Congressional Record, Volume 148 Issue 41 (Monday, April 15, 2002)

[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 41 (Monday, April 15, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2667-S2670]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

AMENDMENT SUBMITTAL

Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, in deference to the majority, it will
be my intent to send an amendment to the desk. I ask that the amendment
be laid over until the appropriate time. This is an amendment that
involves sanctions on Iraq.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I do not want to preclude it, but I am not sure as to
whether or not it would be necessary to set aside the existing
amendment, which is the Iraqi oil import ban. I filed this some time
ago.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On what measure is the Senator proposing to
add the amendment?
Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is a specific ban on imports from Iraq.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. To which bill is the Senator proposing to add
the amendment?
Mr. MURKOWSKI. It would be an amendment to S. 517.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That measure is not pending at this time.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent to submit this amendment as if
it was in order as a pending amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. My understanding is tomorrow morning is somewhat open
because the majority had indicated they were not going to be taking up
the boundary issue, and there was some question of taking something
else up. So I simply offer this amendment. Obviously, it is going to be
up to the leaders if they want to take it, but it would

[[Page S2668]]

be my intention to submit it. So my staff has the amendment coming
shortly. It has already been filed with the clerk. So let me go into
the specifics.
This amendment would basically end our imports of oil from Iraq until
certain conditions were met. First would be that the U.N. certifies
that Iraq has complied with Security Council Resolution 687 and has
dismantled their program to develop and construct weapons of mass
destruction. Further, it would end our imports of oil from Iraq until
Iraq ceases to smuggle oil in contravention of Security Council
Resolution 986; further, that Iraq no longer pays bounties to the
families of suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Israel.
Now, I recognize Iraq's oil export program is intended to be used for
the benefit of Iraq's suffering people, but my amendment also seeks to
ensure the President uses every means available to support the
humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people notwithstanding our ban on oil
imports.
I consider myself somewhat of an internationalist, and I believe
firmly in the importance of engagement with other countries,
particularly economic engagement. But I am a strong believer, as well,
in free trade and in the work that many of my colleagues have done to
reform the economic sanctions policy. However, I draw the line on
economic engagement when national security is compromised.
I said it before, and I will say it again, our increasing dependency
on unstable overseas sources of oil is compromising our national
security. In the last week, this Nation has lost 30 percent of our
available imports from both Iraq and Venezuela. Last week, Saddam
Hussein urged fellow Arab OPEC members to use oil as a weapon--I repeat
that: Oil as a weapon. We saw what happened when aircraft were used as
weapons in the World Trade Center disaster.
Saddam Hussein did that by imposing a 30-day embargo to halt oil
exports to the United States until the United States forced Israel to
cave into the demands of the Palestinian extremists.
In 1973, the Arab League used oil as a weapon during a time of
similar crisis in the Mideast. Some may remember that. We had gas lines
around the block. People were blaming government. That was during the
Yom Kippur War.

At that time, we were 37 percent dependent on imported oil. Still,
the Arab oil embargo demonstrated how powerful a weapon oil could be,
and the United States was brought to its knees at that time in 1973.
Today, we are 58 percent dependent on imported oil. Clearly, the
vulnerability is evident. At that time, the national security
implications of energy dependence was obvious to everybody. At that
time, there was a decision made to build a TransAlaskan pipeline. It
was taken precisely because of our national security implications of
overdependency on Middle East sources. That was then and this is now.
I have charts that show the contribution of Prudhoe Bay to decreasing
our imports when Prudhoe Bay came online. It was a dramatic reduction
in imports. Prudhoe Bay has contributed about 25 percent of the total
crude oil produced in this country. Prospects for ANWR are even
greater. I suggest there is more oil in ANWR than in the entire State
of Texas.
As we look at the changing times, we have to recognize certain things
stay the same. Nearly 30 years after the Arab oil embargo, we are faced
with the same threat we faced in 1973. The difference is that now we
are nearly 58 percent dependent on imported oil. The stakes are higher.
The national security implications are more evident. I wonder what we
have learned. The day before Saddam Hussein called on his Arab
neighbors to use oil as a weapon and begin the 30-day moratorium on
exports, the United States was importing over a million barrels a day
from Iraq. If you filled up your tank on that day, chances are at least
a half gallon of your tank came from Iraq. That is dollars to Saddam
Hussein. Think about it. This is the same individual who pays bounties
to suicide bombers. It was $10,000; now it is $25,000. He shoots at our
sons and daughters who fly missions in the no-fly zone in Iraq; he has
used chemical weapons on his own people and has boasted that he has the
weapons to scorch half of Israel.
When we innocently fill up a gas tank, we have paid Saddam Hussein
nearly a nickel of every dollar spent at the pump that day--paid, in
effect, for the suicide bombers; bought the shells targeted at American
forces; paid for the chemical and biological weapons being developed in
Iraq which are targeted at Israel.
Have we learned our lesson? I ran across an old Life magazine from
March 1991. In a profile of the gulf war, they wrote of Saddam Hussein:

When he finally fought his way to power in 1979, after an
apprenticeship of a few years as a torturer, his first order
was the execution of some 20 of the highest-ranking
government officials, including one of his best friends. He
likes to say ``he who is closest to me is furthest from when
he does wrong.'' He grew up in dirt to live in splendor. He
is cheerless. And he currently possesses Kuwait.

