Romney’s given himself seven years to achieve energy independence. | REUTERS Four roadblocks to Mitt's energy plan

Energy experts say Mitt Romney’s goal to achieve North American energy independence by 2020 would be almost impossible to reach — and anyway, there’s not much in what the Republican candidate laid out Thursday that counts as a concrete plan.

Speaking in the energy production hotbed of southern New Mexico, Romney outlined goals that rely heavily on industry calls to remove federal oversight while approving the Keystone XL pipeline and opening up large swaths of U.S. coastline and public lands to more oil and natural gas drilling.


Politicians ever since the Nixon administration have been pledging energy independence. Now Romney’s given himself only seven years to achieve what none of them have, and he says he’ll be able to.

“This is not some pie in the sky of thing. This is a real achievable objective,” Romney said Thursday, before turning to a chart behind him that included a number of energy production items he supports, including drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, approving Keystone and greater use of biofuels. “We won’t need to buy any more oil from the Middle East or Venezuela or anywhere else where we don’t want to.”

Terry Tamminen, an environmental adviser to former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, doesn’t agree with Romney’s reliance on oil.

“Energy independence is not a pipe dream,” he wrote in an email. “That said, no president or candidate for the office has ever laid out a credible plan to achieve it. A real plan doesn’t rely on fuels that will run out in a few decades, nor does it impose massive hidden taxes that make us very dependent in other ways.”

Here are four parts of the plan that energy experts think won’t add up:

Nursing the oil addiction

Asked if the United States could ever reach energy independence, Alex Flint, a nuclear energy industry official and former top Senate GOP aide, replied that such a plan wouldn’t rely so heavily on oil.

“It’s the year when batteries — or some other technology I cannot imagine — make the transportation sector essentially petroleum free,” said Flint, a senior vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute and a former Republican staff director for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I have no idea if or when that is. Further, even if we only need a bit of petroleum in some far-off year, would we really care where we got it?”

U.S. reliance on imported petroleum has dropped dramatically in the past few years, the byproduct of the financial crisis, efficiency improvements, changes in consumer behaviors and increases in domestic production, including the shale gas boom. According to the EIA, net petroleum imports accounted for about 45 percent of U.S. supply last year, down from a 2005 peak of more than 60 percent.

According to EIA projections, the United States will get between 22 percent to 51 percent of its oil from new imports in 2035, depending on oil prices.

Of course, there’s nothing new about making the promises. President Barack Obama in March 2011 responded to several months of Middle East turmoil that had upended global energy markets and domestic gasoline prices with a pledge to curb imports by a third over the next decade.

The Romney campaign acknowledged its historical challenges that have hampered other proposals but still called the 2020 target an “achievable goal.”

“While every president since Nixon has tried and failed to achieve this goal, analysts across the spectrum — energy experts, investment firms, even academics at Harvard University — now recognize that surging U.S. energy production, combined with the resources of America’s neighbors, can meet all of the continent’s energy needs within a decade,” the Romney campaign said in its white paper. “The key is to embrace these resources and open access to them.”

In making its case, the Romney campaign cited an April analysis from Raymond James energy experts that declared, “Yes, Mr. President, We Believe We Can Drill Our Way Out of This Problem.”

But the study’s co-author, Houston-based Pavel Molchanov, said in an interview that even if Romney met his 2020 goal, it wouldn’t be because of anything the Republican did as president.

“It’s due to the U.S. oil industry, which has mastered the very technically sophisticated skill set of developing these unconventional oil resources,” Molchanov said. “President Obama will take credit for an increase in oil supply. Gov. Romney will insist he can accelerate the trend. In actuality these are issues the U.S. government has very little effect on.”

Offshore problems would persist

The Romney energy agenda also relies on a hard dive into more offshore leasing, starting with Virginia and the Carolinas and expanding into the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the Atlantic seaboard.

Here, the Republican complains that the Obama administration “has stifled efforts at exploration entirely” outside the Gulf through the drilling moratorium it imposed after the BP oil spill.

But Romney’s efforts to encourage a sweeping expansion of U.S. offshore oil production would expose him to the same set of challenges faced by Obama, who has been president amid record increases in domestic oil and gas production despite fallout from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Jay Hakes, a former Clinton-era director of the Energy Information Administration, noted that oil companies like Shell are on their way to getting the green light from the Obama administration to drill offshore in Alaska despite significant opposition from environmentalists. If the energy industry pushes harder, he predicts trouble.

“If they got everything they wanted, I can almost guarantee you there’d be a huge backlash, the tourism industry in Florida for one,” said Hakes, author of the 2008 book “A Declaration of Energy Independence” that concludes there’s no economically feasible way for the U.S. to ever get to zero oil imports.

The environmental community also would be itching to fight Romney. As they proved during the George W. Bush administration, greens often are most effective when forced to play defense.

“The energy independence plan that truly matters is the one that makes us independent of dirty energy sources that are destroying our health and our planet. And the Romney energy plan makes no progress toward that goal,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, a green group that has endorsed Obama’s reelection. “His plan is of, by and for his Big Oil buddies.”

Many of Romney’s other energy ideas also come with catches. If approved in its entirety, the Keystone pipeline that’s been central to the GOP political agenda would give Canada access to world markets with its tar sands oils — not the direct line into American gas tanks that Republicans often suggest. The Canadians, Hakes said, “want it so they can export to other places.”

Drilling plan a 'nonstarter'

Romney’s plan would give states pretty much carte blanche to impose their existing permitting and regulatory powers when it comes to drilling on federal lands. “Maximum flexibility to ascertain what is most appropriate,” the campaign said in a 21-page white paper detailing its plan, noting that it would speed up a process that can take just shy of a year under current federal policies.

While giving states greater control over drilling on federal lands is an idea long advocated by conservative lawmakers, mainly from the West, it’s also sure to run into a groundswell of opposition from Democrats, including the kinds of moderates Romney would need to build a working coalition.

“It’s a nonstarter for the federal government to retreat and say we don’t care what you want to do on federal lands,” said former North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, one of the most outspoken Democrats when it comes to energy production. “It’s not in our national interest.”

The rest of North America doesn’t need to cooperate

Romney’s plan calls for North American energy independence, but that relies on two countries he wouldn’t have authority over even if elected.

While U.S. relations with the two neighbors are currently good, that’s not always been the case. “Suppose we get into a dispute with Mexico over immigration,” Hakes said.

Other parts of the Romney energy plan are largely retreads that seem unlikely to help him get to his 2020 goal, including a call for updated seismic assessments of the nation’s onshore and offshore resources. Romney said the information is needed to know what potential domestic sources can still be tapped. But Bush signed energy legislation in 2005 requiring exactly this kind of updated inventory — on everything from oil to natural gas to coal.

Flint said Romney’s proposal was “interesting” by making the independence pledge for North America.

“It seems he’s at least being pragmatic enough to recognize that we would have to use Canadian resources if we stood a chance of getting to ‘independence’ because of the transportation sector,” Flint said. “What I wonder though is, why would we drive prices of those resources up if we can buy them cheaper elsewhere?”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:53 p.m. on August 23, 2012.