Thursday, August 23, 2012

Romney's energy plan - let states develop their abundant resources

It is about time we got the Federal Government off the backs of the real innovators and gave the power to the states to regulate their own resources.  

Everyone thought that the purchase of land by the Federal Government was meant for good for the American people, but it has turned out to be just another control mechanism.  Because of the vast amounts of land controlled by the Feds, some states have very little room to grow.

The top 10 list of states with the highest percentage of federally owned land looks like this:

  1. Nevada           84.5%
  2. Alaska            69.1%
  3. Utah               57.4%
  4. Oregon           53.1%
  5. Idaho              50.2%
  6. Arizona           48.1%
  7. California        45.3%
  8. Wyoming         42.3%
  9. New Mexico     41.8%
  10. Colorado          36.6%


Excerpt: “What Governor Romney is proposing is that state governments, which already control the development of energy resources on their own and private lands within their borders, would also control the development of energy resources on federal land within their borders,” said Romney’s domestic policy advisor Oren Cass in a briefing call with reporters to preview Romney’s energy speech slated to occur later today in New Mexico.
Cass said that Romney believes the challenge in getting to energy independence by 2020 is “not about the resources we have, it’s not about the technology that we have, it’s about the government we have.”
“The question is, Are we going to pursue the political reforms that will allow us to develop the resources to their fullest?” said Cass.
In addition to shifting the power of energy development exploration on federal lands to the state level, Romney’s policy also calls for opening more offshore drilling options, starting off the coast of the battleground state of Virginia as well as the Carolinas.
Romney’s plan also calls for the pursuit of a “broader North American energy partnership” with Canada and Mexico that would include building the Keystone pipeline, a development Romney calls for frequently on the stump while simultaneously criticizing the Obama administration’s rejection of the pipeline.

Read full ABC News report here.

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