Let's Encourage Energy Security - Not Discourage It
March 5, 2011
The recent events in the Middle East, combined with the administration's decision last year to ban oil and natural gas development in the Atlantic, Pacific and the eastern Gulf of Mexico for the next seven years heightens the awareness that the United States need for energy security. Not only must we put policies in place that encourage – not stymie – development of our domestic oil and natural gas resources, but we must also rely less on oil from nations who do not share our interests.
Fortunately, one of the world's foremost oil producing countries is our neighbor to the north. In recent years, Canada has become the largest supplier of oil to the United States. An estimated 2 million barrels of Canadian oil comes over the U.S. border every day, and about half of it is derived from Canada's abundant oil sands.
Several studies have enumerated the benefits of Canadian oil sands development:
- Cambridge Energy Research Associates (IHS CERA) projects Canada could provide about 40 percent of total U.S. imports in 2035.
- The Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. says Canadian oil-sands oil can offset "drastic production declines" occurring in the Mexican and Venezuelan oil fields, which traditionally have been important suppliers to the United States.
- The Canadian Energy Research Institute calculates that more than 342,000 new U.S. jobs could be created between 2011 and 2015 with the construction of industry facilities and Canadian purchases of U.S. goods and services.
Thousands of U.S. jobs already have been created to build the equipment used to produce oil from Canada's oil sands, and as CERI states above, hundreds of thousands of new jobs can be created. This is even more of a reason that our policymakers should establish policies that encourage U.S. energy and economic security.
The U.S. State Department will soon decide whether to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring more oil-sands oil into the United States. Now that the administration has closed the east and west coasts and a large swath of the Gulf to oil production, and the world is facing unrest in the Middle East, the construction of the pipeline is more important than ever.
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