[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 149 (Wednesday, October 3, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H11236-H11241]
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 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to join 
you this evening and talk about an issue that I think is vital to 
America's future.
  We're in the beautiful time of year. My favorite time of year is the 
fall season, and it's arrived. We have now a week of fall behind us. 
The cool days and cold nights will soon be here all so quickly, and the 
home heating season will begin where Americans will struggle this year 
to keep their homes warm, and American factories and businesses and 
manufacturers will struggle to pay their very high energy bills to 
continue to compete in a global economy, manufacturing, processing and 
distributing their goods.
  Home heating oil prices this year will be record highs with the $80 
oil that's upon us and that has been with us for more than a week now. 
Home heating oil prices will have the largest increase, and those who 
heat with home heating oil will be under severe pressure to be warm 
affordably. Propane and natural gas prices are scheduled to go up again 
this year, propane a little more than natural gas, but both of them, 
and that's barring no storms in the gulf.
  We've been very fortunate in the country. For a year and a half now, 
we have not had a major storm in the gulf, and why that's a problem is 
40 percent of America's energy comes from the gulf. And when we have a 
major storm there like Katrina and Rita in the same year, there's huge 
disruptions in the ability to produce both gas and oil and refine it 
and process it and ship it around this country, and it will help prices 
to raise drastically.
  I guess the question I ask tonight is, what is Congress doing? Is it 
a discussion? I don't know about you. I've listened to the last two 
Presidential debates, one Republican, one Democrat, and the press asks 
the question, but not one question while I was listening was asked 
about energy. I find that amazing because here we are with $80 oil. Is 
it a new floor?
  My chart, which goes through 2006, has this up as high $60, but we're 
clear up here in the $80s. Most people were very concerned that $60 and 
$70 oil would put us into recession, but when you look at the constant 
increase in the last 5, 6 years of oil prices just skyrocketing and no 
stopping, and the scary part on oil is that historically in the world 
marketplace we had slush. I mean, we had extra oil. There were 10, 12, 
15 million barrels of oil that were available to be produced daily if 
we needed them. I'm told today that we're lucky between 1 million and 2 
million barrels a day is available if we have a crisis.
  So, if we would have a storm in the gulf that could take a few 
million barrels off the market and you had one of our Third World 
countries that ship a lot of oil have a governmental problem or a 
terroristic attack one of their sending stations or their pipeline 
systems, then we could lose 4, 5, 6 million barrels of oil a day. You 
would see prices at $100 very quickly. $100 oil will have a severe 
crisis in this country.
  We now have $7.50 gas. It's going up weekly now. The season is here. 
We're through the soft season, and much of the gas in the ground for 
this year's storage was put in at much higher prices than that. Then 
you have the storage costs and the distribution costs, and we're 
talking about a sizeable increase in natural gas prices this year.
  As I was showing you the oil chart, oil prices continue to spike, and 
yet we hear nothing from Congress. We don't hear questions and much 
discussion in the Presidential campaigns, and I find that confounding 
because energy, reasonable, affordable energy, is why America is what 
it is today.

  Natural gas prices, you know for a long time natural gas prices were 
around $2 or less, and then we had spikes, and then we came back down. 
And now we are on the same path as oil. We're right up here about here 
now, $7.50. That's out-of-the-ground price. That's not the price you 
and I pay at home or the companies pay. Pipeline charges, storage 
charges, distribution costs, I mean it's clear up in here, $12, $13 gas 
when it gets to us as a consumer.
  But the price out of the ground, this is the price out of the ground 
that we start at. We're up here. We will be soon approaching $8, and 
that will continue to rise as heating season comes and industry 
continues to use.
  Well, why is this? Why is America having this constant skyrocketing 
prices in energy? Well, here's one of the reasons.
  About 26 years ago, the President of the United States and two 
Presidents since and Congress both put moratoriums on producing 
offshore. That's called our Outer Continental Shelf. The States control 
the first three miles, and then the United States Government controls 
the next 197 miles to 200.
  Now, the only place we've historically produced is right here. 40 
percent

