Sen. Orrin Hatch told The Hill that current natural-gas legislation must be passed during the lame duck session. Speaking with The Hill‘s Ben Geman, who writes an energy and environment blog for the congressional newspaper, Hatch made it emphatically clear how critical the passage of such a bill was to the welfare of the country:
“That bill has to pass. If we are interested in this country at all, we have got to get that bill passed,” Hatch told E2 in the Capitol Thursday evening.
One of the key provisions of legislation currently before the Senate is to convert America’s heavy trucks, buses, and other fleet vehicles from using imported oil to running on domestic natural gas. Over the next seven years, the incentives featured in the bill could lead to a 50 percent decrease in the amount of OPEC oil imported by the U.S.
American consumers spent $28 billion to purchase 341 million barrels of foreign oil in October. These purchases, combined with decades of previous expenditures by Americans to import oil, have resulted in the largest transfer of wealth in history.
In addition to slowing this enormous outflow of U.S. capital, enacting natural-gas legislation would also be an important step in securing energy security for America. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has repeatedly voiced his support for the NAT GAS Act, in part, because eight of the top nine oil exporters are dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms as are almost all of the 22 states that depend on oil and gas for at least two-thirds of their exports.
No wonder Utah’s senior Senator rates passage of this important legislation as critical for our future.
“Every day that we delay this is a day that we are hurting our country.”
Read the entire post HERE.