Washington (Platts)--4Apr2011/813 am EDT/1213 GMT

President Barack Obama is the latest US president to call for reducing US dependence on oil, but the issue has added urgency now due to surging global demand, a senior US Department of Energy official said on the Platts Energy Week TV show.

"What's different is that if you look at the growth of other economies, like China and India, which was not there in President Nixon's time, I think the demand for oil is going to go up, and that [oil] prices in the future will likely on average go up," said Arun Majumdar, acting undersecretary of energy.

Obama last week announced a goal of cutting US oil dependency by 33% over the next 10 years by promoting the development of domestic energy resources, boosting vehicle efficiency, encouraging biofuels and advancing natural gas as a transportation fuel.

Majumdar said natural gas, in particular, has promise to transform US energy consumption, given the US' massive shale gas reserves that can now be accessed through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Still, he acknowledged that many environmental concerns have yet to be fully resolved with fracking.

Article continues below...

Sign up to Inside Energy today.
	Inside Energy brings you reporting on energy policy developments in the US government and how policy decisions and implementation impact the production, delivery, and use of energy resources. Content includes oil, natural gas, electricity, coal, nuclear energy, renewable energy and energy efficiency.

"I think we need to study that more," Majumdar said. "If we find that it is unsafe, we will develop this technology to make it safe to enable our natural gas industry to grow, because this is a domestic natural resource, and we need to reduce the risk of production, be responsible in this production."

Also on the program, former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Pete Bradford said the building of US reactors could slow somewhat, as nuclear officials assess how to improve safety in the wake of the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Bradford served on NRC during the Three Mile Island incident and said the safety reviews that took about a year amounted to a de facto moratorium on nuclear development.

"When you look at the number of people who are going to have to pay attention to new issues from seismic design to the placement and reliability of diesel generators to emergency offsite evacuation plans, that's a huge resource commitment that NRC is going to have to make if it's going to live up to its own statements and President Obama's statements about putting the lessons learned process first," Bradford said.

Platts Energy Week airs at 8 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday on WUSA in Washington, and at 6:30 a.m. Central time on Sunday and at 7:30 p.m. Central time on Monday on KHOU in Houston. The program is also available on the web at www.plattsenergyweektv.com.

-- Herman Wang, herman_wang@platts.com