1. Increase access to the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The Bush Administration thinks that the OCS might produce about 18 billion barrels of oil. But they don’t really know because Congress has restricted access to exploring the OCS for oil since the early 1980s. According to the Bush Administration, advances in oil technology make it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS in a manner that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills.
2. Tap into the extraordinary potential of oil shale. Oil shale is a type of rock that can produce oil when exposed to heat or other processes. According to the Bush Administration, one major deposit – the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming – has an equivalent of about 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil or about a century's worth of oil imports.
3. Permit exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). According to the Bush Administration, with a drilling footprint of less than 2,000 acres – about 0.01 percent of this distant Alaskan terrain – America could produce an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil. This is the equivalent of roughly two decades of imported crude oil from Saudi Arabia.
4. Expand and enhance our refinery capacity. It has been 30 years since our Nation built a new refinery, and upgrades in our refining capacity are urgently needed. Refineries are the critical link between crude oil and the gasoline and diesel fuel that drivers put in their tanks. America now imports millions of barrels of fully-refined gasoline from abroad, imposing needless costs on American consumers and depriving American workers of good jobs.
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