[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 69 (Tuesday, April 29, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3463-S3467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise this morning to talk about what
everyone is talking about, which is the price of energy today. I was
home in Alaska over the weekend. Everywhere I went, the price of
gasoline was the main topic. Everyone wanted to talk about it. Here in
the lower 48, as we are looking at high crude prices hitting the $120-
per-barrel mark yesterday, or nearing that mark, recognizing that we
are seeing a nationwide average of gas prices at $3.60 for a gallon of
regular--
[[Page S3464]]
this is up just 4 cents over the weekend--we all agree that prices are
high, far too high. But in a State such as mine, we consider the prices
to be in the stratosphere. In Bethel over the weekend, the price of
gasoline was at $4.98 a gallon. I just met with a constituent coming
over here. We were talking about prices in Fairbanks, about the
national average. But up in Allakaket, which is a pretty remote little
village, the prices they are looking at for their gasoline are over $7
a gallon for regular gasoline.
In Valdez, which is the site of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the
terminus of our gas line, they are finding regular selling there for
more than $4 a gallon. I think we would all agree these prices are not
just high, but for many they are absolutely unbearable.
We can talk about why the prices are high. It is important to
understand that. But Americans are tired of hearing, when we talk about
the world demand, the world using 85 million barrels a day, that there
is very little surplus oil production capacity left.
They are tired of hearing of the weakness of the dollar that is
driving investors into buying oil as a safe haven against inflation.
The truckers who were gathered around The Mall yesterday in protest of
the high prices--I have to wonder if they care that we, in Congress, in
2005 and again in 2007, passed legislation to promote energy
conservation that requires an increase in the vehicle fuel efficiency
standards. That is going to begin to improve their mileage in about 7
years. They do not necessarily care we have funded the research and the
demonstration of alternative energy technologies, whether it is for
geothermal or for ocean energy. They do not care about the loan
guarantees we intend to make for nuclear and solar and wind and biomass
as we try to make our biofuels go even further.
What people care about--what they want to know--is: What are you
doing, Congress? What are you going to do to make the price I pay at
the pump go down?
I suppose we can halt filling up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--
something we certainly are looking at. I think at this time of very
high prices it makes some sense. But we need to recognize that is only
going to add 70,000 barrels a day to the nearly 21 million we are
using.
We could also reduce the Federal gas tax, which is currently 18.4
cents, and dedicate the nearly $5 billion we gained in OCS lease sales
this winter from sales up in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska and from the
Gulf of Mexico to help offset the losses to the highway trust fund.
But, again, that would only offset the revenue losses to transportation
projects for probably a few weeks.
So the question the consumer is asking is: What can you do that could
make a difference in this country? I believe one of those things we
need to do in America is to produce more of our domestic oil and gas
supplies to help increase global oil supplies and, thus, drive down the
prices. We would do this at the same time we are working toward
renewable fuels. We would do this at the same time we are focusing on a
level of conservation. It has to be this kind of three-legged stool
approach. But we cannot stick our head in the sand and say increased
domestic production should not be part of that comprehensive strategy.
Now, some have suggested we do not have enough oil in this country to
make a difference. But look at what we in the Federal Government have
done through regulation and through moratoria. We have prevented
exploration in many of the places where oil and gas are most likely to
be found in this country.
If you take the areas that are covered by the OCS moratoria--the
Atlantic coast, parts of the Gulf of Mexico closest to Florida and the
Pacific coast and you throw in the Arctic Coastal Plain and parts of
the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska--you have nearly 40 billion of
the Nation's 112 billion barrels of remaining undiscovered oil which
has been put off the table for consideration. That is nearly enough to
power over 20 million cars for 60 years and heat nearly 10 million
homes for the same period.
Last year, I came to this floor--actually, I come to this floor quite
often--to urge my colleagues to consider greater oil development in my
home State of Alaska. Earlier this year, I came and I urged that we
simply allow--just allow--us winter-only exploration in northern Alaska
to confirm that the oil we believe is there is truly there. Last year,
when I spoke, the price of oil was at the $60 mark. At the same time, I
warned that if we continued to do nothing, the prices would only
continue to climb.
