THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. (Applause.) Everybody, please have a seat. Please have a seat. It is wonderful to be back at Georgetown. (Applause.)
We've got a number of acknowledgements. First of all, I just want to thank President DeGioia for his outstanding leadership here, but also for his hospitality.
We also have here Secretary Steven Chu, my Energy Secretary. Where is Steven? There he is over there. (Applause.) Secretary Ken Salazar of the Interior Department. (Applause.) Secretary Tom Vilsack, our Agriculture Secretary. (Applause.) Ray LaHood, our Transportation Secretary. (Applause.) Lisa Jackson, our EPA Administrator. (Applause.) Nancy Sutley, who is our Council on Environmental Quality director, right here. (Applause.)
A couple of great members of Congress -- Congressman Jay Inslee of Washington. Where’s Jay? There he is over there. (Applause.) And Rush Holt of New Jersey is here. (Applause.) We've got -- he didn’t bring the weather with him -- but the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, is in the house. (Applause.) Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Arizona, is here. (Applause.)
And most importantly, the students of Georgetown University are in the house. (Applause.)
I want to start with a difficult subject: The Hoyas had a tough loss, Coach. (Laughter.) Coach is here, too, and I love Coach Thompson. I love his dad and the great tradition that they’ve had. (Applause.) And it turned out VCU was pretty good. (Laughter.) I had Georgetown winning that game in my bracket, so we’re all hurting here. (Laughter.) But that's what next year is for.
We meet here at a tumultuous time for the world. In a matter of months, we’ve seen regimes toppled. We've seen democracy take root in North Africa and in the Middle East. We’ve witnessed a terrible earthquake, a catastrophic tsunami, a nuclear emergency that has battered one of our strongest allies and closest friends in the world’s third-largest economy. We’ve led an international effort in Libya to prevent a massacre and maintain stability throughout the broader region. (Applause.)
And as Americans, we’re heartbroken by the lives that have been lost as a result of these events. We’re deeply moved by the thirst for freedom in so many nations, and we’re moved by the strength and the perseverance of the Japanese people. And it’s natural, I think, to feel anxious about what all of this means for us.
And one big area of concern has been the cost and security of our energy. Obviously, the situation in the Middle East implicates our energy security. The situation in Japan leads us to ask questions about our energy sources.
In an economy that relies so heavily on oil, rising prices at the pump affect everybody -– workers, farmers, truck drivers, restaurant owners, students who are lucky enough to have a car. (Laughter.) Businesses see rising prices at the pump hurt their bottom line. Families feel the pinch when they fill up their tank. And for Americans that are already struggling to get by, a hike in gas prices really makes their lives that much harder. It hurts.
If you’re somebody who works in a relatively low-wage job and you’ve got to commute to work, it takes up a big chunk of your income. You may not be able to buy as many groceries. You may have to cut back on medicines in order to fill up the gas tank. So this is something that everybody is affected by.
The truth is, none of these gimmicks, none of these slogans made a bit of difference. When gas prices finally did fall, it was mostly because the global recession had led to less demand for oil. Companies were producing less; the demand for petroleum went down; prices went down. Now that the economy is recovering, demand is back up. Add the turmoil in the Middle East, and it’s not surprising that oil prices are higher. And every time the price of a barrel of oil on the world market rises by $10, a gallon of gas goes up by about 25 cents.
The point is the ups and downs in gas prices historically have tended to be temporary. But when you look at the long-term trends, there are going to be more ups in gas prices than downs in gas prices. And that’s because you’ve got countries like India and China that are growing at a rapid clip, and as 2 billion more people start consuming more goods -- they want cars just like we’ve got cars; they want to use energy to make their lives a little easier just like we’ve got -- it is absolutely certain that demand will go up a lot faster than supply. It’s just a fact.
So here’s the bottom line: There are no quick fixes. Anybody who tells you otherwise isn’t telling you the truth. And we will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we finally get serious about a long-term policy for a secure, affordable energy future.
We’re going to have to think long term, which is why I came here, to talk to young people here at Georgetown, because you have more of a stake in us getting our energy policy right than just about anybody.
Now, here’s a source of concern, though. We’ve known about the dangers of our oil dependence for decades. Richard Nixon talked about freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign oil. And every President since that time has talked about freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign oil. Politicians of every stripe have promised energy independence, but that promise has so far gone unmet.
I talked about reducing America’s dependence on oil when I was running for President, and I’m proud of the historic progress that we’ve made over the last two years towards that goal, and we’ll talk about that a little bit. But I’ve got to be honest. We’ve run into the same political gridlock, the same inertia that has held us back for decades.
That has to change. That has to change. We cannot keep going from shock when gas prices go up to trance when they go back down -- we go back to doing the same things we’ve been doing until the next time there’s a price spike, and then we’re shocked again. We can’t rush to propose action when gas prices are high and then hit the snooze button when they fall again. We can’t keep on doing that.
The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground. We can’t afford it when the costs to our economy, our country, and our planet are so high. Not when your generation needs us to get this right. It’s time to do what we can to secure our energy future.
