IER Distinguished Senior Fellow Mary Hutzler testified today before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, where she described the vast energy resource wealth of the United States and identified burdensome administrative and regulatory actions that inhibit development and economic growth. The transcript of her remarks follow:<\/p>\n
Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Rush, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to participate in today\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n
I am Mary Hutzler, senior fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, a non-profit think tank that conducts research and analysis concerning global energy issues.<\/p>\n
In the last several years, IER has monitored closely the boom in energy production that\u00a0is\u00a0taking\u00a0place in the United States \u2013 primarily on\u00a0private andstate lands.<\/p>\n
IER also\u00a0tracks\u00a0regulations and policies that limitthe\u00a0potential to reduce our dependence on overseas oil regimes,\u00a0hinder our ability to\u00a0generate much-needed revenues, and\u00a0harm efforts to\u00a0foster an energy-based economic recovery that creates jobs.<\/p>\n
Just this morning,\u00a0we\u00a0released\u00a0a\u00a0study on the economic effect of immediately opening federal lands onshore and offshore to energy production.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0our\u00a0analysis, immediately opening federal\u00a0lands that are currently unavailable\u00a0because of statutory or administrative action would\u00a0result in an additional\u00a0$14.4\u00a0trillion\u00a0to\u00a0o
In light of the recent\u00a0Commerce\u00a0Department\u00a0rep
But today\u2019s hearing is focused primarily on the resource availability and the potential under our feet and off our shores to achieve domestic energy goals almost unthinkable just a few years ago.<\/p>\n
In fact,\u00a0for\u00a0decades\u00a0Americans were\u00a0asking the question, \u201cWhere will we get the energy we need to heat our homes, fuel our cars, and\u00a0meet the demands of a strong, 21st\u00a0century\u00a0economy?\u201d<\/p>\n
Due to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies,\u00a0we no longer question WHETHER we have\u00a0the resources.<\/p>\n
Rather,\u00a0the\u00a0question\u00a0is\u00a0
The myth of energy scarcity that has plagued our national conversation\u00a0has\u00a0been exposed. \u00a0Just in the last year, the\u00a0misleading refrain\u00a0that\u00a0the U.\u00a0S.only possesses 2 percent of the world\u2019s oil reserves has\u00a0been\u00a0replaced by\u00a0the\u00a0mounting evidence of our nation\u2019s resource abundance.<\/p>\n
IER\u00a0highlighted\u00a0this\u00a0in an\u00a0inventory of\u00a0North America\u2019s energy resources. \u00a0Using\u00a0government information, we\u00a0catalogued\u00a0the vast resources of the United States and\u00a0our\u00a0neighbors.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has\u00a0enough\u00a0resources to provide reliable and affordable energy for centuries to come. The question is whether the federal government will permit us to access\u00a0these\u00a0abundant\u00a0resource
We can\u00a0now unlock\u00a0our\u00a0shale resources\u00a0using technology proven\u00a0for more than 60 years in over one million wells without a single confirmed case of contamination.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, while our use of fossil energy has dramatically increased over the last 50 years, our air quality has improved. \u00a0According to the EPA, emissions from the six criteria pollutants under the Clean Air Act have decreased 68 percent since 1970\u00a0even though our energy consumption has increased by 45 percent.<\/p>\n
There are, however,\u00a0troubling trends in policy thatthreaten to\u00a0restrict access to our\u00a0vast\u00a0energyresources, which could make\u00a0American-made energy\u00a0less\u00a0available,\u00a0afforda
Oil shale development has all but stopped because administration policy withdrew research andmuch-needed\u00a0leasing activity that could\u00a0bring these resources to market.<\/p>\n
Increased oil sands imports from our northern neighbor, Canada, could\u00a0free the U.S. from energy dependence on foreign countries\u00a0where American workers face increasing threats of kidnapping by terrorists and even murder.<\/p>\n
But, we need the transportation infrastructure to get it here, and the energy security that this infrastructure would provide.<\/p>\n
Onshore development on federal lands \u2013 which\u00a0is roughly estimated at 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate \u2013\u00a0is\u00a0extremely limited and is increasingly so. In 2009,\u00a0for example,\u00a0the current administration leased fewer onshore acres for energy development than in any\u00a0preceding\u00a0year on record.<\/p>\n
Offshore development on 1.76 billion acres of mineral lands has suffered from a de-facto administration embargo, with lease plans cancelled, moratoria imposed, and cumbersome regulatory activity that serve to discourageexploration.<\/p>\n
Today,\u00a0permitting delays by federal regulators have driven the wait to more than 300 days beforedrilling can begin on federal lands, about twice as long as it took in 2005. \u00a0By contrast, states like North Dakota are now turning permits in 10 days;Ohio, 14 days;\u00a0Colorado,\u00a027 days.<\/p>\n
Alaska\u2019s energy resources lie dormant\u00a0even thoughits pipeline has enough unused capacity to take twice the daily production of North Dakota.<\/p>\n
Decisions made today about access to energy resources affect energy production for years and decades to come. The more areas accessible to energy production today\u00a0increases\u00a0the\u00a0likelihood of domestic production\u00a0tomorrow,\u00a0and with it,increased jobs, government revenues, and economic activity.<\/p>\n
###<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IER Distinguished Senior Fellow Mary Hutzler testified today before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, where she described the vast energy resource wealth of the United States and identified burdensome administrative and regulatory actions that inhibit development and economic growth. The transcript of her remarks follow: Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Rush, and Members of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}