Good afternoon. My name is Sam Butler. I am President of Trinity Petroleum Management, a Denver based privately held independent oil and gas exploration and production company and am on the board of directors of the Energy Literacy Project.

The Energy Literacy Project, Inc. ("ELP") is a 501(c) (3) educational & informational corporation. The purpose of the Project is to provide and advance educational resources to the American public pertaining to of energies role in the prosperity and well being of our nation. Our objective is to provide responsible balanced information in the areas of Energy, Economy and Environment.

The initial funding for the project has been provided by members of the oil and gas industry. The educational efforts of the project, however, pertain to all forms of energy and we seek participants in the project from all interested parties.

The purpose of this hearing for the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy, is to get public input of the President’s proposed National Energy Policy and specific segments of that policy. Our comments are directed at some of the conditions that we see as necessary in order to establish such a policy and gain public support for those programs.

We believe that having an informed, literate public on energy issues is a prerequisite to a sustainable national energy policy. Such policy whether it is pro environment, pro development or a compromise must have public support to be effective.

To further public education, we recommend the DOE sponsor an effort to update the many past surveys of the public’s level of energy literacy. A current assessment is needed so that credible educational programs can be designed to improve literacy levels. Such a survey must be balanced to cover all forms of energy and recognize the interrelationship with economic and environmental considerations. We believe that this is a role for the DOE to sponsor and participate in the funding.

The next step is to design informational programs based on survey results. Currently there is a multitude of available programs to draw from. EIA lists 159 such programs with an energy theme for K-12, DOE/EIA-0546 (2000), put out by government, industry and other groups. The IOGCC has a similar list of 179 programs only on oil and gas and only 11 are common to the EIA list. The National Mining Association also lists 47 programs. Integration of those and other information services would greatly facilitate the design and accessibility of informational programs.

In this second step, we must recognize that the messenger is just as important as the message. Both industry and government carry baggage pertaining to energy issues. Yet both have significant information, materials and resources to contribute to a public literacy program. Many of our trade associations readily admit that they do not have the charter or the talents to take on

such broad-based tasks, yet acknowledge that an informed public will make their jobs easier. The Energy Literary Project would like to see a DOE coordinated effort with Industry to make core investments in balanced public informational programs as an integral part of National Energy Policy.

As an active participant in this effort, we feel the DOE will gain valuable insights into other programs requesting DOE participation.

The Energy Literacy Project sees its role as that of a facilitator, coordinator and consolidator of information and efforts filling the voids in our segmented industry. As such we look forward to participating in this proposed survey and in the construction and dissemination of informational programs for the public in support of a sustainable National Energy Policy.

Thank you for allowing us to present this testimony.