Contract with America Legislative Proposal #3: Unleash America's Full Energy Production Potential


Unleash America’s full energy production potential in oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, wind, nuclear oil shale and more, creating jobs, stimulating a sustainable manufacturing boom, lowering gasoline and other energy prices, increasing government revenues, strengthening the dollar, and bolstering national security.
 

The United States has more energy resources than any other country in the world – more than Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, or Brazil. Expanding the development of these resources could create up to 1.1 million new jobs and deliver $127 billion in new government revenues by 2020, according to a recent Wood Mackenzie study. With the right regulatory policies, the United States could be the largest oil producer in the world by 2017.

It is time to harness the immense natural energy resources our country has, get Americans back to work, and lower gas, diesel, and other energy prices for every American. Yet we pay nearly $4 per gallon for gasoline and continue to import nearly half of our oil from foreign countries, many of which have governments hostile to the United States. Meanwhile, millions of Americans in energy-rich regions of the country remain unemployed. 
 

My administration will pursue an “all of the above” American Energy Policy that allows expanded development of oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, wind, and nuclear sources of energy. 
 

An effective pro-American energy bill will lead to a boom in American jobs, a dramatic increase in the value of the dollar as we spend less on energy from overseas, and more revenue for state and federal government from royalties and increased economic activity.
 

As President, I will immediately reset our energy policy by removing bureaucratic and legal obstacles to responsible oil and natural gas development in the United States.
 

This means development of offshore oil and natural gas resources in places currently blocked by the federal government, such as the Atlantic and Pacific Outer Continental Shelves and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
 

It also means ending the restrictions on oil shale development in the western U.S., where we potentially have three times more oil than Saudi Arabia.
 

Under this plan, coastal states will receive a share of the royalty revenues the federal government takes in – a benefit that states that drill on land already enjoy -- to give them an incentive to allow offshore development. 
 

This plan will also ensure that federal agencies get out of the way in places where drilling is already allowed. 
 

For example, even though companies have been cleared to drill in the western Gulf of Mexico for months, the Department of Interior has dragged its feet on reissuing permits – and Gulf Coast economies continue to languish. 
 

Through citizen action, we can liberate America’s energy resources. For example, in the spring of 2008, gas prices were surging towards four dollars a gallon, a citizen-led petition called Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, called upon Congress to immediately address the energy crisis.
 

One and a half million signatures later, Congress voted to end its 25-year ban on offshore drilling. By the end of 2008, gas prices had plummeted to under $2 dollars a gallon. 
 

A pro-American energy plan must also recognize the enormous natural gas potential in the United States, especially the development of vast shale gas resources across the country. America is a world leader in responsible shale gas production, and we must continue to promote this form of safe domestic energy production that is creating jobs and strengthening our economy, from Pennsylvania to Texas to Colorado.
 

This also means maintaining the strong and effective regulation of hydraulic fracturing at the state level and ending the federal government’s attempts to clamp down on this vital technology that has been used safely for more than 60 years.
 

We must also replace the EPA, which pursues an anti-jobs agenda the economy simply cannot sustain. A pro-growth Environmental Solutions Agency in its place will operate on the premise that most environmental problems can and should be solved by states and local communities. Rather than emphasizing centralization and regulation, it would emphasize coordination with states and local communities, the sharing of best practices, and focus on incentives for new solutions, research and technologies.
 

The imperative to unleash American energy is not just economic. It is also a basic question of national security. The more energy we can produce here, the less dependent we are on foreign countries, many of whom have interests hostile to our own. At the same time, we must strengthen our relationships with close allies that have vast natural resources, such as Canada. For example, we must immediately authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will bring 700,000 barrels of oil a day from Western Canada, Montana, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas, reducing our dependence on Latin America and the Middle East and creating tens of thousands of new jobs.
 

I look forward to learning more about your ideas and solutions for a bill that will end our man-made energy crisis, and pursuing solutions that will create jobs, bring in more revenue, and lower prices for all Americans. 
 

We have done this before, and we can do it again.

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Comment by Ronald A. Newcomb on March 31, 2012 at 9:31am

We keep finding more and more gas which produces CO2 which (wait for it. . .) helps grow trees and plants, which in turn helps absorb sunlight and cool the environment and which is the very thing buried long ago and which then made the oil. Go figure. I wonder what caused it to be buried so deep?

