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In 1973, America imported 30 percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than 60 percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades.

We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil every year, but we only have reserves, including that which has not been pumped, of about 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world.

The U.S. uses most of its oil for transportation. We can limit U.S. demand for oil by requiring automakers to use the technology that already exists to improve fuel economy - technology that the automakers refuse to bring into the market despite societal demand.

If you ask the average person on the street about U.S. energy and U.S. oil in particular, our situation, most Americans would say, 'Oh, we're energy poor; we don't have enough oil; we don't have enough natural gas.'

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

It is important that the United States move with all deliberate speed to develop and get into usage alternative fuels that will allow us to end our dependence on foreign oil.

Even as we work to develop more sources of petroleum for the United States, we must continue our vigorous pursuit of alternative fuels, so that we can be powered by cleaner, more efficient sources of energy.

We need to break our dependency on foreign sources of oil, which leaves us at the mercy of foreign powers. To do that, we should increase domestic energy production.

The more we focus on using renewable fuels, the less we are dependent upon foreign oil.

Europe and North America, we are told, are less dependent on energy-intensive heavy industry than in the 1960s and 1970s. It seems we squeeze more GDP out of a barrel of oil than in those benighted days.