110 HCON 401 IH: Expressing the support of Congress for U.S. House of Representatives 2008-07-31 text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.

IV 110th CONGRESS 2d Session H. CON. RES. 401 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES July 31, 2008 Mr. Aderholt (for himself, Mr. Cantor, Mr. Thornberry, Mr. Pence, and Mr. Pitts) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Expressing the support of Congress for enhancing energy independence through the usage of existing resources and technology.

Whereas the price of oil has tripled in the past 6 years; Whereas the price of gasoline has almost tripled in the same time period; Whereas the United States currently imports over 60 percent of all crude oil consumed; Whereas the price of oil and gasoline today is determined by expectations of future market conditions; Whereas 90 percent of the world’s oil reserves are controlled by governments, not private companies; Whereas Congress has restricted access to key energy supplies, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Offshore Continental Shelf (OCS), oil shale, heavy oil, and oil sands; Whereas ANWR is believed to contain 10,400,000,000 barrels of oil, a figure which may be a very conservative estimate; Whereas the daily oil production from ANWR could be greater than the amount of oil the United States imports from Saudi Arabia; Whereas exploration of ANWR could create 500,000 American jobs; Whereas the exploration would be conducted on only 2,000 acres of the 19,600,000 acres that constitute the refuge; Whereas the United States currently allows drilling in 11 other national wildlife refuges; Whereas environmentally-friendly techniques can be used to minimize environmental impact; Whereas the portion of ANWR proposed for exploration is a barren tundra, devoid of trees and frozen most of the year; Whereas exploration in ANWR could create $150,000,000,000 in Federal tax revenue; Whereas exploration in ANWR could lower gas prices from $0.75 to $1.60 per gallon; Whereas production of the oil in ANWR would add about $1,400,000,000,000 to our Nation’s wealth, assuming a price of oil of $140 per barrel; Whereas drilling is currently banned on 85 percent of the Offshore Continental Shelf (OCS); Whereas the United States is the only country in the world to restrict access to its OCS energy resources; Whereas Cuba is currently leasing land for oil exploration off the Florida coast; Whereas the parts of the OCS closed to exploration are estimated to contain 16,600,000,000 barrels of oil and 59,310,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas; Whereas historically, estimates of reserves have been understated by about 50 percent; Whereas 63 percent of oil seepages in American waters are from natural causes, 32 percent are from cars and boats, only 4 percent are from oil tankers, and fewer than 1 percent are from drilling; Whereas the OCS extends 200 miles from the coasts of the United States, and most energy proposals only propose exploration beyond 20 miles, the limit of what is visible with the human eye; Whereas modern offshore drilling rigs are so hurricane-resistant that even Hurricane Katrina failed to cause any significant spillage of oil from rigs in the Gulf of Mexico; Whereas exploration in the OCS could lower gas prices by $0.90 to $2.50 per gallon; Whereas production of the oil contained in the OCS would add about $2,300,000,000,000 to our Nation’s wealth, assuming a price of oil of $140 per barrel; Whereas the United States has an estimated 2,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil in the form of shale oil, 1,000,000,000,000 of which is recoverable; Whereas by comparison, Saudi Arabia only has 250,000,000,000 barrels of crude oil reserves; Whereas our shale oil reserves make the United States the country with the world’s largest oil reserves; Whereas America’s recoverable shale oil reserves are equivalent to the sum of the rest of the world’s crude oil reserves; Whereas most of the recoverable shale oil in the United States is located on Federal lands in Colorado and Utah; Whereas the land containing the most shale oil deposits in Colorado was specifically set aside for shale oil production by executive orders between 1912 and 1927; Whereas environmentally sustainable production methods that extract the oil without digging up the shale are in development; Whereas such environmentally-friendly production methods will preserve the ground water by freezing a wall of water around the drill site; Whereas commercial-level production will likely be possible by 2015; Whereas oil prices will probably fall before 2015 in anticipation of the increased production; Whereas production of the oil contained in America’s recoverable shale oil deposits would add about $140,000,000,000,000 to our Nation’s wealth, assuming a price of oil of $140 per barrel; Whereas the Bureau of Land Management was blocked by Congress in 2007 from issuing shale oil production regulations; Whereas the United States has the world’s largest reserves of coal, estimated at 275,000,000,000 recoverable tons and nearly 4,000,000,000,000 identified tons; Whereas America’s recoverable coal reserves could last an estimated 250 years; Whereas the process of converting coal to oil was invented by Germany during World War II and is currently profitably used by South Africa for a large percentage of its fuel needs; Whereas Americans are ready to begin building coal-to-liquid plants in the United States, but are held back by regulatory uncertainty and concern about global warming legislation; Whereas the fuel produced from coal burns much cleaner than fuel produced from oil; Whereas much of the carbon dioxide produced by coal-to-liquid plants could be stored underground and used to increase recovery from oil wells; Whereas the United States has not built a new oil refinery in over 30 years; Whereas America currently relies on imports for over 12 percent of our gasoline supply; Whereas our dependence on imported gasoline has been increasing each of the past 10 years; Whereas building more refineries could lower gas prices by $0.15 to $0.45 per gallon; Whereas more refineries have not been built in part due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining government permits; Whereas imported oil, gas, and other petroleum products are currently the largest part of the United States trade deficit, accounting for $317,000,000,000 out of a total deficit of $815,000,000,000 in 2007; Whereas imported oil and gas are consuming an ever-increasing share of our trade deficit; Whereas the massive transfer of wealth from the United States to the Middle East for oil imports is harmful to our Nation’s security; Whereas our military uses 132,000,000 barrels of oil per year and supports the development of American sources of fuel; Whereas a provision was added at the last minute before passage of H.R. 6, the ironically-titled Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, that would prohibit Federal agencies from purchasing fuel from American sources like shale oil and coal-to-liquid plants, and require more Middle Eastern oil to be purchased; Whereas America has the capability to become much more energy independent, using today’s technology without a huge taxpayer expenditure by simply using the resources available; and Whereas the provisions in this resolution could add over $143,000,000,000,000 to our Nation’s wealth over time and lower gas prices by $2.00 per gallon, not counting the impact of coal-to-liquid: Now, therefore, be it

That it is the sense of Congress that a set of laws should be enacted that— (1)make more American energy available for exploration and production, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Offshore Continental Shelf, and Federal lands onshore, including for shale oil and coal-to-liquid production; and (2)streamline the permitting process for building American refineries and allow the construction of refineries on Federal lands.