WASHINGTON — IER Distinguished Senior Fellow Mary Hutzler will testify Tuesday at 10:00 am ET before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power at a hearing evaluating The North American Energy Infrastructure Act. Hutzler’s testimony will focus on the U.S. oil and gas pipeline system and the importance of North American energy trade. Highlights from her testimony include:
- North America has enough oil to fuel every passenger car in the U.S. for 430 years, enough natural gas to provide the U.S. with electricity for 575 years, and enough coal to provide electricity for about 500 years.
- The U.S. annually imports about 1 billion barrels of oil from Canada and almost 400 million barrels of oil from Mexico, the nation’s #1 and #3 suppliers of crude and petroleum product imports.
- Since Canada and Mexico are supplying over 60 percent of our net oil imports, in reality our net energy dependence on non-North American oil is just 14 percent.
- The energy pipeline transportation network of the United States is vast, consisting of over 2.5 million miles of pipelines, which could circle the earth about 100 times.
- Due to current pipelines reaching full capacity, oil transport by rail has increased dramatically despite it being more greenhouse gas intensive than pipelines.
- The U.S. currently imports 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from Canada annually, about 12 percent of our current natural gas consumption.
- Due to hydraulic fracturing and the shale oil and gas revolution, the U.S. is already the world’s largest natural gas producer and the world’s largest liquid fuels producer.
- The U.S. will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2017, according to the IEA.
- The IEA also expects North America will become a net oil exporter by 2030 and the U.S. will become almost energy independent by 2035, when OPEC will be exporting 90 percent of its oil to Asia.
To read the full testimony, click here (PDF).
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