(June 26, 2013) WASHINGTON — During the House Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing this afternoon, several members of the committee advanced the notion that “times have changed” since the passage of the RFS in 2007, and that the United States no longer has a foreign oil dependence problem. The notion was offered as a rationale for amending the RFS.

“This idea that we have somehow kicked our addiction to foreign oil is not based on fact,” said AEC Executive Director Brooke Coleman. “Last year’s 14 percent increase in domestic oil production is good for energy security, but it’s a drop in the bucket when it comes to foreign oil dependence. The United States provides about 8 percent of the world’s oil, we are again on pace to spend more than $400 billion on foreign oil in 2013, imports from the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia were up (not down) in 2012, and this supposed oil renaissance has done nothing to reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline for American consumers or the U.S. economy as a whole,” added Coleman.

The AEC also pointed to the fact that current trends are not predicted to continue in the long term. “Tight oil reserves in places like the Bakken are simply not robust enough to fundamentally change our situation. The estimated 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable tight oil from the Bakken, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is less than one year’s worth of crude oil consumption by U.S. refineries. That’s why U.S. foreign oil dependence is expected to start increasing again within 3-5 years,” said Coleman.

“Times will change when we introduce competition for the oil industry,” Coleman said, “and that’s exactly what the RFS is doing.”