The U.S. has the ability to increase oil production more than 40 percent, to 10 million barrels a day, within a decade to reduce dependence on foreign sources, a former Shell Oil Co. president told Congress.
Developing resources in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, off the U.S. West Coast and in the Bakken formation of North Dakota and Montana may also add 3 million jobs, John D. Hofmeister, chief executive officer of Citizens for Affordable Energy Inc. and Shell president in 2005-2008, told the House Energy and Power Subcommittee in Washington today.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, delayed drilling in Alaska until 2012 because it was unable to obtain all the permits from the Obama administration, Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser said on Feb. 3. The Interior Department halted deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after BP Plc’s well ruptured in April, and asked energy companies to meet more stringent safety requirements before they resume drilling.
“The decline in the Gulf of Mexico, I believe, will be sharper and deeper than anyone is currently projecting,” Hofmeister said. “We have made a horrible error as a country. The rest of the world did not discontinue offshore drilling.”
The U.S. consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day, Hofmeister said. The nation produces about 7 million barrels a day, he said.
“We imposed strong new drilling safety and blowout prevention standards,” Tommy Beaudreau, a senior adviser to the director of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the Interior agency responsible for offshore drilling oversight, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “Industry has yet to demonstrate that it has the equipment and systems in place to respond to a deep-water blowout.”
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