PACE Helps Urge Administration to Preserve Energy Leasing Programs

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In a letter sent today to President Obama and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, more than a hundred organizations, including PACE, asked the administration to preserve its proposed 2017-2022 offshore oil and natural gas lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas and Cook Inlet without any additional removals. The letter also asked the president not to take any executive actions that would remove these or any other areas from consideration under future offshore leasing programs. The Consumer Energy Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce led the effort.

Read the Letter Here

“Our organization has heard clearly from manufacturers, businesses, and consumers that energy exploration and production is important to them,” explains PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “That’s why we were glad to join over a hundred other groups in calling on the administration to continue the flow of energy resources that powers the American economy.”

The letter explains that the U.S. development of offshore oil and natural gas helps to create affordable and reliable energy sources. Those sources also support hundreds of thousands of jobs and generate tens of billions of dollars in economic activity and government revenue. Energy independence that stems from this exploration and production also reduces the nation’s reliance on foreign energy sources and diminishes the leverage of oil-producing countries in hostile parts of the world.

“From manufacturing and agriculture to transportation and construction and beyond, domestic offshore oil and natural gas development helps sectors across the entire U.S. economy more affordably and reliably meet their energy needs, to the benefit of all Americans,” the letter states. “It powers the nation’s economy by supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, generating tens of billions of dollars in economic activity, and producing billions of dollars in government revenue. In an increasingly tumultuous world, it also helps safeguard U.S. national security by reducing our exposure to geopolitical uncertainty and decreasing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.”

“With federal lands and waters estimated to contain nearly 70 percent of the nation’s remaining oil and 26 percent of our natural gas, opportunities to access the country’s estimated 90 billion barrels and 327 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered offshore oil and natural gas will be critical to securing the nation’s long-term economic, energy, and national security,” the letter continues.

“The broad geographic and economic spectrum reflected in today’s letter underscores the critical importance of America’s offshore energy resources to a multitude of communities and businesses throughout the economy,” says Consumer Energy Alliance President David Holt. “We need to start adopting common-sense approaches that support rational, logical, fact-based dialogue and reject a “just say NO” energy strategy.

PACE sent a similar letter to the administration last year urging the Obama administration to support important oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico.