[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 83 (Tuesday, May 20, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H4304-H4311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Boyda of Kansas). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank you for recognizing me to 
address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  As a means of transition, and in fact it is not normal practice, but 
I would ask the gentleman from Texas if he might still be available to 
perhaps enter into a colloquy. If the gentleman from Texas would be 
interested in entering into a colloquy, I would be happy to ask him if 
he would yield for a question. I have been interested in listening to 
the presentations by the folks here, and I would ask if the gentleman 
from Texas would be willing to enter into a short colloquy just as a 
matter of clarification on our energy position?
  Mr. LAMPSON. I absolutely would.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you. And I know you have been here on the 
floor talking about energy for the last hour. Just as a matter of 
transition, I would just ask a few clarifying questions.
  The first one is, as I heard discussion about the Outer Continental 
Shelf, is there a nuance there? Are you for or against drilling on the 
Outer Continental Shelf for more energy?
  Mr. LAMPSON. I personally am not opposed to drilling. I think that 
drilling is only one of many solutions to our problem. What I am trying 
to concentrate on is a whole host of research projects that have 
already been passed by the Congress.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time then, drilling the Outer 
Continental Shelf is part of the solution. We would agree on that?
  Mr. LAMPSON. I would say that everything we can think of is a part of 
the solution. We shouldn't take anything off of the table. We are in an 
energy crisis and we must be considering every opportunity that we 
possibly have facing us.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate that response from the gentleman from 
Texas. So as we go down through this list of things that we might do, 
drilling the Outer Continental Shelf would be on the table. Drilling 
ANWR is on the table?
  Mr. LAMPSON. I say everything needs to be on the table for 
discussion, yes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me just if I could then thank the gentleman and 
go through a list of things that I think that we should engage expand 
the supply of energy. Drill the Outer Continental Shelf, gas and oil. 
Drill ANWR. Open up nuclear. Drill non-national park public lands. 
Expand ethanol, biodiesel, solar, wind, clean burning coal. And then 
out of this whole piece of the energy pie, then add another slice to 
that, which I presume you have talked about tonight, and that would be 
the slice called conservation.
  Would that be the picture you are looking at that I think I heard as 
I listened to your presentation tonight?
  Mr. LAMPSON. Most of what you just mentioned is in this legislation.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. So for those reasons I asked for those 
clarifications, that helps me in my transition as I go into the 
presentation that I hope to make tonight on energy. I just want to make 
those clarifications, because it does provide for a transition for us, 
and it also identifies some common ground that we have.
  I would state to the gentleman from Texas that my view is that the 
free market does prevail and that more Btus of energy on the market 
will help to hold down the increase in prices, and, if all goes well, 
to actually reduce those prices of energy. That is the approach that we 
should be able to arrive at in a bipartisan fashion. If the gentleman 
would agree?
  Mr. LAMPSON. Absolutely. If the gentleman would yield, that is 
precisely what I have been working on since November to get Members to 
join us with on this. We have taken any number of suggestions to change 
this legislation to accommodate different Members and different 
Members' thoughts about how we go about making this bipartisan, and the 
successful way to greatly expand the diversity of what we are using for 
energy this country.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Would the gentleman yield for just a 
moment?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. As I indicated on the floor, I am an oil 
and gas lawyer and obviously have a broadened perspective. But I would 
like to just say that I hope that even as you are presenting your 
presentation, that you heard what I said, which is I think that the 
energy leaders of the respective multinational companies that are in 
the United States need to sit down

[[Page H4305]]

with all of us and refine an energy policy.
  I will just limit my remarks, since I was on the floor, and just say 
that my support of the Outer Continental Shelf is in this way: Limited 
to the areas that the constituencies have been used to it, have seen it 
work environmentally, and that would be, in my perspective, and I have 
done work on that and legislation on that, the Gulf of Texas and 
Louisiana.
  I think if you have a model and show how it works, you may be able to 
bring your other colleagues on. Because I want you to note, and I think 
you would note, that the opposition to the Outer Continental Shelf is 
bipartisan on the coast, bipartisan a lot on the coast of California, 
both Democrats and Republican opposition; in Florida it is Democrats 
and Republicans; and I assume up the coast of New York.
  So I think maybe we can be used as a model. Those of us from Texas, 
and you are not, you are from way up Midwest, but from those of us from 
Texas and Louisiana, we have seen it. The point I made is even after 
Hurricane Katrina, we saw the survival of an environmentally safe water 
system where those rigs did not fall because we have understood the 
construction and we also understand the environment.
  I would yield back, but I just wanted to say I think we have to 
educate, and I am ready to show how it works in the Gulf. And that is 
where I limit my support of the Outer Continental Shelf, where it has 
been done, where it can be proven it can be done right.

