What Congress could do to lower energy prices

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison:

President Reagan said, "There are no easy answers, but there are simple ones." This principle applies to America's energy woes. Since January 2007, the price of a gallon of gasoline has soared from $2.33 to a record $4.04. Over the next two decades, global demand for oil is expected to rise by 50 percent. Further price escalation is inevitable.

When confronted by these facts, the energy solution is simple. We need more energy! We should be increasing our production of oil, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power — and those resources should come from America, instead of foreign dictatorships.

One of the best-kept secrets in politics today is that America is one of the world's richest energy nations and is capable of achieving energy independence.

Our most valuable untapped resource is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, which is estimated to contain 10.4 billion barrels of oil. This remote frozen tundra could be drilled with minimal impact on surrounding life. ANWR is the size of South Carolina and the area drilled would be roughly the size of Dallas/Love Field Airport.

In 1995, the Republican Congress passed legislation to open ANWR for energy production. But President Clinton vetoed our bill. If he had signed it, America would now be producing an additional 1 million barrels a day, almost enough oil to replace all of our daily imports from Saudi Arabia.

Beyond ANWR, federal law prevents oil and gas production in the deep waters off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. These areas, along with a section of the Gulf of Mexico, could contain as much as 115 billion barrels of oil — greater than Venezuela's current reserves — and 565 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — greater than the combined reserves of Iraq, China, Yemen, Oman, Nigeria and Venezuela.

Federal laws also prevent us from exploiting one trillion barrels of shale oil in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah — an amazing amount that is three times what Saudi Arabia has in reserve.

In May, I joined 18 other Senate Republicans to introduce the American Energy Production Act of 2008. Our bill would remove unnecessary government barriers to domestic energy production and allow us to tap our vast resources with environmental safeguards. This should be bolstered with an energy portfolio that includes renewable and alternative sources such as solar, wind and nuclear power.

My Democratic colleagues have a starkly different approach to the energy crisis: It is one that creates no new energy. Their answer is to tax energy production.

In 1980, Congress passed a "windfall profits tax" and the consequences were devastating. In the six years following that levy, domestic oil production dropped by 1.26 billion barrels and imports of foreign oil rose 13 percent. The disastrous tax was repealed in 1986. Rather than learn from that mistake, some in Congress would impose the same ineffective tax on the oil industry today.

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The Democrat energy plan makes no sense. They usually argue that it would take seven to 10 years to get the new fields in production, but omit the fact that its been 13 years since Clinton vetoed ANWR. They also omit the fact that their solutions involving unproven technology will take even longer.

What Democrats really want is to punish us with higher prices so that their high cost alternatives will be more acceptable. One thing should be clear in the current environment. We cannot lower prices with greater conservation, because the world wide demand is growing faster than anyone can conserve.