Big Oil has spent enormous amounts of money to create a propaganda machine that spews the lies that distract us from making meaningful advances. Why? So they can continue to reap record profits from our runaway oil consumption. President Bush says we are addicted to oil, but has done little to break that addicition.

Real Energy Solutions is an I Am Progress/Center for American Progress Action Fund campaign to promote a comprehensive policy plan to address our need for affordable energy and clean energy. Rather than pursue policies, like drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), that increase our long-term commitment to using more oil, while doing nothing to help struggling American families meet their energy costs today, we support a comprehensive solution that:

• Lowers oil prices NOW

• Does not commit us to long-term expansion of oil production and consumption

• Promotes low carbon technologies and solutions that will help us stop and reverse the effects of climate change

Real Energy Solutions offers a comprehensive policy plan that includes:

• Selling 50 million barrels of oil from the Strateguc Petroleum Reserve and using the profits to invest in low carbon energy solution

• Requiring oil companies to "use or lose" the 68 million acres of leases they already have for oil exploration

• Providing emergency energy aid to American families

• Cracking down on oil speculators

• Fantasy vs. Reality

• NEW - What History Tells Us About the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

• The Power Of The Strategic Petroleum Reserve

• Four Steps to Reduce Gas Prices Now

• Eight Reasons to Release Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

• Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf

• Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low-Carbon Economy

• Exposing the lies conservatives and their allies are using to undermine solving our energy and climate crisis

• Raising the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles

• Increasing energy conservation

• Developing renewable, green, low-carbon alternative energy sources

What History Tells Us About the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (back to top)

by Center for American Progress

As the president and many conservative congressional leaders rally around drilling in the protected Outer Continental Shelf—a “solution” that would have no effect on oil production until 2030—Americans are waiting for a solution that will help them make ends meet now.

That solution is selling a small portion of the oil stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holds 706 million barrels of oil and is at 98 percent capacity. By releasing 50 million barrels of oil over 100 days—500,000 barrels a day—President George W. Bush could likely reduce oil prices by anywhere from 5 to 33 percent. And the reserve would still be over 90 percent full. How do we know releasing oil form the reserve will dramatically reduce oil prices? Because it has in the past.

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The Power Of The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (back to top)

by B. Furnas, The Wonk Room

The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in 1975 in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo to help the United States buffer against oil price shocks that have “major adverse impact on national safety or the national economy.” With oil hitting $147/barrel last week and American families struggling with gas prices over $4.00/gallon, we believe the time for a buffer is now.

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Four Steps to Reduce Gas Prices Now (back to top)

by Center for American Progress Action Fund

1. Immediately Release Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The fastest way to bring down gas prices and get relief to Americans is to release a small amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

• Oil could arrive on the market just 13 days after presidential action, increasing supply and reducing prices.
• Offshore drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, in contrast, “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030,” according to the Energy Information Administration.

(read the rest of the article)

Eight Reasons to Release Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (back to top)

by Daniel J. Weiss, Center for American Progress

President George W. Bush plans to announce today that he will lift the executive moratorium on oil drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, which was first established by his father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1990. The current president has argued that the United States should be “drilling for more oil here in America to take the pressure off of gasoline prices.” The congressional moratorium on OCS drilling—first signed into law by President Ronald Reagan—remains in effect, but must be renewed annually.

A Department of Energy analysis determined that opening the OCS to offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.”

A much faster, more effective action to reduce oil prices would to sell a half million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supply, reduce prices, and burst the “speculative bubble” that leads speculators to buy oil futures based on the assumption that supply will remain fixed and prices will escalate.

(read the rest of the article)

Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (back to top)

by Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy

According to the EIA, "Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

(read the rest of the article)

Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low-Carbon Economy (back to top)

by John Podesta, Todd Stern, Kit Batten

The energy challenge we face in this new century is extraordinary in its urgency, its stakes, its scope, and its opportunity. Of course, energy has long been at the intersection of the economy, environment, and national security, and its availability and price have always been important factors in economic performance. Because energy has been produced over the past two centuries mainly by burning fossil fuels, dirty byproducts soon threatened our air and water and spawned the modern environmental movement. Because critical elements of world energy supply come from unstable regions and hostile nations, energy has, for decades, played an important role in our national security.

But something different is afoot now. The realities of global warming and our growing dependence on oil, much of it imported, will make energy more pivotal than ever to our economic, environmental, and national security fortunes in the 21st century. The challenge we face is nothing short of the conversion of an economy sustained by high-carbon energy—putting both our national security and the health of our planet at serious risk—to one based on low-carbon, sustainable sources of energy. The scale of this undertaking is immense and its potential enormous.

(read the rest of the article)