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from 
Texas and the gentlewoman from Texas. I know it is a little bit 
irregular to engage the people that have just completed a special 
order, but I think it is important for us to engage across the aisle.
  I will transition to the things I came here to say, but I will be 
looking at the proposals that you have made here tonight and the 
language that you have. And I have been relatively aggressive on this 
energy issue, and I think we need to be very aggressive on this energy.
  In fact, as we look across the spectrum of all of the components of 
energy, I wouldn't make anything off limits. I want to drill the entire 
Outer Continental Shelf, and I know of no natural gas spill that has 
affected the environment in a negative way. In fact, I don't know an 
Outer Continental Shelf oil drill that has affected the environment in 
any lasting negative way.
  We did see a lot of stability in the Katrina hurricane and the 
subsequent hurricane that came after that. There was one oil platform 
that was broken loose in the Gulf, and it was pushed 60 miles and came 
upshore down by Mobile, Alabama. However, there wasn't a significant 
spill. We can do this.
  Mr. LAMPSON. If the gentleman would yield for just a very short quick 
30 second story or point to make, off of the coast of Florida we are 
saying that we should not be drilling. But let's look at the other way 
around. We won't get permission to drill within 200 miles of the 
Florida coast or any of the coast in the United States. However, Cuba 
is drilling within 45 miles of Florida's coast. So there is another 
country that is drilling within our boundaries that we are prohibiting 
our own people from being able to drill in. It does not make sense.
  Clearly we have plenty of work to do, and I think it is wonderful if 
we have the opportunity to work across this magic aisles of ours and 
get it done for the American people.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's 
remarks from Texas. I believe also that, at the very minimum, we ought 
to go out there and tack some wells in right up against those Chinese 
Cuban wells that are going in within 45 miles of Key West. I am all for 
that. And let's at least build a little barrier and get our share of 
that well and start pipelining it back in here if we can. I would be 
significantly aggressive on all of this.
  I would say on the upside too, Madam Speaker, and to the American 
people, there are a couple of good things going on in America. One is 
that we have the structure put together where we can produce the first 
refinery since 1975. There will be a vote that comes up, it will be 
primary night, June 3rd, and if the people in Union County, South 
Dakota, decide they want to have a refinery in their Hyperion refinery, 
then very likely that will be the biggest roadblock for a large 
refinery to come in that would deal with the pipeline coming down from 
I call it the tar sands in Northern Alberta, a tremendously large oil 
supply up there. A pipeline would come down, and the crude oil would be 
refined there and then distributed across the area in a network of 
pipelines. That is something that we will find out here in a few weeks, 
if that is going to happen.
  Another thing that America doesn't seem to know is that there is a 
nuclear plant that is being constructed--thanks again to the gentleman 
from Texas, Mr. Lampson--there is a nuclear plant that is being 
constructed in South Carolina. I am not certain when that goes on line, 
Madam Speaker. But those are two large milestones that are being driven 
by the market and by the need.
  It is not being driven by this Congress. It is not being driven by 
this Congress, because this Congress has not taken any action to open 
up opportunities for refineries or open up opportunities for nuclear 
power plants or any other kind of power plant to be built.
  This is happening because market forces are driving them, and the 
regulatory resistance is being overcome by very high energy prices. It 
is not because Congress reduced the regulations. It is not because 
Congress provided incentives. It is because the costs of energy are so 
overpowering that it is now starting to roll over the top of the 
prohibitory regulations that have been put in by this Congress and 
signed by more than one President.
  So, the overall picture, Madam Speaker, is this: This is what I call 
the energy pie. It is a pie chart, and this is energy consumption 2007: 
101.6 quadrillion Btus. Now, I could explain what all that is. That is 
a lot of Btus. It is important to look at it proportionately. Let's 
just say that is 100 percent of the energy consumption by British 
Thermal Unit in the United States.
  This pie chart represents the percentages of their consumption that 
comes from each of these sources of energy. Natural gas, 23.3 percent 
of our energy consumption in the United States is natural gas. We use 
that for heating energy and for production energy and a lot of other 
ways. Natural gas is clean burning and it is environmentally fairly 
friendly. Also the coal is 22.4 percent. So coal and natural gas 
comprise about equal amounts, very equivalent amounts of energy 
consumption in the United States.
  Then we go to nuclear. It is larger than most people will think. Even 
though we haven't built a nuclear plant since 1975, 8.29 percent of our 
energy consumption in the United States is produced by nuclear. That is 
a piece that in France, for example, their electrical generation is 
produced by nuclear. 78 percent of their megawatts of electricity are 
produced by nuclear. If the French can do that and do that without 
incident, do that without fear, do that without concern, we can produce 
a lot more energy by nuclear here in the United States. Now, that is 
environmentally friendly. It is clean burning. It is the safest form of 
electrical energy that we have, and we have been remiss in not 
continuing to develop our engineering capability to produce nuclear.
  That slice of the energy pie could get a lot larger. It could take up 
some of this going to coal, it could take up some of this going to 
natural gas, because there is electrical production generation in each 
of these, natural gas and coal, and actually a lot of it, and the 
nuclear could be a bigger piece of this pie.
  As we go around the chart, the hydroelectric is 2.4 percent. That is 
probably not going to get any bigger. That requires we build more dams. 
There are a lot of regulators in the way that don't want to see that 
happen.
  As we go around the chart, you can see small pieces, geothermal, 
wind, solar, all less than 1 percent of the energy consumption. Fueled 
by ethanol is almost 1 percent is all. We would think that would be a 
lot more, Madam Speaker. 1 percent, but a growing number. Biodiesel is 
a tiny .06 percent of the energy there. Biodiesel is a fledgling part 
right now, and it may well become significant. Today it is a small 
piece. Wooden waste is bigger than we would think.

[[Page H4306]]

  Then we get to gas, 16.9 percent, and diesel and heating oil, et 
cetera, is 8.84, and jet fuel, 3.31, and other petroleum projects, 
asphalt and heavy oils and those, 10 percent. That is the energy 
consumption. 101 quadrillion Btus of energy consumed in the United 
States.
  Now, if we are going to look at how we address this energy situation, 
Madam Speaker, we need to look at it from the whole pie chart 
perspective. So often we are here debating on whether we should be 
drilling in ANWR or whether we should drill the Outer Continental Shelf 
or whether we ought to grow ethanol from corn or maybe grow ethanol 
from cellulosic, which is a big part of what is in the farm bill that 
maybe we will see again tomorrow.
  What do we do with solar? There is plenty of solar power that cooks 
the United States, especially in the summertime and especially in the 
Southwest. Can we collect that and turn that into energy? Perhaps.
  But as we have this debate, we can debate the relative merits of 
these sources of energy. But what I am not hearing the Members do or 
the leadership do or the American people or the business world in 
America, no one is out there pitching the big picture, pitching this 
picture that we had the conversation with Mr. Lampson, and that is the 
entire picture of energy, the holistic picture of energy, this energy 
pie. What is our solution? No one thing.

