Securing America's Future Energy

Responsible Energy Production Can Improve U.S. Energy Security – New DOI Regulations Prevent That

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Leslie Hayward
Number: 202-461-2364

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) believes that the Department of Interior’s new regulations, announced Friday, to ban drilling in the Arctic undermines an important opportunity to strengthen U.S. energy security. SAFE supports expanding domestic oil production as critical to improving our country’s energy, economic and national security.

Oil is a global commodity that trades on an unfree market manipulated by OPEC and other national oil companies, posing an economic and national security risk to the United States. As advocated in SAFE’s National Strategy for Energy Security, the United States must take steps to strengthen our energy security by increasing our production of domestic resources, while lessening our overall reliance on petroleum. In this regard, the U.S. transportation sector represents our greatest challenge and vulnerability.

Earlier this year, SAFE urged the federal government to take a strategic approach to this challenge, safely opening energy production in the Arctic, Eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Atlantic, while using a portion of new revenues generated to launch an Energy Security Trust Fund. This Fund would be used to invest in research and development for technologies that boost competition in the transportation fuels market, which is today dominated by gasoline. As noted in SAFE’s National Strategy, “Investment in cutting-edge research and development can address critical energy security and related economic challenges, reducing oil intensity and increasing viable substitutes that expand fuel diversity and consumer choice.”

The Arctic holds a vast amount of untapped resources that our country can use for its economic and national security interests. Commercial access in the Arctic has been limited as a result of the complexity of operating safely in a remote and challenging region; however, advances in technology and reduced ice cover will allow for drilling there in an environmentally friendly manner. Moreover, from an environmental perspective, oil produced in the U.S. not only serves to protect our national interests, it also ensures the oil produced meets the strictest environmental standards in the world.

The National Strategy for Energy Security: The Innovation Revolution is available online on SAFE’s website.

About Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE)

Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) is a nonpartisan organization that aims to reduce America’s dependence on oil in order to bolster national security and strengthen the economy. SAFE advocates for expanded domestic production of U.S. oil and gas resources, continued improvements in fuel efficiency, and in the long-term, breaking oil’s stranglehold on the transportation sector through alternatives like natural gas for heavy-duty trucks and plug-in electric vehicles. In 2006, SAFE joined with General P.X. Kelley (Ret.), 28th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, and Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President, and CEO of FedEx Corporation, to form the Energy Security Leadership Council (ESLC), a group of business and former military leaders committed to reducing the United States’ dependence on oil. Today, the ESLC is co-chaired by Frederick W. Smith and General James T. Conway, 34th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

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