My Review of Mitt Romney's New Energy Policy

On August 23, 2012, Mitt Romney announced his new and improved energy policy that he would implement if elected president of the United States.  He was in Hobbs, New Mexico when he made his speech that outlined the measures that he would make to ensure that America becomes "energy independent" by 2020.

In this article, I will discuss each point he made, points he has made in the past, how some are wrong and what his goals will mean to the United States.  I am not writing this as a liberal, or as a supporter of President Obama, but as an environmentalist.  I will give you facts and not opinion.  I will post a link to the video on the C-Span website since the entire speech is not available for download yet, but when it is I will insert it in this article.  I will do an in time paragraph for every point he makes, meaning the article will go along with the speech - I will put the time, point and then my response.  You will pick up on it.

Here is the link for the video: http://www.c-span.org/Campaign2012/Events/Mitt-Romney-on-Energy-Policy-in-New-Mexico/10737433371-1/

In Governor Romney's 30 minute speech, he emphasized that his main goal, when it comes to his energy policy, is the idea of America becoming energy independent by the year 2020 and for North America to become energy independent by 2020 as well.  If we know one thing about Mitt Romney, it is his strong support of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the pipeline that is proposed to be built from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast.  He used the KXL Pipeline as the centerfold of his energy plan.

00:00 - Mitt Romney Walks on stage.

05:00 - Mitt Romney mentions "5-Point Plan for America's Future", number 1 being energy resources.

06:25 - starts talking about his energy policy plan.

06:30-7:15 - "American and North American energy independence by 2020" - by 2020 he wants all energy used in America, Mexico and Canada to be produced here. He starts listing his plan to achieve this goal.  Brings up a bar graph showing the breakdown of energy demand and production. He says we "are producing 2/3 of what we use and importing 1/3."

08:00-09:15 - Begins the process of describing how he will make America become totally energy independent; he suggests that we will see a minor decrease in conventional production (ex. wells, technology and energies that we already have).

1) an increase in production and exploration of Off-Shore Oil.

2) "Tight Oil", oil that has to be extracted via fracking methods.

3) Alaska; he suggests tapping ANWR oil reserves and other reserves in Alaska.  ANWR is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a very delicate and unstable ecosystem.

4) Natural gas a liquids.

5) Biofuels; he suggest increasing production of bio-diesel and ethanol.

6) Canada; here he mentions the Keystone XL Pipeline and how he will sign this into effect on Day 1.  7) Mexico; mentions that their production is on the decline and with a new (hopefully in his case) president, his administration can convince their government to work with American companies and American technology to increase Mexican production of oil.

09:30 - finishes his graph discussion with his prediction of the amount of barrels of oil produced per day in North America being 23-28 million barrels per day.

10:00-16:00 - begins to list how he will go about achieving these goals.

1) give states the power to grant permits for drilling on federal lands within the respective state boarders.

2) Put together a five year leasing plan for off-shore resources.  Mentions the Carolinas, Virginia and Gulf.  Gives power to drilling companies to meet targets.  Emphasizes for state-of-the-art technology for drilling and regulations for safety, not to stop drilling procedures. "Using the law to stop the production of energy is not in the best interest of the United States of America and our people."

3) establish an energy partnership with Canada and Mexico - create fast track process for energy infrastructure, mentions KXL again.

4) get an accurate inventory of how much energy we actually have through seismic studies both on-shore and off-shore. Claims President Obama says we only have 2% of worlds oil reserves, he believes that we have 7 times that amount.

5) change regulatory and permitting process to make it more transparent. Make sure regulations are meant to help get production where needed and not to stop production of energy.  Accuses the Obama Administration of not wanting to use oil, natural gas and coal due to regulations.  Says regulations are so expensive that is an attempt to make solar and wind cost effective.  Then says that he "likes wind and solar like the next person", but doesn't want the law to stop the production of fossil fuels.

6) promote energy innovation; brings up Solyndra and says that President Obama wants to invest our money in companies, about $90B in "so-called 'Green Jobs'".  "Government of the United States is not a very good venture capitalist."  Says he doesn't want POTUS to invest in companies that are his campaign contributors.  Wants more efficiency in our uses of energy.  Says that we can become an exporter of our energy is we can bring down energy usage.  Wants the money invested in science and research, not companies.

16:05-18:45 - benefits of his plans.

1) 3 millions jobs to come from all of this in oil, gas and coal industries.

