“Drill here, drill now” has taken hold with the American people. They understand instinctively that more drilling yields more resources. And that if the drilling takes place on American soil then Americans have better control over the prices they pay for gasoline and other forms of energy. Americans know the U.S. is 60% dependent on foreign sources of oil because we have restricted access to the Federal mineral estate and have allowed litigation by radical environmental groups and a cumbersome permitting process to unnecessarily delay the exploration and development of Federal oil and gas leases.
America has an enormous amount of energy resources if only the people had access to them. Resource assessments published since 2006 indicate that the U.S. has 147 billion barrels of oil and 872 TCF of natural gas within the Federal mineral estate. These resource assessments only evaluated our conventional oil and gas resources and not the Nation’s unconventional energy resources such as methane gas hydrates, oil shale, tar sands, or heavy oil.
It’s time for Congress to take the next step and let American ingenuity and tenacity loose to develop the Nation’s energy resources. After all, it was Americans who birthed and built the oil and gas industry which has benefited Nations around the world, improved our standard of living and helped us become the most prosperous Nation on Earth.
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