[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 50 (Tuesday, May 2, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1970-H1975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                PEAK OIL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Foxx). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) 
is recognized for half of the time remaining before midnight.
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Madam Speaker, I have here in my hands two 
pretty big reports that were paid for by our government and have for 
reasons that it is difficult for me to understand been pretty much 
ignored apparently by the organizations that paid for them.
  The first of these is a big report paid for by the Department of 
Energy called The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation 
and Risk Management. This is generally known as the Hirsch Report, 
because the project leader was Dr. Robert Hirsch from SAIC, a very 
prestigious scientific and engineering organization. This report is 
dated February, 2005.
  For reasons that we are trying to find, this was bottled up, 
apparently, inside the Department of Energy, because it didn't become 
publicly available until several months after that.
  The second report I have here is the report by the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers. This obviously is paid for by the Army. It is dated 
September of 2005, and it was just about 2 months ago that it finally 
got out of the Pentagon into the public. This one is called Energy 
Trends and Their Implications For U.S. Army Installations. I would 
submit that wherever they mention ``Army,'' you could substitute ``the 
United States'' and it would be completely appropriate.
  What I would like to do for the first few minutes is to look at some 
of the comments and recommendations in these two reports; and I would 
like to keep asking the question, why have these two government 
agencies which paid for these reports done essentially nothing to 
promulgate this information across the country? Rather, it would seem 
that there was an intent to keep this information from the public, 
because the Hirsch Report was bottled up inside the Department of 
Energy for several months, and the Army Corps of Engineers report is 
dated September of 2005, and it says on the cover here, ``Approved for 
public release. Distribution is unlimited.'' But there was essentially 
no distribution of that until just about 2 months ago.
  As you will see, Madam Speaker, if the content of these two reports 
is correct, if their observations and recommendations are correct, you 
would have expected these two government agencies to be using every 
vehicle at their disposal to get this information out to the public.
  Let's look first at a few quotes from the Hirsch Report. The first 
here says, ``The peaking of world oil production presents the United 
States and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As 
peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will 
increase dramatically,'' oil was almost $75 a barrel today, ``and 
without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs 
will be unprecedented.
  ``Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand 
sides, but to have substantial impact they must be initiated more than 
a decade in advance of peaking.''
  A little later we will talk more about this. I am not sure that this 
is exactly the way that I would have articulated our challenge. We will 
talk about that a little later.
  ``Dealing with world oil production peaking will be extremely 
complex, involve literally trillions of dollars and require many years 
of intense effort.''
  Now another quote from this Hirsch Report. ``We cannot conceive of 
any affordable government-sponsored crash program to accelerate normal 
replacement schedules so as to incorporate higher energy efficiency 
technologies into the privately owned transportation sector. 
Significant improvements in energy efficiency will thus be inherently 
time-consuming, of the order of a decade or more.''
  If we are talking about transportation, Madam Speaker, that is indeed 
true. Because the average automobile and small truck is in the fleet 
about 17-18 years and the average 18-wheeler about 28 years. So any 
improvements that we ever make, we are making in energy efficiency in 
automobiles and trucks, is going to take quite some time to show any 
meaningful effect because of how long they are in the fleet.
  Now a third quote from the Hirsch Report. Madam Speaker, I would like 
us to keep in our mind the question, if this is true and we have two 
reports, as you will see, that have reached essentially the same 
conclusion, we have no reason to believe there was any collusion 
between them. Indeed, their dates of publication are quite different, 
February to September. And if these observations and recommendations in 
these reports are in fact correct, then one might wonder why haven't 
these agencies been using every vehicle at their disposal to get this 
information out to the American public and to initiate programs to deal 
with these problems?
  ``World oil peaking is going to happen. World production of 
conventional oil will reach a maximum and decline thereafter. That 
maximum is called the peak. A number of competent forecasters project 
peaking within a decade. Others contend it will occur later. Prediction 
of the peaking is extremely difficult because of geological 
complexities, measurement problems, pricing variations, demand 
elasticity and political influences. Peaking will happen, but the 
timing is uncertain.''
  Then this, Madam Speaker, a very significant statement. ``Oil peaking 
presents a unique challenge,'' they say, and then this statement. ``The 
world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation 
more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and 
will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions, wood to coal and 
coal to oil, were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt 
and revolutionary.''
  Now I would like to read a few of the quotes and recommendations from 
the Corps of Engineers study just out about 2 months ago, although the 
date was September of last year.
  ``Historically, no other energy source equals oil's intrinsic 
qualities of extractability, transportability, versatility and cost. 
The qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as the frontline 
energy source for the industrialized world in the middle of the 20th 
century are as relevant today as they were then. Oil's many advantages 
provide 1-\1/3\ to 2\1/2\ times more economic value per million BTUs 
than coal. Currently, there is no viable substitute for petroleum.''
  Madam Speaker, that is a startling statement. If in fact the world is 
peaking in oil production and there is no viable substitute for 
petroleum, wouldn't you think that the agencies paying for these 
studies would have used every vehicle available to them to get this 
word out to the American public and to articulate a rational program 
for dealing with this emergency?
  ``Oil prices may go significantly higher,'' they say, ``and some have 
predicted prices ranging up to $180 a barrel in a few years.'' Just 
under $75 today, $180 a barrel in a few years.
  ``In general, all non-renewable resources follow a natural supply 
curve: Production increases rapidly, slows, reaches a peak and then 
declines at a rapid pace, similar to its initial increase. The major 
question for petroleum is not whether production will peak, but when. 
There are many estimates of recoverable petroleum reserves, giving rise 
to many estimates of when peak oil will occur and how high the peak 
will be. A careful review of all of the estimates leads to the 
conclusion that world oil production may peak within a few short years, 
after which it will decline.'' Campbell and Deffeyes, several 
references here.