2) adds $500B to the size of our economy.

3) 10's to 100's of billions of dollars in tax revenues to be used on military, schools, seniors and infrastructure.

4) Lower energy prices for homes and business to bring businesses back to America.

5) reduce trade deficit by 80%.

6) Stronger national security; no reliance on "people who may not like us very much".

19:00 - end of energy issue talk, onto jobs, and his other talk points.

Lets break this all down, point-by-point.

Mitt Romney opened up his speech by mentioning that we produce 2/3 of our current energy needs here in America and import 1/3.  For President Obama's first term in office, he made it a goal to significantly decrease our dependence on foreign oil; President Obama's plan already seems to be taking effect as we have seen a decrease in our dependence on foreign oil that is imported since he has taken office, according to the US Census.  In 2011, the Energy Information Administration released the United States energy dependence; in this chart, it states that 52% of American oil used is domestic to North America, whereas 48% is imported.  Of the imported crude oil that America receives, 22% of it comes from Arabic nations, the other large importers are African nations, at 20%, and the remaining 6% is dispersed among other nations.  We are already on the path to energy independence, with or without Mitt Romney's plan.

In the next set of points, the governor mentioned the steps to get to energy independence - there are many issues here.  In his first point "Off-Shore Drilling", he calls for an increase in production of domestic off-shore wells.  Aside from the fact that no other president in history has been able to achieve American energy independence, how will Mitt Romney be different?  He mentioned that he is targeting the Eastern Seaboard as his main region of off-shore oil exploration and production, mainly the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic.  These are all regions that have continuously stated that they want no part of off-shore drilling in their waters or off their coasts.  How will he be able to change their views on the issue to grant permission?  When will he approach these states with this matter?  He says that he wants to be totally independent by 2020, but will he go right at these states and risk a potential second term?  Or, will he wait until 2016, when he can act with no personal, political repercussions?  It can take up to a year or more for oil exploration.  In addition to that year for exploration, it takes on average 2-5 years (depending on the type), to build the rigs.  There is his first term in office with no rigs in the water extracting off-shore oil.  In addition to this, he is planning on producing off-shore oil rigs in some of the most dangerous and vulnerable waters in the Atlantic.  Each year, many tropical storms and hurricanes make their way up the East Coast of the United States; these oil rigs will be in the direct path of some of these storms which can cause environmental disasters on the scale of the BP Horizon spill if the rigs are damaged.  With meteorolgists and climatologists claiming that we are set to see and increase in severe tropical storm activity in the coming years, is it smart to put these off-shore rigs in these locations?

Next is "Tight Oil"; this resource is located in many parts of the continental United States.  The term tight oil is used to describe oil deposits that are trapped and unable to move in shale rock.  We can find many of these deposits all over the country which gives us the opportunity to acquire its energy.  Unfortunately, due to the difficulties of acquiring it, we have only been able to use the "fracking" processes to reach the oil deposits.  Fracking is a relatively new technology that is drawing much criticism from peoples of both parties.  It is the process of mixing freshwater with hundreds of chemicals to break apart the rock to extract the oil (this same process can also be used for natural gas, which will be discussed later).  The problem lies with the chemicals used and how many of these chemicals have been found to leak into freshwater reserves for many communities.  Over 25% of the chemicals used in fracking are found to be carcinogenic; carcinogenic or not, chemicals leaking into water reserves contaminate the water that we drink which puts human health at risk.  

Alaska and ANWR were Gov. Romney's next points.  He wants to open up ANWR for drilling; ANWR is home to hundreds of species of animals and plants, some of which are endangered.  In Accordance with the Endangered Species Act, any process that can harm or put the wellness of an endangered or threatened species at risk, risks being terminated.  Tapping this region, which has shown to be rich in oil, has a significant chance of putting species, such as Polar Bears and other marine and terrestrial life, at risk.  In addition to these species, there is also a Native population living in that region, the Inuit peoples.  This project could potentially displace them or harm their habitat or species from which they live.  Also, experts believe that no significant amount of oil will be produced for at least 10 years, putting the governor's 2020 goal out of sight.  

Natural gas and liquids followed the Alaska point; this idea is similar to the Tight Oil point.  The only way to extract natural gas, at least for now, is through fracking.  Until a new, safer technology is found to acquire natural gas and tight oil, the idea to put human health above energy resources should be a no-brainer.  