[[Page H11237]]

of our energy has come from this little area, and last year we opened 
another small area down here that will be helpful, but will certainly 
not solve our problem.
  So America is the only country in the world that has locked up its 
best oil and gas reserves that cannot be produced. Countries like 
Canada don't do that. Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, 
Australia, New Zealand, all environmentally sensitive countries, they 
all produce out here. Everybody's given kudos to South America, to 
Brazil for being one of the first countries that is now energy 
independent, and everybody thinks it's their ethanol. Ethanol was a 
part of it, but they opened up their Outer Continental Shelf. They 
produce out here.
  There's tremendous gas reserves around Florida. There's tremendous 
gas reserves up and down the coast and oil reserves. Now, there are 
those who are afraid. The last oil spill we had offshore was at Santa 
Barbara in 1969. That's a long time ago, and we've never had a natural 
gas spill and we never will because natural gas escapes into the air.
  Now, we could also put some huge blocks in here of where we, the 
government, have locked up some of our best reserves in the West, and 
for some reason, we, being one of the largest users of energy in the 
world, have decided that we're not going to produce it. So we're very 
much the reason, because of those charts that I showed you previously 
are just going almost straight up.
  Now, we do have energy bills in the House and the Senate, and they 
will be considered at some point in time. They're not scheduled yet. 
They were supposed to be on the floor now, but they've not been 
scheduled yet but we think they will be. The only problem is, as you 
see at the top of my chart, we call them the No Energy Bill because 
they don't produce energy.
  They lock up 9 trillion cubic feet of America's natural gas. It cuts 
off production from the Rome plateau, a huge clean natural gas field in 
Colorado that was once set aside as the naval oil shale reserve in 1912 
because of its rich energy resources. This means that 9 trillion cubic 
feet of natural gas, more than all the natural gas from the OCS bill 
passed last Congress in the gulf, the Rome plateau has already gone 
through NEPA, that's all the environmental assessments, and is ready to 
lease. This position was not in the original Resources Committee bill 
and was added without any public hearings or very much debate on the 
House floor.
  It also locks up 18 percent of Federal onshore production because it 
requires redundant environmental studies. I authored an amendment in 
the 2005 energy bill that was very helpful. Those who were opposed to 
us producing energy in America, and there's lots of those, all the 
environmental groups that had decided that we shouldn't produce fossil 
fuels, that they're just not a part of our future, even though later 
I'll show you they almost have to be, this bill that we passed took 
away the redundant use of NEPA. NEPA's an environmental assessment that 
has to be done before we do much of anything.
  What they did was this is akin to doing an environmental review for a 
parking lot with one car and then requiring a second environmental 
review for a second car in the lot. It makes companies who have leased 
land do an environmental assessment for the overall outlay or overlay 
of a proposal to where they're going to drill and produce. Then it does 
another environmental assessment for the roads they're going to build. 
Then it does another environmental assessment for every well they 
drill. These are many, many months long, sometimes yearlong proposals 
that have to be developed on how the environment's going to do.
  So the use of redundant NEPAs was a way of just stalling and stopping 
production, and we were pleased when we got that legislation passed in 
2005, because in the West there were people who had leased land for 6 
and 7 years and never been able to produce it. So we were able to help 
them.
  This bill locks up 2 trillion barrels of American oil from the 
Western oil shale. The bill stops the leasing program for oil shale 
reserves on Federal land that hold enough oil supply for the United 
States for 228 years. This is more oil than the entire world has used 
since oil was discovered at Drake Well in my home district nearly 150 
years ago and over twice as much oil as the entire OPEC cartel holds.
  Meanwhile, China's developing their shale oil. Now we're in the 
process of developing how to get that oil released. It's like similar 
to Canada's tar sand oil. They've worked at that for a decade or more, 
and today they're producing 1.3 million barrels of oil just above the 
American border.

