t lift a finger to produce any of that energy, since it won’t make a dent in supply, price or in decreasing our dependence from hostile, foreign regimes.

It’s an argument that’s rendered completely asinine when the word “oil” is swapped out for any other commodity of value that exists today. Take gold. Could you imagine anyone with half a brain ever suggesting that, since lots of people use the stuff, we shouldn’t get all that excited about stumbling across a few bricks of bullion on our way to work?

Oil shouldn’t be any different: Like gold, it’s a commodity whose value exists (virtually) independent of the market. Sure, prices will go up and down, but oil is energy. And energy is the capacity to do work. And work? Well, work is the misery of the drinking class. But it also happens to be what makes modern civilization both modern and civil. Work makes it work.

But there’s another, more serious deficiency in the “there’s not enough to make a difference, so let’s call the whole thing off” argument. Consider how it’s applied to the state of Alaska. As Alaska governor Sean Parnell wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month:

Alaska’s OCS contains an estimated 27 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. That’s more than twice the amount of oil that has been produced on Alaska’s North Slope since the Trans Alaska Pipeline System went online in 1977. Counting its OCS reserves, Alaska likely has more than 30% of the nation’s recoverable oil and gas.

27 billion barrels of oil – a conservative estimate provided by our friends at the Interior Department, which, as we know, has a vested interest in minimizing to the fullest extent allowed by law the estimated amount of energy available (but forbidden) to the American people.

Now, you don’t need to be a geologist to understand the most basic point here: 27 billion barrels is a hell of a lot of oil. It’s more oil than 310 million Americans can possibly use over the course of nearly four consecutive years – and from just one source! But it’s precisely upon this argument in which opponents of responsible energy development love to sink their proverbial teeth.

And sometimes, those opponents emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Take for example the editorial that appeared right here in Alaska this week, not from the California-owned and energy-anathematic Anchorage Daily News, but from the student newspaper on the campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage:

So, if we divide 27,000,000,000 barrels of oil, by the 19,500,000 barrels we slurp down each day, that’s a grand total of 1,384.61 days, to be exact, or 3.79 years.

Oh. Well that doesn’t do much for our overall dependence on foreign oil problem. Maybe we should revise that claim to say, “Alaska can meet U.S. total energy needs for almost as long as it takes a college student entering as a freshman this year, to graduate and enter the job market as a productive member of an economy that is once again plagued by dependence on foreign oil.”

Yikes. Keep in mind that this blather is coming from the same university that published a landmark study in March 2009 which found that accessing some of the enormous energy resources that reside offshore Alaska could create 35,000 direct jobs for Alaskans, $72 billion in wages, and $6.6 billion in state revenue. Probably a good guess that the student editors of The Northern Light, UAA’s student newspaper, didn’t take the time to give that paper much of a look. Or that many of them even know from whence the funds for their annual Permanent Fund check come.

Lack of due diligence aside, the argument they’re making here is as intellectually dishonest as they come. Yes: 27 billion barrels of oil might only meet four years of U.S. demand, but guess what? Just because energy is produced in Alaska doesn’t mean that energy cannot or will not be produced anywhere else.

Amazing stuff, isn’t it – the idea that we can tap MORE THAN ONE energy resource, in MORE THAN ONE state, at the same time? You know what’s even more amazing? Energy production creates value and jobs up and down the delivery chain – and that’s true no matter where it’s produced, how it’s produced, or how much is produced. And one more thing: for every unit of energy we can produce up here in Alaska, that’s one less unit of energy we need to buy from foreign dictators.

It’s true! And hopefully, it’s a reality our best and brightest at UAA will stumble across as they try to avoid those bricks of gold on the way to their future place of employment.

Remember earlier this year when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. tossed out our nation’s existing five-year energy plan? The one governing the auctioning and sale of leases and the subsequent exploration and production of energy tied to those leases along America’s 1.76 billion acre outer continental shelf (OCS)? The one that not only iced out responsible energy exploration activities along Alaska’s OCS, but threatened to do the same in energy-rich areas in the Gulf of Mexico?

Late last night, the Court clarified its ruling to indicate that only Alaska’s OCS will be threatened by its capricious interpretation of the law – not the Gulf Coast’s. Here’s the AP’s take on the big news:

A federal appeals court ruling won’t stand in the way of new oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington clarified late Tuesday that its decision earlier this year to block some Bush-era drilling plans was meant to apply only to activity in Alaska, not the Gulf.

Uncertainty over the decision had raised questions about whether the Interior Department should move forward with a lease sale scheduled for Aug. 19 in some 18 million acres in the western Gulf near Texas. The Obama administration announced recently that it planned to hold the Gulf sale but acknowledged it might have to reverse course if the court directed it to.

Why did we create a site called What About Alaska? Consider this Exhibit A.