[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 31 (Thursday, February 16, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2813-S2814]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                OIL RELIANCE THREATENS NATIONAL SECURITY

  Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, and my colleagues, I would think that if 
any government is presented with evidence that their country is under a 
national security threat that they would institute immediately a full-
scale investigation to determine what the threat is and what action is 
needed to prevent that threat from becoming an all-out emergency, or a 
conflict that we could not ultimately solve. That is the purpose of 
government. Ultimately to protect the security of the citizens of our 
country.
  Therefore, when I read a release that I received today from the U.S. 
Department of Commerce which clearly states that they have made a 
finding that growing U.S. reliance on oil imports threatens the 
national security of the United States by making it vulnerable to 
interruptions in foreign oil supplies, I would immediately gather all 
of my advisers around me and say, ``All right, what are we going to do 
about this?''
  I am deeply disturbed that as I read the release and talk to people 
who know about this problem and find that, essentially, nothing is 
being done. I think we as a nation are making a terrible mistake.
  Let me try and point out what I think the problem is in a very clear 
fashion. If we in this Nation were suddenly told that we are now 
importing 50 percent of all of the food that we consume in this 
country, and much of it from nations that are very undependable as far 
as being allies of the United States, I would predict that the next day 
there would be lines of people surrounding the White House and 
surrounding this Capitol saying, ``My goodness, this is a terrible 
threat that we are now having to import half of the food that we 
consume from countries that are not dependable as allies of the United 
States.''
  Yet this is exactly what is happening when it comes to energy 
security. I will tell Members how this came about, Mr. President. That 
is, that the Department of Commerce, under existing rules and 
regulations, were responding to a petition that was filed by the 
Independent Petroleum Association of America that was filed on March 
11, 1994, alleging that ``Increasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil 
threatened the national security of the United States.''
  They pointed out in their request that imports of crude oil products 
were estimated through 1994 to average 8.8 million barrels of foreign 
oil coming into the United States every day. This represents a 200,000-
barrel-a-day increase compared to 8.6 million barrels a day in 1993.
  The estimated import ratio has now, for the first time ever, broken 
the ``peril point level'' of 50 percent of foreign imports coming into 
this country.
  There is no dispute about that fact. The IPAA presented information. 
No one objected to that. The Commerce Department finds, after looking 
at all this information, clearly that U.S. reliance on oil imports now 
threatens national security by making us vulnerable to interruptions in 
foreign oil supplies.
  The Commerce Department recommended, however, that the President not 
use his authority that he has under section 232 of the Trade Expansion 
Act of 1962 to adjust these foreign oil imports through the imposition 
of tariffs, because the economic costs of such a move outweigh the 
potential benefits and because current administration energy policies 
will limit the growth of imports.
  Mr. President, I disagree with that, and I disagree with it strongly. 
I think current administration energy policies in this administration, 
in the last administration and in the administration before that, in 
Republican administrations and in Democratic administrations, have 
clearly allowed us to get to the point where today we are importing 
half of the oil that we use in this country.
  I guess it has been an easy thing for administrations to do because 
we have been getting cheap oil, but does anybody remember what happened 
in the early 1970's when we had lines of Americans sitting in their 
cars waiting to buy the precious gas that was left at the stations to 
run their cars and run this country? Because at that time, the Middle 
Eastern oil suppliers turned the faucets off just a little bit and 
literally brought this country to our knees, because at that time, we 
were importing about 30 percent of the oil we use.
  Today, we are importing 50 percent, and just turning that faucet a 
little bit in 1995 will bring this country to our knees in a much more 
serious fashion than we were brought to our knees in 1973.
  Unfortunately, it seems that all the administrations since then did 
not learn the lesson, and the lesson is very simple: That we should 
never be dependent on something that is important to our national 
security; we should never be dependent on other nations to supply it, 
particularly nations that are not necessarily our friends nor our 
allies, that we cannot trust to be reliable when we have a need for a 
product that they have, whether it be food, as I mentioned earlier, or 
whether it be energy to run our plants, our factories, to heat our 
homes, to cool our homes in the summer, to run our cars, to run our 
trucks, to keep up with the commerce demands of a great Nation.
