President’s Trip Will Allow Him to See Firsthand Where Secure, North American Energy Will End Up If Congress Passes Low-Carbon Fuel Standard
Tomorrow, President Obama will attend a state dinner in Beijing hosted by Chinese president Hu Jintao – an event held to highlight the extent to which emerging Asian markets and the economic well being and security of the United States have come to be inextricably linked.
But while some degree of interconnectivity is both inevitable and positive, the type of relationship between our two countries envisioned under a Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) would actually threaten the energy security of the United States – in the process, handing over a secure, affordable stream of locally available energy to our competitors half-a-world away.
Thankfully, President Obama’s trip to China will allow him the opportunity to find out, once and for all, what China’s intentions are for the Canadian oil sands – a source of secure North American energy in which the government of China invested billions of dollars earlier this year.
Without an LCFS, much of that energy could be sent to markets in the United States, consumed by and for the benefit of U.S. consumers. Under an LCFS, though, that energy would be blocked from crossing the border – diverting as much as two million barrels a day of secure, previously American-bound energy to Asian markets.
In light of that reality, and in anticipation of the president’s meeting tomorrow, CEA today released a list of five critical questions that President Obama should ask President Hu Jintao before he returns home:
1) Your government has demonstrated a relentless determination to go anywhere and do anything to secure energy resources needed to strengthen China’s global position. Recently, your state-owned oil company entered an agreement with Canada to invest $1.7 billion in the oil sands – right in America’s own backyard. Give it to me straight, President Hu:
How much of that oil do you plan to take back to China? And when should we expect construction to start on the Gateway pipeline that will allow you to take it there?
2) You may know that as a member of the U.S. Senate, I introduced my own LCFS plan – even though my home state of Illinois gets 55 percent of its oil from Canada. While it didn’t become law, Congress is now debating a climate bill that could include an LCFS. So let me ask you:
Would a self-imposed U.S. ban on accepting energy resources from Canada, called for under an LCFS, make it even easier for you to become a dominant player in the oil sands? By the way: You all plan on leaving at least a little bit of that energy for us, right?
3) I’m sure you saw the recent Houston Chronicle article reporting on the new, $5 billion refining and chemical complex set to open in your Fujian province – a project that’s coming online even as major refineries in the United States are being forced to reduce their runs and even close their doors.
Do you expect to send the secure energy you’re taking from us in North America to these refining hubs in China? Would you be able to justify this refining expansion without an insurance policy like an LCFS – which will ensure you have these Canadian resources all to yourself?
4) President Hu, if you’ve been reading our newspapers, you know that some well-intentioned folks continue to base their support for an LCFS on that belief that it would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. But several independent analyses – including one from my own advisor at the Department of Energy – found that an LCFS may actually increase the concentration of CO2 in the world’s air, since it’d force us to tanker that Canadian energy half-way around the world to you.
With Copenhagen coming up, will you commit today to include these extra emissions created under an LCFS as part of your country’s CO2 baseline?
5) President Hu, more cars are being sold in China right now than in the United States, so I’m sure you know that 80 percent of the emissions from the transportation sector come from the combustion of fuel in our vehicles – a process that an LCFS would not impact in the slightest. So although an LCFS is being sold to my people as a way to reduce CO2 from the transportation, in reality, it’s just an inefficient and expensive way to nibble around the edges – all while handing over to you the energy and resources that make America strong and secure.
President Hu, Communist China celebrated its 60th anniversary last month – certainly no other country gave you as generous a gift as the American Congress appears willing to give with an LCFS, right?
