[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 7, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1922-S1923]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I am going to be joined shortly by my 
friend from Texas. In the meantime, I want to comment for a moment on 
the statement of the Senator from New Mexico on energy. We need to take 
a long look at where we are with respect to energy. The Vice President 
with his working group is putting together a national policy on energy, 
as are many groups. We have an oil and gas forum, which I cochair. We 
will be taking a look at where we want to be on energy and energy 
production in this country over a period of time.

[[Page S1923]]

  We have not had an energy policy in the United States, I am sorry to 
say, for the last 8 years. As a result, we did not look at what the 
demand was going to be, where the supply was going to be, and, indeed, 
have found ourselves depending almost 60 percent on imported oil, 
depending on foreign countries and OPEC to manage that. So we need to 
take a long look.
  I was pleased with what the Senator from New Mexico had to say about 
diversity. We need not only to take a look at our need to increase 
domestic production in oil and gas, but we also need to look at 
diversity, to where we can continue to use coal. You may have noticed 
on his chart that coal now produces over 50 percent of our electric 
energy. We need to do some research with respect to air quality so coal 
becomes even more useful. We need also to look at coal and its 
enrichment, getting the Btu's out of low-sulfur coal so transportation 
costs will not be so high.
  Nuclear, I am sure, has a role in our future as a very clean and very 
economical source of electric energy. However, before we do that, we 
are going to have to solve the question of the storage of nuclear 
waste, or begin to use it differently, as they do in some other 
countries, recycling the waste that is there.
  We have great opportunities to do these things. We also need, along 
with this, of course, to take a look at conservation to make sure we 
are using all the conservation methods available to us. Certainly we 
are not now. We have to be careful about doing the kinds of things that 
were done in California, to seek to deregulate part of an industry--in 
this case electric energy--however keeping caps on the retail part. 
Obviously, you are going to have increased usage and reduced 
production, which is the case they have now.
  It is really a test for us at this time. One of the issues is going 
to be the accessibility to public lands. Most of the States where gas 
and oil is produced in any volume are public land States, where 50 
percent to 87 percent of the State belongs to the Federal Government. 
Much of those lands have been unavailable for exploration and 
production.
  We need to get away from the idea that the multiple use of lands 
means you are going to ruin the environment or, on the other hand, that 
we need to do whatever we need to do and we do not care about the 
environment. Those are not the two choices. The choice we have is to 
have multiple use of our lands, to preserve the environment and to have 
access to those lands as well. We can do that, and we have proven that 
it can, indeed, be done.
  That is one of the real challenges before us during this Congress, 
although, of course, Congress only has a portion of involvement--it is 
really the private sector that will do most of it.

  One of the most encouraging things is Vice President Cheney and his 
working group have brought in the other agencies. Too often we think 
about the Department of Energy being the sole source of involvement 
with respect to energy, and that is not the case. The Department of the 
Interior is certainly just as important, in many cases more important 
regarding where we go, as well as the EPA--all these are a real part of 
it.
  One of the difficulties, of course, in addition to the supply, is the 
transportation. Whether we have an opportunity to have pipelines to 
move natural gas from Wyoming to California--a tough job, of course--
whether we have a pipeline that economically can move gas from Alaska 
down to the continental United States, those are some of the things 
with which we are faced. In the case of California, people were not 
excited about having electric transmission lines and therefore it was 
very difficult and time consuming to get the rights-of-way to do these 
things.
  We have to take a look at all of those issues to bring back domestic 
production and be able to support our economy with electric and other 
kinds of energy.
  It is going to be one of the challenges. The Senator from Alaska, 
chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has introduced 
a rather broad bill that deals with many parts of the energy problem. I 
am pleased to be a sponsor of that bill. Obviously, it will create a 
great deal of debate and discussion because it has all those items in 
it, but we need to move. We need to have a policy that will encourage 
production. But I say again, not only should we be looking at 
production but we should be looking at opportunities to, indeed, 
conserve and find efficient ways to use it.

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