Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich delivered a speech Saturday at the Pa Leadership Conference that focused on American energy independence created by drilling for oil and gas in areas like the Marcellus Shale rich region of western Pennsylvania.

The annual meeting of Pa. conservatives took place just across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, where Gingrich was born and lived until age 10.

The former Speaker of the House, who limps into Pennsylvania in a distant third to Romney and Santorum in the delegate count, spent little time attacking the two front-runners on their policy. He did, however, use Santorum’s record in the Senate as a stark contrast to his own success of balancing the budget four years in a row, while Speaker of the House.

Gingrich pointed to a 700 million dollar deficit and the “bridge to nowhere” as some of the lowlights of a Santorum tenure that “set the stage in 2006 for the worst Republican defeat since Watergate.”

The rest of his speech was dedicated to bolstering his assertion that he is the only candidate that can defeat Obama in what Gingrich calls “the most important election of our lifetime.”

“One of the keys to successful conservatism is to pick fights that are right principle, but that are also the right solution,” said Gingrich.

For Gingrich, the right fight is in energy policy, calling energy “the great opportunity for conservatives to demolish the left in election.” In the past few weeks, his campaign has boiled down to one promise: $2.50 per gallon gasoline.

He dismissed claims by the “elite media” – including this thorough study by the Associated Press – that American oil production has no correlation to gas prices (let alone presidential actions).

While lampooning the Obama administration taking credit for advances in U.S based drilling as the “height of hypocrisy,” Gingrich made reference to several alternative energy solutions provided by Obama, including government subsidization directed towards the production of the electric Chevy Volt and the use of algae to create petroleum products. The crowd roared with laughter, while Gingrich described the estimated 10-year wait before algae would be able to be commercially produced “at $140-to-$800 dollars a barrel.”

“You could argue that the Obama solution is walk for a decade and the algae will be ready,” said Gingrich delivering the punch line.

The former Speaker of the House presented the increase of both offshore and onshore drilling as casting a wide net of benefits for the American economy, from lowering gas prices at the pump, to solving problems in foreign affairs.

To illustrate his point, Gingrich cited Iran threatening to block access to the important oil route of the Strait of Hormuz, in retaliation to economic sanctions being placed upon them. The long run solution to this problem, said Gingrich, lies in America’s ability to independently produce all their petroleum needs.

“So we can say to the Europeans, the Chinese, the Indians and the Japanese, you have a problem… because we produce enough oil, we actually don’t care.” said Gingrich to the loudest applause of the speech.

Finally, the question of the hour: who is the “elite media” Gingrich often decries? In a conversation with reporters after the speech, someone asked Gingrich. Reports Karen Langley of the Post-Gazette:

“Not  you guys,” the former House speaker said, to a small group that included reporters from the Associated Press, NPR and Capitolwire.

But really, which of us is it?

“I’ll give you a real simple test,” Gingrich said. “Do you automatically assume that Obama’s right? Chris Matthews wake up every morning saying I wonder what wonderful thing Obama’s going to say today. So if you wake up skeptical and wondering –”

He returned to an example from his speech this afternoon, when he made fun of President Obama for saying the country could replace some of its imported oil with gasoline and diesel derived from algae.

“If you think that’s weird, you’re not in the elite media,” he said. “If you think, gosh, that would be wonderful, if only we could have algae, then you’re probably in the elite media. I’ll let you define yourself.”