Comment by Janet Carney on March 14, 2012 at 10:56pm
Comment by James Villas on March 13, 2012 at 12:23am

Almost every home throughout America has a natural a gas meter for cooking and heating purposes.  why not have an outlet just outside one's garage.  A valve like one used for propane with a lock can usually be installed for less than $300... Converting gasoline tanks to natural gas tanks and adapting the cars engine  could be done for less than $400 in the Eighties.  I'm not sure what the cost is today.  This would shorten the life of an engine, but not a lot.  Engines for new cars can be designed to to run on natural gas for a modest cost.  While gasoline has doubled in the past three years, natural gas has been lowered by 50 percent.   There is plenty of natural gas, in the world.  Even Israel will provide their own natural gas in a few years.  I'll bet their cars will be fueled with natural gas within the next four years.</p>  Certainly, this should be a consideration for our immediate and future needs.

I would like to get a response from those familiar with the pros and cons of this proposal.  Additionally, what are your thoughts?

Comment by Janet Carney on March 6, 2012 at 9:39pm

John  this is for Newt Bloggers - Go to Newt .org- And send him a Email ! I have & gotten answers from Erin = They do read them- Also  He is For Some Alternat Fuels  he has been saying though WE have to Do what is Realistic when if Fossil Fuels Oil & Natural Gas 

Comment by John Lillard Burch on March 6, 2012 at 6:02pm

Newt -- The comment max size is to small.  How can I send my whole "comment" to you?

Comment by John Lillard Burch on March 6, 2012 at 6:01pm

(contd #3)

Green Car Initiative -- 1993.
Nothing better illustrates the fallacy of government intervention in what can only succeed if it is seen from the very start as a commercial enterprise than the Clean Car Initiative of 1993, later renamed the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) Consortium.  This was supposedly a model, public-private arrangement involving the big three US automakers.  Like most government energy projects, the purpose was to “correct the market’s failure" to incentivize automakers to create commercially viable, innovative cars free of undesirable externalities (high GHG (green-house-gas) emissions, low mpg, high cost, etc.).

$1.5 billion later, high-mileage prototypes of gas-electric hybrids were indeed created, though only based on basic research from the 70s (Victor Wouk, et al; the first Federal Clean Car Initiative Program and the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research Development and Demonstration Act 1976), and little new science.  But they were too expensive and still too inefficient to be commercially viable, as was finally admitted in 2001 when PNGV died unceremoniously.

US companies were unwilling -- then as now – to work on new technologies without government support.

Meanwhile, Toyota and Honda, excluded as foreign companies from the PNGV Consortium, on their own initiative had begun risking R&D money on hybrid technology without government timetables or benchmarks set by politicians or policy makers, but guided by the correct long-term market perception that fuel prices sooner or later would inexorably rise and create a market for innovative, fuel-efficient technologies.  The millionth Prius sold in 2008, and a growing hybrid market was established.

But PNGV was dead by then. Government incentives masquerading as market forces failed to achieve what market incentives – based on a correct reading of market forces – did.

Conclusions.
In a 2008 white paper titled, "The History of U.S. Alternative Energy Development Programs: A Study of Government Failure," Dr. Grossman points out that all these ambitious energy policies shared three fatal flaws:

  • An inability to distinguish between the technologically possible and the economically possible;
  • A belief that government intervention can force innovation and overcome technical challenges on time and within budget; and
  • A failure to recognize that generous subsidies invariably lead to increased demand for more generous subsidies.

The end result has always been grandiose, unrealistic and extravagant mandates that resulted in catastrophic losses not only for taxpayers, but for investors and corporations that bought into the government’s audacious hope. 

Summary.
For over sixty years now, the government has consistently and predictably failed to understand that industrial revolutions arise from technologies that are perfected by entrepreneurs and prove their value in a free market. The government can accelerate advances in basic science and engineering when cost is not an object, but it cannot make technologies cost-effective or ignore the realities of a resource-constrained world.

In short, based on the abysmal failure of government-sponsored energy initiatives to produce commercially viable results, President Obama’s oft repeated goal of a million EVs “on the road” by 2015 is a strong sign to investors that electric vehicles are a questionable investment.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Respectfully Submitted to the Newt Gingrich 2012 Campaign by John L. Burch
Lawrence, KS

 

Comment by John Lillard Burch on March 6, 2012 at 6:00pm

Energy Innovation Projects Reviewed

Grossman has published on the following projects:

  • The Eisenhower Administration's plans to commercialize nuclear fission reactors for civilian electricity;
  • The Nixon and Ford Administrations' support for synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale;
  • The Carter Administration's support for synthetic fuels (“synfuels), nuclear fusion and ethanol;
  • The Clinton Administration's "Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles" that failed miserably while privately funded initiatives from Toyota and Honda succeeded.

