News from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission

Jim Palmer, Director of Information

March 28, 2000

(WASHINGTON D.C.)-Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode spent the day in the nation’s capitol to testify at the invitation of a joint U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Energy and Natural Resources. Bode was asked to address the issue of "America at Risk: U.S. Dependency on Foreign Oil."

It was Commissioner Bode who while president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) in 1994 asked for a thorough investigation of the national security threat posed by oil imports. That investigation was coordinated by the Department of Commerce upon the application of the IPAA.

Highlights of Bode’s testimony before the joint Senate Committee include:

• Bode points out that the 1994 study and another one in 1999 both reveal natioanl security risks as a result of increased use of foreign oil in America.

• Bode cites evidence that each time there has been a shock in the price of oil it has resulted in a larger share of the American oil industry being lost.

• The oil price shocks increase U.S. dependence on unreliable foreign oil sources.

• Low priced crude oil rapidly erodes the domestic oil industry and makes it harder on the industry to recover leaving high unemployment and the loss of skilled workers.

• The Clinton Administration has done nothing but allow greater dependence on foreign oil while begging for relief from the OPEC countries.

• Bode calls for relief at the gasoline pump with a holiday on gasoline taxes and the bipartisan formulation of a national energy policy to revive the domestic oil industry and reduce the threat created by oil imports.

-occ-