                              {time}  2100

  No one thing is the solution. And there are some parts that need to 
be bigger on this pie chart and there are others that need to be a 
little smaller on this pie chart. But maybe, maybe our solution instead 
is let's make all of these pieces of pie a little bit bigger and let's 
produce more BTUs of energy out of every source that we can.
  As that happens and as market forces dictate, we will see, I believe, 
fuel from ethanol get up above 1 percent. I think actually from a 
gasoline standpoint we can take it to 13, 14, or maybe even 15 percent 
of the energy that today is being consumed by vehicles that burn 
gasoline or that burn generally a 10 percent blend of ethanol. So maybe 
this 1 percent here of the overall can become as much as 15 percent of 
the gasoline component, say 15 percent of this, 16 or 17 percent of the 
BTUs which is in gasoline today. That is one of the ways that it might 
change in proportion.
  And so then another way that we can look at this is if we can produce 
a little more biodiesel, we can take a bigger piece out of the diesel 
fuel on this side. If we can increase nuclear, as I mentioned, then we 
can take a bigger bite out of the electrical production. And if we can 
produce more electricity with nuclear, then the pressure comes on 
natural gas and comes on coal to give up a little bit of that market 
share to nuclear. When that happens, it puts the coal and the gas in 
different areas and different markets, and perhaps keeps the price from 
going up or maybe even can get us a little bit lower price on our 
energy.
  I think this: If we are consuming 101.6 quadrillion BTUs of energy 
and we are producing--this is the chart behind here, this is the energy 
that we are actually producing here in the United States--71.7 
quadrillion BTUs of energy.
  And so, Madam Speaker, just roughly speaking, we are producing about 
72 percent of the energy in the United States that we are consuming 
here in this country, 72 percent of the energy. The balance of it 
presumably is imported.
  Now, we can import it from Canada, we can import it from Venezuela, 
we can import it from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East; in fact, we do 
that from all of those places. But when we do that, it does a number of 
things to us. It makes us vulnerable and dependent upon Middle Eastern 
oil, for example, and makes us also dependent on Venezuelan oil and 
energy, and it makes us dependent upon the Canadians. Which is the 
least of my concerns. I am very happy to be doing business with the 
Canadians. If we are going to be importing energy from the western 
hemisphere or anyplace on the planet, I think from the Canadians is as 
good a place as there is. And we do import some oil from Mexico as 
well.
  But if we are only producing 72 percent of the energy that we are 
consuming, that means then that we, just by simple math, are importing 
28 percent of the energy that we are consuming. And I believe that we 
are importing 61 percent of the oil and gas or the crude oil, the 
products that we are using here in the United States, 61 percent of 
that imported. And as you see, we are producing I think all or very 
close to all of our own coal, we are producing a percentage of our 
natural gas. Not all of it, because a fair amount of that is imported 
into the United States. If you look at the hydroelectric, we are 
producing all of that, the geothermal, all of that. There are a number 
that we are doing, wind, solar, ethanol, as it goes around the corner. 
We are producing most of that.
  But these other energies, the ones that we are most dependent on, 
Middle Eastern oil, 61 percent of our crude oil products imported, much 
of that from the Middle East. We are very dependent upon it, and that 
needs to change, Madam Speaker.

  So my policy is this. And I don't know, I haven't identified the 
distinctions between my approach and the gentleman from Texas who spoke 
in the previous hour. But my policy is this. Take this pie chart that 
we have, let's produce a lot more natural gas. Let's go offshore, drill 
the Outer Continental Shelf. Let's drill everywhere offshore in the 
United States. Let's first rush down there and set up our drill rigs 
right up against those Chinese drill rigs 45 miles from Key West and 
tack those wells in there and start pulling that oil out and work our 
way back. We will build a fence between us and them of oil wells right 
there on that line between Key West and Havana.
  There is a lot of natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. And in 
that region from the gulf coast around Florida and back again, there 
are known reserves of at least 406 trillion--that is trillion with a 
T--cubic feet of natural gas that can be tapped offshore down that way. 
And there is a lot of gas in the gulf coast altogether.
  We can produce a lot more natural gas. We can punch holes around the 
Outer Continental Shelf. We can do that offshore almost anywhere in the 
United States. There is natural gas almost everywhere offshore in the 
United States. But we need to expand that where we can develop the 
fields and be able to transport that gas effectively and efficiently. 
And the most promising region is offshore in the Outer Continental 
Shelf of Florida.
  Now, I have a growing list of Florida Members of Congress who are 
willing to support drilling offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, 
because they understand that this Nation is vulnerable to other 
countries for energy supply. And they are understanding more and more 
that if they are going to build generating plants in Florida, and they 
increasingly want to build them as natural gas fire generating plants, 
that they are going to have to go along with the idea of tapping into 
the resources that they have offshore in Florida itself.
  So, they are concerned that people sitting on the beach might see an 
oil rig out there and not come back to the beach and sit down in the 
sunshine. Beautiful State, beautiful beaches. I don't think they are 
matched anywhere. But if you cannot see an oil well 200 miles offshore, 
you can't see a gas well 200 miles offshore.
  To give an example, somebody in the Midwest that might think like me, 
if I am sitting down between Iowa and Missouri on the Missouri line, on 
the State line at say Lineville, for example, a little town right there 
on the Missouri line and Iowa, and I am sitting in my lawn chair gazing 
off to the north up to the Minnesota border, roughly 200 miles, maybe a 
little less, that is about what we are talking about. If we are worried 
about drilling offshore in Florida, 200 miles offshore in Florida, 
roughly the equivalent of sitting on the Iowa-Missouri border and 
wondering about whether you are going to have something mess up the 
scenery that is going to be a drill rig that would be up on the 
Minnesota border that far away and perhaps even a little further away, 
as I say, a growing number of the members of the Florida delegation 
willing to tap into this.
  But truthfully, I say this to the good members of Florida, both 
Republicans and Democrats, those resources that

