ABSTRACT
Energy has become an important feature of national and state policymaking over the past thirty-plus years. From 1859, when the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, to the early 1970s, national energy policy focused on finding new supplies of oil anywhere in the world and enabling American companies to produce increasing amounts of energy to fuel the nation's economic growth. As domestic oil sources dwindled, American companies opened new fields in Venezuela and the Middle East. Imported oil was so cheap that policies had to be developed to protect American companies. Two major policies before 1973 were (1) the oil depletion allowance granted to oil producers that gave them tax breaks for pumping oil out of the ground and (2) minimum prices for oil sold in the United States set at a rate that made expensive domestic oil competitive with the cheaper oil coming from the Persian Gulf. 1 Energy policy amounted, then, to protecting the interests of the energy producers and ensuring a growing supply of low-priced energy.
