Roscoe Bartlett: “the United States has about 2 percent of the known reserves of oil in the world. We use 25 percent of the world's oil…”

“the United States has about 2 percent of the known reserves of oil in the world. We use 25 percent of the world's oil, and we now import 56 percent of the oil that we use. This is up from 34 percent that we imported at the time of the Arab oil embargo. Since 1970, except for a short blip produced by Prudhoe Bay, every year in the United States we have found less oil and pumped less oil. Mr. Speaker, it does not make good sense to me that if we have only 2 percent of the known reserves of oil in the world, that we should rush out and find it and pump it. If we were able to do that tomorrow, what would we do the day after tomorrow? Mr. Speaker, we need a balanced approach, which means we need to rely very heavily on alternatives, and we need to start moving in that direction.”