[[Page H4307]]

are offshore are American resources, not Florida resources, not Alabama 
or Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas resources. These are American 
resources, the resources that were claimed by President Reagan on the 
Outer Continental Shelf out to that 200 mile limit, I think the year 
was 1983. It seems as though Jimmy Carter made a move in that 
direction, too, and I can't remember exactly what he did, but I believe 
President Reagan declared our influence and declared the mineral rights 
out to the 200 mile limit. It wasn't a declaration of the Governor of 
Florida or the Governor of any other State that is a coastal State. It 
was a declaration by the President of the United States that claimed 
those resources for all the people in the United States.
  And so as much as I like to see coalitions and like to see us get 
along and cooperate with each other, Madam Speaker, I will submit that 
the good people in Florida and the rest of the way around the coast, 
really, let's bring them into the dialogue. But this is an American 
situation, not a Florida or a Louisiana or a Texas situation, and we 
need to make a decision for America. I am increasingly hearing the 
Florida delegation make such decisions and take such stands.
  If push comes to shove, I am going to say that it is America that 
will decide; it needs to be this Congress that decides. We need a 
President that will help us decide to do that, drill the Outer 
Continental Shelf. If we do that, natural gas gets more plentiful, and 
the law of supply and demand keeps these gas prices from going up and 
in fact pushes them down. If we can put a lot more natural gas into the 
marketplace, that means Florida can have the electricity that it needs 
to run its air conditioners, and it means that they can have the 
natural gas that they need to generate their electricity, and that 
natural gas can be delivered to the rest of the country, heat our 
homes, run our generating plants that we need, too.

  But, Madam Speaker, I would submit this. Let's put more natural gas 
into this marketplace. Let's put a lot more natural gas into the 
marketplace. But let's not turn a lot of it into electrical generation. 
Let's use this for the things we need it for. Let's use it for 
industrial production, plastics, for example. Mr. Peterson from 
Pennsylvania has given speech after speech on those necessities.
  But let's also use the natural gas for fertilizer production, because 
that fertilizer is what is necessary in order to provide food for the 
American people and the people of the world. You simply can't produce 
food without nitrogen, the nitrogen that either is drawn from the air 
naturally through a crop or nitrogen that is put into the ground 
through the fertilizer. And 90 percent of the cost and of the feedstock 
that goes into the production of nitrogen fertilizer is natural gas 
itself. And so more natural gas available on the marketplace means that 
we will come back and rebuild the fertilizer production industry in the 
United States, and it frees up a lot more gas for the production of the 
things that we need as far as industrial production is concerned. Home 
heating is another way we can use natural gas.
  And if we increase the production of the natural gas and we start 
taking away from the generation of electricity by natural gas and 
replace that with nuclear, you can start to see how the pieces of this 
pie will shift. American production can increase for natural gas, but 
actually the share of the overall consumption of energy could actually 
diminish even though we increased it because we will have more energy 
on the marketplace and more energy in the form of nuclear, which is 
here; the 11.73 percent of our production of energy is nuclear. But if 
we are down to the other chart, then it is 8.29 percent of our 
consumption is nuclear. That gives a sense of what we can do with this 
energy, grow the size of the energy pie.
  Madam Speaker, this chart, this is energy consumption, 101.6 
quadrillion BTUs of energy consumed in the United States, which tells 
us that about 28 quadrillion BTUs of energy is imported into the United 
States. So this energy pie that I just sat down here on the floor needs 
to be at least matched by the production energy pie chart here. And 
another thing that we can do is add another slice to this pie called 
energy conservation, so that on this consumption side we can replace 
some of that consumption of energy with the conservation of energy, 
efficient homes, efficient vehicles, and efficient generating plants, 
efficient plants of all kinds.
  That is the view of the energy situation here in the United States, 
Madam Speaker.
  And then I have another bar graph right here that helps lay out the 
proportionality of the different kinds of production that we have. I 
started on the bottom. For petroleum, it is 39.14 percent of our 
production. So we are dependent upon petroleum products significantly. 
It is almost 40 percent.
  We go to natural gas. That is another well product, another petroleum 
hydrocarbon product, 23.25 percent of natural gas. These two things of 
course come out of the ground, deep wells, not quite of deep of wells 
as a rule. And coal. Coal has traditionally been a big part of our 
energy consumption here in the United States. And you see how, as we go 
to nuclear with 8.27 percent energy consumption, now it goes down 2.5 
percent, hydroelectric about the same, ethanol less than 1 percent. And 
it gets down to where these other pieces, biodiesel, solar wind, 
geothermal and that are all tiny in comparison.
  Another way to look at this is as we grow fuel by ethanol, that bar 
gets longer. Hydroelectric probably stays the same. And wind can get 
bigger, solar can get bigger, biodiesel can get bigger. But we are in 
the early stages of this, Madam Speaker. We have a lot to do, and we 
have a lot to do to expand each one of these kinds of energy that we 
have.
  We are a Nation, we are a Nation that is sitting on a significant 
amount of natural gas. We actually have a wealth of natural gas. And I 
recall a statement made into the Congressional Record by a Member of 
Congress from Colorado about 3 or 4 years ago, and that is that we have 
enough natural gas in the United States underneath the non-national 
park public lands that if we would drill that natural gas in the known 
reserves, there is enough there to heat every home in America for the 
next 150 years, Madam Speaker, 150 years of heating every home in 
America just with the gas that is underneath the non-national park 
public lands, Bureau of Land Management lands, primarily.
  And why can't we do that? Why can't we open up all those areas to 
drilling? We have do so in an environmentally friendly fashion; We have 
done so without spillage in a significant way without any kind of 
permanent environmental damage. And we need to open up our non-national 
park lands for drilling and for distribution. We can't be shutting 
people out of there by shutting off roads and not allowing them an 
ability to deliver the product. We have got to open this up and get the 
energy into the marketplace.
  We do that, drill our non-national park public lands and we drill the 
outer continental shelf for gas and oil and we drill ANWR. And ANWR is 
the piece that I asked the gentleman from Texas about. I have long been 
an advocate for drilling in ANWR. I took a trip up there a few years 
ago because I had listened to the rhetoric about ANWR.