                              {time}  1945

  A lot of that oil is coming down here to be refined, thank the good 
Lord and thank Canada. But they are at 1.3 million barrels, and they 
hope to be at 3 to 3.5 million barrels at some point in time, but they 
have developed the ability to release that oil from the tar sands. It 
has been known to be there, and that is very similar to our shale oil.
  Are we learning how to do it? Are we continuing to start and get some 
pilot projects going? No. The legislation before us will take it off 
the charts.
  Well, we go on down here, it locks up 10 billion barrels of oil from 
the National Petroleum Reserve. Again, that's in Alaska. This bill will 
make it much harder to produce energy from Alaska's national oil 
reserve that was set aside in 1923 for energy for this country.
  It has only recently begun to be explored starting with leases issued 
by the Clinton administration. Under current law, the Department of 
Interior can extend the time of a lessee who might have begun to 
produce energy without fear of losing his lease.
  Producing oil offshore is a complicated, expensive process. Sometimes 
if they have a lease of a certain period of time and they don't get 
their leasing done as quickly as they would like to, maybe for many 
reasons, caused by government, then they want to take away the right to 
renew that lease and extend it. Again, it would take that amount of 
oil, 10 million barrels, away from the marketplace.
  Then we go down to breaking legitimate offshore energy contracts. We 
have contracts that were given for the deep water oil. We have 
companies that have spent $2 billion producing energy out in the deep 
water, I mean, way out there several, many miles deep, very expensive, 
very costly, and they have not yet made a profit.
  But there are those who think they should be paying royalty, even 
though they are not making a profit, and want to, with legislation in 
those contracts, or prevent them from having contracts again. That's 
not exactly how the American economic system works, but there are many 
here in Congress who want to confiscate those leases, even though they 
were legitimately given by the Clinton administration.
  It also inflicts a $15 million tax increase on American oil and gas 
companies. Why would we do that?
  Well, there are those here who hate oil companies. A few years ago, 
Congress lowered the corporate tax rate for all manufacturers and 
processors, and that included oil producers and manufacturers. This no 
energy bill singles out the oil and gas industry, hiking their tax rate 
back up to 35 from 32 percent. So my refinery in Bradford, Pennsylvania 
in my district and my refinery in Warren, Pennsylvania, United in 
Warren, Pennsylvania, will pay 3 percent more corporate taxes than all 
the manufacturers and processors around them.
  Will that help us to have more energy in America? No. Will it make it 
more expensive to produce American energy? Yes. Does it make sense in 
the big, long-term of energy production for America? Of course it 
doesn't.
  Now, the next one down here, all the legislation ignores alternative 
energy like coal-to-liquids. It seems like coal has been shut out by 
many. Coal cannot be a part of our future, according to many, but we 
are the Saudi Arabia of coal.
  The future of coal is not just using it to make electricity by 
burning it, but making liquids from it. During World War II, Germany 
was blockaded. They didn't have oil, so they made oil out of coal, and 
the Fischer-Tropsch method was one of them. There are several others 
now, but we need to, in this country, in my opinion, we need to be 
force-feeding some coal plants that are making liquid fuels, diesel and 
gasoline and jet fuel, out of coal.

[[Page H11238]]

  We also need to be making natural gas out of coal. We need to have 
those plants online, refining that process so it can be cost-effective, 
because these plants cost from $2- to $3 billion apiece for just a 
medium-sized plant, a very heavy capital investment. They need some 
incentives, some loan guarantees, some help, to get these plants up and 
running to make sure that that's an alternative.
  Why do we want to do that? We need to have as much energy available 
to Americans as we can get, all kinds of energy. We will get into that 
in a moment.
  The more alternatives we have and the better supply we have, the more 
affordable the price will be. Today, those first charts I showed you 
with the prices skyrocketing, it's because we have a shortage of almost 
every kind of energy. So we believe that it's very important that we 
have coal-to-liquid.
  Also, on the last one here, we raise false expectations by mandating 
that we have 15 percent renewables used, that's called the renewable 
standard, to make electricity. Now, I wish we could make 15 percent of 
our electricity from renewables. We are currently, on an average, 
nationally, at 3. Some States and some plants are doing better than 
that, but they have resources and the ability in their area to do that.
  Not every part of the country can do wind and can do solar. The sun 
doesn't shine often enough or the wind doesn't below regularly enough. 
Those are very specific areas where you can do that. And other places 
just don't have the renewable fuels that could be used.
  We think the Federal standard of 15 percent will force companies into 
making electricity in very expensive ways and will skyrocket electric 
prices, especially in areas where you just don't have access to 
renewables. We believe the 2007 energy bills that are currently in the 
Senate and the House are no energy bills.
  Now, there are some good conservation measures in there. There are 
some things in there that will stimulate renewables. But there is no 
energy there. It limits gas, it takes away oil, it has nothing for 
coal, and it makes it much more difficult to produce in existing 
fields.
  Now, let's look at where we are at in the country today. Energy in 
America, these are 2005 charts, we still have them from the Energy 
Department but they haven't changed very much in the last year and a 
half. Forty percent of our energy is petroleum. That's oil. Twenty-
three percent is natural gas. Twenty-three percent is coal. Now, this 
has been a growing figure, because 12 years ago, we took the lid off 
and we allowed an unlimited amount of natural gas to be used to make 
electricity. We use to limit that, that it could only be used for peak 
power, and so a very small amount was used. But now a lot of natural 
gas is used for electricity. In fact, about 20 percent of our electric 
comes from natural gas. Nuclear has remained 8. The only reason it has 
remained 8 as electric use has went up is because we've squeezed more 
production out of our old plants than they were designed for. We have 
been upgrading them and working them overtime.

