API says US needs energy strategy

Sept. 13, 2000
Red Cavaney, American Petroleum Institute president, Wednesday called for the US to open a debate about drafting a national energy strategy. Cavaney told a meeting of the National Association of State Energy Officials in Redondo Beach, Calif., that there is a widening gap between the growing energy demands of the US economy and the country's ability to meet those needs from its own resources.


Red Cavaney, American Petroleum Institute president, Wednesday called for the US to open a debate about drafting a national energy strategy.

Cavaney told a meeting of the National Association of State Energy Officials in Redondo Beach, Calif., that there is a widening gap between the growing energy demands of the US economy and the country's ability to meet those needs from its own resources.

"If we are to reverse this troublesome trend, our nation must develop a more contemporary energy policy. Few subjects will be more important for the new President and the Congress when they take office in January."

He said the current economic boom has changed the political climate in Washington and made it possible to have a debate about a budget surplus instead of a deficit.

"There is, however, a neglected side in the economic reverie," Cavaney said. "In spite of the bountiful prosperity available to us, we�as a country�have chosen not to address some chronic needs essential to the continued improvements in our nation's quality of life."

He said gasoline supply and price problems in the US Midwest this summer and earlier heating oil concerns in the Northeast show "that our nation has fallen short of addressing our energy challenges in a sustainable, strategic fashion."

Cavaney said it has been a quarter century since the country broadly debated its energy policies, and, while they may have been satisfactory for those times, "We have a very, very different world today."

He said the US oil and gas industry would want a minimum of four elements in an energy policy: greater access to resources on federal lands, onshore and off; an end to unilateral sanctions that ban US companies from operating in some nations; a balanced approach to environmental regulations that considers the nation's energy needs; and expedited permitting for the construction and modernization of refineries, pipelines, and other facilities.