                              {time}  2115

  And the constant statement was that this is a natural, beautiful 
arctic wilderness. It's a place that wildlife needs to be able to roam 
without being disturbed by man, pristine wilderness area.
  And so I remember seeing commercials on television that showed a 
beautiful alpine forest, a beautiful alpine forest represented as 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And so I'm sitting there, like any 
American would be, thinking, boy, if we go up there and bulldoze those 
trees and start putting roads in and pipelines in and drilling into 
that beautiful alpine forest, it'll never be the same.
  And I wasn't really totally shocked or surprised when I got up there, 
but I started to put all the pieces together. I was looking around for 
trees. And as we flew north, it was a long flight from where I saw the 
last tree out the window of the plane before we got to the place up 
there in ANWR where they want to drill. In fact, it's about 700 miles 
from the most northerly tree approaching the Arctic circle. It's about 
700 miles south of the area they want

[[Page H4308]]

to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and then in a region 
with that Eskimo town called Kaktovik. That's about 250 to 300 people 
that live up there right on the Arctic Ocean.
  So as we flew over that area, we flew over the north slope of Alaska, 
which had the pipeline. The Alaska pipeline was built beginning in 
1972. And the wells were drilled up there beginning about that same 
period of time. And so for all these years we've watched crude oil be 
pumped down out of the north slope of Alaska into that pipeline and 
down to the Port Valdez, where it's been loading tankers, and the 
tankers have then gone down to the refineries along the West Coast.
  Madam Speaker, the question continues, and that is that comments 
continually come to my office about allegations that that crude oil 
from Alaska is being exported to places like Japan. And once again, I 
looked into that. Once again I got the answer back that says no, that 
oil is going to the United States. It goes down for United States 
production.
  Early on there were some market forces that sent some of that oil 
across over to Japan. It has been a long, long time since any of that 
oil has gone anywhere except into the U.S. marketplace. So I think we 
can be confident that the oil that would come out of ANWR would also 
come into the U.S. marketplace. In fact, it would go into the same 
pipeline.
  And as the oil wells in the north slope start to wind down and start 
to slow in their production, we need to ramp up production next door in 
ANWR to bring that oil on-line and keep that Alaska pipeline full. If 
we fail to do that, the line will corrode on the inside and, as it 
starts to, it'll take a fair amount of renovation work to get it back 
up to speed again if we don't keep it working most of the time.
  And so, as I looked at the ANWR region, and flew over that 19.6 
million acres, I was looking for caribou herds that would be scattered 
out all over the place, and perhaps a lot of musk oxen and birds and 
polar bears, et cetera.
  But, Madam Speaker, as much as we flew over that area and looked, 
from end to end, out and back, as low as we could safely fly, all of us 
looking out the window, the pilot finally spotted four musk oxen, four 
oxen standing out there in 19.6 million acres. And I'm sure we missed 
some animals. We didn't see them all. They were standing there with 
their head down, doing nothing, just standing there, four of them all 
in a little group. And we saw that, and two big white birds. I don't 
know what kind they were. That's all we saw for wildlife across that 
whole region.
  But what we know is this, that there is not a native caribou herd in 
ANWR, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a kind of a 
maternity ward where caribou migrate in from Canada in the spring, 
starting perhaps a week or 10 days into May, and they have their calves 
in there in that region around the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And 
once those calves get big enough, then they migrate back to Canada mid 
June or the latter part of June. That's the extent of the caribou herd.
  Now, if we're worried about caribou, we ought to look and see what 
happened to the caribou herd on the north slope of Alaska where we have 
about, let's say, 36 years of experience up there building pipe lines, 
drilling oil wells and delivering oil onto the marketplace of the 
world.
  And so the caribou herd that was 7,000 head of caribou back in 1970 
today is over 28,000, and the herd is growing. That doesn't tell me 
that the work that's been done on the north slope has been detrimental 
at least to the caribou herd which is more than four times what it was 
back in 1970 when they first began the operations. Court injunction 
shut it down for 2 years, and then the work really began in 1972, as I 
recall.
  But from 7,000 caribou to 28,000 caribou on the north slope, I don't 
think we ought to worry about the caribou, if that's our issue, and any 
kind of environmental reason that they might come up with on the other 
side of the aisle not to drill. So all the indications are that the 
caribou are going to do just fine with the pipeline running through 
them and some oil rigs that are drilling.
  We think, somehow, that wildlife just simply is not compatible with 
man and not compatible with machines, not compatible with oil drilling 
or pipelines or road construction or populations. So Madam Speaker, I 
would submit that there are a number of examples that would beg 
otherwise, and that would be--
  Well, one of those easy examples would be, let's see, I get my days 
right. Night before last, as my wife and I were walking down the street 
at about let me see, pretty close to Sixth and Pennsylvania Avenue 
Southeast, there a furry raccoon ran down the sidewalk on the other 
side of the street, almost in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C. 
And a raccoon figured out how to live inside Washington, D.C. It's the 
first one I've seen running around on the streets. I was quite 
surprised, but there he was.
  Another example, Madam Speaker, would be, I recall my wife and I were 
doing a little road trip. We had driven up to the end of the road in 
northern Ontario. And there's a paved highway that goes up to a city by 
the name of Red Lake, Ontario, actually a fairly small town but along 
the shore of the lake there, a beautiful region. And it's vast and it's 
wild, and it's open wilderness.
  But I'd always been concerned about how the eagle would adapt to 
humanity. And I recall working on a job in Southwest Iowa where the 
Department of Natural Resources, in a heavy timber, discovered one of 
the earliest eagle nests in modern times in the State of Iowa. And this 
would be back in, I believe, 1986. The game warden told me about the 
eagles nest, but would not tell me where it was because he said that if 
I would walk down there I would scare the eagle off the nest and the 
eagle would fly away and the eggs wouldn't hatch. That was the concern 
about scaring an eagle out of their reproduction operation. And that 
was things we heard many times, that these animals do not, and they're 
not very compatible with humanity.
  Well, Madam Speaker, I don't know what happened to that eagle out in 
that heavy timber in Southwest Iowa. I presume she hatched out her 
eaglets and they flew away, because we've got a lot of eagles living in 
the country side now, these 22 years later.
  But what I did see up there in Northern Ontario were the highway, a 
paved highway that actually has a reasonable amount of traffic going 
north and south. It's two lanes. But it's split around a high line 
pole, a big tall high line pole that was perhaps over 100 feet high. 
And as we drove by, we had the top down, and I looked up on top of that 
pole and there was an eagle nest with an eagle sitting in it, keeping 
an eye on all the traffic that was buzzing by right directly underneath 
its necessary.
  Now, that tells me that animals are fairly compatible. All of them 
maybe are not. And the argument about the spotted owl, I don't have 
quite the personal experience rebuttal to that. But we do know that 
peregrine falcons live pretty well in the city if they can prey on the 
pigeons that also live pretty well in the city.
  And so time after time we find out that animals adapt to their 
environment, and a lot in the same way that people do. They will find a 
way to find some feed and find some shelter and reproduce and hatch 
some little ones out. The caribou found out how to do that in the north 
slope.

