Tragically, America sends over $700 billion every year to foreign countries – mostly in the Middle East – for our oil needs. Few people realize that just over 20 years ago, in 1985, 75 percent of the crude oil used in the United States refineries came from American oil fields – and only 25 percent came from abroad. Today, 70 percent comes from foreign sources, and only 30 percent is from domestic sources.
That is a shocking and dramatic turn of events, but it did not happen overnight. So, whose policies are truly at fault for our current energy crisis, and what should be done to rectify the situation? Review the facts:
-- 1984: Reagan recommended that we drill in ANWR and offshore, but a filibuster by Senate Democrats kept the measure from coming to a vote.*
-- 1995: The new Republican majority prepared to take up the battle again, and included a provision for ANWR in the federal budget. President Clinton, a Democrat, vetoed the entire budget and expressed his intention to veto any other bill that would open ANWR to drilling.
-- 1998: The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there was significant oil in ANWR, mostly in the western part of the "1002" area. Estimates ranged from 5.7 to 16 billion barrels.
-- 2000: George W. Bush pushed to perform exploratory drilling for oil and gas in and around the refuge. The Republicans in the House of Representatives voted in mid-2000 to allow drilling. In April of 2002, Democrats in the Senate rejected it.
-- 2005: The Republican-controlled House of Representatives again approved drilling but the House-Senate Conference Committee later removed the provision.
-- 2005: The Republican-controlled Senate passed Arctic Refuge drilling as a part of the federal budget resolution for fiscal year 2006. The provision was removed due to Democrats in the House of Representatives who signed a letter promising they would oppose any version of the budget that had Arctic Refuge drilling in it.
-- 2005: Republican Ted Stevens attached an Arctic Refuge drilling amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill. A group of Democratic senators led a successful filibuster of the bill on Dec. 21, 2005, and the language was subsequently removed from the bill.
-- 2008: President Bush pressed Congress to reverse the ban on offshore drilling in ANWR, in addition to approving the extraction of oil from shale on lands owned by the federal government. Congress has done nothing.
We must not allow another year, or even another month, to pass before Congress acts decisively to unrestrict thousands of acres of onshore and offshore resources for oil exploration. Based on numerous scientific studies, we already know there are billions of barrels of oil that can be tapped for America’s use, if only Congress would act.
* The chronology above was recently compiled and published by Dr. James Edwards, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy for President Reagan.