  These plants are producing more electricity, but the bad news is that 
we need 35 new plants online by 2020 to stay at 8 percent. That's going 
to be a big job for America. So that means if we don't do that, we are 
going to have to substitute something else for the nuclear that's not 
going to grow maybe that fast. We have 35 companies with permits now, 
it takes 4 years to design them, 4 years to build them and with delays, 
that's at least a decade.
  So if we don't have those online by 2020, then we will be looking at 
other ways to make more electricity that we are not making out of 
nuclear. Then we have hydroelectric. There is no growth here. This is a 
shrinking figure because actually we have the environmental groups that 
want to tear out the dams we have. They want nothing to do with damming 
up a waterway and using that to make electricity, so that's a figure 
that will continue to decline.
  Now, biomass is the one that has been growing. That's wood waste. 
It's being used to make pellets to heat our homes. We have pellet 
stoves and pellet furnaces. That's the new fuel, so that's using waste 
wood, sawdust and trimmings that are ground up and made into pellets.
  Now, biomass is also being used as topping the load on electric 
plants that are using coal. Because to meet air quality standards, if 
they use 80 percent coal and 20 percent wood waste, they can sometimes 
meet the air standards, depending on the coal they are burning that 
day. So wood waste is an add-on. Wood waste is going to be used down 
the road making ethanol, we believe.
  But biomass is the one that's growing. We also, in the wooded areas, 
like my district is a big timber district, we're using wood waste to 
heat all of our dry kilns now that we use to dry our wood. We use to 
use natural gas and fuel oil for that. I shouldn't say all, but many. 
Because of the prices of natural gas and fuel oil, you can't hardly 
afford to use it anymore for that purpose. Many of the small factories 
where they process wood, they use the waste to heat the factory. So 
biomass is sort of finding its own market, especially in the areas 
where you have strong supplies of it.
  Now, geothermal is a very good form of energy, but it's a costly 
investment. It's where you either drill into the water table, and then 
when you pump that up into your system, you take heat out of it in the 
wintertime, or you take coolness out of it in the summertime and send 
it back cooler or hotter.
  Another way to do it is to put a big loop pipe system in your 
property. Then you get it below the frost line, where it stays at 54 
degrees all the time, and you take heat out of it in the wintertime, 
and you take coolness out of it in the summertime. You will use a fair 
amount of electricity with that because there are a lot of pumps, but 
this has been a pretty affordable type of energy, and it's renewable. 
You use some amount of electricity, but not as much as you would in 
direct electric heat.
  Now, wind and solar are the ones that we are putting an awful lot of 
pressure on, and everybody is talking about. Wind also has its 
opponents. We had a bill proposed this year by the Resources Committee 
that actually stated that if you found a dead bird or bat at the foot 
of a windmill, it was a criminal offense. Now, that language has been 
removed, but somebody believed that, and I also serve on a committee 
where one of the gentleman there raises the issue there all the time 
with the Fish and Wildlife Service, why they are not arresting windmill 
operators where they find endangered species birds or bats at the foot 
of the windmill, that that should be a criminal offense. I have heard 
that argument each year now for a number of years. It has its 
opponents. I am not one of them. But wind has limited application. When 
the wind doesn't blow, you have to have a redundant supply. That takes 
us back up to natural gas, because natural gas is the generation where 
you can turn the plant off and on quickly. That's why we historically 
used it for peak power in the morning and night, when we're running our 
factories and we are using a lot at home, that's when the greatest 
demand for electricity was and that's when we turned on the gas 
generators. When the wind doesn't blow, you turn on the gas generator. 
When the sun doesn't shine and you don't have solar coming, you turn on 
the gas generator.
  Now, what I think the American people and too many Members of 
Congress don't understand is how small they are. Wind currently is 0.12 
of a percent. Solar is 0.06 of a percent. Let's say we could double 
them every 3 years. This would be 0.24, and this would be 0.12. Let's 
say 3 more years we double it again, and then we would be 0.48 and 
0.24. We are still a very small fraction and now we are already 6 years 
down the road. And, you know, to get to 1 percent would take decades.
  So we have to realize, as good as these are, and as much as we want 
them to be a part of our energy supply, they are limited in the ability 
they can produce. So those are the facts sometimes that sort of get 
lost.
  Now, another issue I want to mention is the new issue here, the issue 
that's getting a lot more attention here in this House and in the 
Senate is climate change. Climate change is the fear that the use of 
fossil fuels and putting CO2 into the air is harming our 
environment and causing the surface of the Earth to warm.
  Now, there are many scientists that don't agree with that. I know the 
sun

