In a speech on delivered this afternoon to the “the oil capital of America,” presidential candidate John McCain described his vision for promoting energy security in the U.S. His talk emphasized the need for independence from foreign oil sources, and identified opportunities for expanding domestic capacity, including:

• lifting the moratorium on off-shore drilling;
• expanding nuclear power options;
• advancing clean coal technologies while continuing to use coal as part of the US energy mix; and
• developing innovative clean technologies.

McCain characterized the energy policies of previous administrations as having more failure than success, underscoring the “errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly twenty Congresses and seven presidents” and describing energy security as “an alarming situation twenty years ago” and a “dangerous situation today.” McCain’s speech also sought to illuminate a moral imperative to work towards energy independence by emphasizing the vulnerability of US pipelines to “Al Qaeda terrorists” and describing the role of US “petrodollars” in “underwriting tyranny, anti-Semitism, the brutal repression of women in the Middle East, and dictators and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere.”

McCain’s full remarks on energy security are available online.

For further information about this topic, please contact Akin Gump.