Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

Co-editor of "Resource War in 3-D: Dependency Diplomacy Defense" and currently associated with the establishment of a new energy policy center in New Mexico, Dr. Daniel Fine contends that the energy security crisis and confrontation over national policy fails to recognize the decisive importance of the Rocky Mountains region to the debate. What is to be done with the greatest oil concentration in the world? Neither in the Middle East nor Russia, this resource is the foundation of a strategic unconventional fuels policy that challenges all assumptions on foreign oil import dependency. Measuring in trillions of barrels of barrels, it is all here in the United States within the shale rocks beneath the Rocky Mountain region and flagged by Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Early in the last century, geologists recorded its existence and potential. Someday, it was agreed in industry and government circles, this oil shale resource would be developed to replace declining conventional oil structures as economics and technology developed. It was the future of domestic supply - today or the 21st Century. Is it time for our national policy to move "back to the future"?

The promise of energy security through unconventional fuel from the Rocky Mountain region introduces a new and diversified perspective to the policy debate and process. How would a trillion barrels of oil reserves over the next ten years impact on agricultural and electrical (plug-ins) investment alternatives to gasoline? What would be the impact on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? Join us as Dr. Fine addresses these and other questions about this untapped energy resource and oil import dependency.