Politicians lament the fact that the United States imports about 66 percent of its oil — about 9,000 barrels every minute. Yet Congress has done little to remedy the situation. Instead, it has all too often erected barriers to domestic energy production.

Fortunately, the U.S. has vast quantities of oil in rocks, including oil shale, which can be converted into fuel. In fact, we have 75 percent of the world’s oil shale. There are an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in shale formations in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.

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