Of course, it’s a summer holiday week. So, this good news somehow slipped by most media critics of this president.

But the latest government figures just showed that in April the United States produced a new record amount of oil per day — a stunning 12.16 million barrels of oil every 24 hours.

That’s up another quarter-million barrels a day from March and the third straight monthly increase, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Of more significant interest, the oil production jump makes the United States the world’s largest producer of oil, ahead of the usual slippery suspects like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

How’s that for energy independence?

And how can presidential debaters turn that into a negative?

Fracking technology is the biggest reason for the production increases.

Also, the breakeven cost for developing new shale wells in Texas, for instance, has fallen $2 a barrel to a recent low of $50 per barrel. The Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas recently painted a rosy picture for continued growth of the onshore shale oil industry.

Energy groups and federal officials project U.S. crude oil output will exceed 13 million barrels a day by year’s end.

Texas remains the largest oil production state with nearly five million barrels per day, up 11,000 over March. April production offshore in the Gulf of Mexico jumped 77,000 barrels a day to 1.98 million.

The agency also boosted its March production figure to 11.92 million barrels a day.

A barrel contains about 42 gallons of oil, which produce 20 gallons of gasoline and another 11 gallons of ultra-low sulfur distillate fuel oil, mainly diesel and heating oil.

What about natural gas? Same deal. Monthly gross natural gas production (in the lower 48 states) also rose to a fresh new record high 100.27 billion cubic feet per day in April from the prior March high of 99.46 billion cubic feet.

Texas is also the largest natural gas-producing state. Production there grew 1.8 percent to a record high 26.83 billion cubic feet per day from 26.35 billion in March.

As the second largest gas-producing state, Pennsylvania (who knew?) held steady at 18.79 billion cubic feet a day.