It merely lacks the will to exploit them. Well intentioned, but sometimes misguided and scientifically unjustified environmental concerns have taken precedence, resulting in the prohibition of petroleum exploration in vast areas of public lands that are prospective for oil and gas. A number of regulations that discourage petroleum development have been put in place. The nation has assumed that there is an inexhaustible supply of crude oil from overseas sources, and that the US will be first in the supply line. Both of these assumptions are flawed and access to supply no longer can be taken for granted, as the supply disruptions of the winter of 1999-2000 demonstrated.
Natural gas is a North American continental commodity.
The natural gas that we need must come from U.S. production and from our neighbors in Canada and Mexico. A significant increase in LNG imports would require construction of new import facilities with long lead times and costs that would require prices substantially above domestic sources. In addition, the potential supply volumes deliverable by LNG tankers, and fleets of tankers to come, would still be small in comparison to deliveries from the North American gas fields. These forecasts are based upon rapidly escalating increases in usage of natural gas for electric-power generation and other industrial and commercial uses where a less polluting fuel is needed. This is a 50 percent increase over current domestic production.