This article should be used as a reminder of the costly mistakes for
not dealing with him completely. It is almost a play-by-play review of
the gulf war, but new names and a new era from 2002 could just as
easily be inserted in that article. These lessons must not be lost. He
is our enemy. The world must isolate him, cut him off and coax his
regime to an early demise.
We have not learned our lesson, have we? He is still there because we
are still buying his oil. Sure, it is masked in an oil-for-food
program, but is it really working? He is still there. I know oil for
food isn't supposed to work that way. Saddam Hussein is supposed to use
the money for oil, for food to feed the Iraqi people, to buy medicine,
but he cheats on the program, buying all kinds of dual-use and
questionable material and smuggles billions of dollars of oil out of
Iraq, which directly funds his armies, his weapons, his programs, and
his palaces.

We have had lost lives. A few months ago we had two of our Navy men
drown boarding one of his illegal tankers that was going out of Iraq.
During the inspection, the ship simply sank.
No matter how you look at it, our purchase of Iraqi oil is absolutely
contrary to the national interests of our country. It is indefensible.
It must end.
My amendment does just that. It would end the new imports of Iraqi
oil until Iraq is proven a responsible member of the international
community and complies with the relevant Security Council resolutions.
I begin this statement by affirming my support for economic
engagement. I believe deeply in the principles of free trade. I do not
believe, however, in economic disarmament. When, as in the case of oil,
a commodity is not only important to our economy's health, but it is
also important to our military's ability to defend this Nation, self-
sufficiency is a critical matter. No country or group of countries
should have the ability to ground our aircraft, shut down our tanks, or
keep our ships from leaving port. Yet allowing ourselves to become
dependent on imports threatens to do just that.
In the case of Saddam Hussein, we are dependent, as I indicated, as a
consequence of what has happened with the curtailment of imports and
the strikes in Venezuela. Thirty percent of our normal imports have
been interrupted, a portion of that by a sworn and defined enemy,
Saddam Hussein.
I will show a chart I referred to earlier because I think it
addresses and thwarts some of the negative impressions as to how
significant any development in ANWR might be.
Looking at history, this particular chart shows, on the blue line,
production in Alaska. In 1976 and 1977 it went up dramatically. The red
line shows why. We began to build the TransAlaskan pipeline, the TAPPS
pipeline, and we see in 1977 at that time imports peaked, and then they
dropped dramatically. They dropped in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984,
1985, and 1986 because we opened Prudhoe Bay. When critics say opening
up ANWR will not make any difference, history proves them wrong. This
is the actual reality of what happened to our imports when we opened
Prudhoe Bay. The imports dropped in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985,
and 1986. Why did they start going up? Obviously, the demand in the
United States increased. They kept increasing. If you look at the blue
line, Alaska's production begins to decline. It will decline until we
face reality and wake up to the fact that we have the capability to
develop ANWR just as we did Prudhoe Bay. But there is the reality that
the contribution of opening up a field of the magnitude of ANWR

[[Page S2669]]

will certainly be comparable to that of Prudhoe Bay. I think that
comparison is evident in the range estimated for the reserves of ANWR--
somewhere between 5.6 billion and 16 billion barrels.

