Weekly Column

    Current gasoline prices makes exploring for new sources of domestic oil more necessary than ever for our national security and economic competitiveness. Last week the House passed the America-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act. This bill authorizes oil and gas exploration and production in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and offers the opportunity to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil by expanding our domestic energy supply and stimulating our economy.

     Opening up ANWR, according to the mean estimate, would make available 10.4 billion barrels of oil for domestic consumption. That's more than the proven reserves in all of Texas. The resulting economic activity will create as many as 250,000 new jobs. As an additional benefit, royalties and corporate taxes in the amount of $111 billion would flow to the federal government over 30 years, a modest but real improvement in our nation's budget picture. I had the opportunity to speak on the House floor regarding the America-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act. I countered two arguments I always here against exploration in ANWR--it hurts the environment and it doesn't completely solve our energy crisis.

      Exploring in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge will increase our vital domestic supplies without causing damage to the environment. Twenty first century technology has made it easier than ever to harvest the vast resources available with minimal impact on the environment. Environmental protections in the bill are the strictest ever applied to a federal energy project, using the most sophisticated technology available. Stringent environmental protections include requiring that the Department of the Interior establish regulations to ensure that drilling will have no significant adverse effect on fish and wildlife and their habitat.

    True environmentalists think globally not nationally. And this bill offers us a choice. We can have more production occur here, where it is done under the most stringent environmental regulations in the world using the most sophisticated technology, or we can have more production done overseas, where in many cases, far weaker environmental regulations prevail.

     The second argument although true, is not a good excuse to keep ANWR closed to exploration. It is true--opening ANWR will not solve all of our nation's energy problems. But, there is no single solution for all of our energy problems. We should no more reject ANWR, just because it fails to solve all of our energy problems, than we should reject investing in future promising sources of energy that may be many years away from fruition. Likewise, we should not reject efforts at conservation just because this too can only solve part of the problem instead of all of it. The energy crisis is not a one size fits all problem. To become energy independent we will have to be creative and implement a comprehensive, multi-tiered solution.