Onshore, the President has used his executive powers to limit oil and gas activity on vast regions of government lands. Congress has refused to authorize exploration on that small section of the Alaskan coastal plain that was specifically set aside by law in 1980 for possible exploration. More recently, the U.S. Forest Service moved to make it more difficult for our companies to explore for natural gas and oil on government lands when it announced a plan to bar road building in 43 million acres in the forest system. Technology has revolutionized how oil and natural gas are found and produced. For example, we now can produce more oil with fewer wells thanks to three-dimensional seismic equipment that locates hydrocarbons with greater precision and directional drilling technology that allows a variety of productive reservoirs to be accessed from one location.
Fewer wells mean less disturbance of the environment.
Offshore wells can now safely capture oil and natural gas in ocean depths of thousands of feet in areas far offshore. The industry is ready to usher in a new era of energy so that we can once again see American companies and American workers producing more of the energy American consumers use. American oil companies work hard to do what they do to ensure that we have the energy we need to fuel our cars, heat our homes and make the products essential to our way of life.