Reducing U.S. Dependency on Foreign Oil: Essay Example

“Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources -- and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.” -President George W. Bush, 2006 State of the Union Address. In the past five years we have seen the devastating effects of our dependency on foreign oil. The average price of a crude barrel of oil has steadily increased and nearly tripled from $23 in 2001 to $60 in 2006. To combat this problem our government has come up with two ways to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, and become less subjective to OPEC. The first way is to increase the amount of oil we produce in the United States. Relaxing some of the government restrictions on oil drilling would help promote more production, such as the Bush Administration’s proposal to open some of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Unfortunately relaxing government regulations in any industry can be a very slow political process. The other way to reduce our dependency on foreign oil is to find alternative sources of energy. This seems to be a solution that is supported in almost all political realms. In this list of alternative energy sources is Ethanol. Ethanol is a combustible substance that exists in small amounts in about one third of the gasoline sold in the United States. Many domestic vehicles have flex fuel engines that will run on gas that is up to eighty-five percent ethanol. The good thing about ethanol is that it can be refined out of products like corn or sugar. Because ethanol is a legitimate alternative to traditional fossil fuel, support for ethanol producers in the United States is very high. Congress has taken much action in recent years do what they think will