For decades, politicians have promoted policies to achieve greater energy independence. Unfortunately, even after dozens of bills and federal initiatives, we continue to import nearly 60 percent of our nation’s total energy.
Year after year, we send hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of good-paying jobs overseas to feed our energy dependency. What is exasperating is that we find ourselves reliant upon foreign energy not because we lack adequate energy resources, but because our energy policies deliberately prohibit us from developing them.
Misguided and outdated federal energy policies place roadblocks that prevent U.S. energy producers from accessing some of their most promising homegrown resources. U.S. policies have, in effect, encouraged oil and gas providers to look beyond the U.S. borders to meet growing demands.
In reality, America has been blessed with enormous energy resources. If tapped, those resources could dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign sources, create good-paying jobs and return revenue to the federal treasury.
For example, conservative estimates indicate the outer continental shelf contains 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This means that at present levels of consumption, the OCS could allow us to replace all oil imports from the Persian Gulf for 130 years. Developing this single resource could also create an estimated 1.2 million long-term and well-paying jobs and generate more than $2.2 trillion in incremental tax receipts.
Another example: According to the Institute for Energy Research, “The United States has two trillion barrels of oil shale. This is more than 7 times the amount of crude oil reserves found in Saudi Arabia, and is enough to meet current U.S. demand for over 250 years.”
Others have pointed out that if full-scale production of U.S. oil shale resources began within five years, the U.S. could completely end its dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries by 2020.
Another step toward greater energy independence would be to allow energy production on a mere 2,000 acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. This simple action would eventually produce about 1 million barrels of oil per day, create approximately 730,000 jobs and generate more than $114 billion in royalty revenue plus $95 billion in corporate income tax revenue.
Other steps could also be taken. Unleashing our underutilized nuclear capacity and allowing for the free-market development of our abundant renewable resources such as wind, geothermal and solar will also provide a key role in our domestic energy future.
Ultimately, the development of new technology is this nation’s ticket to greater energy independence. New technologies are allowing us to better use our existing energy resources and in the years ahead will allow us to create entirely new sources of energy in ways earlier generations could never dream. The government has to get out of the way and allow human creativity to flourish, for that is the ultimate resource that will lead to true energy independence.
In the current Congress I, along with many of my Republican colleagues, introduced H.R. 2828, the American Energy Innovation Act, a comprehensive, forward-thinking proposal that will spur the best in American ingenuity and foster market-based approaches to America’s energy needs.
Our bill recognizes that our nation’s greatest inventions did not result from dictates from Washington, but rather through the ingenuity and innovation of enterprising individuals. It was not under mandate or government direction that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone or that led to Benjamin Franklin in discovering electricity.
Americans intuitively understand that the clean energy options of tomorrow will be found through the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of the American people, not through a Washington mandate. They also recognize that all the incentives in the world are useless if burdensome bureaucracy and litigation get in the way.
Energy is the lifeblood of our nation’s economy and underpins nearly every aspect of economic growth. By unlocking our domestic energy resources and allowing a prosperous free economy that encourages and rewards innovation, millions of new jobs will be created and new energy technologies will be developed.
The United States has the natural resources and the ingenuity necessary to become more energy-independent. All we lack today is the political will.
Republican Rep. Rob Bishop represents Utah’s 1st Congressional District.