  There's not a problem in ANWR. No one can create an environmental 
scenario that tells me that we should go without energy in America.
  But we do have the situation where the Secretary of the Interior has 
put the polar bear on the threatened species list. Now, this polar bear 
that has watched its population over the last 2 decades go from about 
7,000, maybe as low as 5,000 polar bear, now up to about 25,000 polar 
bear. That would be the world population of polar bear. We've watched 
polar bear numbers that are blossoming, anywhere from 3\1/2\ to five 
times the population of polar bear that it was 20 years ago.
  And yet, for the first time in the history of the country, the 
Secretary of the Interior has put an animal on the threatened species 
lists because of the predictions from the global warming enthusiasts of 
what will happen to its environment if they are right.
  Now, Madam Speaker, I will submit that that polar bear will become 
the

[[Page H4309]]

tool and the pawn and the toy of litigation after litigation after 
litigation that will be designed to shut down the development of energy 
exploration and production in all of those regions where the polar bear 
might roam or might have roamed. That's what we can expect coming, 
because this debate isn't really about the well-being of the polar 
bear.
  This debate is about people on that side of the aisle, not all of 
them, but I do believe the majority of them, Madam Speaker, that really 
in their heart of hearts don't mind seeing expensive energy. They don't 
mind seeing $4 gas. In fact, I don't think they'd mind seeing 6, 8 or 
$10 gas because they believe that the higher the cost of energy, the 
less of it we will use.
  If gas goes to six bucks or 10 bucks, more people will park their 
car, more people will ride their bicycle, more people will walk, more 
people will take mass transit, and more people will stay home. If all 
of that happens, their calculus is that we'll use less energy per 
capita, instead of more energy per capita, and the net result will be 
that, in their mind, that they saved the planet from global warming.
  Well, this is a long ways from subtle science, and we should not be 
handicapping the economy of the United States of America for the 
purposes of people who believe we should have a more expensive energy 
policy.
  So in spite of what I heard the gentleman from Texas say, and I don't 
discount his word, nor do I challenge his integrity. I will submit that 
his party has only brought energy issues to this floor of Congress that 
have raised the cost of energy by making it more scarce.
  They've tried to bring windfall profits taxes on the energy 
companies. They're the ones that are keeping our energy at least as low 
as it is today. They're slowing the increase in prices, companies like 
Exxon, for example, that are putting billions of gallons of gasoline 
out there in the marketplace.
  If they stop producing because we punish them, gas is going to go up, 
not down. We don't get cheaper gas prices by punishing energy 
companies, and we don't get cheaper gas prices by taxing companies 
after the fact in windfall profit taxes, Madam Speaker, because what 
will happen is they'll sit around the boardroom and they'll decide, 
wait a minute. We paid our royalties to the Federal Government for the 
energy that was there. We entered into these agreements in good faith. 
We're an efficient company, an efficient company that drilled and 
explored the leases that they paid for, put that energy on the 
marketplace for a fair market price and paid the royalties to the 
Federal Government for that.
  Now, how do we come in and change the deal?
  How do we say, if you don't renegotiate those lease agreements with 
the Federal Government, we're not going to let you enter into another 
lease agreement. We're going to hold a gun to your head and make you 
capitulate and change. The deal's not a deal, according to some folks 
on this side of the aisle, and a lot of them are driving the agenda.
  And so, Madam Speaker, I submit this, that a deal must be a deal. And 
we can't be penalizing energy companies that are out there exploring, 
risking billions of dollars in capital, and putting gas and diesel fuel 
and oil and kerosene and jet fuel and asphalt for our roads all out 
there on the marketplace, keeping the price as low as possible.
  They're competing in this marketplace. And yes, they are making some 
money. But if their Board of Directors are listening, they're hearing 
what this Congress is saying to demonize the people that are producing 
the energy, and they're starting to wonder, shouldn't I take some of 
that billions in profit and invest that in some other industry 
someplace where Congress isn't going to come in and tax me after the 
fact?
  If they play by the rules, every company that plays by the rules 
should be able to count on the Federal Government keeping their part of 
the bargain. And whatever the tax structure is when they enter into the 
agreement should be the tax structure that they comply with, at least 
for that year that they've entered into and the corporate tax and the 
royalties that are designed to be part of it.
  I've spent my life in the business world, 28 years meeting payroll, 
doing construction work, entering into contracts, some written, many 
written actually, many more verbal contracts, sometimes a hand shake, 
sometimes we didn't bother, sometimes it was over the phone, sometimes 
it was just simply eye contact, nod, and we have the kind of 
relationship where we know we'll each keep our deal.