[[Page H1971]]

  Let me digress for just a moment. One of these, Dr. Deffeyes, 
predicted that the peak did occur a couple of months ago, and he says 
he is no longer a prognosticator, he is now a historian, because the 
peak, he believes, is behind us.
  ``Once peak oil occurs, then the historic patterns of world oil 
demand and price cycles will cease. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia has not 
been able to increase supply above its monthly production peak of April 
2003.''
  And I am reminded here of a recent book by Matt Simmons called 
Twilight in the Desert. He has done a very scholarly and exhaustive 
study of all of the open literature and believes that Saudi Arabia has 
peaked in oil production.

                              {time}  2215

  Iraq may also have significant excess capacity if it can be brought 
into production. Under Saddam Hussein, we got about 2\1/2\ million 
barrels a day from Iraq; now we are lucky to get 1\1/2\ million barrels 
a day.
  Meanwhile, domestic oil production in both the lower 48 States and 
Alaska continues to decline. Many non-OPEC oil producers have also 
passed or are currently reaching their peaks of production. Indeed, 
Madam Speaker, of the 48 largest oil-producing countries in the world, 
33 have already peaked.
  And now their recommendations. And excuse me for reading, but to 
paraphrase this would not have quite the impact of reading exactly 
their words. The coming years will see significant increases in energy 
costs across the spectrum. Not only are energy costs an issue, but also 
reliability, availability, and security.
  It is time to think strategically about energy and how the Army, and 
please substitute here the United States, should respond to the global 
and national energy picture. A path of enlightened self-interest is 
encouraged. The 21st century is not the 20th century.
  Issues will play out differently and geopolitics will impact the 
energy posture of the Nation. Technology will change more rapidly and 
flexibility will be a crucial part of installation operations. This 
must also extend to the energy infrastructure and its operational 
concepts.
  And then this very interesting statement: the days of inexpensive, 
convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close. 
When I read that, Madam Speaker, I was reminded of the short paragraph 
that Matt Savinar uses in introducing his discussion of peak oil.
  He says: ``Dear reader. Civilization as we know it is coming to an 
end soon.'' I hope that he is overly pessimistic. We will see. Domestic 
natural gas production peaked in 1973. Now, note this statistic, Madam 
Speaker: the proved domestic reserve lifetime for natural gas at 
current consumption rates is about 8.4 years.
  What this says is, if we can get all of our gas from our resources, 
it would last 8.4 years. Of course, we cannot get it out that fast. So 
we are importing gas. But that is all we have remaining is 8.4 years. 
This is the Corps of Engineers.
  The proved world reserve lifetime for natural gas is about 40 years, 
but will follow a traditional rise to a peak, then a rapid decline. 
Domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and continues to decline. This 
is a really startling statistic. Proved domestic reserve lifetime for 
oil is about 3.4 years.
  That means if we could pump oil as fast as we are using it, our 2 
percent of the world's reserve would last us, at the rate at which we 
are using oil, 3.4 years.
  World oil production is at or near its peak; and current world demand 
exceeds the supply, which is why oil is about $75 a barrel. Saudi 
Arabia is considered to be the bellwether nation for oil production and 
has not increased production since April of 2003. After peak 
production, supply no longer meets demand; prices and competition 
increase.
  World proved reserves lifetime for oil is about 41 years, most of 
this at a declining availability. Our current throwaway nuclear cycle 
uses up the world reserve of low-cost uranium in about 20 years. We 
will see significant depletion of Earth's finite fossil resources in 
this century. We must act now to develop the technology and 
infrastructure necessary to transition to other sources.
  This is dated September of last year, Madam Speaker. Have you seen 
anybody in authority in our country telling the American people this? 
We must act now to develop the technology and infrastructure necessary 
to transition to other energy sources.
  Policy changes leap ahead of technology breakthroughs, cultural 
changes and significant investment is requisite for this new energy 
future. Time is essential to enact these changes. The process should 
begin now.
  Indeed, if they had written this 20 years ago, they would use exactly 
that same language. Because we really should have started some 20 years 
ago.
  Madam Speaker, what is all of this about? What are they talking 
about? To understand that, we need to go back about six decades and to 
the life of a very, now very famous oil geologist, Dr. M. King Hubbert, 
who worked for the Shell Oil Company.
  In 1956, as a result of his studies, he published a paper that the 
50th-year anniversary of that was March 8, in which he predicted that 
the United States would peak in oil production about 1970.
  Now this was revolutionary. Because at that time I believe we were 
the largest producer of oil in the world, and probably the largest 
exporter of oil in the world. Shell Oil Company pleaded with him not to 
publish a paper, that we would make him and them look really silly.
  He published the paper anyhow. And 14 years later when right on 
target we peaked, he became kind of a celebrity. What we have here, 
Madam Speaker, is his predicted curve, the smooth green curve. And then 
the more ragged curve, green curve with the largest symbols represents 
the actual data points.
  And you see that right on schedule in 1970, oil production peaked. 
Now, this is the lower 48. He did not know about Alaska at that time, 
and in just a moment we will look at another chart which includes 
Alaska.
  The red there, by the way, is the Soviet Union. More oil than we, 
peaked just a bit after us. They kind of fell apart when the Soviet 
Union fell apart, and they are now having a second small peak. But 
after that it will be continually downhill.
  The next chart shows where we have been getting our oil from. Not 
just in the lower 48. And that is this blue curve and the dark blue one 
under it, Texas and the rest of the United States. But then you see the 
natural gas liquids and the Alaska oil, and the Gulf of Mexico oil.
  And you see that in 1970 we peaked, and just a little blip in the 
downhill side of what is called Hubbert's peak here. I remember 
particularly, Madam Speaker, the fabled Gulf of Mexico oil discoveries 
which were supposed to get us home free. That is the yellow on this 
chart. Notice the relatively trifling contribution that the Gulf of 
Mexico oil discoveries made, about 4,000 wells out there. We were 
reminded of that last fall with these hurricanes, when a number of them 
were damaged.
  The next chart is from the Hirsch report, and that shows you what we 
do with this oil. It is really kind of interesting. The light blue here 
represents transportation. That is about 70 percent of all of the 
energy from the oil that we use is used in transportation. Then there 
is industrial and a little bit of electric power and a little bit 
commercially. But the major part of our oil is used in transportation.
  That is a liquid fuel. And, you know, the challenge is to find 
something to replace that. The next chart is a really interesting one, 
and we could spend a long time on this chart, because it has so much 
information on it.
  But I want to look at it just in gross form here. The bar graphs here 
represent the discovery of oil, and you see that way back in 1940 we 
were discovering some big fields of oil. And then a little later in the 
1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, we were discovering a lot of oil.
  And our use of oil was very small then. The heavy black line here 
represents our use of oil, and notice that we were finding enormously 
more oil than we were using.
  So there was every reason to believe that for the foreseeable future 
and beyond everything was going to be just fine, because we were 
finding enormous amounts of oil and we were not using very much oil. 
But then that all turned around about 1980.
  Because at about that time, the discoveries of oil reached a maximum, 
and

[[Page H1972]]