[[Page H11239]]

scientist from MIT doesn't agree with that. She has a pretty strong 
history where when the sun hits us directly, we warm for a decade or 
so. Then when the sun is hitting us a glancing blow, we cool. But there 
are those today that are convinced that it's CO2. That's 
what we breathe out. We breathe out CO2 and we breathe in 
the oxygen. The plants take in CO2 and they process oxygen 
that we breathe. It's that even exchange. But there are those who feel 
that we have too much CO2 in the air and are really wanting 
to treat CO2 as a pollutant, and they are really somewhat 
being successful with that, which I think is going to be harmful.
  Now, I am not saying we shouldn't be observing it, I am not saying we 
shouldn't be working on how to sequester carbon as we use fuels, that 
we shouldn't be working on all those things, but I look for us to put 
on measures that will raise energy prices up to 30 percent or more 
because of having to deal with the carbon issue. The carbon issue makes 
it very difficult for coal to participate, and that's what we own the 
most of. And it makes it very difficult for petroleum. That's what we 
don't have a lot of but we use a lot of for our transportation system.
  Then when that happens, we will be putting great pressure on natural 
gas, because it has no NOX or SOx, very clean burning, and 
it has a third of the CO2 of any other fossil fuel. It will 
move to gas if we force companies to measure how much CO2 
they are putting into the air, and it will decimate certain industries. 
We probably won't make lime and cement in this country. I guess what 
worries me is when we don't manufacture anything in America.
  The current natural gas prices have caused us to lose 50 percent of 
the fertilizer industry in the last 2 years. The petrochemical industry 
is in the process of building all their new plants offshore, where 
natural gas is a fraction. That's another point I want to make is most 
Americans are not aware that our natural gas prices are the highest in 
the world.
  How is that? Well, it's not a world price. When oil has been $80, and 
that's a scary figure to me, and nobody is talking about it now. It's 
just kind of like, well, it's $80, but natural gas prices, when we have 
$80 oil the whole world has $80 oil, so competitively it keeps us even.
  But when natural gas prices are two, three, four, five times higher 
here than in other countries, it gives those countries a huge 
advantage. I have been promoting that we must, as a first priority, 
open up natural gas.
  Before I go to that, I just want to mention, here is the chart that 
shows us our oil imports as we continue to become dependent on foreign, 
unstable countries.