And today, I want to announce a new goal, one that is reasonable, one that is achievable, and one that is necessary.When I was elected to this office, America imported 11 million barrels of oil a day. By a little more than a decade from now, we will have cut that by one-third. That is something that we can achieve. (Applause.) We can cut our oil dependence -- we can cut our oil dependence by a third.
I set this goal knowing that we’re still going to have to import some oil. It will remain an important part of our energy portfolio for quite some time, until we’ve gotten alternative energy strategies fully in force. And when it comes to the oil we import from other nations, obviously we’ve got to look at neighbors like Canada and Mexico that are stable and steady and reliable sources. We also have to look at other countries like Brazil. Part of the reason I went down there is to talk about energy with the Brazilians. They recently discovered significant new oil reserves, and we can share American technology and know-how with them as they develop these resources.
But our best opportunities to enhance our energy security can be found in our own backyard -- because we boast one critical, renewable resource that the rest of the world can’t match: American ingenuity. American ingenuity, American know-how.
To make ourselves more secure, to control our energy future, we’re going to have to harness all of that ingenuity. It’s a task we won’t be finished with by the end of my presidency, or even by the end of the next presidency. But if we continue the work that we’ve already begun over the last two years, we won’t just spark new jobs, industries and innovations -- we will leave your generation and future generations with a country that is safer, that is healthier, and that’s more prosperous.
So today, my administration is releasing a Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future that outlines a comprehensive national energy policy, one that we’ve been pursuing since the day I took office. And cutting our oil dependence by a third is part of that plan.
Here at Georgetown, I’d like to talk in broad strokes about how we can achieve these goals.
Now, meeting the goal of cutting our oil dependence depends largely on two things: first, finding and producing more oil at home; second, reducing our overall dependence on oil with cleaner alternative fuels and greater efficiency.
This begins by continuing to increase America’s oil supply. Even for those of you who are interested in seeing a reduction in our dependence on fossil fuels -- and I know how passionate young people are about issues like climate change -- the fact of the matter is, is that for quite some time, America is going to be still dependent on oil in making its economy work.
Now, last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003. And for the first time in more than a decade, oil we imported accounted for less than half of the liquid fuel we consumed. So that was a good trend. To keep reducing that reliance on imports, my administration is encouraging offshore oil exploration and production -- as long as it’s safe and responsible.
Now, today, we’re working to expedite new drilling permits for companies that meet these higher standards. Since they were put in, we’ve approved 39 new shallow-water permits; we’ve approved seven deepwater permits in recent weeks. When it comes to drilling offshore, my administration approved more than two permits last year for every new well that the industry started to drill. So any claim that my administration is responsible for gas prices because we’ve “shut down” oil production, any claim like that is simply untrue. It might make for a useful sound bite, but it doesn’t track with reality.
What is true is we’ve said if you’re going to drill offshore you’ve got to have a plan to make sure that we don’t have the kind of catastrophe that we had last year. And I don’t think that there’s anybody who should dispute that that’s the right strategy to pursue.
Moreover, we’re actually pushing the oil industry to take advantage of the opportunities that they’ve already got. Right now the industry holds tens of millions of acres of leases where they’re not producing a single drop. They’re just sitting on supplies of American energy that are ready to be tapped. That’s why part of our plan is to provide new and better incentives that promote rapid, responsible development of these resources.
We’re also exploring and assessing new frontiers for oil and gas development from Alaska to the Mid- and South Atlantic states, because producing more oil in America can help lower oil prices, can help create jobs, and can enhance our energy security, but we’ve got to do it in the right way.
Now, in terms of new sources of energy, we have a few different options. The first is natural gas. Recent innovations have given us the opportunity to tap large reserves –- perhaps a century’s worth of reserves, a hundred years worth of reserves -– in the shale under our feet. But just as is true in terms of us extracting oil from the ground, we’ve got to make sure that we’re extracting natural gas safely, without polluting our water supply.
That’s why I’ve asked Secretary Chu, my Energy Secretary, to work with other agencies, the natural gas industry, states, and environmental experts to improve the safety of this process. And Chu is the right guy to do this. He’s got a Nobel Prize in physics. He actually deserved his Nobel Prize. (Laughter and applause.) And this is the kind of thing that he likes to do for fun on the weekend. (Laughter.) He goes into his garage and he tinkers around and figures out how to extract natural gas. (Laughter.)
I’m going to embarrass him further. (Laughter.) Last year, when we were trying to fill -- figure out how to close the cap, I sent Chu down to sit in the BP offices, and he essentially designed the cap that ultimately worked, and he drew up the specs for it and had BP build it, construct it. So this is somebody who knows what he’s doing. (Applause.) So for those of you who are studying physics, it may actually pay off someday. (Laughter.)
But the potential for natural gas is enormous. And this is an area where there’s actually been some broad bipartisan agreement. Last year, more than 150 members of Congress from both sides of the aisle produced legislation providing incentives to use clean-burning natural gas in our vehicles instead of oil. And that's a big deal. Getting 150 members of Congress to agree on anything is a big deal. And they were even joined by T. Boone Pickens, a businessman who made his fortune on oil, but who is out there making the simple point that we can’t simply drill our way out of our energy problems.
So I ask members of Congress and all the interested parties involved to keep at it, pass a bill that helps us achieve the goal of extracting natural gas in a safe, environmentally sound way.
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