then they trailed off. And you can see it here on the downslope here. 
And in spite of improved techniques, in spite of intense drilling, year 
by year, we have found on the average less and less oil.
  For those who are familiar with curves like this, it is quite obvious 
that the area under this curve, if we were to draw a smooth line 
through this discovery curve, the area under that curve represents the 
total volume of oil which has been discovered.
  And the area under the consumption curve represents the total amount 
of oil that we have consumed. Now, it is very obvious that you cannot 
consume oil that you have not discovered, and so to find out how much 
consumption we can have in the future, all one needs to do is to look 
at the area under this discovery curve, and then to project where you 
think the consumption curve is going.
  Now, this chart has peaking occurring, what, in 5 years or so, about 
2010. There are a number of people who believe that peaking has 
occurred about now or will occur very shortly.
  The lightly shaded part of this graph, of course, is to the future; 
and, Madam Speaker, you can make that future within limits look about 
any way you want to make it look. For instance, if we use enhanced oil 
recovery, and we drill a lot more wells, the United States has drilled 
530,000 wells. I believe there are about 400 wells in Saudi Arabia and 
maybe 300 in Iraq, both of which have enormously more reserves than we 
have.
  But if you vigorously go after this oil, you might get it sooner. But 
if you get it sooner, there will be less later, unless you are really 
good at enhanced oil recovery and you are able to get significantly 
more out of the ground. The next chart kind of puts this in long-range 
perspective, and this is a really interesting chart.
  Looking at the top chart here, we are looking back about 400 years 
through history; and we see that the quadrillion Btus, it is so near 
the zero line here that you probably cannot see the difference. And 
then we began the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. And we began 
that with wood, of course. We denuded the hills of New England, the 
mountains of New England, carrying charcoal to England to make steel. 
We have a little furnace up here in Frederick County, and we denuded 
the hills of northern Frederick County to provide charcoal for that 
little furnace there.
  The Industrial Revolution was stuttering with wood when we found coal 
and were able to utilize that. And then look what happened, Madam 
Speaker, when we discovered gas and oil. It just took off. This is an 
exponential curve at about a 2 percent growth rate.
  In a moment we will show this same curve with different units on the 
ordinate abscissa, and it will appear to be a much less dramatic curve 
there because it really spread out the abscissa here.
  But I would like to note that the world population has reasonably 
followed this energy cycle. So that we went from about one-half a 
billion to about 1 billion people here. Steady state for quite a long 
time until we now have between 6 and 7 billion people.
  And that dramatic increase in the world's population was largely due 
to the incredible quantity and quality of energy from oil and natural 
gas. I would like to reflect for just a moment on the quality of this 
energy, the energy density of these fossil fuels.
  One barrel of oil, and you will now pay a bit more than $100 for the 
refined product at the pump, 42 gallons, will buy you the work output 
of 12 people working all year for you.
  If you worked really hard in your yard this weekend for a full day, I 
will get more work, more mechanical work out of an electric motor for 
less than 25 cents' worth of electricity. And that may be kind of 
humbling to recognize that we are worth less than 25 cents a day in 
terms of the energy available in these fossil fuels.
  Madam Speaker, our children and certainly our grandchildren will look 
back at our generation and the generation of our parents, and I say 
that because my father lived almost half way through the age of oil, 
and they will wonder how we could have behaved the way we have behaved.

                              {time}  2230

  When we found this incredible resource, this wealth, we should have 
stopped and asked ourselves, what do we need to do so we can provide 
the most good for the most people for the longest time with this 
incredible wealth. It should have been obvious to everybody that this 
was not infinite. The earth is not made of oil. It is a finite 
resource.
  We are now, as this chart shows in 5,000 years of recorded history, 
about 100, 150 years into the age of oil. In another 100, 150 years, we 
will be through the age of oil. What, then, when we have had to 
transition to the renewables?
  Notice here, Madam Speaker, what happened in the 1970s. That was 
really quite dramatic. There was a worldwide recession, demand for oil 
fell, the price collapsed, and we reduced our energy consumption. It is 
now with China and India and the developing world demanding more and 
more oil increasing again at the same kind of a rate that it did up 
till 1970.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to give one statistic that is just 
startling. Up until the Carter years, in every decade we used as much 
oil as had been used in all of previous history. What that means is, 
had we continued on that course, and fortunately we did not as this 
chart shows, but had we continued on that course when we had used up 
half of the world's supply of oil, only one decade of oil would have 
remained. In 5,000 years of recorded history, the age of oil would be 
just a blip, about 300 years long is all, out of 5,000 years of 
recorded history.
  The next chart shows the predictions of some of the experts about 
when peaking should occur, and this is from the Hirsch report, and this 
was about a year ago, and they could not have known that Dr. Deffeyes 
was going to conclude that the peaking has already occurred. He gave a 
specific date for that, and he rather humorously said he is no longer a 
prognosticator, he is a historian.
  Well, all these people believe the peak is going to occur in the next 
5 years; and then there are a few that believe it will occur about 5 
years after that. Then there are Serum, Shell Oil Company, a few who 
believe it will be sometime in the future. Nobody, Madam Speaker, will 
contend that we will not have peaking. It is not if. It is when.
  The next chart is a simple depiction. It shows the same curve, that 
really dramatic one you saw a couple of charts ago, when we had this 
dramatic increase in the production of energy, same curve. You can make 
it short and very high or spread out, depending upon the units you use 
in the ordinate and the abscissa.
  This is a 2 percent exponential growth rate, and notice that starts 
out rather slow, but 2 percent, leave the interest in the bank, it 
grows and grows till it is now getting quite steep, even on this 
expanded abscissa scale.
  As you saw from the previous chart, most of the experts believe that 
oil peaking is either now or very shortly in the future. If, as we have 
indicated here, we are at this point, then the peaking will indeed 
occur a couple of years or so hence.
  But notice that the discrepancy between the oil we would like to use, 
the demand curve and the oil which is available to use, begins before 
the curve. It will not be as smooth as this. It will be ups and downs, 
and oil may again fall down to $50 a barrel. That will be nice. Do not 
count on it.
  What we have produced here is what is called a gap. That is a 
difference between what is available to use and what we would like to 
use; and, as the next chart shows, the Hirsch Report focused on the 
problems of filling that gap. What they did is look at the consequences 
of filling the gap, dependent upon when you start to fill the gap, and 
if you wait until peaking has occurred, you see zero here, that is when 
it has occurred. Then there will be significant shortfall. You will be 
able to do some mitigation.
  In a few minutes, we will talk more about that mitigation; and I 
wonder if, in fact, we should try to mitigate or whether we need to 
effect a steady state where we can live happily and productively at the 
current energy level and thus leave a little more for our kids and our 
grandkids and a little more for the next few years just ahead of us.

