[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 149 (Thursday, November 1, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H7707-H7709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       UNITED STATES INCREASING DEPENDENCY ON IMPORTED PETROLEUM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as we complete our commemoration this 
evening of our dear colleague Congressman Jerry Solomon of New York, I 
am reminded that his patriotism and his devotion to duty inspired us 
all, and as we confront this latest test of America's will and position 
in the world and what is just for all people, I am reminded of a book 
that I have been rereading called Sacred Rage that puts in context some 
of the forces that are arrayed against the United States and our 
interests now and the entire issue of terrorism and its roots.
  In that book by Robin Wright, much is discussed, including some of 
the religious fervor that has been promoted and directed against the 
people of the United States, some of the hatred of U.S. policies in the 
Middle East that are at the basis of some of the antipathy toward our 
country and our people, but also the economic underpinnings of the 
unrest in the Middle East and Central Asia and how directly it is tied 
to petroleum and oil.
  This evening I am going to spend a little bit of time talking about 
that because, as the American people understand better some of the 
underpinnings of the terror, we can get a clearer sense of new 
directions to set in order to build a more peaceful world for the 
future.
  This evening I wanted to talk about the United States' increasing 
dependency on imported fuel and petroleum, and I have two charts here 
that describe it very clearly.
  This is a chart dating back to the mid-1980s and each year showing an 
increase in the amount of imported oil that comes into our country, and 
in spite of conservation efforts, in spite of

[[Page H7708]]

