Rep. Rob Bishop says the Obama administration and environmentalists are trying to block the American shale renaissance.
Writes Bishop in a Houston Chronicle op-ed:
The nation’s energy prospects changed ostensibly overnight. In 2005, about 60 percent of the petroleum consumed by the United States was imported from foreign countries. In 2014, that number fell to 27 percent. Whereas once the conversation hinged on Peak Oil, we’ve now entered a new era of growing energy accessibility and abundance. The prices at the pump prove it.
However, since the beginning of the U.S. shale revolution the campaign of unfounded allegations from the Left has been relentless.
Distressed that America has discovered access to homegrown fuels, these radical environmental groups want to stop this progress completely. They stir up fear and mistrust of the process, which scientists and academics have proven to be completely safe. Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency released a landmark five-year study demonstrating that hydraulic fracturing poses negligable threat to drinking water.
Nevertheless, the Obama Administration ignores its own study by moving forward on new regulations that threaten to undo the progress that hydraulic fracturing has made. The U.S. Department of the Interior finalized its hydraulic fracturing rule which imposes a blanket mandate on operations on federal lands. Right now, a ban on crude oil exports – a relic of the 1970s – still stands in place despite the abundance of oil unlocked by hydraulic fracturing in the United States. The Administration continues to block access to offshore resources, which cripples development of these resources for decades to come.
