Tying Our Own Hands on Energy
Press Release
Tying Our Own Hands on Energy
Energy is not only critical for U.S. national security, economic well-being, and stability, but also important to the folks driving to work to provide for their families. For too long we have grown ever more dependent on unreliable foreign sources of energy. We have made it too difficult to build refineries and new power plants, and we have put much of the country off-limits to energy development.
Dependence on unreliable foreign sources .
U.S. consumes nearly 22% of the world's energy but produces less than 70% of what we use.
We import 60% of our total oil and around 16% of our natural gas.i
Annually, the U.S. consumes about 7.55 billion barrels of petroleum products and 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Our 2nd and 4th largest suppliers of petroleum are Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Tying our hands on energy .
Federal lands are estimated to contain 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 60% of these lands are closed to leasing making 62% of the oil and 41% of the gas inaccessible.
There are over 570 million acres in the Outer Continental Shelf that are off-limits to oil and gas leasing and development. The Minerals Management Service estimates this amounts to 17.84 billion barrels of oil and 76.47 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that we cannot produce.
Opening up ANWR could produce an estimated 780,000 barrels per day, over half of what we import per day from Saudi Arabia.iv
Regulations made it too difficult to build refineries - 301 operating in 1982, only 149 today.
No nuclear power plants have been ordered in the United States since 1978, and more than 100 reactors have been canceled, including all ordered after 1973.
The latest extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy is only one year.
More and more people recognize that conservation has it place, but until we produce more energy of all kinds here at home, we are only dealing with half the answer to our energy crisis. I have introduced H.R. 3089, the "No More Excuses Energy Act," that takes some common sense steps to responsibly increase domestic energy production.
H.R. 3089 will produce more energy at home by .
Creating a competitive leasing program to responsibly drill on federal lands in Alaska and removing the congressional moratoria on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.
Encouraging construction of new refineries by requiring the IRS to implement provisions from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, allowing tax exempt bonds to be used for construction, and making use of federal lands for new refineries.
Expanding electricity generation by encouraging investment into building new nuclear power plants and boosting alternative energy development through wind power by extending the PTC for ten years.
Offering a tax credit for CO2 captured for use in enhanced oil recovery. This will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also allow us to fully utilize our reserves.
There is no quick or easy fix to our energy problem, but we can start here at home.
Everyone understands supply and demand. In the past year, Congress has passed a bill to raise taxes on energy and to make production of domestic energy resources more expensive. Saudi Arabia has announced a hold on plans to further increase long-term production capacity from its vast oil fields, and unrest in Nigeria and other oil producing countries has shown how vulnerable supplies from those areas can be. In short, our own government and world politics are making supplies tight and artificially more expensive. We must unleash the creative power of Americans and unlock the energy resources we have here at home.
Source