[[Page H1973]]

  What it shows here is that if you are going to have no supply 
shortfall, that you need to begin the mitigation 20 years before 
peaking occurs. Now, from all of the experts' predictions that we saw, 
that is going to be manifestly impossible because almost nobody 
believes that peaking is two decades from now. So what one would 
conclude from this is that there are going to be consequences.
  The next chart shows what we would be using to peak. We would be 
using enhanced oil recovery, coal liquids; and, by the way, South 
Africa and Hitler's Germany demonstrated you can indeed do that; heavy 
oil, that is the oil shales, tar sands and so forth, gas-to-liquids and 
then vehicle efficiency.
  I mentioned previously how long these vehicles stay in the fleet. If 
you start here, there will be several years before you notice any 
effect, and then slowly over 50 years. That is a little less than the 
average lifetime of the average car and pickup in the fleet and about 
half the average lifetime of an 18-wheeler in the fleet.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to wonder if, in fact, we ought to be 
trying to fill the peak, that is, to fill this gap till there is no 
shortfalls so that the world can continue to use all the oil that it 
would like to use. Notice that, except for vehicle efficiency, we are 
dealing here with finite resources. They are not forever, and the more 
we use now, the less we will have to use in the future.
  Today, we are amassing the largest intergenerational debt transfer in 
the history of the world. I would like not to include with that an 
enormous energy deficit that we are going to pass on to our kids and 
our grandkids. We are already burdening them with an enormous 
responsibility to not only run their government on current revenue but 
to pay back all of the money that we borrowed from their generations to 
run our government today. In good conscience, Madam Speaker, can we 
also borrow from their generations the fossil fuel energies which will 
be essential for establishing any reasonable quality of life in their 
generations?
  I would submit that the challenge should not be to fill the gap. The 
challenge should rather be to establish an infrastructure and economy, 
lifestyles that can be interesting and productive and sustaining while 
we make the inevitable transition to renewables. These are all finite. 
You cannot fill that gap forever with these. As a matter of fact, for 
some of them, you cannot fill it very long.
  The next chart shows us something about the consequences of excessive 
consumption. This is a really interesting chart. I would like to start 
here with this little insert where I think we are, and this is from our 
Energy Information Agency, and they get the data from the USGS. We 
talked to the Energy Information Agency, and they just use the 
information from USGS, and I think this is a rather meaningful 
misrepresentation of what the world will look like.
  Madam Speaker, for any statisticians out there, it will be quite 
obvious that the 50 percent probability is not the mean. The most 
rightly thing to happen is the 95 percent probability. That is a high 
probability. It is the lesser, the lower amount of oil.