I have never been one of those people who relishes the ``I told you
so'' approach, but I am here to say it is time for this country to snap
out--snap out--of its lethargy and actually explore for and produce
more of our Nation's fuel needs.
It was about a month ago, Senator Stevens and I introduced new
legislation to open a tiny part of the Coastal Plain of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. Opening a few
thousand acres--we are talking about 2,000 acres--of Alaska's Arctic
coast to oil and gas production could produce up to 16 billion barrels
of economic oil by current Government estimates. To some, that might
not seem like much. But without opening ANWR, we are going to have to
import between 780,000 and 1 million barrels of additional oil each
day. That is only going to continue to help drive up the world price of
oil.
Without ANWR, American domestic oil supplies fall sharply. The EIA
predicts Alaska will be producing about 270,000 barrels a day, next
decade, from our existing oil fields up in Prudhoe Bay. This is
compared to the nearly 800,000 barrels a day the State is currently
producing.
The bill we introduced will automatically open the coastal plain of
ANWR in the northern part of the State if the world price of oil tops
$125 a barrel for 5 days. In return, what it does is allocates all the
Federal revenues that would come from that oil to both alternative
energy development and to programs to help improve energy efficiencies
and to those in need. What we anticipate, in terms of revenues, would
be an estimated $297 billion--$297 billion--to help fund the wind
technology, the solar, the biomass, the geothermal, the ocean energy,
the landfill gas--everything that was covered in those Energy bills
that were passed in 2005 and 2007, plus it would provide funding for
LIHEAP, for weatherization, and for the WIC Program. The bill
incorporates protections so that while we do the exploration and the
production, we are also protecting the environment.
We mandate that the exploration occur only in the winter, when no
animals are 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 for special areas to be designated to protect the key habitat.
There are dozens of stipulations to guard against noise and flight
disturbances, spills or land use problems.
Opening ANWR does so many things. It makes us, first and foremost--
and most important--less dependent on foreign sources of oil. It cuts
our balance of payments deficit. It improves our economy. It keeps our
jobs at home, not exporting them to foreign oil producers such as
Venezuela. But, more importantly, I think it signals that we are
finally serious about helping ourselves, that we will do it here first,
that we can produce oil from ANWR, and we recognize this will help to
drive down the psychology and the speculation that is currently acting
to drive up world oil prices.
I will be the first one to admit to you that opening ANWR tomorrow
will not produce more oil tomorrow. We recognize that. But we do
believe it will dampen the price speculation that is helping to fuel
higher prices.
We have to talk about true and meaningful solutions: not only
increasing alternative energy--which is a must--not only doing more to
improve our energy efficiency and our conservation--absolutely
important--but we need to get on now with also increasing our domestic
energy supplies. ANWR is one way to demonstrate we are serious about
doing that.
I do hope we will seriously look at the current merits of opening
ANWR to exploration and development.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Murkowski for her
comments and agree with them very
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strongly. This is not a matter that she just raised. Her distinguished
father, who chaired the Senate Energy Committee, was a champion of ANWR
production when he was in the Senate.
When I came here almost 12 years ago, I believed that was the right
thing then. I understood then that it did have the capability of
maintaining wealth in our country and helping to ease the surging price
of oil and gas. I believe, as history has proven, she is correct.
That is the way it is. We steadfastly--vote after vote after vote,
for the last 12 years I have been in the Senate and before that--tried
to produce the tremendous reserves of oil and gas that are contained in
a small part of ANWR. We have been blocked.
It is odd that those who blocked it, and seem unphased by the fact
that we are importing huge amounts of oil and gas from nations around
the world that are often hostile to us, such as out of that great lake
in Venezuela. Nobody is worrying about the environment in Venezuela--it
is all right to bring it from Venezuela or other places but not from
the United States.
After many years since I have been in the Senate, we finally were
able to open up more lands in the Gulf of Mexico, where huge reserves
exist. It is not an academic matter only. We are talking about gasoline
that has risen to the price of $3.61 a gallon as of this morning. One
year ago, it was $2.84 a gallon; and 2 years ago, it was $2.74 a
gallon. As a result, the American family, with two cars, is paying
about $75 a month more for the same amount of gasoline they were buying
previously.
