[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 15, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4932-S4933]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise on a small point, but it is 
representative of some of the difficulties we are having in trying to 
keep some focus on reality associated with the administration's 
anticipated energy package.
  I am sure many Members saw the Washington Post today, Tuesday, May 
15. On the front page there was a color picture of the Phillips 
Petroleum Company facility at Alpine which depicts very vividly the 
realization that technology indeed can make a very small footprint in 
the Arctic areas of Alaska, my State.
  The picture represents a fair evaluation of this development. It was 
taken in the summertime, that brief 2\1/2\ months or so when the area 
is not covered with ice and snow. The viewer can see the river, the 
lakes. But to grasp the significance of it, one has to recognize that 
this is a major oil field in itself. Yet it takes less acreage than the 
District of Columbia.
  That footprint is concentrated in the area that is known as Alpine. 
For the most part, one derrick has drilled the wells there. These are 
directional drills that go out for many miles recovering the oil. This 
particular facility is producing about 88,000 barrels a day.
  However, there is another picture. This is the point I want to bring 
home to the Members. In an effort to try to draw a balance, if you 
will, between development and the wildlife in the area, the Washington 
Post portrays a picture of three little bears, and it is entitled ``A 
polar bear with her cubs rests in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge.''
  The reality is that this picture was not taken in the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge. It was taken in another area of Alaska far, far away.
  It isn't that we don't have polar bears in Alaska. We are all 
concerned about the beauty and the majesty of this beast, but we have 
done a lot to encourage the polar bear by safeguarding it from any 
trophy hunting. In Alaska, you cannot take a polar bear for a trophy. 
You cannot take a polar bear if you are a non-Native, but you can go to 
Canada and you can go to Russia.
  We have and will provide for the Record the statement from the 
photographer of exactly where this picture was taken. But it is not in 
ANWR, and the photographer is prepared to give a statement in that 
regard. Here again we have another mischaracterization, the implication 
that ANWR is filled with polar bears and that if we open up this 
fragile area, somehow we are going to disturb the polar bears. That is 
not accurate.
  The Washington Post should know better. They should check their 
sources. They should recognize that polar bears for the most part live 
out on the ice. Why do they live on the ice? Because that is where 
there is something to eat. They live on the ice, and they stalk the 
seal. As a consequence, they don't come into the Arctic National 
Wildlife area in any abundance.
  They do come in from time to time.
  But there is little food for them, and during the months where the 
ice is continually moving, they simply stay out on the ice where they 
can have the availability of food. It is noted that there are very few 
that den on the shores adjacent to ANWR. So, again, I encourage my 
colleagues to recognize, as I am sure many people who see in the 
Washington Post today those warm and cuddly polar bears, that they are 
being misled in this particular photo because this photo was not taken 
in ANWR.
  I also encourage my colleagues to recognize that the administration 
is going to come out with an energy task force report. While I have not 
had briefings to amount to any significant detail, I think it is 
important for the American people, and my colleagues particularly, to 
know that it addresses positive corrections in the imbalance we have in 
America's energy crisis.
  We do have a crisis. One need only look at California to recognize 
that Californians are going to be paying an extraordinarily increased 
amount for energy. Electricity is $60 billion to $70 billion. Last 
year, it was in the area of $28 billion. The year before, it was $9 
billion. They have an energy crisis. We haven't built a new coal-fired 
plant in this country since 1995. Yet close to 51 percent of our energy 
comes from coal. We haven't built a new nuclear plant in this country 
for more than 10 years. Yet we know the value of nuclear from the 
standpoint of what it does to air quality. There are no emissions. 
There are other tradeoffs.
  We also know we are now 56- to 57-percent dependent on imported oil, 
and the forecasts are that the world will be increasing its consumption 
of oil for one reason--for transportation--by nearly a third in the 
next 10 years or so.
  We have seen natural gas and our increasing dependence on natural gas 
because it is one of the few areas where you can get a permit to put in 
facilities. Yet natural gas prices have increased dramatically from 
$2.16 per thousand cubic feet 18 months ago to $4, $5, $6, $7 to $8. We 
have had a coming together and that coming together also involves 
distribution. We have had the realization in the hearing that we had 
today before the Energy Committee, which I chair, that there are severe 
constrictions on transmitting electric energy.
  In our bill that we introduced, we left out eminent domain for 
electric transmission lines purposely because we felt the States could 
meet that obligation as they saw fit. Now some suggest that States 
don't have the commitment internally to reach a decision and are going 
to need Federal eminent domain. Maybe that is the case. It is like the 
perfect storm; everything is coming together at once. No new coal, no 
nuclear, dependence on imported oil, higher costs for natural gas, no 
relief on transmission. Now they are saying we have to do something 
about it immediately.