  By the way, the 50 percent probability means that there could be a 
whole lot more oil. It also means there could be a whole lot less oil. 
You just do not know. What the Energy Information Agency does and the 
USGS is to assume that 50 percent probability is the mean. This is an 
unusual, and one might say bizarre, use of statistics, but using these 
statistics, you end up with almost twice the recoverable oil left in 
the world.
  You see, they said that the ultimate recovery would be about 2 
trillion barrels of oil with a 95 percent probability. We have already 
used about half of that, about 1 trillion barrels. So there is about 1 
trillion left.
  With the mean, which they say is expected, now that is not the 
expected value. The expected value is the 95 percent probability. That 
is the most probable. That is what it means. It is the most probable.
  But with this assumption that that is the mean, which is a bizarre 
use of statistics, that pushes the peak out only from here at about 
2000 to about 2016. So even if there is that much more oil there, and, 
by the way, only half of that yet to be pumped 2 trillion barrels have 
been found, you remember that earlier chart that showed the steep 
decline in discoveries, one must project something phenomenal in the 
future, that it will look just vastly different than the last few 
years. It would discover enormous basins of oil, and there is no expert 
out there that I know who believes that anything like that is going to 
happen. Notice that you push the peak out only about 10 years if you 
have that much more oil.
  Now there is another interesting assumption that is made here, and 
that is if you can produce it with enhanced oil recovery and then you 
have a 10 percent decline, look what happens. You are really falling 
off a cliff.
  The next chart kind of puts this in perspective; and it is these 
numbers, Madam Speaker, which prompted Boyden Gray and Frank Gafney and 
Jim Woolsey and 27 other prominent Americans, four-star admirals and 
generals, to write to the President some months ago, a number of months 
ago, saying, Madam Speaker, the fact that we have only 2 percent of the 
world oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world's oil, importing 
almost two-thirds of what we use, is an unacceptable national security 
risk. Mr. President, we have got to do something about that.
  Even if you think that the only problem with oil is a national 
security risk, we ought to be about freeing ourselves from the 
dependence on foreign oil. Even if there was no such thing as peaking, 
our behavior today needs to be vastly different than it is.
  We are less than 5 percent of the world's population, about one 
person out of 22, and we use a fourth of the world's energy.
  Madam Speaker, when we found all of that oil, and we more than others 
fit this characterization, rather than a responsible response to that 
discovery, which would ask the question how can we get the most good 
for the most people for the longest time, we acted like kids that found 
the cookie jar. We just pigged out, and here in the United States we 
are now using 25 percent of all the world's oil, and we represent a bit 
less than 5 percent of the world's population.
  These top two numbers are significant. With only 2 percent of the oil 
reserves, we are pumping 8 percent of the world's oil. That means we 
are pumping our wells four times faster than the average in the world, 
which means that we are going to be increasingly dependent on foreign 
oil as we pump down our reserves.
  The next chart kind of puts this in a global perspective. Because 
what this shows, and many people now recognize this, that for the last 
several years China has been scouring the world for oil. We have 
symbols here which show who has access to the major sources of oil in 
the world, and notice the symbol for China is all over this map. They 
have bought all of the increased capacity of the Canadian oil sands. 
They have major commitments from South American countries. They almost 
bought Unocal in our country. They have really major commitments from 
the Middle East.
  Madam Speaker, not only this, but they recognize that we have the 
only blue water Navy, that is the Navy that sails the seven seas of the 
world and can control all of the access lanes. They see that we could, 
if we wish, cut off their source of oil.

                              {time}  2245

  So they are very aggressively building a blue water Navy.
  Last year, we launched one submarine; they launched 14 submarines. 
Now theirs are not the quality of ours, certainly, but they are 
improving.
  Well, what do we do? And the next chart kind of presents this 
challenge and this picture. Obviously, if what these two big reports 
say is true, that we are just about reached peaking, then we need to be 
about transitioning. In fact, we should have been about transitioning 
from fossil fuels to the renewables.
  Madam Speaker, we knew of a certainty 26 years ago in 1980 we had 
already slid 10 years down the other side of Hubbard's Peak. Now, M.P. 
Hubbard was right about the United States. He predicted that the world 
would be peaking about now. Madam Speaker, he was right about the 
United States.

[[Page H1974]]

