Paul R. Ehrlich Quotes

The Coastal Plain of Alaska has great potential for energy development. Americans have paid record-high prices for oil and gas in the year 2005.

Mr. Speaker, high natural gas prices and the summer spike in gasoline prices serve as a stark reminder that the path to energy independence is a long and arduous one.

The reason gas prices are so high is because the oil is in Texas and Oklahoma and all the dipsticks are in Washington.

Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge stands to not only increase the United States' oil reserves by nearly 50 percent, but it will create thousands of good U.S. jobs.

In 1973, America imported 30 percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than 60 percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades.

Over the last two decades, America has increased its demand for oil by nearly 30 percent, yet we have not expanded our ability to produce domestic sources of fuel.

There are billions of barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf. There is even more in Alaska. There is enough oil shale in the Rocky Mountain West alone to power America for the next hundred years. The Democrats say all this American energy is off limits.

Offshore drilling is not the solution to U.S. energy independence, and I am against opening parts of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic oceans to oil and natural gas production.

I strongly support the construction of the Keystone Pipeline and favor expanding offshore drilling to make our nation less dependent on foreign oil.

Gas prices in many parts of the country are nearing $4 a gallon; it could get even worse as unrest spreads throughout the oil-exporting Middle East. Yet the Obama administration once again seems to see no crisis. It has curtailed new leases for offshore oil exploration for seven years and exempted thousands of acres in the West from new drilling. It will not reconsider opening up small areas of Alaska with known large oil reserves.

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.

In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible [to increase the supply of oil] by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years.

You know, if we're going to bring down the price of gas, you have to have three things. You have to have a big reserve, you have to have the ability to develop oil out of that reserve quickly, and you have to be able to produce oil at a relatively low cost.

Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They've gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it... Let's be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.

The Keystone Pipeline is one common-sense step in the right direction to help put more people back to work, reduce prices at the pump, and position our nation for greater energy security now and in the future.

The oil companies are regulated by the federal government. They can't drill on land nor in American waters without permission from the feds. Many Republicans want to drill baby drill but what's the point if all the oil goes to China? Increased production obviously doesn't mean lower prices for us.

There is no doubt that now, more than ever, we must work to end our dependence on foreign oil sources. But we cannot do so by ignoring the wishes of the coastal communities that oppose drilling.

Among the many important provisions in the energy bill are the creation of an estimated half million new jobs, increased oil production, blackout protection, controlling fertilizer costs by stabilizing natural gas prices and enacting new efficiency benchmarks.

I've often argued that oil and gas exploration is a state's rights issue. It is abundantly clear that the State of Florida does not want drilling to negatively affect its beaches and shores.

There are those of us that believe if you truly want to try drive down the cost of gas, if you really want to solve the problem, then you should be pursuing the extraction of our resources that are right here at home: alternative energy and traditional.

Rather than proposing a forward-looking energy initiative, House Republicans continue to push Big Oil's tired old ideas, ideas that will do absolutely nothing to lower gas prices for the American consumer.

The fact that the price of gasoline has declined some in recent weeks must not allow Americans to be lulled into a false sense of security. Energy independence must rank along with border security as the top priorities of the United States.

I'll give you a great example of an issue that no one brought up during this Florida primary, the fact that we're going to have a Chinese made oil rig put in place about 60 miles off the coast of Florida.

When I go down in my state, I see virtually none of the independent oil producers for [President Jimmy] Carter … We’ve gotten higher drilling rig counts, more dollars being spent, more activity, more profits being made by oil people than ever before. But do they like Carter? Oh no. they hate him because of his rhetoric.

We can sit between active drilling operations in neighboring countries, complaining that it's too risky to develop our own resources while the world around us does exactly that.