Bio-diesel and ethanol are also relatively new sources of energy.  While these sources of energy emit less fossil fuels than conventional oil and coal, they also come with a lot of baggage.  In terms of fuel for vehicles, if your car is not fitted with a flex-fuel type engine, your vehicle will most likely not be able to run off of bio-diesel or ethanol.  Also, ethanol and bio-diesel will require the use of mass amounts of crops, mainly soy and corn, to produce it.  According to Matthew Brown, the energy program director at the National Conference for State Legislatures, we would have to divert about 60% of our soy crops for bio-diesel and ethanol production.  This would cause a massive decrease in the amount of soy and corn that would be used for other purposes.  This processes is highly inefficient in terms of the amount of energy you receive and how many resources you put into the process.  Many experts do not believe that this source of energy will be able to make a large impact in a nations energy needs.  

Canada and the Keystone XL Pipeline have been the center of controversy in the energy debate for a few years now.  Governor Romney has stated that he will approve the KXL Pipeline on Day 1 of being in office. Aside from the fact that we would be creating a large pipeline across the entire mid-west and delicate ecosystems and natural resources such as underground water deposits, the burning of the Tar Sands in Alberta bring up the issue of climate change and what the impacts would be on the climate on a global scale.  He expects to create a few hundred thousand jobs through the manufacturing and development process of building the pipeline; while this may be true, it is important to note that the jobs are temporary.  These jobs would be very important to the project, but what would happen after the pipeline?  Would we have to create more and more pipelines to keep these jobs? Mitt Romney will have to clarify his statement by saying that this project will "create a few hundred thousand temporary jobs" that will move on with the pipeline as it expands, not all at once.  He needs to make a statement claiming how many permanent and temporary jobs will be created, when will they be created and when they will be terminated.  

Finally, he ended this part of his speech with Mexico.  His plans to work with Mexico come along with issues that many, maybe not even his advisors are aware of.  He wants to bring American corporations into Mexico to help them innovate and produce their resources while at the same time, importing oil from Mexico to the United States.  The issue here is that the Mexican Constitution makes it illegal for any foreign corporation to develop Mexican natural resources - only Pemex, the Mexican nationalized oil and gas company has exclusive rights to extract in Mexico.  In a highly unlikely task, Mitt Romney is asking Mexico to re-write or pass a constitutional amendment in order for American corporations to help drill and produce Mexican oil.  This is certainly not a slam-dunk; my question is, what is his contingency plan if Mexico says "No" to his proposal? 

After listing the goals of his energy policy plan, he went on to discuss how he will go about achieving them.  The first point that he made was that he would take the responsibility of granting drilling permits on federal land away from the federal government and give the responsibility to the states.  By doing this, he believes that it will speed up the permit process which will allow for drilling to happen faster and more often.  He will be opening up an unspecified amount of federal lands for the states to decide who can drill and who can not.  

He moved on to discuss off-shore drilling and how he is targeting the Eastern Seaboard as his area of research and development of off-shore and deep-water rigs.  Once again, in states that have continuously opposed the notion of drilling off of their shores, how does he expect to completely change their minds to proceed with these processes?  At this moment, after he made this speech, he is risking the votes of key states, two of which are battleground states  - North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia - all states that he is targeting and all states that have said they do not want off-shore drilling on their coasts.  He also made the point of weakening the regulations to increase drilling procedures instead of the current regulations which he says hinder those operations.  He only plans to enforce regulations to ensure the safety of these processes.  

His next point, the energy collaboration between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, is one of his only points that made sense to me.  It would make more sense to me, and probably to our foreign neighbors if our elected government officials would work together within our own borders.  How can a foreign government take us seriously when we say "Let's work together!" when our government can't even work amongst itself.  As the saying goes, "if you're gonna talk the talk, you have to walk the walk." 

Governor Romney then claims that President Obama is lying when it comes to the total amount of oil that we have in the United States.  Experts from the EIA, OPEC, Dept. of Energy and the Institute of Energy Research all say that the U.S. has 2% of proven oil reserves.  The governor claims that we have 14%.  Experts show that we have what we have in proven reserves; now, while there may be more in undiscovered oil reserves, he insists that we will be able to discover, tap and refine 700% more oil deposits in the US by 2020 - IF we can even access these reserves, and that's a big IF.  

