[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 49 (Monday, March 31, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2219-S2220]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICAN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND SECURITY ACT OF 2008
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes today to
speak about legislation I introduced before we went on our 2-week
recess. This is legislation that is cosponsored by my colleague, the
senior Senator from Alaska, Mr. Stevens.
It made great sense when the price of oil hit $111.72 a barrel, which
is an all-time record high, and it still makes sense today, even with
the price of oil having declined to $101, as it is today. It is a bill
that will call for the United States to actually take steps to produce
more oil, to actually help increase global supplies of petroleum to
lower prices, and to use all the Federal revenues from the oil
production to fund many forms of alternative energy and the programs
that help Americans deal with high energy and food prices.
[[Page S2220]]
The legislation is entitled the ``American Energy Independence and
Security Act of 2008.'' This legislation would automatically open the
Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska
if the world price of oil tops $125 a barrel for 5 days. In return, it
allocates all the Federal revenues that would come from that oil to
both alternative energy development and to provide programs to help
improve energy efficiencies to those in need.
The revenue includes the estimated $3.5 billion of Federal lease,
bonus, and royalty revenues within the first 5 years, plus all the oil
production tax revenues over the life of the field.
This is an estimated $191 billion to $297 billion to fund wind,
solar, biomass, geothermal, ocean, landfill gas--everything covered by
the two Energy bills we passed in 2005 and 2007, plus programs such as
LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, that provides
aid to help low-income residents pay for home heating and cooling, the
weatherization program that helps people improve their insulation to
cut energy costs, and also to the Women, Infants, and Children's
nutrition program that provides a safety net for nutrition costs, when
energy prices rise so high women cannot afford to buy food for their
babies and young infants. By the way, the estimates of those total
revenues are not my estimates that I have worked up; they were
developed by the Congressional Research Service.
We know there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington about what to
do about record-high oil prices that are strangling our economy from
the east coast all the way west and certainly up to Alaska. Rather than
begging Arab oil sheiks to produce more oil, America should produce our
own oil to send a signal that we are willing to increase our own
supplies and drive down prices.
Alaska's Arctic Coastal Plain is likely to hold the largest reserve
of traditional oil left on land in Northern America. If the price rises
any higher, we should explore the area and find out if there is oil
there. And if there is, we ought to produce it and use the revenues to
wean ourselves from the fossil fuels and to promote energy
conservation.
We know so many Americans are hurting every time they fill up their
cars at the pump. And while prices may moderate fractionally, the AAA
early this month reported gasoline prices have risen 26.9 cents
nationwide since February 10. In Alaska, my home State, the average
price of gasoline is $3.36 a gallon for regular. This is trailing
California and Hawaii by a little bit.
Americans are having an equally hard time affording their winter
heating bills and will have similar problems with their summer air-
conditioning bills. So it only makes sense the revenues from finding
and producing U.S. oil go to help the people who are having trouble
making ends meet, given the high fuel prices we are facing.
By this legislation, only 2,000 acres of the 1.5 million acres of the
Arctic Coastal Plain can be physically disturbed. The bill includes a
host of environmental protections. It requires directional drilling to
be used to minimize disturbance to the wildlife. That means wells can
be drilled from a single oil pad that can go underground up to 8 miles
away to find the oil pockets. That means that there will be nearly 100
square miles of habitat for caribou and musk oxen and the birds between
these well pads.
The bill mandates exploration only occurs in winter, when there are
no animals on the Coastal Plain to be disturbed. It requires the use of
ice roads that disappear in the summer to protect the wildlife. It
allows special areas to be designated to protect key habitat to keep
any activity out. It contains dozens of other stipulations to guard
against noise, flight disturbances, spills or land-use problems.
The bill also sets up a special fund to help protect Alaska and
Canadian Natives should they face any disruptions because of the
limited development that would be allowed.
The bill earmarks not just the $3.5 billion of expected initial
Federal lease royalties and the potential $192 billion to $297 billion
of total Federal income taxes from the first 30 years of energy
production, to be split evenly, half would be going then to alternative
energy projects contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that we approved in
December. The other half would be allocated evenly to LIHEAP,
weatherization, and to the WIC programs.
In a hearing we held earlier this month, there was a discussion about
LIHEAP and LIHEAP funding. We recognized that LIHEAP needs $2 billion a
year in additional funding to be fully funded. This legislation could
do this for 30 years if we were to pass it.
We need a balanced program to increase alternative energy development
and improve energy efficiency, but we also need to fund these programs
without increasing our Federal debt. Look at the fights we are having
to find the offsets to pay for extending tax breaks to further
alternative energy. The best way to fund alternatives is by raising new
revenue. Look at the pain we are having in crafting and approving the
ongoing budget resolution.
We know this pain is going to continue for years if we don't do
something, and the best way is by using the funds from the fossil fuels
to build alternatives. By doing that, we are using domestic oil as a
bridge, as a bridge to pay for the alternative fuels that will allow us
to reduce our use of fossil fuels and cut our carbon emissions.
Opening ANWR does so many things. It makes us less dependent on
foreign oil, it cuts our balance of payments deficit, it improves our
economy, it keeps our jobs at home instead of exporting them to foreign
oil producers such as Venezuela and the Middle East. More importantly,
signaling we are finally serious about helping ourselves, that we will
produce oil from ANWR, will help to drive down the psychology and the
speculation that is currently acting to drive up world oil prices.
Admittedly, if we were to open ANWR tomorrow, it is not going to
produce more oil tomorrow, but it will or it can dampen the speculation
that is helping to fuel higher prices. It is absolutely the right thing
to do today, and it is vital if prices rise higher, as we believe they
will.
The U.S. economy is at risk if prices rise, not counting the health
of our low- and middle-income residents. Folks are drowning under the
high cost of gasoline and the high cost of heating oil. This bill helps
to reduce that pain. If the prices get any higher, we have to produce
more oil as a means of driving down market forces.
This bill contains all of the environmental safeguards that will
allow us to open a tiny fraction of the 40 million acres of the Arctic
Coastal Plain in Alaska without harming the wildlife or the
environment. It won't hurt the polar bears. It won't hurt the yellow
loon. And doing onshore development certainly protects the marine
environment and the whale and the walrus and the polar bear that spends
90 percent of its life offshore on the Arctic ice pack.
This bill is cautious. It doesn't open the refuge tomorrow, but it
simply says if oil prices rise much further we have to take action to
show markets that we are serious about helping ourselves and producing
more domestic supplies of oil and natural gas. It responsibly takes all
the proceeds and puts them toward alternatives and safety net program
for those who can't afford these prices. Using these monies for these
existing programs will free up funds in the Federal budget to help
reduce the debt or fund other vital services.
I am realistic about the fate of this legislation. I doubt that the
leadership in this body will allow this bill to come up for a vote
right now. But everyone here, from Senators who represent farmers who
won't be able to afford to till their fields this spring during the
planting season due to the high prices, to those who represent cold
States, where home heating oil is a problem, to those Senators who
represent warm States, where air-conditioning costs will be a concern,
to those of us who represent fishermen who are worried about how they
will afford the fuel to go out and earn their living, we should come
together to support this commonsense way to help reduce prices and to
actually help provide a real long-term solution to our supply problems.
We owe to it our constituents to do what is right, and I believe this
is what is right for our Nation's future.
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