  Would you not think that our leaders have wondered maybe, just maybe, 
he might be right about the world, and maybe we ought to be doing 
something about that? There has been a deafening silence on this 
subject for the last 26 years.
  Any rational person, get a bright fifth grader and he will tell you 
what we need to be doing: We need to call upon all of our finite 
resources to help us through this transition period, and those finite 
resources are the tars and the oil shales and coal. And then there is 
nuclear as kind of a separate class, light water reactors, breeder 
reactors.
  And note the quote from the Corps of Engineers study that the high-
quality cheap, that is fissionable, uranium, will be exhausted in about 
20 years, so we will need to move to breeder reactors which, as the 
name implies, makes more fuel than they use and so they are kind of 
self-sustaining. But, with that, you buy some problems of 
transportation and enriching and products that could be used by bad 
guys for making nuclear weapons.
  I have a number of colleagues who have been stoutly opposed to 
nuclear, but when they are now rationally considering the alternative 
of shivering in the dark, nuclear is looking better and better.
  Nuclear fusion, if we ever got there, Madam Speaker, we are home 
free. There is nothing else on this chart that gets us home free. 
Fusion does. I support happily the roughly $250 million a year that we 
put into this technology. But I think that counting on solving our 
energy future challenges with fusion is a bit like me or you, Madam 
Speaker, planning to solve our personal economic problems by winning 
the lottery, and I think the odds are probably somewhere near the same.
  Once we have gone through these finite resources and have developed 
all the nuclear that we wish to develop, then we will ultimately, and 
the geology will assure it, because coal, gas and oil are not forever, 
we will transition to the renewables, and these are what they are, 
solar and wind and geothermal. That is true geothermal, where you are 
tapping into the molten core of the earth. There is not a chimney in 
all of Iceland because all of their energy is geothermal there, ocean 
energy, the tides and thermal gradients and so forth.
  Agriculture resources, a lot of talk today about ethanol and methanol 
and soy diesel and biodiesel and biomass. Waste energy, a great idea. 
Instead of putting it in a landfill, burn it. There is lots of energy 
there. A very productive plant, state-of-the-art plant up in Montgomery 
County who would be happy, Madam Speaker, to have you come visit them 
there.
  And then hydrogen from renewables. That is significant. Today, we are 
getting all of our hydrogen from natural gas. That is not renewable. 
That, by and by, will be gone, and then we will have to get hydrogen 
from renewables or from nuclear.
  Just a word of caution. Hydrogen is not an energy source. We will 
always use more energy to produce hydrogen than we get out of it, or 
else we will have to suspend the second law of thermodynamics. And, Mr. 
Speaker, if we can do that, we can suspend the law of gravity and we 
are really home free, are we not?
  Why even talk about hydrogen then? Well, because of the two 
characteristics of hydrogen. One is when you finally burn it, you get 
water that is not polluted. And if you have used a nonpolluting energy 
source to produce it like nuclear, for instance, or wind or solar, then 
you are totally nonpolluting.
  The second advantage of hydrogen is that it is quite ideal for fuel 
cells if in fact we are ever able to make fuel cells that are economic. 
With the fuel cell, you get about twice the efficiency or at least 
twice the efficiency that you get out of reciprocating engine.
  The next chart looks at coal. And some will tell you do not worry 
about energy because we have got an incredible supply of coal, they 
will tell you, in 500 years. That is not true. At current use rates, we 
do have 250 years of energy, of coal.
  Albert Einstein said that compound interest was the most powerful 
force in the universe. If you increase its use only 2 percent, that 250 
years shrinks to about 85 years. And, now, if you have to use some of 
the energy from the coal to convert to a gas or a liquid, and we will 
