[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 125 (Wednesday, August 1, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H9538-H9541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) is
recognized for 32 minutes, which is half the time until midnight, as
the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, tonight I'd like to share
with the House what I think is the most important issue facing this
country. Later this week we will have an energy bill, or a so-called
energy bill, because the number one issue facing America, in my view,
is available, affordable energy.
First, I'd like to look at my chart on my left here, and this is the
energy as we utilized it in 2005. It has not changed much in 2006. It
changed very little in 2007.
The number one form of energy that we use is oil, 40 percent.
The second item is natural gas, 23 percent. Now, natural gas is used
to heat our homes, to heat our businesses. It's used by many people.
Many people are not aware that it's used in making many goods.
Petrochemicals use it as a fuel and use it as an ingredient. Fertilizer
uses it as a fuel and as an ingredient and so does polymers and
plastics. In fact, most of the man-made materials today have natural
gas in them as an ingredient, and they also use natural gas as a fuel
to make the product. Plus, we also now generate more than 20 percent of
our electricity with natural gas. So natural gas is the one that's been
growing in use but not in production.
Coal is an equal amount which we use a lot to generate electricity
mostly, 23 percent, heat a few factories. Nuclear, again to generate
electricity. Hydroelectric, again to generate electricity.
Biomass is the one that's been growing. Nobody talks much about it.
But it's woody waste, it's used in the pellet industry for pellet
stoves to heat our homes. It's one of the new uses of wood waste made
out of saw dust. Also, biomass is used in power generation. It is used
to top coal loads so that they bring the air standards down because it
burns cleaner, and many factories are now using waste pallets and waste
wood to heat their factories because it's a cheap fuel.
Geothermal is one that's growing slowly. It's usually with new
construction, not old, because of the underground work that's needed to
use geothermal to heat your home or business.
Wind and solar are the ones we hear a lot about. Hydrogen is not even
on here, but hydrogen vehicles is another one I should mention.
But this shows you, and I guess the part that is worrisome is that
all of our energy bill deals with the last four: biomass, geothermal,
wind and solar, or hydrogen.
{time} 2300
The numbers in them are so small. We are all for them. The energy
bill also does some good things. It does deal with conservation, wiser
use of all of our forms of energy, better CAFE standards, although I am
not sure that's in the bill, although there is talk about that being
there, use, getting more fuel efficient cars.
But there's a lot of things in this bill that are very alarming. I
believe that our 66 percent dependence on foreign oil will increase
under the proposed legislation, because this bill goes in the wrong
direction. Today, oil reached $79 a barrel, closed at $78.77, record
high. I talked to some energy people this evening at a dinner, and they
would be surprised if it doesn't reach $100 this summer or this fall.
Everything is in place. There is a world shortage of oil. We are not
producing as much as we should be, and the tremendous consumption by
countries like China and India and all the developing nations are now
using huge amounts of oil. They are roaming around the world, signing
up contracts, while we sort of sit along the sidelines dealing with the
lower four.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday reports that the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries posted record revenues of 650 billion
last year on high crude prices and increased oil production, 650
billion, many of those our dollars.
Another move to use energy as a political weapon, Russia announced
today that it's cutting off Belarus off from its natural gas supply. At
the same time, Russia is trying to annex the North Pole in a very
controversial move, contravention of international law, to feed its
energy lust.
[[Page H9539]]
Yesterday, it was announced that Venezuela has joined China, Norway,
Canada and Spain to produce energy right off the Florida coast.
The Iranians and the Chinese are inking new energy production
agreements with Venezuela. Dow Chemical just announced that it's going
to build a $22 billion chemical facility in Saudi Arabia because
natural gas supplies in this country are too tight, energy prices are
too high.
What most people don't realize is that natural gas is not a world
price. We had $78 oil today. The whole world does. We have had the
highest natural gas prices in America of the whole world for 6 years,
and that has endangered the financial stability of chemical companies
and fertilizer companies and plastic and polymer companies and steel
and aluminum and bricks and glass that use huge amounts of natural gas
to make them.
Recently, the Business Roundtable, which represents 160 CEOs of the
leading companies in America that use energy, 4.5 trillion in annual
revenues, with 10 million employees, wrote in a letter recently, ``None
of the House [energy] bills addresses the critical need to increase
domestic supplies of petroleum liquids and natural gas. Energy security
means having well diversified sources of energy--not putting all of our
eggs in one basket. Alternative fuels will not eliminate the need for
traditional energy resources and, without additional supply, the tight
market conditions that have put pressure on prices are likely to
persist. The result may well be greater reliance on imports,'' and
there are many who predict that we have been increasing our dependence,
2 percent every year. Some think we will spurt up to 70 real quickly,
because of the energy bill.
