Buy American... Energy

“Calls to buy American used to be a staple of keeping our U.S. manufacturing sector strong, but you don’t hear those calls so much anymore.  As we work to build the part of our American economy that makes things, we have another unique opportunity to buy American: energy.

From using more domestic resources to innovating in an energy-independent future, we have a good start on the technologies that will achieve energy security, economic security and national security.                

But as long as crucial American resources remain off-limits to production, we are turning down the stability that accompanies home-grown energy production as well as the jobs that come with it.

Despite long struggles to encourage more drilling along our coasts for offshore oil and natural gas, those means of production are not yet operating.  Despite new technologies that minimize the footprint of exploratory drilling, oil reserves in Alaska still slumber under a million square miles of unbroken snow and ice.  Despite the exciting new discovery of a huge deposit of natural gas in Pennsylvania and southern New York, some in Washington, DC are rushing legislation to make sure those reserves stay in the ground and off the market.

Other countries are being much more aggressive.  China, for instance, is pursuing energy relationships with African nations, helping to jump-start production that can be exported to Asia.

If Americans are looking for an energy-rich nation to put into production on behalf of our industrial economy and family budgets, we should look within our own borders.  America contains 28 percent of the world’s coal reserves – the most in the world.  Russia is second in the world with 19 percent of the world’s coal reserves.  On natural gas the story is much the same.  Adding up all the energy reserves of our own country and putting them in terms of barrels of oil, we have more than 1.3 trillion barrels of energy resources in the U.S.  Even more impressive, 87 percent of those reserves are untapped.

By comparison, China holds less than one-third of the energy reserves held by the U.S.  So does Saudi Arabia which has plenty of oil, of course, but no significant sources of coal or natural gas.  And America holds ten times the volume of natural resources of countries like Brazil and Nigeria.  American energy is a competitive advantage, if we use it properly.

The policy challenge is how to recover the energy and put it to the best uses possible – insulating families and businesses from price shocks and motivating the American manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

The complete picture of American energy reserves shows that recoverable oil in the U.S., along with other resources and reserves, puts us in an excellent position if we work to recover those resources.  We have to drill, pump, mine and innovate to keep our economy moving towards a better energy future.  Instituting policies like Cap-and-Trade will only serve to slow that process and penalize the same energy-intense sectors of our economy on which we rely for stable growth and sure jobs.

Some of that growth and those jobs will come from innovations in American energy, too.  Renewables like biofuels, solar power and wind energy are sure to be growth areas in America’s energy portfolio.  Institutions like Missouri Science and Technology are leading the way today, and their progress will create more opportunities to invest in American energy tomorrow.  This crucial balance between the tried-and-true and the exciting-and-new will secure our economy and our nation in a competitive energy age.”