Gas Prices and Energy
Tom Feeney is fighting to lower the price you pay at the pump and encourage a diverse portfolio of efficient and reliable sources including oil, natural gas, clean coal, nuclear, solar, and wind.
My energy vote fight reported here:
REPUBLICANS IN WASHINGTON MAKE A BOLD STAND FOR CONSUMERS DURING ENERGY CRISIS
U.S. Representative Tom Feeney
Energy Policy: Unleashing America's Potential to Produce Affordable and Reliable Energy
America's economy relies on abundant, available, and affordable energy. America has been blessed with a multitude of energy sources. If we release our talent and expertise, energy will be generated and result in comfort, mobility, and economic security.
Unfortunately, too many Inside the Beltway policymakers have embraced a failed 1970's command-and-control energy policy worthy of the former Soviet Union - mandates, higher taxes, wagering on yet-to-be-achieved technological breakthroughs, and choking off tried-and-true ways of producing reliable and inexpensive energy.
For months, I've said that if Washington continues following these failed policies and imposes European-style regulations on American energy markets, Americans will wind up paying European prices for gasoline that now range from $8.17-$9.51 per gallon.
Unfortunately, the recent spike in gasoline prices has affirmed that prediction's foresight. If we continue down this path, Washington will deliver higher gasoline, diesel, and electricity prices, unreliable supplies (such as electricity brownouts and gas lines), and a stagnant and shackled economy.
I will fight to unleash America's demonstrated ability to produce energy from abundant domestic sources. We must encourage a diverse portfolio of efficient and reliable sources including oil, natural gas, clean coal, nuclear, solar, and wind.
To do so, I support the following initiatives:
- Suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve so more domestic crude oil is available for refining.
- Encourage the Administration to grant waivers to local rules requiring the use of certain gasoline blends. Such waivers worked to keep fuel available in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. If more statutory authority is needed, Congress should immediately provide it.
- Reduce the number of gasoline blends required under local air quality rules so gasoline can be readily sent to areas of shortage.
- Waive environmental rules, as needed, regarding the formulation of gasoline and diesel fuels. These rules provide minimal improvements to air pollution but increase production costs and limit available supplies.
- Streamline the permitting process for refinery construction and expansion so more gasoline and diesel fuel refining capacity can be brought online.
- Open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Such authorization would send a strong signal that America is serious about developing its energy reserves.
- Allow environmentally responsible development of oil shale and tar sands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming so those alternative oil sources can be brought on line like the Canadians have developed their tar sands in Alberta.
- Allow environmentally responsible exploration of other domestic oil and natural gas reserves that are now off-limits (Rocky Mountain region, Alaska, offshore sites).
- Encourage the greater use of coal and nuclear energy to produce the electricity needed to air condition our homes and power our high technology economy.
While in the short term, we must depend on oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power, we should search for better future alternatives including alternate fuels and renewable sources. But we must be realistic about what these alternatives can and cannot realistically deliver.
* Improve energy efficiency so the same amount of energy does more.
* Ensure that America becomes the energy laboratory of the future through government and privately funded research. We possess the world's best technology and should apply it so we:
produce more oil and natural gas from existing wells;
find and develop new sources of oil and natural gas including non-traditional sources like tar sands, oil shale, coalbed methane, gas shale, and tight gas sands;
improve coal burning and nuclear energy technologies so environmental impacts are lessened;
produce more alternate fuels and renewable energy; and
improve energy efficiency.
America has faced this challenge before. After the disastrous energy policies of the 1970's, President Reagan came into office in 1981, scrapped that entire scheme, and unleashed the free market. The result was abundant energy supplies at inexpensive prices. The market - and not the government - delivered. Reagan's wisdom still remains true today: "The economic realities of the marketplace have done more to bring down the price of oil than all those years of frenetic government regulating."