[[Page S4933]]

  Well, what do you do about it? This didn't come overnight. We have 
seen the realities with regard to higher prices of gasoline. Yet we 
know we don't have the refining capacity. We haven't built a new 
refinery in 25 years in this country. We have our refineries up to 
maximum production. They were busy making heating oil. Now they are 
trying to build up inventories for gasoline. So you not only have a 
shortage of refined capacity but you are dependent primarily on foreign 
countries--OPEC, for the most part--for our crude oil. We suddenly find 
we have an inability to refine an adequate amount. So with inventories 
low, the maximum utilization out of refineries is converting over--and 
they have been for some time--to gasoline; and then the complications 
of 15 different types of reformulated gasoline in this country that 
require almost a boutique type of activity in the refiners, where they 
have to refine it to specific fuel specifications for the area--they 
have to separate it, batch it, transport it separately. Additives, 
whether ethanol or MTBE, complicate the process.

  Is it necessary that we have that kind of a mandate? Clearly, the 
industry says they can meet the air quality requirements and the Clean 
Air Act if you will give them some flexibility. Well, we haven't given 
them the flexibility.
  The public wants relief, and I think it is unfair to characterize the 
new administration with having the sole responsibility to come up with 
so-called immediate relief. Nobody is a magician around here, and it 
would take a magician to provide immediate relief for the crisis we 
have gotten into. But what we have to do is focus realistically, and I 
think that is the value of what we are going to see out of President 
Bush's and Vice President Cheney's new energy task force--relief--which 
will be coming out Thursday.
  We are not going to see generalities that say you can simply get 
there from here by conservation. Conservation is important, but 
conservation isn't going to do it alone. Make no mistake; Americans are 
used to a standard of living that has been brought about by plentiful 
supplies of relatively inexpensive energy. If we want to sacrifice our 
standard of living, that can be done. But I wonder how many people in 
California are ready to go out and turn in their old refrigerators, 
their old washers and dryers, when they are not worn out, for a new 
energy-saving appliance that will cut their energy bills in half. I 
don't know. Maybe we can mandate CAFE savings. We have a mandatory 27-
mile CAFE standard currently in the automobile industry. People say, 
well, that doesn't include the vans, the suburban vehicles, the type 
that are so popular today, the SUVs and others. That is true. They are 
classified in the truck classification as light trucks, but the reality 
is that you can't get there on CAFE, either.
  We have 207 million vehicles in this country. About 170 million are 
automobiles and the rest are trucks and cars. It is going to take you 
10 years to make a significant dent in that number of vehicles because 
a lot of them aren't paid for. So you are not going to discard them.
  If you mandate substantially increased CAFE standards, then people 
have to buy new cars; they have to buy new ones. CAFE standards are 
important, but you can't achieve the kinds of savings we need by CAFE 
standards. You can give tax credits for people who save energy. I think 
you will probably see an amendment or two on that to give them a $250, 
$300 tax credit.
  The point is that we are far behind, and what the administration is 
going to propose is some positive steps as to how we can address the 
energy crisis. It is going to take the conventional sources of energy 
that we know and have had experience with and the addition of the clean 
coal technology that we have come to develop in the last decade or so. 
We can continue to use coal. We can use it in a manner in which we take 
out many of the impurities--the sulfur, and so forth. We can address 
the reality that we can produce more natural gas in this country, but 
the incentive has to be there. That is a return on investment.
  Obviously, we can reduce our increased dependence on imported oil by 
producing more domestic oil. Of course, that involves my State of 
Alaska and the item that I first mentioned, the accuracy of some of the 
important portrayals of ANWR.
  In conclusion, to those who suggest the potential development in 
ANWR, a reserve somewhere in the area of 5.6 billion to as high as 16 
billion--and if it were an average of 10 billion it would be the 
largest oilfield found in the last 40 years--I suggest the prospects 
for developments of this area are very good. We have the technology to 
open it safely, there is absolutely no question about that, with the 3-
D seismic and directional drilling.
  The people, the residents in the area of Katovik and Nuiqsut, Barrow, 
the Natives who live in this area who are dependent pretty much on the 
realities associated with hunting and fishing for their livelihood, a 
subsistence lifestyle, also have aspirations of a better life, an 
alternative life, and this provides them with jobs, education, health 
care opportunities, and opportunities for their children as well to 
prosper. Just as people in any other community, they have visions of a 
better life. They support it.
  Some say it is a 6-month supply. That is a totally unsuitable and 
inappropriate comparison because, as we all know, if you were to stop 
all the oil flowing into the United States for a 6-month period, that 
is what it would take to say that this is a 6-month supply. You would 
have to stop all oil imports coming in from my State of Alaska, from 
oil produced in the United States, whether it be from California, 
Kentucky, or Pennsylvania, or imported into this country from overseas. 
That is what it would take to equal a 6 months' supply of oil.
  That Prudhoe Bay has supplied the Nation with 20 to 25 percent of 
crude oil for the last 25 years--and the likelihood is this field is 
larger than Prudhoe Bay and would immediately flow in the area of 
somewhere in excess of 1 million barrels a day--is the reality about 
which we are talking.
  It is important Members keep in mind the reality of separating fact 
from fiction, which again brings me to the fiction associated with the 
front page of the Washington Post in identifying three little bears as 
residents of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Clearly, they are 
not, and we will have certification from the photographer as soon as we 
can obtain it relative to the exact location of where the picture of 
the three bears was taken.
  Mr. President, thank you for indulging me additional time. I yield to 
my good friend from Nevada, if he is seeking recognition at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

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