other things that we have done, more miles per gallons and so forth, we 
have become more and more dependent on imports of petroleum to drive 
this economy.
  We imported 1.2 billion barrels of oil in 1982, but last year, 3.3 
billion barrels, and so we have nearly tripled in the last 20 years our 
dependency on imported petroleum. Serious work on alternative fuels has 
been largely ignored, while billions of dollars in tax subsidies and 
profits have accrued to the oil industry.
  The second chart that I have gives a sense of our entire petroleum 
usage in this country, which is the red set of bars here, and this is 
just the last decade from 1992 to the present showing that the number 
has been rising slowly, the usage has been rising slowly in total 
petroleum consumption, but the yellow bar underneath shows how much is 
imported of that total, and my colleagues can see that our total 
consumption is going up but the amount of imported fuel is going up as 
a larger share of that. In each single year of the 1990s and last year, 
it has gone up to now almost half of total usage in this country, and 
over half of what is imported comes from the Middle East.
  Last year, the United States imported more than 3.3 billion barrels 
of crude oil, and our largest supplier, Saudi Arabia, actually sold us 
over 557 million barrels. America's addiction to imported oil threatens 
our freedom of action. It saps the lifeblood from our economy, and 
truly, it distorts our foreign policy goals.
  What an irony of modern history that while our country's bombs fall 
on Iraq's no fly zone, our Nation continues to purchase an estimated 
$15 billion worth of Iraqi crude annually. That is really something to 
think about.
  America's addiction to imported oil threatens our freedom of action 
without question. A couple of decades ago when President Jimmy Carter 
warned about America's growing energy dependence on the outside world, 
our Nation responded by creating the Department of Energy with the goal 
of putting America on a course to be more self-sufficient.
  Conservation saved millions of barrels per day, and more fuel 
efficient cars stemmed the growing usage of oil, but truly, Americans 
were never really committed to being energy independent, and we fell 
asleep as to the risks, again as these charts attest. We are more 
dependent now on imported oil than at any time in our history.
  Half the oil, as I mentioned, that we consume is imported, and half 
of that comes from OPEC, from the OPEC cartel. We spend $86 billion on 
our oil habit every year, and in the meantime, those dollars are 
foregone for domestic investment opportunities in alternative fuels for 
America's independence such as biodiesel, ethanol, clean coal, the 
range of alternatives that exists if we but had the will to apply them.
  The United States Department of Energy itself has warned us that 
dependence on foreign oil has cost our economy deeply. Price 
manipulation, if you think about it, by the OPEC cartel from 1979 to 
1991 cost our economy over $4 trillion. One of the earlier speakers 
this evening talked about September 11, and in some places in our 
country the price per gallon going up to over $4 a gallon. Think about 
the price manipulation that my colleagues might have seen in their own 
communities, in their own towns and think about all those dollars and 
how much wiser it would have been had we invested those here at home in 
domestic production.
  America's foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, has been 
heavily influenced by the extraction and removal of oil, and in fact, 
oil has become a distorting proxy for our foreign policy. It clouds it. 
It creates a situation where we cannot see politically clearly enough 
in that region of the world. We ought to remove it as a proxy for our 
foreign policy, and we ought to make a commitment to do it.
  Becoming energy self-sufficient here at home makes global economic 
sense, too, because over the next 15 years the world oil reserves will 
begin diminishing. They have reached their peak in terms of 
availability on the face of the globe, and prices will rise even higher 
with each barrel pumped. There is no more opportune time for our Nation 
to get serious.
  Putting America on a sound energy footing will require national 
leadership, and it will require the active involvement of our Federal 
Government and our State governments. The goal should be to make each 
State in our Union energy independent to the greatest extent possible 
and eliminate Federal requirements that discourage alternative fuels.
  If you look at our defense budget, just the cost of maintaining the 
oil supply lines from the Middle East at a minimum costs us over $50 
billion a year, $50 billion a year. That has to do with military 
emplacements that have been stationed in that part of the world, ships 
that patrol, planes that fly, et cetera. Imagine if we could be 
investing that kind of money here at home to make ourselves energy 
self-sufficient.
  The State of Minnesota, and I just returned from there, is leading 
the way in new ethanol producing plants that are also creating new 
value added for our depressed world countryside. The Federal Government 
really needs to take a look at Minnesota, and every other governor 
should take a look at Minnesota. They are doing so much to encourage 
the use of renewable fuels, and I sort of felt as I went through 
Minnesota and I looked at these various farmer co-ops that were 
producing this ethanol, I thought I was seeing a modern day incarnation 
of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison. They are tinkering around and 
finding an answer and applying it in that great State.
  In addition to those kind of efforts, I have introduced other 
legislation that will deal with America's long-term energy dependence. 
One piece of legislation would expand and rename what we call the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve and rename it the Strategic Fuels Reserve 
to allow that reserve to also access ethanol and biodiesel, not just 
crude oil and petroleum. The biofuels initiative would authorize the 
Secretary of Agriculture to provide loans for production distribution, 
development and storage of biofuels beyond the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve.
  These fuels provide the American farmer with new market 
opportunities, and their mass production could provide the rural areas 
of this Nation with the economic infusion of jobs and investment that 
has been dreamed about but has not occurred for generations. With a 
bill that has been introduced in the other body by Senator Richard 
Lugar of Indiana, it is my great hope that for the first time we can 
look at this biofuels initiative and make it a central pillar in new 
agriculture legislation that will clear this year for our great Nation.

  If you think about commodity crises and their levels today, it is 
clear that more can and should be done to utilize those domestic 
surpluses to produce new fuels for this economy. Economic security is 
provided by the increased utilization of renewable biofuels and would 
provide significant economic benefits.
  According to our own Department of Agriculture, a sustained annual 
market of 100 million gallons of just biodiesel would result in a $170 
million increase in income to farmers, and that is a very small 
increase.
  Ethanol, biodiesel and other alternative fuels also provide us with 
environmental security. Biodiesel contains no sulfur or aromatics 
associated with air pollution, and the use of biodiesel provides a 78.5 
percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared to petroleum 
diesel, and when burned in a conventional engine, provides substantial 
reduction in unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and particulate 
matter.
  For too long we have been uncreative and cynical about the 
opportunities that alternative energy sources provide us. Some day, not 
so far from now, the oil reserves will be tapped dry. Alternative 
energy sources like ethanol, biodiesel, solar energy, wind power, 
geothermal, fuel cells, clean coal and hybrids will provide us with new 
opportunities to become more energy independent and to determine our 
own destiny, not be forced to shape the foreign policy and economic 
domestic policy of this Nation based on imported petroleum.
  I have been active on this issue for quite a while. Last year, as I 
mentioned, during the appropriations committee markup, we had an 
amendment which would have increased the appropriated amount for 
renewable energy