                              {time}  2000

  And we're up here right now. This is of course old data. And we're up 
here right now at 66, and we're going up 2 percent a year and we'll 
soon be at 70 percent.
  Now, is that bad? Well, a decade or so ago, when oil was much 
cheaper, you know, over in the 30, 20 range, and back here when it was 
below 20, and I remember when it was back here at 10. Now, these are 
the average prices per year. So during this period of time we've had 
$10 oil a number of times. But then in the year average, so this chart 
is the annual average price, so it doesn't show the $10 level. But when 
oil was 20 and $30 a barrel, it was much more affordable. And a lot of 
people said, well, we should be using their oil and saving ours. Well, 
we did that. Well, when you get up here to where you're at $80 oil, it 
seems to me that that's pretty concerning. And how do we compete as a 
country when we have $80 oil ongoingly and could have spikes from that?
  Now, we believe that, I want to go back to this chart here. We 
believe it's time to open up the OCS. And our proposal opens it up for 
natural gas only. It's a bill that we now have 165 cosponsors of. It's 
called the NEED Act. And it also sets aside funds for a lot of very 
good purposes. But it would open up both of our coastlines and the rest 
of the gulf for natural gas production only.
  Now, the States currently control 3 miles. We're prepared to give 
them, with this legislation, 50 miles. And they could open that if they 
chose to, but they would have to pass a law asking for it to be open. 
The next 50 miles would be open automatically, but they have the right, 
within 12 months, to pass a bill to say they don't want to produce. So 
we have States' rights for up to 100 miles, where now they just have it 
out to 3 miles. Then the second hundred miles would just be purely 
open.
  So we believe that making natural gas available and stabilizing 
natural gas prices, we can preserve the petrochemical industry in this 
country, we can preserve the polymers and plastic industry in this 
country, we can keep what steel and aluminum manufacturing and bending 
and shaping companies we have left.
  I predict that if we don't stabilize natural gas prices for home 
heating, for business heating, and for production of products, we will 
be making bricks and glass in nearby South America where gas is a buck 
and a quarter, when our average retail price will be 11 or $12. Those 
companies will go there and save millions of dollars in energy costs, 
and they can ship those bulky products like bricks and glass to us in a 
boat in a day or two. Not very far down here to South America.
  We have enough competition with China and India. Their natural gas 
prices are way lower than ours, maybe a third of ours, and so they have 
not only the cheap labor advantage, we're giving them an energy 
advantage.
  And I guess the part that I've struggled with in this Congress, Mr. 
Speaker, is it seems like Americans are just immune to the impacts of 
high energy prices. Now, this winter, as I started, when we start 
heating our homes, we will feel pain. The poorest among us will 
struggle to heat their homes this winter, especially when they live in 
older housing that's not as tight, doesn't have the new windows.
  I found it interesting this year, I'll just step on a sidebar here 
for a minute. The Speaker of the House wanted us to have a less carbon 
imprint for the Capitol, and so she's mandated that we switch from 
using less coal to heat the Capitol complex and more natural gas. Well, 
that costs us an extra $3 million because gas is much more expensive, 
and it sets a precedent out there to all of our local governments and 
State governments and all the other departments of government that they 
ought to do the same. And I see universities doing it now, switching to 
clean natural gas, spending more money.
  But what we didn't do is this building and all the buildings we work 
in still have single-pane windows that let the heat out or the cold in. 
It would seem to me that the first thing we should have done was to put 
modern windows in our buildings to keep the heat in and keep the cold 
out, because there's a huge difference between a single-pane window and 
a triple-pane window, whether it keeps the heat in and the cold out or 
the cool in in the summer time and the heat out. So windows should have 
been our first measure. But no, we're putting in the little curly-cue 
light bulbs in all our offices now, by mandate, by law. I'm not opposed 
to them. I have some in my house. But they unfortunately are all made 
in China. They're not made in this country. And so that's another part; 
we are mandating China products to light our facilities around here. 
And we're now forcing natural gas to be used instead of coal, which 
will cost us more but will send a precedent around the world. And if 
everybody, if all the governments do that, all the agencies do that, 
all the educational facilities do that, we'll put tremendous pressure 
on natural gas.
  Now, our natural gas bills, I explained that and I'll just explain it 
again. The first 50 miles will be controlled by the State, only 
produced there if they pass a bill and ask to be opened up. The second 
50 miles will be open, but the States have a right to close it with 
legislation if they can pass it and their Governor signs it, the second 
hundred miles would be open for natural gas only, not oil.
  Now, we also have some things that we think are pretty important in 
this bill. And as you look there, we're going to give $150 billion of 
the royalties to the States. That's an incentive. So as they produce in 
all the coastal States, they will then have the ability to have some of 
those monies for their reserves, and we think that's important.
  Then we have $100 billion for the government. The Federal Government 
will

[[Page H11240]]

get $100 billion utilizing the resource on the Outer Continental Shelf 
over a period of years. And we're going to have $32 billion set aside 
for energy research and production, real money, not a few $100 million, 
but billions of dollars to do the essential research and develop the 
renewables that can help us in the future. And $32 billion set aside in 
a fund for carbon capture and sequestration research. That's what we're 
talking about today. Not talking about it. We would get affordable 
energy for Americans to heat our homes and run our businesses, and we'd 
get $32 billion over a period of time to figure out how to deal with 
the CO2 issue, if that's our number one problem.
  Now, I think affordable energy is a far bigger problem than 
CO2. I know the pain that's going to be felt in this country 
for the home heating costs and the small business costs, but the job 
losses as we, and we have the potential of losing millions of jobs in 
America, more going to foreign countries because of our energy prices. 
That's the concern, because when the working man loses his chance to 
make a living, how does he afford to heat his home? How does he afford 
to have a home?
  Now, we have some areas that have been wanting cleanup money for a 
long time, and the first one here is the Chesapeake Bay. They've wanted 
$20 billion, and their proposal says they need $19 billion to clean up 
the Chesapeake Bay, and the State's put a little bit of money, the Feds 
put in a little every year, but it's kind of trickling in. This would 
provide them over a period of time the money they need to clean up the 
Chesapeake Bay.
  Great Lakes, the need, their studies have all shown, their 
organization's the same. They need $20 billion to clean up the Great 
Lakes. Well, this bill would provide them with the $20 billion to clean 
up the Great Lakes.