The result, the unnecessary and counterproductive impediments to oil
and gas leasing, on Federal lands, contained in this bill, report by
the Natural Resources Committee, will have an immediate negative effect
on domestic production and should not be adopted by the House.
It will cut off 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from the
Colorado Roan. It will cut off 2 trillion barrels of oil shale from oil
shale resources. It will cut off 18 percent in Federal on-shore
production, because it is removing the redundant NEPAs.
Currently, we have off limits the Outer Continental Shelf, and this
little spot in the middle here is the new Colorado Roan Plateau. It's a
huge, clean natural gas field in Colorado that was set aside as the
Naval Oil Shell Reserves in 1912 because of its rich energy resources.
There is more natural gas there than was in the bill that was passed
last year in the gulf.
Cutting off the Roan Plateau was not the subject of any hearings,
markups, and was done at the 11th hour. It also cuts off 2 trillion
barrels of oil shale from oil reserves in some of the similar areas
there, 2 trillion barrels. Now, that's the largest oil reserve known
left. Like coal oil shale may prove to be our key to hundreds of years
of energy security. This bill throws the key away by neutering the
current oil shale program. Meanwhile, China is developing its oil
shale.
The NEPA program, NEPA studies, redundant NEPA study was legislation
that I helped to get in the energy bill which says that redundant NEPAs
are not necessary. Historically, groups who are trying to prevent
drilling from happening would force producers into multiple NEPA
studies, a NEPA study, an environmental impact statement. Many times
before they were allowed to drill a well, they would have done three,
four or five of them, each taking a year.
I had talked to people who had leased land, and 7 years later had not
produced any oil. That will not serve America well. The bill we are
going to be considering cuts off 10 billion barrels from the National
Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. This is an interesting one, cuts off
interagency communication for oil and gas permitting.
Historically, all of the agencies, when they were permitting oil and
gas, like Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, EPA, Fish and
Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, would all work together in
their permitting process and would all work together collectively in
enforcing them. This legislation says they must all deal with the
person separately, which makes it much more difficult to produce
energy.
I want to next bring up the next chart here. Total net U.S. petroleum
imports. Prior to this energy bill, I believe it was called energy
independence. Folks, the legislation we are going to consider this week
will increase energy dependence. It will give us no independence.
This shows you the study path of dependence. Many of us predict this
bill put another spike here because it locks up good reserves, and it
takes away what opportunities we have.
It's vital to America that we produce fossil fuels.
In my view, we ought to be opening up the Outer Continental Shelf,
and I will talk about that in a minute, which is, for natural gas, I
have a bill to do that, and I will talk about it in a few minutes. But
we also ought to have a program promoting coal to liquids, because the
Germans fought us in the war when we blockaded them and prevented them
from buying energy, any oil. They made their energy out of coal. Their
processes are still known.
There are several processes that have been developed, but these
processes need to be streamlined. We need to build some pilot plants.
We need to make sure that in the future we are not growing our
dependence to 70 and 80 percent on foreign countries.
Interestingly enough, the Air Force is doing their own work. They
have been experimenting with coal to liquid. They have been
experimenting with natural gas to gas liquid, which would make natural
gas prices even higher because there is not enough supply, because they
don't want to be dependent in the Air Force. They use 2\1/2\ billion
gallons of jet fuel a year, and they want at least at least 60 percent
of that to be from American products. They can't do that today. They
are dependent on foreign oil.
The interesting thing we need to know, where does the foreign oil
come from? Exxon is the 14th largest oil company in the world. The 13
larger are government-run oil companies. Most of the companies like
Iran, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the government owns the oil company,
owns the oil, opens the refineries, owns the marketing strategy, and
even countries like nearby Mexico.
We have all of these countries in the world. Most of the ones that
are the big oil producers are not democracies. They are not
particularly close friends of ours. There is much concern in the world
today that 80 some percent of the known oil and gas reserves are opened
by governments that are monopolies that own the whole shebang. They own
it in the ground. They own the refineries. They own the marketing
systems.
Unfortunately, the fear is that Venezuela is going down the same road
that Mexico went. Mexico has huge reserves, but they have always been a
government monopoly. They don't put money back into the oil fields, and
so today they can't produce enough of their own. We actually export oil
and gas both to Mexico when they ought to be exporting to us and to the
rest of the world because they have huge reserves.
