Calling for greater energy security and independence, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Wednesday said a John McCain administration would put in place policies for producers to “drill here and drill now” on both land and offshore.

“In a McCain administration, we will authorize and support new exploration and production of America’s own oil and gas reserves because we cannot outsource the solution in America’s energy problem,” she said during an energy address in Toledo, OH, Wednesday.

“Every year we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars out of the county for oil imports, much of it from OPEC [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries], while America’s own oil and gas reserves…go unused. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska, we’ve got lots of both,” Palin, the vice presidential running mate of Sen. John McCain {R-AZ), told the crowd.

“As a matter of fairness, we must assure affordable fuel for America by producing more of the trillions of dollars’ worth of our oil and natural gas. On land and offshore, we will drill here and drill now!”

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), the vice presidential running mate of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), is “against drilling off our coasts, for environmental reasons. But he says that offshore drilling holds real promise for the island nation of Cyprus — as if the environmental safeguards of the Cypriots are more rigorous than our own,” Palin said. That isn’t the case, she noted. Technological advancements have made oil and gas production far safer in the U.S. than was once thought possible.

Moreover, Palin said the construction of an Alaskan natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to the Lower 48 states “will lead America one step farther away from reliance on foreign energy. That pipeline will be a lifeline — freeing us from debt, dependence and the influence of foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.”

She said big producers, such as ExxonMobil, were “one of the main obstacles” to the pipeline being built over the past three decades. “They should have been competing to invest in a new means of delivering their product to market. Instead they wanted a higher price than fair competition would yield. They were holding out for more billions of dollars — in public money. No one in good conscience could pay them what they wanted to build the pipeline. And that’s how we found things when I became governor.”

So “we introduced the Big Oil companies and their lobbyists to a concept some of them had forgotten — free-market competition,” Palin said, adding that progress has been finally been made on what is expected to be a $40 billion pipeline.

Palin called for a “clean break not just from the energy policies of the current administration, but from the 30 years’ worth of failed policies in Washington…We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly 20 Congresses and seven presidents.” In addition to expanded drilling, McCain advocates the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 to power homes, plants and cities, as well as the enhanced development of clean-coal technology.

While “I have seen what American ingenuity can achieve if given a chance,” she said that “as governor of a huge energy-producing state, and as chair of our state’s oil and gas conservation commission, and chairman of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, I’ve also seen how political pressures, special interests and corporate abuses can work against the clear public interest in expanding our domestic energy supplies.”

Palin warned that energy would suffer under a Democratic administration and Democratic Congress. “When you look over the energy plans of Barack Obama and his allies in Congress, it’s just a long, labored agenda of inaction. And it’s the same agenda of inaction we could expect under the one-party rule of Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid. They’re always talking about things we can’t do in America, energy we can’t produce, refineries we can’t build, plants we can’t approve, coal we cannot use, [and] technologies we cannot master.”

©Copyright 2008Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.