Every hour of every day, pipelines move vitally needed energy products to consumers.
Our energy highway has over 2.6 million miles of extremely safe and reliable pipeline infrastructure. This system is vigorously regulated by several federal and state agencies, with the U.S. Department of Transportation having the primary oversight role of interstate pipeline safety.
Energy security is much more than just than the mere presence of fossil fuel resources. Real energy security is continuous access to resources at an affordable price.
Our nation’s ability to transport the surging supplies of domestic crude oil, refined products, and natural gas is the envy of the world – even among resource rich countries who have significant reserves but lack the infrastructure to efficiently and quickly get products where they are needed. It gives us an incredible strategic advantage to:
Expanding and upgrading our nation’s pipeline infrastructure has not only brought more domestic production to the marketplace, but it has also helped reduce our dependency on unstable and unfriendly regimes.
Nations without sufficient pipeline infrastructure know firsthand the dire consequences when pipelines are used as a weapon to shut off supplies in cold winters or to create economic hardship.
As robust and substantial as our nation’s pipeline is, there are portions of the country that either lack enough capacity to meet market demands or simply just need an upgrade to the system. Foregoing this development can lead to serious economic hardship for families and businesses trying to make ends meet.
For example, New England consumers pay some of the highest electricity rates in the continental United States simply because the region has become increasingly reliant on clean natural gas but it lacks enough supplies and pipeline capacity on cold winter days when electricity and home heating demands are at their highest.
The Polar Vortex exposed this short-sightedness and consumers paid the price – paying billions more for natural gas – unnecessarily than other regions of the country with access to supplies.
Exorbitant utility and electricity costs are essentially a tax on those that can afford it least and it saps the vitality of energy-intensive manufacturing and entire portions of the nation’s economy still struggling to recover.
Approving new pipeline infrastructure upgrades can go a long way toward:
Increasingly our energy security also means considering ways we can improve environmental quality. Pipelines play a key role in this solution by reducing air emissions and congestion, all while being the most affordable way to move energy products over long distances.
For instance, a modestly-sized petroleum pipeline (roughly 150,000 barrels per day in capacity) could help:
By reducing traffic, approving more pipelines significantly help reduce emissions from production fields. Pipeline have also been a substantial part of meeting increasingly stringent air quality standards from regulatory agencies like the EPA.