  Then the Everglades. You know, we've been putting money in the 
Everglades every year. Well, this would give them $12 billion for 
Everglade restoration.
  We've been talking about the Colorado River Basin restoration. Well, 
this would give them $12 billion for restoring the Colorado River 
Basin.
  And the San Francisco Bay restoration. This would give them $12 
billion for the San Francisco Bay.
  Now, the issue that I always find confounding here, every year we 
give more and more money for LIHEAP and weatherization, and rightfully 
so, because the reason America has the highest energy costs in the 
world is Congress and the administrations that have been running our 
government, both parties, we have not, either party, adequately went 
after energy. I think my party is more on the right track than the 
other party, but neither party has done what we need, and that's why 
we're in trouble today.
  And then when we're in trouble and it costs so much to heat our 
homes, we have to help the poor. We also have to save energy by helping 
the poor weatherize their homes, because they don't have the money to 
spend to save money. So we put $10 billion into LIHEAP and 
weatherization to help Americans to heat their homes.
  I'm going to go back to the first chart here. World oil prices. Here 
we are, as I started, we're now clear up here, clear up off the chart, 
$80. All week long, in fact, it's been as high as $83. Have we heard 
much about it on television? No. Hardly mentioned. Do we hear about it 
in the Presidential debates? No. Has it been any special meetings here 
in Congress? No. Has there been any discussion in the last few weeks 
about the energy bills that are languishing to be considered and need 
to be conferenced? No. It's like it doesn't matter.
  Mr. Speaker, it does matter. $80 oil. I've talked to experts in 
Federal agencies that have dealt with energy all their life. They told 
me in a private meeting that they thought $60 to $70 oil for a long 
period of time, or for, you know, a decent period of time would stall 
our economy. And then we hit $70 oil for quite a while, and then it got 
up around $75, and it still hasn't stalled our economy. And they said 
they know we're getting close to that price point. They don't know 
where it's at, but they don't think it's far away. And folks, when that 
happens, it takes a long time to come back, because here's the problem.
  As we go back to the big chart that I had, I want to put it back up 
here. The problem that we have with energy, to open up the Outer 
Continental Shelf to get gas, and then maybe at some point oil on out, 
it's 10 years from the day you pass a bill till you have any quantity 
of energy. If we do new nuclear, from the day you put some new 
incentives in or figure out some ways to entice companies to invest or 
government helps invest, you're 10 years away from production. 
Everything we're doing, and we don't know when. We hope it's soon, but 
we don't know when wind and solar will be a real mark on the chart, 
will be percentages of our energy portfolio. There are people who think 
we are right up there. They've been saying that for a decade. And 
nobody's holding them back. They're highly subsidized.
  I haven't talked about ethanol. Ethanol is the one that's happening 
with petroleum. You know, we now use 6.3 billion gallons of ethanol 
this year. There's almost as many plants in production being built as 
there are in production, that in a year or two will double our ethanol. 
And that's from corn. The price of corn has gotten high. Now, our food 
prices are rising, and the cost of making ethanol's very high. It's 
almost an energy swap. I'm not against it because it's American made, 
but there is some danger in putting too much of your portfolio when 
you're using food to make your fuel.
  And the cost, what do we use to make ethanol? Natural gas. Huge 
amounts of natural gas. If we can break the hydrogen link, what do we 
use to make hydrogen? We use natural gas. Biodiesel, we use natural gas 
and soybeans. Ethanol, natural gas and corn. Natural gas is the one, 
the only one that gives us hope. It can be a bridge. Natural gas could 
replace a third of our auto fleet and really cut back our need for oil. 
But there's no push to do that. It would burn cleaner. The only problem 
with natural gas in vehicles is you can't drive as far. You can't have 
a big tank. But all your short-haul vehicles, all your taxicabs, all 
your small engines, all your local tractors, a lot of your construction 
vehicles that are nearby and can be fueled up every night, they could 
all be on natural gas. That's an exchange of carburetion. Our current 
engines will burn natural gas. And so natural gas, if it was more 
affordable, if we got out on the Outer Continental Shelf and produced 
it and we had lots of it, it's our hope till renewables grow to where 
they can really help us.
  My concern is there's no sense of urgency here. Congress does not 
have a sense of urgency. The White House does not have a sense of 
urgency. Where do we get our oil? Eighty percent of the oil today is 
owned by governments, not companies, Third World countries, very few 
democratic governments, dictators, unstable governments, they not only 
own the oil, they're producing it. And when government produces, it's 
never efficient. It's like Mexico.

