[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 120 (Thursday, September 22, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10334-S10335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HURRICANES AND THE PRICE OF OIL

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, Hurricane Rita, bearing down on 
the gulf coast of Texas, perhaps Louisiana again, a category 5, with 
winds that have gotten up to 175 miles an hour, is very similar to 
Hurricane Katrina 3 or 4 weeks ago. It sprang up as a category 1, 
hitting south Florida first. Katrina did quite a bit of damage, as you 
would expect with winds in the range of 80 and 85 miles an hour. There 
was a lot of debris. There was the loss of electricity as it went over 
Miami, Dade County. Then, of course, when it got out to the gulf, 
fueled by those warm waters, about 87 degrees, providing the fuel for 
the hurricane, it surged in intensity on up to category 5, coming down 
to a category 4 before it hit the Louisiana coast.
  It is eerily similar; Hurricane Rita springing up and hitting Florida 
this time actually 50 miles south of Key West, of course, with those 
counterclockwise winds, and a category 1 hitting Key West--that being 
the strongest side of the storm--and then out over the warm waters of 
the gulf. This is what we have as it is approaching landfall Saturday 
morning.
  Before Katrina, this Nation was finally waking up to how vulnerable 
we are in our dependence on energy sources. Specifically, the Nation 
was waking up to the fact that 58 percent of our daily consumption of 
oil comes from foreign shores. That is not a very good position to be 
in if you have to depend on foreign lands for that oil. The price of 
gasoline was spiking up prior to Katrina, in the range of $2.70 a 
gallon. This was during August. I was doing townhall meetings all over 
my State of Florida, and I can tell you at $2.70 a gallon, people are 
hurting. Senior citizens on fixed incomes cannot afford to drive to the 
doctor. People making $20,000 a year can't afford to drive to work.
  Then along comes Katrina, and because of hitting the area of our 
refinery capacity, the scare goes into the market and the price of 
gasoline surges. In one station, overnight--one station on Interstate 
10 near Tallahassee--it surged 40 cents to well over $3 a gallon.
  I can tell you because I know what my people feel in Florida, they 
are hurting. They are having difficulty making ends meet, even without 
now having this additional cost. Here we go again. Here comes the next 
major hurricane, Hurricane Rita. It is now apparently bearing down on 
the Galveston-Houston area, one of the major shipping ports of the 
world. Also, that is where a great deal of the oil activity and the oil 
refinery capacity of this country is located. If it does knock out some 
of that refinery capacity, we are going to see these spikes in the 
price of gasoline to the point that it is starting to hurt our people.
  Is it going to take another tragedy like this for us to finally wake 
up and, as a nation, get our heads out of the sand and address this 
energy-dependent condition in which we find ourselves? Mind you, this 
is with the backdrop that over the past 4-plus years I have been 
privileged to be a Member of the Senate, we have tried almost every 
year to do a simple little thing, and that is to raise miles per gallon 
on SUVs and phase it in over a long period of time so it doesn't hurt 
anybody. But we cannot even get 40 votes out of 100 Senators for an 
amendment like that, to try to address the energy-dependent condition 
in which this Nation finds itself.
  What are we going to do? Is it going to take another Katrina-like 
tragedy to shake us out of our lethargy? We might be shaken come next 
Saturday morning.
  There are a number of things we can do. But before I go into that, 
let me tell you about this thin thread we are hanging onto in our 
energy dependence. With 58 percent of our daily consumption foreign 
oil, any disruption in the system automatically will cause prices to 
spike and could come to the position of paralysis. It could be a major 
shutdown because of some malfunction in a refinery. Lord forbid, it 
could be a terrorist sinking a supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz, 
that 19-mile-wide strait in the Persian Gulf through which all of the 
world's tankers have to go out into the open sea to supply a world 
thirsty for oil. It could be another series of hurricanes. Whatever it 
is, that thin thread of the supply line could have devastating 
consequences for this country, if we cannot satiate our parched 
throats, this thirst for oil.
  We best get on with it. I suggest we start rethinking and get more 
than 39 votes for mandating increased miles per gallon. I suggest we 
start making ethanol, not just from corn--which is an expensive 
process--but from less expensive sources from which our technology now 
allows us to make ethanol. We can surely make it from sugar cane. We 
can make a lot from normal waste. Do you know something else. We can 
make it from grass. We have 31 million acres of prairie grass in this 
country. Let's cut the grass. Let's make cheaper ethanol and let's mix 
that ethanol with gasoline that will burn in our existing car engines.

  The primary consumption of oil is in the transportation sector, and 
in the transportation sector are our personal vehicles, where we 
consume most of that oil. If we start mixing ethanol with gasoline in 
greater proportions, it will burn in our existing car engines and we 
will use that much less oil.
  But let's do something else. Let's make sure that when the car 
manufacturers are satisfying the demands of the American public for new 
automobiles, they satisfy the demands and start producing more hybrid 
vehicles. If you have a hybrid vehicle, which Toyota has had for the 
last 6 years, that will get the equivalent of 50 miles per gallon in 
start/stop traffic, then you are burning less oil. The consumption of 
oil is less.
  If that hybrid vehicle is now burning a fuel that is not just 
gasoline but is a mixture of gasoline and ethanol, then you are 
consuming all the less oil.
  I suggest one more thing, that we build our hybrid vehicles so that 
when you park in your garage at night, you plug it in and it charges up 
that battery, so the next day, when you drive out, you have a fully 
charged battery so the gasoline engine in your hybrid vehicle is being 
used less to charge up that battery, and you have charged up that 
battery overnight from a source of energy other than oil.
  These are steps we can take right now. How many more monster 
hurricanes is it going to take, hitting the refinery capacity of this 
Nation along the gulf coast, for us to get our heads out of the sand? I 
hope and pray that Rita is going to lessen and that it will not strike 
a portion of the coast that brings devastation and tumult and hardship. 
But as of Thursday midday, that is the course it is on for Saturday 
morning landfall. The National Hurricane Center is pretty accurate in 
their predictions.
  I am talking to an empty Chamber because we are all out there in 
committee meetings. I have just run here from trying to help protect us 
in the Commerce Committee on a question of communications after a 
natural disaster--which we have experienced after

[[Page S10335]]

Katrina. The Judiciary Committee is meeting at this moment as they 
consider a nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
  I have made similar remarks on this floor time and time again. If 
they have not fallen on deaf ears, they have been ignored, as have the 
similar remarks of other Senators. How many times do we have to be 
reminded of our vulnerability as a nation, dependent on foreign oil? 
Let's start enacting some energy policies that will address this 
problem immediately, to wean ourselves as quickly as possible from 
dependence on foreign oil.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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