[[Page H7709]]

 programs by $106 million. It failed in committee, but an amendment I 
cosponsored with former Congressman Matt Salmon increased that funding 
by an additional $40 million.
  We just have to be vigilant, and if one looks at the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve, which I referenced a little bit earlier in my 
remarks tonight, if we think about that reserve, it should hold about 
700 million barrels of crude. It only has 545 million barrels today, 
sufficient to push the United States from wild price swings for a 
period of approximately 53 days. None of the fuel in that reserve is 
biobased. In fact, 92 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has 
been purchased from foreign sources; 41.9 percent from Mexico; 24 
percent from the United Kingdom; and over a fifth from the Middle East, 
the OPEC-producing Nations.
  The Strategic Petroleum Reserve should also include the development 
of alternatives to our Nation's reliance on petroleum.

                              {time}  2215

  Every single part of our government should be asking the question, 
how can we move America toward a more independent future? How can we 
make our economy more secure in the years ahead?
  This is a primary source of instability. Since the economically 
damaging Arab oil embargoes of 1973 and 1974 and 1979, to the current 
recession which was precipitated by rising oil prices that began in 
1999, the economic stability of the United States has too often in 
modern history been shaken by economic forces outside our borders. How 
long is it going to take us to wise up?
  Legislation here should shift our dependence away from foreign 
petroleum as our primary energy source to alternative renewable 
domestic fuels. Currently the United States annually consumes about 164 
billion gallons of vehicle fuels and 5.6 billion gallons of heating 
oil. In 2000, 52.9 percent of these fuels were imported. That means 
every time you go to the gas station and you fill your tank with 
gasoline, half of what you pay goes offshore to one of those oil cartel 
interests. Does that make you feel good? Would you not rather be 
investing those dollars in this country?
  Since 1983, the United States importation of petroleum and its 
derivatives has nearly tripled, rising from 1.25 billion barrels in 
1983 to a level of 3.3 billion barrels in the Year 2000.
  If we think about the benefits of continued development and 
utilization of ethanol and biodiesel, they involve energy security for 
our country, economic security based on independence that we grow and 
process here at home, and environmental security.
  In terms of the Middle East and the situation we are now facing with 
Enduring Freedom, there is absolutely no question that every single one 
of those Gulf oil states, their economies are propped up by the dollars 
that come from inside this economy. Now, we cannot cut them off 
tomorrow, it would create a terribly disruptive situation in that part 
of the world. But it is high time that the United States thought very 
hard about how it is going to live up to the promise of our founders, 
and that is our own new Declaration of Independence, recognizing how 
our independence is being subscribed by forces that perhaps because of 
inertia we have let overwhelm us, but now, particularly at this time in 
our history, to be wise enough and to have enough foresight and enough 
determination to wean ourselves off of this dangerous dependence on 
imported petroleum.
  To think that we have major military presence in the Middle East, not 
because of Enduring Freedom, that has come on recently, but major 
military presence to patrol those oil lanes and to make sure that that 
product gets to our shores, should cause every single American to think 
very hard. What does that mean to our children's future? What does it 
mean to the independence of this country?
  Think about the fact that $50 billion to $100 billion of taxes paid 
every year by the people of this country go directly into our defense 
budget to support the petroleum industry, which is largely now every 
year more and more an imported product into this market. Would it not 
be wiser to spend those dollars here at home, using our ingenuity, 
using our promise, using our hopes for a better future, and investing 
every single dime here at home where it would create ripple effects 
into our economy and cut our very dangerous dependence on imported 
petroleum?
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank those who have listened this evening. I 
think that this is absolutely the most important economic issue that 
faces us as we try to move toward peace and resolution of the very 
serious threat that is facing our country from the Middle East. But 
unless one understands this piece of the equation, one will never be 
able to understand how to lead us to a more secure and independent 
future.

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