HOW HE SEES IT Storms highlight failed energy policy

By Rep. JOHN E. PETERSON
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON -- Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be remembered as poignant human tragedies as well powerful lessons of our need for humility and awe when confronting nature's wrath.
More important in the long-term, perhaps, they focused a spotlight on our failed national energy policy -- a policy that for years has concentrated far too much energy capacity in too small of an area in an effort to satisfy parochial political interests.
The consequences of these policies couldn't be more severe: A storm that affected a small area along the Gulf Coast shut down 40 percent of the country's natural gas supply, causing prices to further skyrocket and ensuring that home heating costs this winter -- scheduled to rise as much as 71 percent in the Midwest and 40 percent elsewhere -- will be unaffordable for many, and downright prohibitive for the rest.
Yet it should be noted that in spite of gulf oil platforms being hit by waves up to 120 feet high, damaging many, washing some 65 miles to shore, and causing still another to disappear completely, there wasn't a single significant oil spill or natural gas leak from any of these battered facilities.
This should finally convince the vast majority of Americans that the environmental fears of offshore oil and gas production raised over the years are completely baseless.
The price increases and supply shortages also should convince those in Congress as well as appropriate state legislators that it's time to use proven, environmentally sound exploration techniques to tap the abundant natural gas and oil supplies along the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Outer Continental Shelf
Estimates done in the 1970s indicated there are 400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- a 50-year supply -- in the Outer Continental Shelf. It is thought that more modern techniques would reveal twice that much. Oil reserves -- often alongside natural gas deposits -- also are abundant.
Since 1982 Congress has been passing measures to prevent oil and gas exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf. Now it is clearly time to change direction and encourage production there.
The Outer Continental Shelf Energy Relief Act of 2005, which I'm sponsoring, is a vital first step toward a quick solution to our growing energy crisis.
The legislation would lift both presidential and congressional bans on natural gas and oil exploration and production in the Outer Continental Shelf. It would also give the states incentive to promote production by sending them 50 percent of the federal royalties, providing billions of dollars of revenue to coastal states. It is hoped this legislation will be one of the front-runners of a national push toward energy independence.
There are other domestic energy areas worth exploring immediately rather than in some distant future.
There are 2.6 trillion barrels of oil -- hundreds of years of supply -- locked in oil shale on lands in western states. It's clean, low-sulfur oil that is easy to refine as well. Government should join with industry in an all-out push to develop techniques for extracting this invaluable resource.
And it's also time to simplify the permitting process so we can end our generations-old drought in building nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, the first and fastest step we can take is to unlock the huge natural gas and oil reserves currently bottled up along the Outer Continental Shelf. I hope the majority of my colleagues in the House and Senate will concur.
X Rep. John E. Peterson, R-Pa., is a five-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a member of its Committee on Resources. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services