                              {time}  2015

  Mexico is loaded with energy. We actually export some gas and oil to 
Mexico because they just can't get out of their own way. Their 
government is so inefficient and so ineffective, they can't get it out 
of the ground and get it refined. They actually buy some from us.
  The most energy we buy from any one country is Canada. Thank God, to 
the north of us, if Canada really produces gas and oil and they are 
reaching into the new fields with the oil sands and so forth, they're 
moving. They are an environmentally sensitive country, but they are 
moving forward with their energy production. And, fortunately, we 
benefit from that.
  But to the south of us, 80 percent of the oil is owned by unstable 
countries. They not only own it, they're producing it, they're refining 
it, and they're marketing it. And what they are doing that is very 
troublesome is they are skimming off the profits, instead of putting it 
back into the business, and using it for all their social programs and 
for people to live wealthy life-styles, and their energy patches are 
often a mess. Many of them have kicked out Big Oil. Big Oil has been 
chased out of country after country. Their investments have been 
captured. I could name a whole lot of them, Nigeria, El Salvador, 
Russia. Country after country has nationalized their energy, chased the 
big boys out that actually had the expertise, and

[[Page H11241]]

are now running their own refineries. We have 80 percent of our oil 
coming from countries that are not run like a business. And they are 
not democracies. They are not efficient. And so the supply of petroleum 
could decrease quickly if two or three of those countries get in any 
kind of trouble or would have any kind of an explosion in their major 
pipelines or refineries or sending stations.
  Terrorism is a threat to energy. Terrorists could put this country in 
serious straits with little explosives in the right places. It's a 
scary world.
  I guess the part that bothers me tonight is as we approach this 
season, this heating season for America, Congress ought to have on its 
agenda that we are going to provide affordable energy for Americans by 
producing adequate amounts of energy so we can bring the prices down.
  Prices aren't set by big oil companies. Everyone blames them. Prices 
are set by the stock market. And every day they bid on what the price 
of natural gas is going to be, what the price of oil is going to be, 
what the price of fuel oil is going to be, what the price of kerosene 
is going to be. Those are all set by traders on the market. And if it 
shows there's a little shortage, they run the price up, and that helps 
add to the price. Fear of a shortage.
  Well, we know there is an upcoming shortage of oil and gas in 
America. And we also know that we are doing very little. China is 
building a coal power plant every 5 days. They are building a nuclear 
plant every month. They are building the largest hydrodams known in 
America. They are buying up oil and gas reserves from countries whom we 
have historically purchased from. And I'm not going to be surprised 
when we pick up the paper one of these days and we read where one of 
the major countries that America has been buying a lot of oil from, 
that China has bought their whole supply. They are going to be 
producing oil 50 miles off the Florida coast in companionship with 
Cuba.
  Mr. Speaker, America needs to wake Congress up. We need to wake 
Congress up. We need to wake this administration up. We need to have a 
sense of urgency that America produces the energy we need. We are still 
86 percent fossil fuel, 8 percent nuclear, and 6 percent renewables, 
and biomass and hydroelectric are more than 5. And that leaves 
geothermal, wind, and solar, less than 1 percent, and 83 percent of 
that is geothermal.
  America needs to understand the concern that is out there about 
having available, affordable energy. We have always taken it for 
granted. It is no longer going to just happen. America needs to be 
debating an energy policy that will bring oil and gas prices down; will 
take advantage of using clean coal technology, coal to liquids, coal to 
gas; expanding the use of clean nuclear; no CO2; looking 
harder at hydroelectric; continuing to grow biomass, geothermal, wind 
and solar, ethanol and biodiesel as fast as we can. We can't do it 
quick enough, Mr. Speaker. America needs to put the pedal to the metal. 
We need to produce energy for Americans so they can afford to heat 
their homes and we can afford to run our businesses so Americans can 
have jobs to support their families.

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