Significant challenges exist toward maintaining affordable and reliable petroleum and gasoline supplies upon which the public and industry of the Southeast Energy Alliance states depend.
These challenges include:
- Geopolitical influences on oil and gas development;
- Increasing oil and gas demand from developing areas in the world such as China and India;
- Trade and security issues; and
- Increasing constraints on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that could impose changes in future oil and gas production and use.
The map below highlights both the growing demand for petroleum productions in such developed regions as Europe and North American, increasing demand in developing countries and the shift of global petroleum production to the Middle East, Russia and West Africa.
These trends will concentrate conventional petroleum supplies in a few areas of the world where state-owned oil companies and central energy ministries – not the global market – make key policy decisions on when and how to develop oil and gas resources.
Recent increases in the price of gasoline in the United States reflect a growing recognition of these challenges.
The Southeast Energy Alliance recommends the following policy options to help increase domestic energy security and lower transportation fuels costs for the families, farms and businesses of the Southeast:
- Increase development of the Outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas production in areas that are now under moratorium or restricted access;
- Improve car and light-truck fuel economy standards at the maximum rate possible by applying economic and available technology;
- Promote agricultural policies in the Southeastern States and the rest of the U.S. that will enhance production of both food crops and biomass for fuel;
- Support research into second-generation biofuel crops that have lower input requirements or are suited to more marginal lands; and
- Increase development of unconventional fuels and access for oil and gas production in areas that are now under moratorium or restricted access.