have to do that because we have limited uses for coal itself, then you 
reduce it to 50 years. That is meaningful. But it is a finite resource. 
It is not forever. It is dirty. You are either going to pay a big 
environmental penalty or an economic penalty for cleaning it up.
  The next chart is an interesting one, and that looks at the 
opportunities and limitations from the agricultural world. On the top 
here, we have two little sequences which indicate the energy 
transformation from petroleum, and notice that you start out with maybe 
5 equivalents of energy and end up with 4, so it is 5:4. And with corn 
to ethanol, you ought to do better, because you are getting some energy 
from the sun here. There are lots of challenges. It is or it can be 
energy positive. It certainly is in South America, where Brazil is 
converting sugar cane, which is a bit better than corn, to ethanol, and 
they are now freeing themselves from dependence on imported oil and 
soon all of their cars will be ethanol cars.
  The bottom pie chart here is something I wanted to spend just a 
moment on because it is so startling. This shows you the energy input 
into producing a bushel of corn. Notice the purple area there, almost 
half of it, it says nitrogen, that is nitrogen fertilizer made from 
natural gas. When natural gas is gone, that source of nitrogen 
fertilizer is gone.
  Madam Speaker, before we learned how to do that, the only source of 
nitrogen fertilizer was barnyard manure and guano. The guano is gone. 
It took tens of thousands of years to produce it, we believe, and now 
it is harvested, and it is gone. That is the droppings from birds and 
bats on tropical islands and caves and so forth.
  All those other segments of the pie here are other fossil fuel energy 
inputs into growing corn. I would just like to emphasize in very large 
measure the food we eat is just transformed gas and oil, and without 
gas and oil it would be very difficult to produce the amounts of food 
that we are producing today.
  The next chart is a really interesting one. The little analogy that I 
use here is that we are very much like a young couple whose 
grandparents have died and left them a big inheritance, and they have 
established a lifestyle where 85 percent of all the money they spend 
comes from their grandparents' inheritance and only 15 percent from 
their income. They look at the inheritance and how old they are and 
project a reasonable life span, and, gee, the grandparents' inheritance 
is going to give out long before we retire. So, obviously, Madam 
Speaker, they have got to do one or both of two things: Either they 
have got to make more money, or they have got to spend less money.
  I use that 85/15, and others will use 86/14. The 85/15 shows what our 
energy dependence is now. About 85 percent of all the energy we use 
comes from fossil fuels. That is like the inheritance from our 
grandparents: It will not last forever. And only about 15 percent of it 
comes from other sources. A bit more than half of it that comes from 
nuclear power, 8 percent of our total energy, 20 percent of our 
electricity.
  As you drive home tonight, note that every fifth business and every 
fifth house would be dark if it weren't for nuclear power.
  Then we look at that 7 percent which is renewable energy, and the 
biggest chunk of that is conventional hydro that will not grow in our 
country. We may get some micro-hydro, but the big rivers have all been 
dammed and probably more than we should have dammed.
  The next biggest chunk of that comes from wood, and that is the paper 
industry and the timber industry wisely burning a waste product that 
would otherwise end up in the landfill.
  And then waste energy, that 8 percent. By the way, this 1 percent is 
0.07 percent, because that is 1 percent of 7 percent from solar. That 
is a tiny, tiny amount of energy. But this was in 2000. That has been 
growing at 30 percent a year, so now it is about four times bigger. It 
is now 0.28 percent. Big deal, Madam Speaker. 0.28 percent? And that is 
about the same thing for wind, maybe a bit more from agriculture.
  Those are the energy sources we are going to have to increasingly 
rely on in the future. So we have got a big challenge ahead of us.
  The next chart depicts what we ought to be doing. The first thing we