                              {time}  2130

  I respect a contract. I respect a deal and an agreement. That's what 
makes the economic world go round. People that have integrity that 
understand that a deal is a deal are what keeps this world going. And 
we have verbal agreements that go on up into the hundreds of millions 
of dollars, and in the end, we're evaluating the character of the 
people that are entering into those.
  I would also submit that one of my favorite energies here on this 
chart, the energy production, which is the fuel by ethanol, this .94 of 
a percent here, is getting a bit of a bad rap. And it's getting a bit 
of a bad rap by the folks who just simply don't like the competition of 
ethanol. I think it's become a political argument rather than a 
rational scientific argument.
  I know a couple of scientists in this Congress who are working and 
tracking the three laws of thermodynamics, and I hope they're paying 
attention when I make this argument, Madam Speaker, and that is this: 
according to Argon Labs out of Chicago--first the argument that comes 
from ethanol's critics is it takes more energy to produce ethanol than 
you get out of it. Madam Speaker, I submit that's factually incorrect.
  If ethanol from corn can only be calculated if you take a bushel of 
corn and you say, All right, now I have this bushel of corn here 
sitting here at the ethanol plant, I want to convert it into ethanol. 
How much energy does it take to convert this bushel of corn into 
ethanol compared to how much energy do I get out of this bushel of 
corn? And if you're going to be fair about it, if we're comparing it to 
gasoline, we have to also measure how much energy it takes to refine 
the same amount of energy from crude oil into gasoline, because it 
takes energy to do that, too.
  Here are the numbers, Madam Speaker. To produce one Btu of energy in 
the form of ethanol from corn, you will consume, according to Argon 
Labs, .67 Btu as the energy that it takes to get an entire Btu out of 
corn in the form of ethanol from shell corn sitting at the gates of the 
ethanol plant. That's the equation.
  But if you go down to the oil refinery, let's just say in Texas, and 
you have a barrel of crude oil sitting at the gates of the oil refinery 
of Texas, how much energy does it take to get a Btu, a British thermal 
unit of energy in the form of gasoline out of that crude oil? That, 
Madam Speaker, is 1.3 Btu's; .67 to get one out of corn ethanol, 1.3 
Btu's to get one out of gasoline refined from crude oil. Almost twice 
as much energy to craft gas out of crude as it is to convert corn into 
ethanol, Btu to Btu.
  Another way to look at that is a gallon of gasoline is, for round 
purposes, is 100,000 Btu's of energy. Let's just say it takes a little 
bit more of a gallon in the form of ethanol, but let's say we had two 
jugs sitting here, one has ethanol in it and one has gasoline in it, 
each are 100,000 Btu's. Well, to produce 100,000 Btu's of ethanol it 
took 67,000 Btu's of energy to convert corn into ethanol. 67,000 Btu's 
to get 100,000. And to convert crude oil into 100,000 Btu's, roughly a 
gallon of gasoline, it takes 130,000 Btu's to get your 100,000, roughly 
a gallon's worth.
  So there's your answer, about twice as much energy to convert gas 
from crude oil as it is to convert corn into ethanol.
  Those are laboratory scientific facts, Madam Speaker, and those are 
facts that ethanol's critics cannot get around. And so let me take us 
to another level.
  Since it doesn't take more energy than you get out of it, .67 Btu's 
to get one full Btu of energy out of corn, since it doesn't take more 
energy, it does for gasoline, it doesn't for ethanol, then the only 
other argument that remains is well, food versus fuel, Madam Speaker.
  And the argument that we're using this corn for fuel instead of 
feeding the world population, well, we have a lot of folks who think we 
take field corn and, I suppose, set it on our plates and cook

[[Page H4310]]

it up and feed it. Now, that may well be how we make grits. I don't 
know that. We don't make any grits in Iowa, but I do have a little sack 
on my shelf. And other than that, our corn goes to about some 300 
products, maybe a little bit more than that. Corn sweetener and a whole 
variety of products including, I think, the forks, knives, and spoons 
at the Longworth cafeteria are today now made from corn.
  But we produced 13.1 billion bushels of corn last year in the United 
States. Now, that's the annual crop for the 2007 crop, 13.1 billion 
bushels of corn. Now, if we're going to argue that food prices went up, 
I'm going to take that argument away also from ethanol's critics, and 
here's how it is. We produce 13.1 billion bushels of corn. We exported 
more corn than ever before. We exported 2.5 billion bushels of corn. 
And so more corn exported than ever before, and you subtract that 2\1/
2\ billion from the overall crop of 13.1, you end up with 10.6 billion 
bushels of corn left over after we exported more than ever before.
  Then we converted 3.2 billion bushels of corn into ethanol, roughly 9 
billion gallons of ethanol, 3.2 billion.
  So remember, we were at 13.1 billion bushels, overall production, 
minus 2\1/2\ billion bushels for export, leaves us 10.6 billion. Then 
from that we subtract 3.2 billion that went to ethanol. That takes us 
down to 7.4 billion bushels of corn left over for domestic consumption.
  Now, that happens to be the exact number that is the average of our 
corn that's available for domestic consumption for all of the other 
years of this decade is 7.4 billion bushels of corn.
  So one would say by this argument we didn't really take any corn out 
of the availability for food for domestic consumption in the United 
States because we still have 7.4 billion bushels left over after we 
exported 2\1/2\ billion bushels after we converted 3.1 billion bushels 
into ethanol, we still end up with 7.4 billion. But additionally, we 
have to add back in half of the bushels that we converted to ethanol 
because at least half, Madam Speaker, of that corn has a retained feed 
value in the protein that we did not use, the protein that goes back in 
livestock feed in the form of DDG, dried distiller's grain.
  So you add 1.6 billion bushels back in, and that says last year, 2007 
crop, the average annual domestic corn crop for the decade is 7.4 
billion, but the 2007 year, there's 9 billion bushels of corn that were 
available for domestic consumption. That says the supply for domestic 
consumption went up, not down. If the supply went up, then we can't be 
arguing that the food-versus-fuel argument, although I will say that if 
you dump 3.2 billion bushels of corn into the domestic market, and it 
would push the price, and that would be a lot better for our livestock 
producers, especially our pork producers.
  But that's not the case. It's 9 billion bushels available where 7.4 
normally are available. I think that takes that argument away that the 
high costs that are there today that are putting so much pressure on 
our pork producers are at the burden of ethanol, yes, it's part of it. 
It's part of it.
  But, Madam Speaker, I will submit that the low dollar is a bigger 
part of it. And according to some financial experts that I have met 
with, people whom I respect, their judgment is sound and they're well 
respected in the country, the cheap dollar has more to do with high 
grain prices and high gas prices than most people will calculate.
  So, for example, if about 35 percent of the value of our commodities, 
such as crude oil, is wrapped up in the cheap dollar, we could take 
$129 crude oil and say well, about two-thirds of that is where oil 
would be today if our dollar were shored back up and it was more 
traditional values than it is right now. And I know that some think 
that we should try to encourage the European Union to devalue their 
Euro. I don't know that that can be done from the United States any 
more effectively than we can convince the Saudis to put more crude oil 
out on the marketplace.
  But we can shore up the value of the dollar, Madam Speaker. We can 
and we should shore up the value of the dollar. And we ought to take 
some dollars out of circulation. We ought to make an announcement that 
we're going to hold a tighter money supply and push the value of the 
dollar up. If that happens, and we can get the dollar back to its 
traditional values, the gas that we're looking at today that on the 
streets tomorrow or by next week will be $3.80 a gallon, would only be, 
with a more traditional value of our dollar, about $2.47 a 
gallon. That's still too high in my view, Madam Speaker.