This impacts our economy adversely. It is a transfer of wealth. T.
Boone Pickens--himself an oil producer and one of America's most
successful entrepreneurs--recently talked about the fact we are buying
over 60 percent of our oil from foreign countries at the cost, he
estimates, of $600 billion a year. We are sending $600 billion a year
to foreign countries to import the oil we utilize. T. Boone Pickens
referred to that, in an American Spectator article recently, as: the
greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world.
Do we have the ability to do something about it? Are we just totally
hopeless? Do we have an ability to do something about that? Absolutely,
we can do some things. I supported ethanol, although we clearly are
pushing the limits on that. But if we could do more cellulosic ethanol,
we could do better. I supported the increase in the gas mileage, which
we did pass, which will have a significant reduction in our demands.
But as the population of our country is growing, even if we reduce
our own individual use, we are going to have high demand in our country
for years to come. It is a question of: Where are we going to get it? I
support hybrid automobiles. I support diesel automobiles. In fact,
diesel is as clean or cleaner, in terms of CO2, and gets 30
percent better gas mileage than gasoline automobiles. Europeans utilize
diesel automobiles. Fifty percent of their cars are now diesel. They
actually get the same gas mileage and emit the same or less
CO2 than hybrids. Did you know that?
So somehow we have fiddled around here and ended up not promoting
diesel in an effective way and have seen the price of diesel fuel,
which should be cheaper, be 60 cents more per gallon at the pump. I
would like to know more about why that is happening. I think it has to
be a combination of things, but I think Congress needs to look into
that. I hope, in the Energy Committee, we will have some hearings on
that particular question.
But let me talk about some of the reserves we have in our country.
In 2005, this Congress directed the Department of the Interior to
study our reserves on the Outer Continental Shelf. I am from Alabama.
We are a gulf coast area. They found that 8.5 billion barrels of oil
are currently known to exist off the Nation's shores. In addition, the
study estimated that approximately 86 billion barrels of oil also exist
in those areas that have not been charted yet. The U.S. Geological
Survey and private industry also estimate that approximately 25 billion
barrels of oil exist onshore in the lower 48 States and in Alaska.
This amounts to approximately 119 billion barrels of oil available to
the United States in our country or off our shores alone, for which we
do not have to pay any foreign nation. Any production we get, as
Senator Murkowski of Alaska stated, can create profits that come to the
United States and not to foreign countries, and we can use it to
accelerate nuclear power, plug in hybrids, ethanol, cellulosic ethanol,
wind and solar, and those other kinds of energy forms. But apparently
we have those who just steadfastly block this and prefer to send our
money to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Now, there are some additional sources of oil in our country of
immense proportions, and at these world prices, it has proven to be
already economically feasible to develop them. One is oil shale. The
Congressional Research Service, our own independent research service,
estimates this country's oil shale reserve to be equivalent to
approximately 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, or 1,800 billion barrels of
oil in oil shale. The largest oil producer in the world, Saudi Arabia,
is estimated to have only 267 billion barrels. We are talking about 1.8
trillion in the United States, and it can be produced for less than
$100 a barrel--some say $60 a barrel--and the people who produce it
would be Americans paid salaries by the American Government, who would
pay taxes to the U.S. Treasury, keeping our wealth at home and not
transferring $600 billion to a foreign country.
In 2005, Congress recognized the potential--I want my colleagues to
understand this--we recognized the potential of oil shale in the Energy
Policy Act we passed, which was a good bill. It made a number of good
steps forward. We identified it as strategically important and called
for its further development. Yet the new Congress, under the new
leadership, has acted to block the development of this abundant
resource despite the record price of oil. They undermined the 2005
Energy Policy Act. In the recently passed Energy Independence and
Security Act, the majority inserted language into the bill prohibiting
any Federal agency from contracting to procure any alternative or
synthetic fuel that produces greater life-cycle greenhouse gas
emissions than those produced from the ground, those produced from
Saudi Arabia. This language prohibits the Federal Government from
contracting to produce oil shale. They knew exactly what they were
doing, and that was exactly the purpose of that language. It really
should be repealed. It is misguided. It is wrong.
