Americans have every right to be disturbed over the cost of energy from gasoline to natural gas.  Rising energy costs are putting increasing pressure on our everyday finances and will threaten the health of our economy if they continue to rise.  

Free enterprise and open markets are the cornerstone of our nation.  However, we must protect the public from efforts to manipulate the market.  Cartels like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that limit the available supply to our country distort the laws of supply and demand.

The eleven OPEC countries-Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela-possess 885 billion barrels of known oil reserves.  On the other hand, non-OPEC countries have 393 billion barrels.  Even though non-OPEC countries possess less than half the crude oil reserves, these countries actually produce more than OPEC countries.

Just as the warning signs appeared long ago that the New Orleans levee system would not stand up to more than a category 3 hurricane, we cannot afford to ignore the fact that we are at risk as a free nation if we continue our reliance on foreign sources of oil.  Today, the U.S. imports 58% of the oil we use and that percentage is increasing every year. 

The United States possesses less than 2% of the world's known oil reserves, yet we consume more than 25% of the world's oil.  Based on today's global consumption, OPEC alone has enough oil to last the world 75 more years.  These statistics expose a very troubling vulnerability for the future of the United States. 

The recently passed National Energy Policy Act creates incentives for consumers to drive hybrid electric and alternative fueled vehicles and encourages investors, builders, and industry to invest in renewable energy, but even this sweeping legislation does not go far enough. 

We cannot delay.  The United States of America must be aggressive with oil producers in the short term and take decisive action for the future.  The President and the Congress have already opened the Strategic Oil Reserve to make more oil available, especially in the southeastern U.S.  We have ordered large quantities of oil from Europe and tough negotiations must be held with the OPEC countries to increase supplies.  All these efforts should bring retail gas prices back down in the short term. 

Our long term challenges are even more important.  The President and the Congress must launch a Manhattan Project-styled program to deploy new technologies like solid-oxide fuel cells and hydrogen propulsion vehicles to create transportation systems that are not so reliant on foreign oil.  The transportation sector uses the majority of our imported oil so we must use American ingenuity, our research institutions, and our free enterprise system to create an expert industry of alternative fuel vehicles with a national goal of being 50% less dependant on foreign oil within the next 10 years. 

Carrying out this bold proposal will require extraordinary leadership.  Just as when President John F. Kennedy declared to the world that we would go to the moon in ten years, some said it could not be done.  In less than 10 years, we proved them wrong.  We can accomplish greatness when we commit ourselves to the task.  Now is the time for action.