Expert: Energy Price, Not Source, Is America’s Biggest Problem
The problems of the United States energy policy boils down more to the high cost of oil than to its source, Yossie Hollander, the founder of the Our Energy Policy Foundation and co-founder of the Fuel Freedom campaign tells Newsmax.
“The issue is not who we buy it from, it’s price,” he said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV.
The country spent $780 billion last year for oil and oil products, he said. “That’s too much. That’s bankrupting us.”
“If we bought it all from Saudi Arabia at $1 a barrel versus $100 a barrel we wouldn’t care if we bought it all from them. So the issue is how do we get cheaper oil to the American public, not where we buy it. And we can get it all from America.”
Therefore the focus of his Fuel Freedom campaign is to reduce the price of oil to $2 per gallon at the pump, which could help give Americans “eventually $2,000 more in your pocket.”
“That’s what we want to do, to revive the American economy,” he said.
Unfortunately, he indicated that few of the solutions being addressed would actually help reduce the country’s dependence on oil.
In particular, “if we went all wind or all solar or all nuclear we will not replace one gallon of oil, only coal.”
Currently, the situation is “like basically [giving] Advil to a cancer patient,” Hollander explained. “We need to actually get replacement that will compete in the market. Expensive oil is not the answer.”
However, he expressed high hopes for hydraulic fracturing — known as “fracking” — so long as the country has an open market where everybody can decide what fuel they want to use.
“Then we’ll have a real competition and cheaper fuel,” Hollander said.
In addition, Hollander dismissed the Obama administration’s reluctance to embrace fracking as futile because “the train has left the station already. Fracking is so big here that it’s going to continue.”
The biggest problem he fears is a global oil shortage projected to hit this decade. This is because the world will not be able to drill its way out of it.
“Demand from China and India is growing so much faster than our ability to drill, and the world’s ability to drill,” Hollander explained, adding that the country has already reached the tipping point, which is “The reason we’re not growing.”
“If we spend $300 billion or less on oil — which is possible —a year, that would be $1,000 net per person.”
However, Hollander suggested the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline was “A classical example where the parties argue about something that doesn’t matter.” Regardless, he explained “the oil will flow, whether it will flow from Louisiana with a pipe or the west coast of Canada, it will flow.”
However, Hollander admitted the Keystone pipeline “does matter if we do more processing of the oil internally [because] there will be some more jobs.”
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