The initial fanfare and optimism of all these early projects were no less than the more recent government projects, on which Grossman has not yet published but which he feels (personal communication) are continuing the same pattern.  These would be:

  • Fuel cells
  • The hydrogen economy
  • Corn ethanol
  • Vehicle electrification
  • Alternative/renewable energy in general.


Market Failure.
Virtually all such projects were instances in which attempts justify government intervention was based on the notion that the social good to be achieved by the innovation was unquestionable, just not yet unrecognized by commercial forces in the private sector.  So it was only proper for the government to get out in front of the private sector and “correct” for this presumed “temporary” market failure.  Like today in the Obama administration, this allowed inexperienced politicians to play entrepreneur and pose as morally superior at the same time.  This approach was taken by members of both political parties.  Massive spending by the government was deemed to be needed to correct for “market failure” and jump start the development of a new industry without waiting for market forces to make it viable.  The underlying presumption was that market forces would eventually take over.  Note that almost none of this was seen as basic research, but rather as facilitating commercialization. 

Grossman’s conclusion is that all these ideas were politically popular at the time, and so politicians scored lots of votes for supporting them, but they were by nature such long-term projects  that all was soon forgotten – and the failures went unnoticed -- by both the politicians and voters.  He says promising miraculous new technology continues to be effective politically, no matter whether it is ever actually achieved.  

Apollo Fallacy.
Grossman finds that virtually ALL government attempts to encourage alternative energy technologies have consistently been forced into the R&D model initially created for the Manhattan Project during WWII, and later updated to fit the Space Program (Obama’s “sputnik moment”).   Although this claim always has sounded extremely patriotic, it completely ignored the reality that, "The goal of the Apollo Program was the demonstration of engineering prowess, while any alternative energy technology must succeed in the marketplace."  This fundamental mistake doomed all projects to consistent failure, and has even set back US energy innovation.

In “The Apollo Fallacy and its Effects on the U.S. Energy Policy,” Dr. Grossman summarized the problem as follows:

“The Apollo fallacy has been detrimental to the development of effective energy policies in the US [and] instead of asking what kinds of programs might be useful, the government holds out the promise of a technological panacea to be delivered simply by an act of Congress. The prospect of an energy panacea actually has some political benefits. It allows politicians to claim that they can provide simultaneously the two outcomes most Americans seek from energy policy: low energy prices and energy independence. In fact, with conventional resources these goals are mutually exclusive. To get low prices, the government should provide incentives to drill fo

Comment by John Lillard Burch on March 6, 2012 at 5:57pm

Dear Newt Gingrich,

I’m a big supporter and feel you are by far the best qualified candidate to be our next President.  Please keep working on energy policy and expand your thinking to include realistic ways to stimulate alternative energy industries. 

Lots of independent voters will be turned off if they perceive you as being against alternative energy and simply for drill, baby, drill (well… frack, baby, frack).  But they will be turned on by seeing serious proposals about how alternative energy technologies can be developed.  The Obama administration has made a complete mess of it, despite their rhetoric in favor, and they have actually set back rather than advanced the attempts by the nation’s entrepreneurs to develop successful alternative energy businesses.  The need for new energy is undeniable whether one “believes in” man-made climate change or not.  So, I hope that rather than your wasting time and potentially alienating voters by questioning “climate change” or any of that, you and the Republican Party will simply take on the project and do it right.  When you are President, you can hire Mitt Romney to head up the government’s program to stimulate the development of alternative energy industries.  This is the kind of project he would be extremely good at.

So, in addition to your proposal to boost oil and gas production using new extraction technologies, etc., you should add material on how bad the government’s record – past and present -- is on developing commercial energy innovation and what can be done seriously to make it happen, rather than just waste more taxpayers money as the Obama administration has done.

Review of Govt. Failures.
The work of Peter Z. Grossman, Ph.D., an economics professor at Butler University is a good place to start.  I came upon Grossman’s work as a private investor, trying to find investment opportunities in alternative energy.  He finds that every attempt by the government to stimulate the development of new kinds of energy – most of which have been motivated by laudable but non-commercial goals – have failed.  The lessons of all this for the present time are obvious and becoming increasingly serious.  Obama’s attempts to stimulate alternative energy technologies is simply continuing the same patterns and falling into the same traps.

Below I’ve tried to highlight his work for you or your staff.  I hope this can be of some use already by Super-Tuesday.  

Overview.
Dr. Grossman has reviewed the history of our government’s attempts to insert itself into the business of energy innovation, going back to nuclear powered electricity generation under Pres. Eisenhower (showing that nuclear power could be used for peace was the motivation) .  He has found it to be one of consistent failure by the government to achieve anything commercially viable at all (including nuclear, which apparently continues to be subsidized everywhere), while wasting billions in taxpayers’ money in the process. 

