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America’s Natural Resources: Energy and the Environment
We are the party of America’s growers,
producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners,
commercial fishermen, and all those who bring
from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and
the bounties of our seas that are the lifeblood
of our economy. Their labor and ingenuity, their
determination in bad times and love of the land at
all times, powers our economy, creates millions of
jobs, and feeds billions of people around the world.
Only a few years ago, a bipartisan consensus in
government valued the role of extractive industries
and rewarded their enterprise by minimizing its
interference with their work. That has radically
changed. We look in vain within the Democratic
Party for leaders who will speak for the people of
agriculture, energy and mineral production.
...
A New Era in Energy
Our country has greater energy resources
than any other place on earth.
Our engineers and miners, the
men and women whose labor
taps the forces of nature, are
the best in the world. Together,
the people of America’s energy
sector provide us with power
that is clean, affordable, secure,
and abundant. Their work can
guarantee the nation’s energy
security for centuries to come if,
instead of erecting roadblocks,
government facilitates the
creation of an all-of-the-above
energy strategy.
We applaud congressional
Republicans for doing just that
through far-sighted legislation.
Both Houses have passed bills that will modernize
pipelines and the electric grid, protect the grid from
disruption, expedite energy exports, and lower
energy costs. A Republican administration will
build on those policies to find new ways to store
electricity, a breakthrough of extraordinary import.
Planning for our energy future requires us to
first determine what resources we have in reserve.
Thirty years ago, the world’s estimated reserves of
oil were 645 billion barrels. Today, that figure is 1.65
trillion barrels. The more we know what we will have
in the future, the better we can decide how to use it.
That is why we support the opening of public lands
and the outer continental shelf to exploration and
responsible production, even if these resources will not be immediately developed. Because we believe
states can best promote economic growth while
protecting the environment, Congress should give
authority to state regulators to manage energy
resources on federally controlled public lands within
their respective borders.
The Democratic Party’s energy policy can be
summed up in a slogan currently popular among
its activists: “keep it in the ground.” Keeping energy
in the earth will keep jobs out of reach of those
who need them most. For low-income Americans,
expensive energy means colder homes in the winter
and hotter homes in the summer, less mobility in
employment, and higher food prices. The current
Administration, and particularly its EPA, seems
not to care. Its Clean Power
Plan — the centerpiece of the
President’s war on coal — has
been stayed by the Supreme
Court. We will do away with
it altogether. The Democratic
Party does not understand
that coal is an abundant, clean,
affordable, reliable domestic
energy resource. Those who
mine it and their families
should be protected from the
Democratic Party’s radical anti-coal
agenda.
The Democratic Party’s
campaign to smother the U.S.
energy industry takes many
forms, but the permitting
process may be its most damaging weapon. It takes
an average of 30 days for states to permit an oil or
gas well. It takes the federal government longer than
seven months. Three decades ago, the Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) leased 12.2 million acres.
In 2014, it leased only one-tenth of that number.
Our nuclear industry, cleanly generating almost 20
percent of our electricity from its 99 plants, has
a remarkable safety record, but only a handful of
plants have been permitted in over three decades.
Permitting for a safe, non-polluting hydroelectric
facility, even one that is being relicensed, can take
many years because of the current President’s
hostility to dams. The Keystone Pipeline has
become a symbol of everything wrong with the current Administration’s ideological approach.
After years of delay, the President killed it to satisfy
environmental extremists. We intend to finish that
pipeline and others as part of our commitment to
North American energy security.
Government should not play favorites among
energy producers. The taxpayers will not soon
forget the current Administration’s subsidies to
companies that went bankrupt without producing
a kilowatt of energy. The same Administration
now requires the Department
of Defense, operating with
slashed budgets during a time
of expanding conflict, to use its
scarce resources to generate 25
percent of its electricity from
renewables by 2025. Climate
change is far from this nation’s
most pressing national security
issue. This is the triumph of
extremism over common sense,
and Congress must stop it.
We support the
development of all forms of
energy that are marketable in a
free economy without subsidies,
including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and
hydropower. A federal judge has struck down the
BLM’s rule on hydraulic fracturing and we support
upholding this decision. We respect the states’
proven ability to regulate the use of hydraulic
fracturing, methane emissions, and horizontal
drilling, and we will end the Administration’s
disregard of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act with
respect to the long-term storage of nuclear waste.
We encourage the cost-effective development of
renewable energy sources — wind, solar, biomass,
biofuel, geothermal, and tidal energy — by private
capital. The United States is overwhelmingly
dependent on China and other nations for rare earth
and other hardrock minerals. These minerals are
critical to advanced technology, renewable energy,
and defense manufacturing. We support expediting
the permitting process for mineral production
on public lands. We support lifting restrictions to
allow responsible development of nuclear energy,
including research into alternative processes like
thorium nuclear energy. We oppose any carbon tax. It would increase
energy prices across the board, hitting hardest at
the families who are already struggling to pay their
bills in the Democrats’ no-growth economy. We
urge the private sector to focus its resources on the
development of carbon capture and sequestration
technology still in its early stages here and overseas.
American energy producers should be free
to export their product to foreign markets. This
is particularly important because of international
demand for liquefied natural
gas, and we must expedite
the energy export terminals
currently blocked by the
Administration. Energy exports
will create high paying jobs
throughout the United States,
reduce our nation’s trade
deficit, grow our economy, and
boost the energy security of
our allies and trading partners.
We remain committed to
aggressively expanding trade
opportunities and opening
new markets for American
energy through multilateral and
bilateral agreements, whether current, pending, or
negotiated in the future.
Energy is both an economic and national
security issue. We support the enactment of
policies to increase domestic energy production,
including production on public lands, to counter
market manipulation by OPEC and other nationally-owned
oil companies. This will reduce America’s
vulnerability to energy price volatility.[3]
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Trump on fracking
