Exploring All of America's Energy Resources

Statement

Exploring All of America's Energy Resources

The rising cost of energy is hitting all Americans - whether you live on the coast or in the heart of the country, in a big city or a small family farm. Gas prices continue to soar at or near all-time highs, food costs are rising due to increasing transportation and production overhead, and - keeping winter in mind - home heating costs could hit a record.

High energy costs have an especially negative impact on agriculture dependent economies, like Nebraska's - high cost of fuel, of maintaining equipment, and simply making ends meet at the end of the month.

As a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Committee on Agriculture I know how the high cost of fuel and energy hits agriculture producers and how that cost hits consumers down the line.

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in a tour of locations in Colorado and Alaska with House Republican Leader John Boehner and nine of my colleagues to look at some of the solutions to the problems facing America's energy future.

Our first stop was to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. Established in 1974, NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary lab for research and development of renewable energy technology.

NREL is working on emerging energy technologies to reduce our nation's costly and increasingly dangerous dependence on foreign sources of energy. We were able to glimpse the next generation of American energy technology, including a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, wind to hydrogen technologies, an overview of NREL's biomass technologies, and a solar hybrid electric vehicle.

We then traveled to Alaska's remote North Slope, where we had the opportunity to learn first-hand about both current and emerging oil and gas production technologies.

We were given an aerial tour of Alpine Field, where oil and gas production is underway, and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska - which is currently being explored for potential oil production. We saw offshore oil production facilities in the Arctic Ocean and received an overview of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve's (ANWR) "10-02 Area," which was designated by President Carter and Congress nearly 30 years ago for energy exploration and production. To date, none of this area has been tapped for energy production.

ANWR, in total, consists of nearly 19 million acres. But the actual "footprint" of where production would occur is just 2,000 acres. Put it this way, that is the size of a postage stamp on a football field.

Officials in the North Slope also underscored the possibility for energy production and wildlife protection to co-exist in the region - in large part because it already is occurring. Native caribou, polar bears, and other animals are living in or near the North Slope's production facilities with no disturbance to either their activities or energy production. The actual 10-02 Area where exploration would occur is a tree-less plain, with very little animal life.

Moreover, the 10-02 Area's proximity to the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline means supplies can reach the continental U.S. with greater speed and ease once production is underway.

Within 10 years, at its current rate of decline in transporting oil supplies, the pipeline will be processing fewer than 300,000 barrels of oil per day, compared to nearly 720,000 barrels today. Experts agree at that level - without adding new supplies of oil - the pipeline could not continue to operate, shutting down all production in the North Slope and increasing our reliance on foreign sources of energy.

To secure our nation's energy future, it's time for both parties in Washington to begin working together to increase environmentally-safe production of all forms of American energy - from the next generation technologies being developed at NREL, exploration of American resources in ANWR, biofuels, hydrogen, wind, nuclear, solar or hydropower. We must take an "all of the above" approach if we don't want to wind up in the same situation ten years from now.

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