[[Page H1975]]

need to do is to buy some time. You see, it takes three things to 
develop these renewables: It takes money, and it takes energy, and it 
takes time. Mr. Speaker, we will not worry about the money, although we 
should. Because when it comes to money we just borrow it from our kids 
and our grandkids by running up a big debt. So let us not worry about 
the money here.
  But we cannot borrow time from our kids, and we cannot borrow energy 
from our kids. The only way to buy some time and free up some energy is 
with a pretty massive conservation program which frees up some energy.
  Today, Madam Speaker, there is no surplus energy to invest in 
alternatives. All of it is needed by the economies of the world, or oil 
would not be roughly $75 a barrel.
  Madam Speaker, what this chart denotes is a program that I think 
needs three qualities if we are going to make this transition in any 
acceptable way. First, we must have everybody involved, a total 
commitment like World War II. I lived through that. Everybody had a 
victory garden, everybody saved their household grease and took it to a 
central repository. It was the last war, the last time that everybody 
in our country was involved. We need a program, Madam Speaker, that has 
the total commitment of our population in World War II. It needs to 
have the technology focus of putting a man on the moon, because we are 
going to have to have a lot of technology breakthroughs and 
applications here if we are going to make it.
  Thirdly, it needs to have the intensity of the Manhattan Project. 
Minus that, I think we are going to have a very rough ride. We should 
have begun 26 years ago.
  Once we have freed up some time and freed up some energy, we need to 
use it wisely. And what has the biggest potential? What will have the 
biggest payoff? I think there are enormous benefits to this. I can see 
the American people going to bed every night thinking to themselves, 
gee, I really contributed today. I used less energy, I lived very 
comfortably, and I am really working on that new project which is going 
to help my kids and my grandkids to live as well as I live or maybe 
even better.
  I think that we can be a role model for the world. I think that we 
can develop a lot of technology that we can export, but, Mr. Speaker, 
we will never get there unless we start.
  I am wondering again, unless we close in the way we started, these 
two big studies paid for by our government noting the problems that we 
face in the future, why have not those parts of the government that 
paid for these reports claimed ownership? Why are they not using the 
resources available to them to make this information available to the 
American people? Why are they not coming to us with a program that says 
we have a big challenge, we have big opportunities, we really need to 
get going?
  Madam Speaker, I think that we have a great bright future if we 
challenge the American people and marshal the resource. I think we have 
a very bumpy ride if we do not.
  I look forward, Madam Speaker, to our leadership showing the way. I 
think Americans will follow. I think that we can be a role model to the 
world, and I think that we can get through this with less problems than 
many are depicting, but we won't get there unless we start.

                          ____________________