American Solutions: The Peterson Amendment!

Report From Norway: Why They Don’t Have an Energy Crisis and We Do

by Newt Gingrich; Posted 06/10/2008 ET

The U.S. Was Once a Leader in Offshore Drilling. Today Norway Is!  

The United States was a leader in the creation of the offshore drilling industry in the 1950s and early 1960s, but today it’s countries like Norway that are leaders in the field.

Norway’s annual output of 1.6 billion barrels of oil comes exclusively from offshore drilling. Oil and natural gas are transported through a network of sub seafloor pipelines. Norway is the home to the world’s largest natural gas drilling platform.

And the truly remarkable fact is that Norway has built this robust offshore oil and gas drilling industry alongside large and thriving fishing and tourism industries.

The Norwegian Model: Trust, Common Sense, and Green Conservatism

Norway has avoided the “everywhere versus nowhere” trap that has paralyzed U.S. offshore drilling through a common sense approach that is textbook Green Conservatism.

In Norway, strong environmental protections were part of exploration, drilling and transportation of oil and natural gas from the outset. This initial environmental emphasis has built the sense of trust necessary to allow Norway to move to a cooperative, performance-based model rather than a regulation-based model like we have in the U.S.

Norway has relatively few laws, regulations and government agencies that govern offshore drilling. Their equivalent of our Supreme Court – the Hoyesterett – reportedly declined jurisdiction over offshore drilling on the grounds that it lacks expertise!

The result is a policy in which environmental concerns are carefully balanced with energy needs. Norwegians have put some areas off-limits to drilling. In some areas, drilling is carefully circumscribed. But the point is that drilling occurs. Environmental concerns have informed – not pre-empted-Norway’s oil and gas industry.

The American Model: Distrust, Stalemate and Energy Crisis

Compare that to the United States, where a series of congressional prohibitions and presidential moratoria on offshore drilling – fed by public mistrust and largely unfounded environmental fears – have placed virtually all of the offshore United States off limits to drilling.

The United States is the only country in the world that so dramatically limits the exploration and development of its offshore oil and gas deposits.

The hysteria is so acute that both of our current presidential candidates even voted in 2005 in favor of willful ignorance about our domestic energy resources. Each voted for an amendment that would have removed from the energy bill that ultimately passed a provision for a comprehensive inventory of the oil and natural gas resources in the offshore continental shelf of the United States. Fortunately the amendment failed — even though one of the two candidates is still the sole sponsor of a bill to repeal the authorization of the inventory. You can read the inventory here that 44 U.S. Senators didn’t want you to read and learn that the U.S. Minerals Management Service estimates a mean of 85.9 billion barrels of undiscovered recoverable oil and a mean of 419.9 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered recoverable natural gas in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf of the United States.

I’m not suggesting that the United States adopt the level of government involvement in oil and gas that Norway has (its major petroleum producer, Statoil, is a public-private company). And I’m too much of a realist to think that the U.S. oil and gas industry and the environmental groups are going to suddenly sit down, hold hands together, and forget their differences.

What I am advocating is a more informed public making its demands of energy independence clear to our government.

New Poll Shows Broad, Bipartisan Support for Tapping Domestic Energy Sources, Including Offshore

Last week American Solutions released the results of new survey research dealing with energy security, coal and climate change. The adults surveyed made clear that Congress should prioritize increasing the availability of affordable energy over battling climate change.

In pursuit of the immediate goal of energy security, clear majorities of Americans of every political and ideological stripe advocated the U.S. tap into its voluminous domestic energy resources, including the oil located off its coasts and in Alaska and the coal deep within its grounds. Clean coal was particularly popular and Americans urged the swift building of zero emissions coal plants.

Americans prefer a greater use of domestic energy sources and an innovation-encouraging tax policy that rewards businesses for new energy solutions. While there were some political and ideological differences, for the most part, Americans stood united in favor of a smart, practical energy policy that would allow them to drive to work and power their homes without breaking their bank accounts. For additional information, including the survey results, click here.

A Vote to Watch: The Peterson Amendment to Lift the Offshore Drilling Moratorium

This week, Congressman John Peterson (R-Pa.) will offer an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would lift the congressional moratorium on offshore drilling.

Contact your member of Congress today and urge them to support the Peterson Amendment to restore sanity and common sense to our domestic energy policy.

Every American should keep their eyes on the House Appropriations Committee this week to see whether members vote to support our desire for environmentally responsible increased domestic energy production, or whether they continue to bury their heads in the sand.