Because they are government run, they are corrupt. They steal from
the oil reserves, money, and use it for other purposes and don't invest
back. So their fields are so antiquated that they can't produce. There
are many that are afraid today because in the last 3 or 4 years, three
or four or five countries have taken over what were partly owned
companies from the big oil companies, chased them out, taken over their
equipment, taken over their refineries, taken over their operations,
taken over their ownership, and they are now government-run monopolies.
That's unfortunate, because they are doing the same thing that Mexico
and other countries have done. They are not putting their money back.
They have kicked out the smartest people in the country on how to
produce oil, how to do refineries, how to produce the energy we need,
and so there is great concern around the world that, as they continue
to do this, their ability to produce will decrease and decrease, and
the oil supply will be shorter and shorter.
We sit here today with $78, $79 oil, $78.87, and we are storming the
gulf away from probably $90 oil or any little blip in one of these big
producing companies, and $100 oil. In fact, someone
[[Page H9540]]
was telling me today of a pipeline he was worried about that produces 2
million barrels a day, and he said that pipeline is too long, in a very
dangerous situation in the world. If it was blown up, we would have
$100 oil in a couple of days.
Should America be dependent on foreign, unstable countries, not
democracies, not our friends, for the lifeblood of our country? I don't
think so.
Let's bring the chart back up on energy here. I am for all of these
renewables. I want all the wind we can get, all the solar we can get,
all the ethanol and biodiesel we can get, geothermal. Why we aren't
putting more hydroelectric in because we have dams all over this
country that have never had hydroelectric hooked up to them. We should
be expanding nuclear.
With the greatest coal reserves in the world, we should be force
feeding coal to liquids and coal to gas mass. Now, some of the
arguments I have had is, because of carbon sequestration, we can't do
coal. Well, folks, we better do coal. We can work on the carbon
sequestration as we refine the process of developing liquids and
natural gas from coal.
Now, natural gas, I believe, is our road to the future, for the
immediate future. We have huge reserves of natural gas, Outer
Continental Shelf. Let's bring that world map back up here or the
United States map back up here again.
We have huge reserves offshore. We only produce in the gulf, but we
have huge reserves up and down the coast line.
Now, I have legislation that will open up the Outer Continental
Shelf, and it's vital that we do that. It's vital that we produce,
because we, every electric generating plant we have built recently is
natural gas. So if we continue to have a hot summer, we will use a
tremendous amount of electricity. In hot weather, they turn on the gas
plants, peaker plants. Before, 12 years ago, we only used natural gas
for peaking plants. That was high use in the morning and high use at
night, but where they were not allowed to run during the day, only in
emergency.
But then we took that restriction off, so now 98 percent of all the
plants built in 12 years have been natural gas plants. They are
cheaper, they are easier, but it's the most expensive electricity we
are producing today. They are 22 percent of the volume, and they are 55
percent of the cost of electricity, because natural gas is so much
higher than it used to be, because we have not produced natural gas in
adequate numbers. But if we produced our offshore, if we continued to
produce more in the West, we could bring natural gas prices down so we
are not the highest in the world.
{time} 2315
When Dow Chemical moved its big plant to Saudi Arabia that they are
building right now, they didn't want to do that, but their natural gas
bill went from $8 billion per year to $22 billion per year and
continues to rise; $8 billion to $22 billion. Nobody talks about that.
Clean, green natural gas, it heats 50-some percent of our homes, 60-
some percent of our businesses. It is used to make ethanol, it is used
to make biodiesel, it is used to make hydrogen, and it could be fueling
one-third of our vehicles. And if we did that, because you can burn
natural gas in a gasoline engine. You have to use a different fuel
system, but it is just a change. We know how to do that. But it has to
be affordable, there has to be financial incentives there, and so we
need to do that.
But the unfortunate part is America is just kind of going along like
we have always had cheap energy. And I sometimes get angry at Congress
and I get angry at the administration because energy has not been as
high a priority as I think it should have been. But then 6 years ago,
we had $2 natural gas and we had $10 oil; the world was awash in it.
The only concern people had was we were importing too much of it from
foreign countries and we weren't producing our own. But as cheap as it
was, it didn't really matter.
But we are a long way from $2 natural gas and $10 oil. The average
price of natural gas to the home last year was $12.50 per thousand and
the current price of oil is almost $79, and expected to go higher.
So it seems to me that there would be a sense of urgency in this
Congress and that legislation that we would be looking at this week
would really deal with availability and affordability of energy. But,
unfortunately, people keep saying that renewables must take over. Well,
I wish they could. I am for them all, clean renewables. But clean,
green natural gas can really bridge us until we have renewables playing
a more significant role, until we have some new break-throughs.
