Romney on U.S. Energy Independence

Romney Plan Would Make America An Energy Superpower

Posted 08/23/2012
IBD Editorial

Leadership: Mitt Romney has unveiled a market-based plan to achieve U.S. energy independence by 2020 and make America an energy superpower. It calls to mind just how stagnant our energy policy has been up until now.

Ever since the Arab oil embargo of 1973, presidential contenders have called for U.S. energy independence — and none, not one, has come close to achieving it. In part, that's because oil is a fungible commodity that responds to world prices.

All the same, the idea of the U.S. drilling for its own energy, creating 3 million high-paying jobs, putting historic technological innovations to work and ending our reliance on foreign petrotyrants is a desirable objective if the resources really are there.

Fact is, they are, and that's what's different this time.

Romney's call for energy independence, which includes an honest tallying of what's out there, may just be the energy-independence plan that succeeds.

According to a Romney campaign White Paper released Thursday, experts such as Citigroup, Raymond James and the Manhattan Institute all say that the U.S. could now indeed make itself energy self-reliant: "After more than three decades of falling oil production in the lower 48 states, the U.S. is now poised to sharply increase domestic oil production and sharply decrease its dependence on imported oil . .. Specifically, we are looking ... (at) actual oil independence by 2020."

All they require is leadership and some serious policies, which are there in abundance in the Romney plan.

Astonishingly, these opportunities for energy independence have been ignored for windmills and solar energy, even as a new energy revolution unfolds.

The fact is, in the last 10 years, more energy has become retrievable than ever thought possible, based on new discoveries, new technologies for extracting it, and new products and services for, yes, profiting from it.

The Green River formation in the U.S., with its 3 trillion barrels of shale oil, means the U.S. could be self-sufficient in energy for at least 200 years.

Alaska is another massive energy bonanza, as Gov. Sarah Palin told the world of the state's efforts to drill the frosty Chukchi Sea and a tiny slice of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Gulf of Mexico, still limited by President Obama's shutdown after the BP oil spill, is another source of energy independence. The waters off Virginia, North Carolina and California are also brimming with oil. Then there are the massive shale deposits and oil resources of Canada waiting only for a pipeline.

One very welcome element in Romney's plan would give states more leeway in deciding how energy resources on federal lands are developed.

While domestic private energy output has risen, energy restrictions on the federal government's vast land holdings, especially in the West, mean huge potential supplies of energy remain virtually untouched.

The Romney plan will prompt competition for energy development among the states eager to collect taxes and royalties. It may even entice shiftless, but energy-rich, California to get serious.

All it takes is leadership. After years of stagnation, the Romney plan provides it.