  Yet today, for all of those needs, we are now dependent on foreign 
nations for over half of those energy needs. And the thing that bothers 
me the most is that after recognizing that there is a national security 
threat--and these are not my words, these are the words of the Commerce 
Department when they made the findings--that the situation today 
presents a national security threat to the United States but we are not 
going to do anything in terms of setting a tariff to try and reduce the 
amount of imports coming in in order to encourage greater domestic 
exploration and production right here in this country.
  I think that that is something that is not acceptable, because there 
are some things that we can do. I do not suggest that maybe oil import 
tariffs are the only answer. I have advocated them for 
[[Page S2814]] a number of years. But there are a lot of other things 
that they could have said we are going to recommend that needs to be 
done, other than just saying we are going to rely on current policy. 
Because, folks, it is clear that current policy has us in the 
predicament we are in. Current policy has allowed us to have imports 
increase up to the point where they now constitute 50 percent of all 
the energy we have in this country.
  Imports increased this year from last year by 200,000 barrels a day 
more than the year before. That is under current policy. And to say 
that we are going to continue to stay with current policy, there is no 
trend line to suggest that is going to solve the problem. The trend 
line is that imports will continue to increase under current policy.
  So I suggest to my friends in this administration that they take the 
Commerce Department's findings that there is a national security threat 
to make some recommendations on new things that should be done in order 
to prevent a national catastrophe from falling on this country.
  I suggest that there are a number of things that I would have hoped 
that the administration would have been able to say we are recommending 
instead of maintaining the status quo.
  First, they could have recommended that the administration will 
actively support what the industry calls geological and geophysical 
expensing, which simply says that oil and gas operators in this country 
would be able to expense the cost of exploring and producing a well, 
whether that well is a dry well, a dry hole, which they can do now, or 
whether it is a producing well. That would encourage a substantial 
increase in domestic production in this country to reduce that 50 
percent number to what would be a more acceptable number.
  I look over the recommendations and that is not there.
  They could have, second, suggested that we move toward and support 
OPRA 90 reform. OPRA is the Oil Pollution Act that this Congress passed 
in 1990, but the way it is being implemented is not the way this 
Congress intended it to be implemented, and legislation is necessary to 
clarify what we meant. Here is the simple problem:
  Congress never intended when we passed that Oil Pollution Control Act 
that onshore facilities would have to carry insurance of $150 million 
per well. We were talking about major offshore activity that had the 
potential to pollute if a catastrophic event occurred. We never 
intended that any facility onshore that may be very, very small, with 
only very limited potential to cause any pollution, would also have to 
have $150 million of liability insurance. But that is how our folks in 
the bureaucracy have interpreted it.
  An amendment, a legislative fix for this problem would allow 
independent operators who produce oil onshore to do it in a fashion 
that they could afford. We are going to run independents out of 
business if we do not do something legislatively to fix this problem. 
That would have been the second thing that could have been recommended 
and should have been recommended.
  The third is to have recommended some type of broad-based royalty 
reform to encourage exploration and production in difficult areas where 
it is more expensive to find oil, where many times a day it costs more 
to explore than it would pay them if they found a producing well, 
because the price of oil per barrel, partly because of cheap foreign 
imports, is less than it costs to find that oil. Broad-based royalty 
relief would have made a major impact on helping to increase domestic 
production. But there is no recommendation for that type of activity.
  The fourth is to do something about the Alaska export ban on oil that 
is produced in Alaska. When Congress passed that law saying that oil 
that is found in Alaska could never be exported outside the United 
States, it probably made sense at that time. But it does not make sense 
today.
  If oil from Alaska can be sold in other areas at a higher price, it 
would give companies greater amounts of money to explore for and find 
additional fields domestically in North America--in Alaska, in the gulf 
coast area--which would increase the domestic production and thereby 
lower that 50 percent import figure that we have.
  Mr. President, not one of those proposals, not one of those 
initiatives is found in the Commerce Department's finding and 
recommendation as to what should be done.
  I will just close by saying that it is insufficient, in my opinion, 
for a department of our Government to make a finding that there is a 
national security threat to this Nation, which they have made, and then 
to say we are not going to recommend anything new to address that 
threat. That is an abdication of responsibility. It is unacceptable. 
This Member, and I know other Members, will take their finding and 
offer constructive suggestions to, in fact, address what is now clearly 
established as a national security threat to the United States of 
America.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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