My legislation to open up the Outer Continental Shelf will allow the
first 25 miles to be locked up by law. Today, we are locked up for 200
miles. We are the only country in the world that I know of that has
locked up the Outer Continental Shelf, and that is from 3 miles to 200
miles; that is considered our territory to produce. Everybody, Canada,
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, these are pretty green countries, New Zealand,
Australia. They all produce there.
Everybody talks about Brazil being energy independent. They are,
because of ethanol. But it is not just ethanol. Ethanol was just a
little piece of it. They also produced energy on their Outer
Continental Shelf, and they don't now depend on anybody else for
energy.
Unfortunately, we can't ever get there. We will always be dependent
on foreign countries for energy. There is no way America can be self-
sufficient, but we sure ought to be trying. We sure ought to be moving
in the right direction instead of continuing to be more dependent. We
are now 17 percent dependent on natural gas. Thank God for friendly
Canada to the north. They produce about 15 percent, and we get about 2
percent of LNG. That is liquefied natural gas. That is another whole
issue. I am not opposed to it. It is very expensive. You have to build
new sending ports, you have to build huge sending ports, you have to
build huge receiving ports that nobody wants; and there has been great
resistance to that. And you have to build the biggest ships known to
man to bring that natural gas here.
But, again, we are buying it from foreign, unstable, nondemocratic
countries. Some say, it is okay for emergency, but don't we have enough
of that? But clean, green natural gas, if we produced, opened up the
Outer Continental Shelf, my bill, 25 miles remains closed; the second
25 miles, States' rights. They can open it if they choose to. The next
50 is open, but the States still have a say. If they don't want it
produced, they can pass a law that their Governor signs that keeps them
in the moratorium. And then the second 100 miles would be open.
Now, I would like to open it for oil because I think we should, but
we haven't been able to pass clean, green natural gas. A natural gas
well has never polluted a beach. A natural gas well has never polluted
anything. It is a simple six-inch hole drilled in the ground with a
steel casing put in behind it and the pipe is rigged up to allow
natural gas to flow into a system.
Offshore, if you are past 25 miles, you will never see it. You only
can see 11 to 12 miles. It will never be seen. You will never know it
is there. And you can check with the people in the gulf, the best
fishing in the gulf is where we produce gas and oil. The fish are
attracted to the rigs. It helps make new reefs; it helps make barriers
to protect them. It does not hurt aquatic life. In fact, it is probably
the most environmentally friendly place to produce energy, and we as a
country have said we are not going to do that. We are not going to
produce energy there. In fact, we are not going to produce energy at
all if we can help it.
The bill before us this week will restrict the production of energy
in a whole lot of ways. I have already listed them. And that is very
unfortunate for America, because there is a lot of incentives for
renewables. But if you double wind from one-sixteenth of a percent, you
now have one-eighth of a percent for energy. That doesn't change much.
That doesn't really change anything.
And solar, we keep hoping for break-throughs, but it is even a
smaller fraction. And geothermal is a big expense, and it is usually
done with new construction. But in my country, I find out that when it
gets below 10 degrees or 15 degrees into really hard, cold winter
weather, it doesn't work well
[[Page H9541]]
enough and people start looking for other kinds of heat.
Let's have the chart here on my bill. The NEED Act is the bill we
hope we can amend into the energy bill. It would open up the Outer
Continental Shelf for gas only. And we do some things here that we
think are important. States will get 37.5 percent. That will be up to
150 billion. That is with the known reserves. And we have never done
modern seismographic out there, so most people who produce oil figure
there is three times as much out there than we think because the old
seismographic of 40 years ago wasn't very good and today we have much
more sensitive seismic that will tell us exactly what's out there.
We are going to give 100 billion to the government for the Treasury;
$32 billion will go into a fund for renewable energy that will help us
promote the renewables of the future; $32 billion will go into carbon
capture and sequestration research, because there are those who
determined that we must capture carbon. I am not sold totally on that;
I am still somewhat skeptic, but let's provide the money so we can
capture the carbon and we can produce energy without putting carbon in
the atmosphere if that is what they believe to be correct.
We put $20 billion to clean up the path of the Chesapeake Bay, the
exact amount of money they say they need to clean up the Chesapeake
Bay; $20 billion to restore the Great Lakes, exactly what they said
they needed to restore the Great Lakes; $12 billion for the Everglade
restoration; $12 billion for the Colorado River basin restoration; $12
billion for the San Francisco Bay restoration; and $10 billion for
LIHEAP and weatherization, which we have to fund because energy prices
today are forcing people out of their homes.
