[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 97 (Wednesday, July 17, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H4772]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  (Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, increasing our energy 
independence is absolutely vital to ensuring America's national 
security.
  Americans are 5 percent of the world's population. We use 25 percent 
of the world's oil production, and yet we produce 30 percent of the 
world's output of goods and services. We are the most energy-efficient 
and productive Nation on earth, but America has only 2 percent of the 
world's known oil reserves. In pumping that 2 percent, we meet only 44 
percent of America's needs.
  America must import nearly 60 percent of our oil, up from 32 percent 
in 1992 and 34 percent during the last Arab oil embargo. Americans must 
pay billions of dollars to unstable or hostile regimes, such as Saddam 
Hussein's Iraq, for the oil we need to run our economy and our 
military. Every year since 1970, with only a tiny blip from Alaska's 
Prudhoe Bay, oil production in the United States has gone down, and 
experts agree it will continue to go down.
  That is why conservation, efficiency, and alternative and renewable 
forms of energy are critically important parts of a balanced, 
comprehensive national energy strategy.

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