The actual production of Prudhoe Bay has been a little over 10
billion barrels. So if you apply roughly the same scenario, you are
going to see a significant drop in imports from overseas as we increase
production in Alaska. I think that chart really needs to be understood.
I wish to conclude by a reference to relying on foreign sources of
oil. I think we all agree history shows us it is not risk free. We saw
what happened in 1973 during the Arab oil embargo. I think it is fair
to say we have a bit of an uneasy relationship with our friends in the
gulf, and September 11 clearly demonstrated that our enemies--in
staunch allies like Saudi Arabia--may outnumber our friends.
Isn't it interesting the Saudis have indicated they are going to make
up the supply that was terminated by Saddam Hussein indicating he is
going to cease production for 30 days? I wonder at what price. We
already have some form of economic sanction on every single member of
OPEC.
Think about that. Here we are, relying on a cartel which is illegal
in this country to provide us with our oil. Then we have some form of
economic sanction on every single member of OPEC, a reflection on the
uneasy relationship we have with those countries.
That is risky, relying on countries such as these to provide for our
national security. We have long recognized the folly of importing oil
from our enemies. There is lots of oil in Iran and Libya, but we have
not imported so much as a drop of oil from those countries in 20 years.
Does relying on Iraq make more sense than relying on Iran or Libya? I
notice many colleagues advocate production in less risky parts of the
globe, including in the United States. The trouble is, you have to
drill for oil and you have to go where the oil is. The fact is, the
ground under which most of the oil is buried is controlled by unstable,
unfriendly, or at-risk governments.
Let me turn for a moment to some of the other areas of the world on
which we depend. Take Colombia, for example, the oilfields being
developed in this pristine rainforest down there. We get more than
350,000 barrels of oil from Colombia. The 480-mile-long Cano Limo
pipeline is at the heart of the Colombian oilfields and the trade. It
is very frequently attacked by the FARC rebels. They are anti-
capitalist, anti-U.S., anti-Colombian Government rebels. The trouble
is, half the country these rebels control has the Cano Limo pipeline
running through it, a convenient target to cripple the economy, get
America's attention, and rally the troops to their cause.
The countless attacks have cost some 24 million barrels in lost crude
production last year and untold environmental damage to the rainforest
ecosystem.
Last year alone, the rebels bombed the Cano Limo pipeline 170 times,
putting it out of commission for 266 days and costing the Colombian
Government and the citizens of that country about $500 million in lost
revenues.
The Bush administration wants to spend $98 million to train a brigade
of 2,000 Colombian soldiers to protect the pipeline and now another
rebel faction called the American companies running the pipeline
``military targets.''

I ask you, is Colombia a stable supply, a stable source of supply?
How about Venezuela? Workers are on strike there. The Government is
in turmoil. Production is suspended. Yesterday, labor leaders and
Government officials were set to return to the bargaining table. That
has broken down today. Instead we have seen riots, 12 to 20 people are
dead. Hundreds are injured. We have seen President Chavez resign and
then we have seen him come back.
One has to question the absence of Chavez and what does it mean to
stability? Does it leave a vacuum? Does it leave more uncertainty?
Between a Venezuelan labor crisis, Colombia's civil war, Iraq's
embargo, 30 percent of our oil supply is threatened. What are we doing
about it? We are talking about CAFE standards. My colleagues suggest to
you if we would only adopt CAFE standards, we would be able to take
care of, and relieve our dependence on, imports.
There are two things about CAFE standards. One is the recognition
that we can save on oil. But the world moves on oil. The United States
moves on oil. Unfortunately, other alternative sources of energy do not
move America. They don't move our trains or our boats, our automobiles
or trucks. We wish, perhaps, we had another alternative, but we do not.
The harsh reality is we are going to be depending on oil and oil
imports. The question is, Is it in the national interest of this
country to reduce that dependence? The answer is clearly yes.
Are my colleagues truly unfazed about the close connection between
oil money and national security? Are we willing to turn our heads while
the money we spend at the pump fuels the Mideast crisis? Are we willing
to finance the schemes of Saddam Hussein? Are we willing to allow our
policy choices in Israel to be dictated by our thirst for imported oil?
Are we willing to let oil be used as a weapon against us?
Whatever the outcome of the ANWR debate which we are going to start
tomorrow, we should stop relying on Saddam Hussein. It is simply a
matter of principle. The United States is a principled nation. We
should not allow our national security to be compromised. I have heard
time and time again, on the other side, my friends dismissing ANWR as a
solution to the national security dilemma of overdependence on foreign
oil. But I have not heard of a good, sound alternative solution.
Our military cannot conduct a campaign of conservation. Our aircraft
do not fly on biomass. Our tanks do not run on solar. Wind power has
not been used by the Navy in 150 years.
I sympathize with the desires to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. I
believe we will get there through continued research in new
technologies. But, in the meantime, the United States and the world
moves on oil. As the developing nations develop their economies, they
are going to require more oil. I certainly understand the urge to deny
the importance of oil in the national security equation, but all my
colleagues, I think it is fair to say, will eventually have to look
themselves in the mirror after this debate and ask whether we have
sacrificed our national security in order to appeal to the fantasies of
extreme but well-funded environmentalists.
Whether or not we do the right thing for this country and open up
ANWR to safe, effective exploration, we should not compromise our
national security by continuing to rely on our enemies. That is just
what we are, evidently, doing at this time.
Finally, let me again point out something that we have been having a
hard time communicating; that is, the reality associated with the ANWR
issue. The fact is, this is a significant size--roughly 19 million
acres, the size of South Carolina. We have already made specific land
designations. Congress made these. We have roughly 9 million acres in a
refuge, 8.5 million acres in wilderness, and this is the Coastal Plain,
1.5 million acres in green that potentially is at risk. But the House
bill only authorized 2,000 acres, that little red spot there. So that
is the footprint that would be authorized in the Senate bill.
We have the infrastructure in. We have an 800-mile pipeline that was
built in the early 1970s from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.
Having participated in that discussion, it is rather interesting to
reflect that 27 or 28 years later we are still arguing the same
environmental premise on whether or not this can be done safely. The
argument then was that we were going to build a fence across 800 miles
of Alaska; that we were going to separate two parts of the State by
building a fence; and the animals were not going to cross it--the polar
bears were not going to cross it, and the moose were not going to cross
it. That proved to be a fallacious argument.
The other argument was you were going to put a hot pipeline in
permafrost which would melt the permafrost, and the pipeline was going
to break. All of those naysayer scenarios were false.
The same argument is being made today--that somehow we can't open
this area safely.
I will show you a couple of pictures of some of the animal activity
up

