We
can only compete directly for 7 percent of the world’s available
reserves while about 75 percent is completely controlled by national
oil companies and is not accessible."
Another
theme of the day’s testimony was that, if anyone is “gouging” consumers
through the high price of gasoline, it is federal and state
governments, not American oil companies. On the average, 15% percent of
the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4%
represents oil company profits. These figures were repeated
several times, but, strangely, not a single Democratic Senator proposed
relieving consumers’ anxieties about gas prices by reducing taxes.
The
last theme that was sounded repeatedly was [the Democratically
controlled] Congress’s responsibility for the fact that American
companies have access to so little petroleum. Shell’s John Hofmeister
explained, eloquently:
While
all oil-importing nations buy oil at global prices, some, notably India
and China, subsidize the cost of oil products to their nation’s
consumers, feeding the demand for more oil despite record prices. They
do this to speed economic growth and to ensure a competitive advantage
relative to other nations.
Meanwhile,
in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been
limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from
exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American
people.
Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.
According
to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal
lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions
applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer
continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer
continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental
shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on
on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and
Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the
resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern
Gulf of Mexico.
The Argonne National Laboratory did a
report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that
halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to
review it. It is a long list. If I may, I offer it today if you would
like to include it in the record.
When many of these
policies were implemented, oil was selling in the single digits, not
the triple digits we see now. The cumulative effect of these policies
has been to discourage U.S. investment and send U.S. companies outside
the United States to produce new supplies.
As a result, U.S. production has declined so much that nearly 60 percent of daily consumption comes from foreign sources."
There
you have it. We are dependent because our own Democratic Congress is
keeping us from analyzing, exploring, drilling and refining our own
oil. To add insult to injury it is actually the Democratic Congress
that is "gouging us" through high gasoline taxes.
Markets and prices are driven by supply and demand. They are also driven by future estimates of supply and demand.
For
American oil companies the Democratic Congress has tied both their
hands behind their backs. What would happen to oil prices if we just
allowed our own oil companies to analyze potential resources in the
Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico? What if we discovered huge
reserves? What if we begin to explore and drill? What if we produced
more of our own oil?
We would stop the addiction to foreign oil. Gasoline and energy prices would plummet.
What do you think?