Underestimating the technological challenges was typically the first and most fundamental mistake.  Overestimating commercial demand potential was the second.  But then, as has been done by advocates, evoking the Manhattan project or, in recent decades, the Apollo project (“Sputnik moments”) has only compounded the error even further by failing to distinguishing between the basic nature of technology-demonstration projects and the nature of commercial development.

Energy Innovation Projects Reviewed
Grossman has published on the following projects:

  • The Eisenhower Administration's plans to commercialize nuclear fission reactors for civilian electricity;
  • The Nixon and Ford Administrations' support for synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale;
  • The Carter Administration's support for synthetic fuels (“synfuels), nuclear fusion and ethanol;
  • The
Comment by Janet Carney on March 3, 2012 at 1:37pm
Comment by Janet Carney on March 2, 2012 at 6:42pm

This is Excellent Please Watch it & Send it To Everyone - Post it Wherever you Blog >Send to Family Friends   Also mentions The Tides Foundation & Kennedy's who want to Block the Pipeline   > Remember the Kennedy are Part of the Problem (& Soros and the Progressive Movement) Video: Canadian Talk Show Host Destroys Obama Over Keystone Deci" on Arizona Tea Party Network: http://ning.it/A7vIJq

Comment by Janet Carney on March 2, 2012 at 6:38pm

http://Video: Canadian Talk Show Host Destroys Obama Over Keystone ...   This is Excellent Everyone Needs to See this Talks about Obamas Camp Promise to Be Free of Forg Oil - within 1- years (Yeah- Right) Yet Nixs Oil from  there Friendly Neighbor (Canada) & Brings in Oil From Venez/.Chavez

Comment by Richard C. Schaum on March 2, 2012 at 4:53pm

From > NumbersUSA.com

During our weekly webcast on Thursday afternoon, Roy went through some of the finer details of the poll, specifically the responses that deal with E-Verify. But more importantly, he offered some inside information on what's going on behind the scenes with House Leadership and singled out Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor, and Majority Whip McCarthy for blocking E-Verify bills in the House.

You can watch a replay of the webcast by clicking on the image below or going to http://www.NumbersUSA.tv.

Comment by Tony Norris on March 2, 2012 at 4:42pm

If that SOB OBAMA had invested part of the $700 billion in CNG infrastructure, I'd be driving a CNG car right now.  Safe efficient, virtually smog free - and your motor will last at least 50% longer.  We use Natural gas to generate electricity.  A $200 billion investment would replace all those plants with Nuke plants - freeing up enough natural gas to replace 15% of our gasoline consumption. - 30% of our oil imports

Comment by Richard C. Schaum on March 2, 2012 at 4:27pm

@ J. Carney, yes just as safe as gasoline. No sparks around the fumes please.

Comment by Janet Carney on March 2, 2012 at 3:47pm
Comment by Janet Carney on March 2, 2012 at 3:38pm

Richard is Compressed Gas Safe  ?  Don't laugh I haven't Researched & you seem to know alot about it ---

[Yeah } On Fox- Cavuto-Gov Palin is saying let the GOP run along (which I think is because she wants to see NEwt Rise again - As Charles Krauthmar Said he does't want to say Newt is Dead because anythong can happen & he could lose his DR.  liscense...  

Comment by Richard C. Schaum on March 2, 2012 at 10:29am

Check out the prices and refueling stations for CNG accross the USA and where they are currently located.

http://www.cngprices.com/

Comment by Richard C. Schaum on March 2, 2012 at 10:02am

To attend the private call with T. Bone Pickens click here – http://finance.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/reports/GRH/refuel/refuel-re...

Refueling America with energy independence is something we should all have interest for.

Go Newt Go!

 

 

Comment by Richard C. Schaum on March 2, 2012 at 7:55am

The comparisons between natural gas and electric powered cars needs to be brought to the forefront. Charging stations vs Fuel stations, Physical battery and electrical upgrades cost vs CNG change over kits, the cost of generating the electricity (+new power grids) vs CNG. What is cleaner and most cost effective is CNG. In the 70s most of the CNG cars and trucks were provided to government agencies. Why did this option not go into production? most likely it would not generate enough tax$$ due to too low of cost.

GoTo > http://cngva.org/

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_natural_gas

Comment by Louis Acker on March 1, 2012 at 10:31pm

This is the theme that will win the election. Hit it hard, over and over until you are heard.  You are already out in front with it, but voters don't yet connect you with it. I firmly believe we are on the verge of a great future in which we lead the world in energy production and manufacturing associated with low energy cost. You can get it done. Go! Go! Go! The future is yours and ours, carpe diem!

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