[[Page S2670]]

there. I think it warrants consideration. We have already seen the
growth in the caribou herd relative to Prudhoe Bay. There were 3,000 to
4,000 animals in 1974-1975. There are about 26,000 today.
The Porcupine herd traverses Canada. There is a large number taken
for subsistence in that particular area. It is a different herd. But we
are not going to develop this area in the summertime. The development
will be in the winter.
Here is a little idea of the caribou. These are not stuffed. These
are real. These are caribou traversing the Arctic oilfield of Prudhoe
Bay. They are not shot at; they are not run down. You can't take a gun
in there. You can't hunt. They are very docile unless they are
threatened.
Here is a picture of what happens when the bears want to go for a
walk. They walk on the pipeline because it is a lot easier than walking
on the snow. I think many of my colleagues would recognize that these
are bears which are smarter than the average bear. Let us just leave it
at that.
As we get into this debate tomorrow, I hope my colleagues will
recognize again the magnitude of this area, the very small footprint,
and recognize that this area is known to contain more oil than all of
Texas. There is absolutely no question about that. The question is,
What are the extremes? Again, it is as big as Prudhoe Bay. It will
supply this Nation 25 percent more of its total crude oil consumption,
and the infrastructure is already built.
Let me conclude with one other point. As the occupant of the chair is
well aware, all of the oil from Alaska is consumed on the west coast of
the United States. There hasn't been a drop of oil exported outside of
Alaska since June 2 years ago. That was a little which was in excess
for the west coast. This oil moves in U.S. tankers down the west coast.
A significant portion goes into Puget Sound in the State of Washington
where it is refined. Oregon does not have any refineries. A portion of
the Washington-refined oil goes into the State of Oregon. The rest of
it goes down to San Francisco Bay or Los Angeles where the balance is
refined. A small portion goes to the refineries in Hawaii.
That is where Alaskan oil goes. When Alaskan oil begins to decline as
a consequence of the decline of the Prudhoe Bay field, where is the
West going to get its oil? Is it going to get it from Colombia or it is
going to get it from Saudi Arabia or Iran or Iraq or wherever. It is
going to come in in foreign ships because the Jones Act requires that
the carriage of goods between two American ports be in U.S.-flagged
vessels.
We are looking at jobs here. We are looking at jobs in the Pacific
Northwest, in California. The significance of maintaining those jobs is
very real to the American merchant marine.

Primarily, 80 percent of the tonnage in the American merchant marine
today is under the American flag--U.S. tankers. They are in need of
replacement. It is estimated that if we open up ANWR, there will be 19
new tankers built in U.S. shipyards employing U.S. crews. If it isn't,
you are going to see the oil come into the west coast ports in foreign
vessels from foreign ports. Obviously, that will affect our balance of
payments and result in sending dollars overseas.
As we begin the debate, I hope my colleagues will recognize that
America's environmental community has been pushing very hard on this
issue because it has been an issue that has allowed them to raise
dollars and generate membership. And they really milk it for all its
worth.
I hope Members will reflect on the debate itself, the merits of the
debate, and not be prepositioned by having given certain commitments to
one group or another.
This is a big jobs issue. About 250,000 U.S. jobs are associated with
opening up the ANWR field, the tankers, and the operation. When we get
into the debate, hopefully we will have an opportunity to respond to
those who have expressed concerns about safety, those who have
expressed concerns about the adequacy of the reserves, and those who
have expressed concern over how long it would take to get on line.
With this pipeline here, and the proximity, it is estimated that we
could expedite the permits and have oil flowing within 3 years. Those
are basically the facts from one who has spent virtually his entire
life in the State of Alaska.
I can assure you that the Native people of Kaktovik--300 residents--
support the issue. As a matter of fact, they are in Washington right
now making calls on various Members.
I hope we will do what is right for America in the coming debate;
that is, authorize the opening of ANWR.
I yield the floor. 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. REID. Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________