The Energy Act of 2005 directed the Bureau of Land Management to
lease Federal lands for oil shale research and development projects.
Yet the Congress, in this same bill, acted to block the development of
this provision. So we passed it in 2005, and they came along and
blocked it. Language was inserted, actually, this time in the
Consolidated Appropriations Act--that is, the Omnibus appropriations
bill at the end of last session--that prohibited funds from being used
to implement the leasing program which Congress directed BLM to
implement in 2005. It should be repealed. That is not the right thing
for us to do.
So there is much more we can say. We need technology. We need
advancement in our ability to conserve energy, and at the same time,
while we are making that progress, we do not need to be devastating our
economy by transferring $600 billion a year to foreign countries when
we can produce so much more here at home.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas is
recognized.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire how much more time of
morning business is allotted to this side?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Eight minutes.
Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes in
morning business.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.
I don't blame the American people for being upset at the price of
gasoline they have to pay at the pump. Frankly, the biggest cause of
those high prices is the Congress.
It has been 2 years since Speaker Pelosi said that her party, the
Democratic Party, had a commonsense plan
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to bring down prices at the pump. I am left to wonder how long we will
have to wait to hear what that commonsense plan is. So far, all we have
heard is an escalation of the blame game, which, of course, here in
Washington, DC, inside the beltway, is a world-class sport. The problem
with the blame game is it doesn't actually solve any problems. I think
what the American people are frustrated about, among other things, is
Congress's intransigence, its unresponsiveness, and its unwillingness
to listen to their concerns--legitimate concerns--about how they are
going to balance their family budget, particularly when it comes to the
rising cost of gasoline and the rising cost of health care.
As my colleagues can see, in the 2 years that have gone by--in almost
2 years--we have gone from $2.33 for an average price for a gallon of
gas to $3.61. That translates for an average family to about a $1,400
increase in expenses a year associated with their gasoline costs--
$1,400 a year. So the Federal Government has essentially imposed an
additional tax by its inaction on the average working family in this
country. Frankly, we have the tools available to us to remove that tax
and remove that burden if we will simply exercise our ability to use
those tools in order to begin to bring down that price at the pump.
History has shown that raising taxes on oil companies is no solution
because ultimately we know who ends up paying for tax increases.
Ultimately, they are passed on down to the consumer. So it may be
fashionable to beat up on big oil and say: Let's tax the oil companies
because they are making too much money, but do you know what. If we
raise taxes on the oil companies, we all end up paying an increased
price for gasoline at the pump. It also has the effect as we saw from
1980 to 1988; the so-called windfall profits tax actually caused a
decline in American oil production, reducing domestic production by as
much as 8 percent. So for those who are worried, as I am, about our
dependence on imported oil, a windfall profits tax is simply no answer
at all. In fact, it is counterproductive.
Of course, the problem then was the same as the problem is today, and
that is a shortage of oil around the world. I have said it before and I
will say it again: Congress can pass a lot of laws, we can repeal some
laws, but we cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. Other
countries around the world have or want more of what we have in this
country, which is unheralded prosperity, primarily because of our use
of a disproportionate amount of energy. India and China and growing
countries such as those with a billion people each are using more
energy, and we are not seeing the supply go up, particularly here at
home. So we know that Congress has been one of the biggest obstructions
to increasing oil supply and lowering prices at the pump.
My staff helped me research these figures to make sure we had
justification for them. As we see oil now approaching--maybe it has
gone over--$120 a barrel today, if we were to develop the known
resources we have available in Alaska that the Senator from Alaska just
talked about, it would be the equivalent of $55-a-barrel oil--$120-a-
barrel foreign oil versus $55-a-barrel American oil. If we were to
develop more of the Outer Continental Shelf in places such as the Gulf
of Mexico, even beyond the horizon where you can't even see it from
shore, we could produce that oil from American reserves at the price of
roughly $63 a barrel--$63-a-barrel American oil versus $120-a-barrel
foreign oil.