I come from rural America. We have big old farmhouses, and people
hate to leave their original farmhouses. Some of them, their parents
and their grandparents were raised there. They like it there, they are
comfortable there, it is a nice location. But they are hard to heat.
They are big old plank houses, they are not built like houses today,
and it takes a lot of energy to heat them. And people, with today's oil
prices and natural gas prices, are forced out of their homes. That
shouldn't be in America.
With the energy prices that are facing us this year, this winter, by
the time Americans drive their vehicles with possibly $3.50, $4
gasoline, and very high gas and fuel oil to heat their homes, they will
be choosing between being warm, having adequate food, and other staples
of life. I know last winter, which was a very mild winter in my area in
Pennsylvania, up until January and then it was very, very cold from
January 15 on for about 3 months; but overall, it was considered a mild
winter because the first half was very mild. I know people that kept
their homes at 58 degrees. Seniors in America shouldn't have to live in
a 58-degree house. That is not how it ought to be. They ought to be
able to afford to heat their homes.
And the tragedy is if we were allowed to produce, if this Congress
would stop locking up the Outer Continental Shelf, if they would open
up the reserves in the Midwest which some of them are taking off in the
energy bill, we could have adequate natural gas in this country; the
price could be affordable; Americans could be warm; and, the very best
jobs in America like petrochemical and polymers and plastic and
fertilizer and glass and steel plants and bricks could be made in
America, and middle-class working Americans could continue to have the
jobs that have historically allowed them to live a quality of life and
raise their families.
Natural gas and energy prices overall are going to change the
American economy. We are right on the verge of how much this economy
can absorb. I was talking to someone who has worked on this all their
life. They said they are astounded that $70 oil has not stalled our
economy. They are just holding their breath because they know it can't
get much higher without stalling our economy and putting our economy
into a recession and possibly a world recession. These kind of energy
prices.
America has to get busy. China is building coal plants weekly,
nuclear plants monthly, building the largest hydro dams in the world
and cutting deals all over the world for gas and oil and coal. They are
out there because they know, like so many other countries know, energy
is scarce today, it is high priced, and they have to be about securing
their future.
This Congress has been negligent year after year in dealing with
energy, and here we are now facing an energy bill that is actually
going to move us backwards. The Pelosi energy plan has no energy in it.
In fact, it takes energy out of the supply stream we have today and
will force dependence up on foreign unstable parts of the world, with
false hopes that we can conserve.
And I am for conservation. I am for all of the better light bulbs and
more efficient appliances and all the things and more efficient cars.
All of those things. But they move the pendulum very slowly. New CAFE
standards take 10 to 15 years for the new fleet to fully be here. All
of these other appliance changes, it is only when a person buys a new
appliance does it impact. And I know people who have refrigerators that
are 15 and 20 years old, and until they replace that they are using an
older, wasteful refrigerator.
Folks, we need to have energy as the number one issue facing this
Congress, energy availability and affordability. We became the
strongest Nation in the world because we were the first to discover
oil, harness oil, and give us an energy source that started the
Industrial Revolution. The whole transportation revolution came from
this country because we produced energy. We are choosing today to not
produce energy, and we will fritter away, we will become a second rate
nation in a very few years if we continue the wrong energy policy. And
if we pass the energy bill that we are going to be facing on Friday, I
believe we will increase dependence quickly, we will actually cause
Americans to be forced to move out of their homes in the near future,
not be able to live in the homestead because they can't afford to heat
it.
We will continue to force millions of jobs overseas as we have in the
past. Chemical plants have been built overseas in the last few years;
they will continue to be rebuilt overseas. They can't move quickly, or
they would have already been gone. It is a $2 billion, $3 billion, and
$4 billion investment to build a small chemical plant, and $10 billion
and $20 billion to build a large one. Folks, they are in the process of
doing that.
We now make 50 percent of our fertilizer offshore. In fact, the
ethanol issue is an interesting one, because we are taking food stock,
corn. And to grow the corn, we have to have lots of fertilizer. It
takes a lot of fertilizer to grow corn. And 50 percent of the
fertilizer that we are using to grow corn is coming from foreign
imports. Does that make any sense? I don't think so. Because clean
green natural gas can solve all those problems.
I look at natural gas as the clean fuel that bridges us to the
future. No NOX, no SOX, a third of the
CO2 if you are worried about CO2. And why the
environmental groups are against clean green natural gas, I will never
know, because some of the renewables are not nearly as clean as clean,
green natural gas.
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