The next point that he makes is how he wants to make regulations more transparent.  He wants to get rid of regulations that could possibly stop or slow down oil production, mainly through the Clean Air Act, which now regulates carbon emissions.  By doing this, only with the help of Congress, he will make it easier for oil companies to produce fossil fuels without having to regulate emissions and water and air pollution as much.  This could have serious environmental and human health impacts as we will be breathing dirtier air and polluting waters. He also mentions that the Obama Administration is out to get the fossil fuels industry with regulations that they put in place.  President Obama has put a cap-and-trade on carbon emissions to decrease CO2 levels in our atmosphere and has set a target MPG for cars in the years ahead.  Some argue that he has a War on Coal, but many nations, not just the U.S. are distancing themselves from coal due to the effects that it has on our air and human health issues.  It seems that the regulations put forth by the Obama Administration are nothing more than regulations to protect human and environmental health.  He also accuses the Obama Administration for making the costs of producing fossil fuels so high that it makes alternatives such as wind and solar more affordable and efficient.  In his next sentence, he says that he likes solar and wind just as much as the next guy.  

Finally, Governor Romney ends with the notion that he wants to promote innovation, but not by investing in corporations such as Solyndra or other alternative energy companies.  He claims that the Obama Administration has wasted over $90B in bad investments to "loser" companies.  These investments are nothing more than government subsidies to promote green jobs and alternative energy technologies.  The $90 billion in subsidies is no where close to the $409 billion spent on fossil fuel corporations in 2010, an amount that the governor plans to increase when president in his plan to invest in "science and research" about oil and fossil fuels.  He also makes the erroneous claim that President Obama is granting subsidies to the same corporations that contribute to his campaign; without going on a rant here, Mitt Romney's main sources of campaign funding within the last year have come from SuperPac's run by the Koch Brothers (who own an fossil fuel energy conglomerate) at $1.46 million and probably more through their SuperPac's, Harold Hamm (a billionaire oil tycoon who is also his energy advisor) and his company Continental Resources at $1.26 million, Exxon Mobile at $1.5 million, and the largest being Oxbow Corp, an energy company founded by the third of four Koch brothers - William Koch - which has funded close to $3 million through Koch brother-run SuperPac's.  (All figures from www.opensecrets.org).  Mitt Romney has absolutely no room to point fingers at someone claiming they are trying to make regulations to grow a certain industry when his entire energy plan caters to the Oil and Fossil Fuels Industry in every way.  He held a meeting with some of the most powerful people in the energy industry just two days prior to this speech; his energy plan will most likely insure that the CEO's and individuals funding his campaign will receive billions of dollars in personal gains over the years to come.  

At one point during this presidential campaign, Mitt Romney spoke of his energy plan which, at the time, included alternative energies and nuclear power.  As we can see, he has thrown those options out the window and is going with a fossil-fuel-only type energy policy.  Aside from the environmental repercussions that will follow his plan, his idea of becoming totally energy independent by the year 2020 will most likely not happen.  The idea of being energy independent is one that I support and I believe that we can achieve it, but not like this.  Aside from the political views that separate Mitt Romney and me, the facts are facts, and that is what I have presented you with.  By leaving many important details out when speaking to the public, he leads them to believe that this is the only way to achieve energy independence.  He argues for clean energy, yet he wants to do away with all regulations that make energy production clean.  It is as if this energy plan was written by the CEO's of America's oil corporations since it will give them billions of dollars more per year.  

He pledges that he will create millions of jobs, but leaves out the fact that many of them will be temporary.  He pledges for lower energy prices, but leaves out the fact that many economists and scientists have stated that the KXL pipeline will not lower our energy prices.  He pledges that we will be energy independent by 2020 when the fact of the matter is we will not.  It is not possible with our current sources and energy demands to meet that goal by that year.  ANWR won't produce enough oil for 10 years so that option is already past 2020.  Off-shore wells may not be up and running for at least 5 years before they can produce oil and even there, it will not be a significant amount right away; this option puts us past 2020 as well.  The fracking of oil and natural gas is still new and will not create enough energy to make us independent on its own - again past 2020.  Mitt Romney loves to give himself a deadline for a certain issue when it is in every way impossible.  One day we will be energy independent, many nations are on the path to that goal, just as we are, it just won't be by 2020.  

That is the breakdown and reality of Mitt Romney's newly released energy plan that he will bring to the White House.  Some may think that I gave my own opinion, but these are all supported facts and figures.  

Please leave comments, I am interested to hear your thoughts!