Drilling can ease energy woes

News
February 27, 2012
By U.S. Sen. John Cornyn
 
Last week, President Obama told us that drilling is not the answer to rising gas prices. It's a good thing he made those comments in Miami and not Midland. Texans are proud that our state remains the leading U.S. producer of oil and natural gas, and we know that America has only just begun to tap the potential of its vast resources. We also know that the single biggest obstacle to greater domestic energy production is the Obama administration.
 
Here are a few numbers the president didn't mention in Miami: Since his inauguration, U.S. gas prices have increased by 90 percent; and last year, according to the Associated Press, the average American household spent $4,155 on gasoline, which represented 8.4 percent of median family income, the largest portion in three decades.
 
President Obama says there is very little we can do about high gas prices in the short term. But that's not entirely true.
 
The administration could loosen access restrictions on federal lands and offshore drilling. It could end needless delays and issue more drilling permits. It could ditch Environmental Protection Agency plans to impose costly greenhouse-gas regulations that would threaten the existence of many refineries. And it could stop making abusive power grabs under the Clean Water Act.
 
Indeed, if the president is serious about looking "for every single area where we can make an impact" on gas prices, as he pledged in his Miami speech, he must reverse the regulatory overreach of the past three years. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that EPA alone "is moving forward with 31 major economic rules and 172 major policy rules" that affect our energy supply - "an unprecedented level of regulatory action."
 
Texans know this all too well. Our state provides more than a quarter of America's total refining capacity. Last month, I met with refinery workers in Port Arthur who expressed concern about the future of their livelihood. They were particularly upset that the Obama administration had rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, which would terminate in the Port Arthur region and allow our state to refine an extra 700,000 barrels of oil each day.
 
Meanwhile, many folks in West Texas are worried about a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to list the sand-dune lizard as an endangered species. Such a listing would threaten the jobs of nearly 27,000 Texans who work in the Permian Basin, which is home to more than one-fifth of the top 100 oil fields in America.
 
All across our state, Texans are being forced to make difficult sacrifices. Family budgets have been squeezed. Savings have been depleted. Trips have been canceled. And parents are working overtime to keep up with soaring transportation costs.
 
At a time of high unemployment, spiraling deficits and geopolitical unrest, misguided federal regulations are costing us private-sector jobs and public-sector revenue, contributing to greater U.S. spending on imported oil, and driving up prices at the pump. According to the Congressional Research Service, our country has more recoverable energy resources than Canada, China and Saudi Arabia combined. As American Enterprise Institute scholar Kenneth Green has noted, the Outer Continental Shelf of the U.S. alone contains "enough oil to fuel 85 million cars for 35 years." Yet more than 97 percent of that territory is not under lease.
 
Rather than demonizing oil and gas companies that collectively employ millions of hard-working Americans, while wagering more taxpayer dollars on boondoggles like Solyndra, the Obama administration should take its regulatory boot off the neck of our domestic energy producers.
 
Cornyn, a Republican, is the junior U.S. senator from Texas.