We cannot continue to depend on leaders such as Hugo Chavez for our energy needs. I believe that Congress should dedicate itself to achieving energy independence by 2015. This is an ambitious goal; one which will require industry, policy makers, and Americans to think of innovative approaches to meet our energy needs. Our traditional energy sources will only get us so far; we can't drill our way to energy independence; we need a balanced approach.

But then the temperature drops and heaters go on in homes across the country. Americans’ energy demands become greater and greater. With the change of the season, this annual rite is becoming more and more precarious because of our dependence on foreign energy. Every day, America consumes more energy than we produce. This leaves a gap that we must fill by turning to other countries with an abundant supply of energy, but are often in areas of the world where friends of America are in short supply.

Each day, large tankers enter our ports with cargos of crude oil, gasoline and liquefied natural gas (LNG). In exchange, we send billions of dollars and thousands of jobs abroad. This trend has led our country to place our energy assurance in the hands of leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and inflexible or unstable dictators of the Middle East.

So our future is now, and this Congress, indeed this generation is obligated to usher in that age of American energy independence.

Subsequent years may hold a fleet of duel-fueled vehicles powered by efficient engines such as electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles.

The recently enacted Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-58) reflects this balance between encouraging advanced technology such as clean coal and hydrogen fuel cells, encouraging conservation and efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear energy, clean coal, and conventional and unconventional oil and natural gas.

The Barnett Shale, a natural gas shale formation located in the Metroplex, is currently a major source of natural gas. A provision included in the Energy Policy Act will ensure that this resource will continue to provide natural gas to North Texas and the U.S. for years to come.

Growing up in the hills of West Denton, I never dreamed that someday there would be natural gas rigs popping up in the farmland around us. On road trips with my family in Oklahoma, I would ask my dad why we didn't have rigs in the fields at home, and my father would reply that we didn't have anything to drill. My dad turned out to only be partly right -- we do have natural gas in North Texas, but forty years ago we didn't have the technology to recover it.

Luckily, great strides have been made since that time. The dedicated and innovative people in the energy industry have developed technology, such as hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling, that allows us not only to extract the natural gas in an environmentally sensitive way, but also to minimize the impact of this production on every day quality of life.

Directional drilling allows producers to be miles away from the place where the oil and gas is actually located. In addition, because directional drilling allows them to use a hub and spoke system to access multiple reservoirs from a single place, fewer drilling rigs are needed to produce the same amount of gas.

This is especially important in the Barnett Shale because homes and businesses now sit on top of this valuable resource. It is precisely for this reason that this is not something that should be controlled by Washington, but should be controlled by Mayors and City Councils who are closest to the people.

The Barnett Shale contributes to the local economy by providing jobs -- one estimate puts this at more than 5,000 jobs -- and pumping dollars into the Dallas-Fort Worth economic engine. Bernard Weinstein of the University of North Texas, located in my district, has said that the local economic impact could approach $3 billion a year.

We are lucky in North Texas to be geologically blessed with the Barnet Shale to provide America with natural gas. Locating non-traditional energy sources such as the Barnett Shale and developing new technologies to access these types of sources will be essential to energy dependence by 2015. In Congress I can be proud that North Texas is doing its part to help those in the Northeast who are worried about hearing their homes this winter.