President Obama used his State of the Union address to launch a re-election campaign that will emphasize mainstream energy policies promoting both fossil fuels and renewable sources as part of a collective cure to the nation's economic ills.

In what could be his final January address to Congress, Obama promised to expand the production of oil and natural gas from shale deposits, while vowing to continue making clean energy investments despite Republican criticism about its cost.

He also appealed to a deeply divided Congress to extend tax breaks to wind and solar energy companies and to pass legislation that rewards industrial energy efficiency.

"This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy - a strategy that's cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs," Obama said, triggering prolonged cheers. "The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy."

The speech was also aimed at undercutting months of criticism by Republican lawmakers that Obama's policies on oil drilling are weakening employment. In it, Obama celebrated increased oil and gas production under his administration and announced plans to expand access to 75 percent of the nation's potential offshore oil and gas sites.

"Right now, American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years. That's right -- eight years," Obama said. "Not only that, last year we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years."

The drilling plan recalled some of Obama's past moves that angered environmentalists. Three weeks before BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the president announced plans to expand offshore drilling.

Climate 'not a political winner'

Yet Republican lawmakers and their allies say Obama is taking undeserved credit for the domestic climb of crude. Most of the expansion has occurred on private land, particularly in North Dakota, rather than the vast public areas that his critics are clamoring to explore.

"The president's trying to take credit for work he had nothing to do with, while simultaneously trying to avoid blame for his own anti-energy policies," Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.

Obama's congressional requests around clean energy could land in the same place as his efforts to prod lawmakers last year to pass a clean energy standard: nowhere. He jabbed his audience last night for failing to debate the idea of requiring utilities to use a minimum amount of renewable energy, and announced that his administration will open public lands for the production of enough renewable energy to power 3 million homes by year's end. He also said the U.S. Navy will purchase 1 gigawatt of clean power.

"Some technologies don't pan out. Some companies fail," Obama said, referring to the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. "But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here."

"We have subsidized oil companies for a century," he added. "That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs."

President Obama

In his address last year, the president never mentioned climate change. He glanced by it last night, admitting that the divisions in Congress "may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change."

That is perhaps disappointing to some advocates who had hoped he would provide a strong counterpoint to Republican presidential hopefuls who have rejected the scientific consensus around rising temperatures.

"It's not a political winner right now," Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University, said of environmental issues. He drew a distinction between Obama's 2008 campaign, which promoted aggressive steps to confront rising temperatures, and his campaign today. "The broader agenda he had in 2008 is not what voters want right now."

Strong offense needed

But Obama has no choice but to drive the discussion on climate policies -- like clean energy, emission reductions and climate science, says Roger Ballentine, the former chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force under the Clinton administration.

He wants to see the White House go "strongly on the offensive" to draw a positive picture of clean energy investments and how it could infuse the nation's manufacturing sector with new activity. Last night's speech might mark a turning point.

"For the last year, they've just been reacting," Ballentine said. "These are hardhat jobs. This is reconstruction. This is rebuilding clean energy infrastructure. That's how you deal with climate change."

But there was no full-throated defense of the science last night, an omission that some saw as a victory.

"President Obama has clearly received the message that his global warming agenda is gone, dead, done with the American people -- that's why he was touting oil and natural gas so much in his State of the Union address," Sen. James Inhoff (R-Okla.) said in a statement.

Others sketched Obama's positions into the shape of liberal social issues overseen by a "big and bossy" federal government, as described by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who provided the Republican response to Obama's speech.

"The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy," Daniels said.

The pipeline that Daniels referred to promises to be a centerpiece of the GOP strategy to unseat Obama. Last week, the president temporarily rejected the Keystone XL project, which would carry Canadian oil sands crude to the Gulf of Mexico.

That pleased environmentalists -- and also provided a potent line of attack for Republicans who are using it to counter Obama's assertions that he supports growth in all energy sources to revive the economy.

Reporter Julia Pyper contributed.