It seems to me we are missing a great opportunity, not only to help
bring down the major price driver of gasoline costs--70 percent of the
cost of gasoline is the cost of oil--but also to make ourselves more
secure and less dependent on foreign sources of oil, enhancing our
national security and helping to bolster our economy at the same time.
But, as we have heard, Congress has consistently thrown up a roadblock
at accessing these sources of American oil.
Now, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have
proposed another so-called solution to low supplies. They said: You
know what. We are going to take OPEC to court. Let's sue somebody.
Unfortunately, that is an all-too-common proposed solution where we are
going to litigate, regulate, and increase taxes. But, frankly, it is a
little bit--well, more than a little bit--impractical, and it would
make us even more hopelessly tied to foreign nations and their
production whims. So if your solution is, let's sue OPEC and force them
to sell us more oil, does that make us less dependent on foreign
sources or more dependent? I would suggest that even if it were
practical, which it is not, it would make us more dependent on foreign
oil and is not a solution.
We need to remember just how much of an impact high energy prices
have on the everyday lives of working Americans. High prices drive up
the cost of all methods of travel. We are here this week talking about
our airlines, and we know what economic pressure has been put on the
airline industry and on the prices of tickets that continue to go up
because, frankly, the price of oil is coming close to bankrupting the
airline industry and driving those costs. But, of course, whether it is
the cost of driving the kids to school or driving to work, these high
gasoline prices impact everyday Americans all across our great country.
As the Senator from Alabama noted, sometimes Congress's best
intentions backfire in things such as ethanol subsidies, using corn,
using food for fuel, and leading to skyrocketing--helping to lead to
skyrocketing food costs, not to mention livestock feed and other
unintended consequences. We need to recognize that while developing
renewable fuels certainly has its place as a part of the answer, no
single solution is a panacea. All of these have to add to our energy
diversity and our energy mix in order to provide the relief the
American people want and need.
Increasing the supply, which will help bring down the cost of oil and
the cost of gasoline, as I said earlier, must begin here at home using
America's natural resources. Why Congress would mandate, in effect,
that we can't buy American, we have to buy foreign when it comes to
oil, is beyond me, and it just doesn't make any sense. We can develop
environmentally responsible oil production right here at home if
Congress would simply act.
The only real commonsense near-term solution to bringing down prices
at the pump is to take advantage of the enormous natural resources we
have right here at home. It is estimated that if Congress stopped
penalizing and handcuffing American energy production right here at
home, we could produce an additional 2.7 million to 3 million barrels
of oil a day. That would be 3 million fewer barrels of oil a day that
we would have to buy from Canada, from Venezuela, and from nations in
the Middle East.
Allowing American production would send a strong message to the
American people and to the financial markets that we are working as
quickly as possible to drive down gas prices for American families. It
would reduce speculation on the commodities markets that is helping to
drive up the price of oil because when the financial markets see the
Congress doing nothing and see the supply of oil remain static and see
the demand increase, it is going to continue to drive prices higher and
higher.
Unfortunately, we have seen too many Members of Congress block sound
energy policies that would give American companies access to our
valuable natural resources, such as we have heard about oil deposits in
Alaska, offshore deposits, and shale oil sites that the Senator from
Alabama mentioned a moment ago.
I think most Americans take an instinctive pride in the ``Made in
America'' label, and wouldn't it be nice when it came to the gas pump
if we saw a ``Made in America'' label on that gas pump.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what I think is probably
the No. 1 issue on the minds of most of my constituents in Texas and
most people in America today. It is the reason we had a bunch of
truckers here yesterday complaining about the inaction by Congress when
it comes to the price of fuel they need to earn a living and move
America's goods and services around this country and to our homes.
I hope the majority leader and Members of Congress will work together
on a bipartisan basis to try to bring some of these policies to the
floor as soon as possible and without a moment of unnecessary delay.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper). The Senator from West Virginia.
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Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we were
going to go to the FAA bill at 11 o'clock. I was not aware morning
business had been extended until 12:30 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair understands the Senator from West
Virginia seeks recognition for 30 minutes.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. The Presiding Officer is an extraordinary person.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
____________________