Harrison Township, MI – U.S. Congresswoman Candice Miller (MI-10) today renewed her call for the President and the Administration to open up additional areas for domestic energy exploration. Miller said the following:

“The recent unrest in Egypt underscores the need for our nation to become less dependent on foreign sources of energy, particularly oil. Egypt controls the Suez Canal through which a large amount of the world’s supply of oil is shipped. If the Suez Canal were to shut down or if the unrest in Egypt were to spread to oil producing nations in the region, then we would see a drastic jump in the price of oil around the world.

“During the State of the Union, President Obama called for increased taxes on domestic oil and gas exploration which would make it more difficult to advantage ourselves of domestic supplies of energy while making us more dependent on foreign sources. That is absolutely the wrong approach.

“Our nation has vast energy resources that have been declared off limits by the federal government, but the fact remains that our nation needs oil. To put it very simply, energy security equals national and economic security. If we continue to remain dependent on foreign sources of energy, particularly when many of those sources are from unstable parts of the world, we continue to place at risk both our national and economic security. We clearly must take action now to increase our domestic production of energy while at the same time finding ways to move forward with alternative energy research and expansion of alternative sources we know will work, such as nuclear power.

“Americans are struggling today with high energy costs. Those high costs also serve to make our economic recovery more difficult. We should not wait for an unforeseen shock to energy prices brought on by events in an unstable area across the globe before we take action. The time to act is now.”

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