  So the combination of these things, the combination of the 
speculators that expect that energy is going to be more scarce in the 
future, is driving up the price of energy, the intimidation effect of 
windfall profit taxes and higher regulations and the constant beating 
that the energy supply companies take here on the floor of this 
Congress pushes up the energy prices.
  The bill that passed today that was debated yesterday, the NOPEC 
bill, the bill that says it's unlawful for the organization, the 
petroleum export companies, OPEC, the bill that says it's unlawful for 
OPEC to exist and grants the authority to the Department of Justice to 
sue those OPEC countries, and if they successfully bring suit, one 
could presume that they could freeze the accounts of the investments of 
those oil companies here in the United States, at least the sovereign 
wealth accounts that they might have invested in U.S. products. It is a 
move that drives up more energy prices.
  The Middle Eastern countries that are part of OPEC, because when we 
passed NOPEC here in this Congress, they are not going to produce more 
energy to get Congress off their back because they know Congress 
doesn't know how much energy they produce. They know this, that the oil 
that sits underneath their land is their oil, and they will market it 
in a way that serves their interest best. That's the bottom line. 
That's free market capitalism. And even though a lot of those countries 
don't have the level of freedom that we have, they do understand the 
market system.
  So if we say to them that we're going to turn the attorney general 
loose, create a task force to study this and then give the attorney 
general the authority, the Department of Justice the authority to bring 
suit against the OPEC countries, I'll submit this, Madam Speaker, 
they're not going to produce more energy; the best we could hope for is 
they produce the same amount of energy, and we have to hope that they 
don't reduce that energy supply, and we have to hope that they don't 
pull their capital out of the United States out of fear that their 
assets could potentially be frozen in the aftermath of a suit that 
could be brought by the attorney general.
  Only bad things can come from the NOPEC bill that passed the floor of 
this Congress. It's going to make energy either the same or more 
scarce. Just like every other piece of energy legislation that's been 
brought in this Pelosi Congress that's made energy more scarce, more 
expensive, provided more regulations and more intimidation, more taxes 
on our energy producing companies. That's wrong.
  And what we have been doing is growing an industry. We've been 
growing the corn-based ethanol industry. This piece right here. This 
probably, by now, exceeded 1 percent of our overall energy consumption 
in the United States.
  We need to, Madam Speaker, grow the size of the energy pie. This is 
the energy production chart, 71.7 quadrillion Btu's of energy produced 
from all of these sources, and they come with crude oil, liquefied 
petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro-electric, geothermal, 
ethanol, biodiesel, solar, wind, all of these sources. This is the 
energy production chart, 71.7 quadrillion Btu's. This is the energy pie 
that we need to grow.
  We need to grow this energy pie to the size of this energy pie, Madam 
Speaker. This one that is 101.6 quadrillion Btu's. Now this circle 
should be bigger in proportion to the one behind it. We will get our 
graphics down a little better later on, Madam Speaker, but this is what 
we need to do: grow the size of the energy pie so the energy-
consumption chart, which is behind here, excuse me, the energy-
production chart, which is behind here, equals or exceeds the size of 
the energy consumption chart which is this one here, the 101.6 
quadrillion Btu's.
  If we do that, we will see energy prices go down in America, we will 
see gas at a price that a working man and woman can afford it again, 
and we will see ourselves become significantly less

[[Page H4311]]

dependent, in fact independent from foreign sources of energy and oil 
and, and if we do that, the prospects for America's balance of trade, 
the prospects for the stability of our currency, the prospects for the 
future of the United States of America, of our children and 
grandchildren and each succeeding generation, gets greater and greater.
  That is our responsibility, Madam Speaker. It is our responsibility 
to advance the American dream. Advance it for our children and advance 
it for our grandchildren. We need to do that with a comprehensive 
approach to the big picture in every way that we can. We cannot do it 
by increasing the cost of energy by making it more scarce and 
intimidating our energy-producing companies. That's the theme that the 
American people understand.
  And I will submit, Madam Speaker, that the clearest thing for the 
American people to understand is drill ANWR. Drill in ANWR, drill now, 
drill as fast as we can. It doesn't take any 10 years to get that 
energy on the marketplace.

                              {time}  2145

  How can we, on the one hand, how can we say, well, there's only 
enough energy up there to last for 5 years and we can't get it into the 
marketplace for 10? That doesn't make sense to me, not in a Nation that 
can have a Manhattan Project that can, in a few very short years, 
produce an atom bomb and deliver it, or in a few very short years, from 
the time John F. Kennedy said we're going to the moon, by 1969 we were 
on the moon.
  A Nation that can produce a nuclear weapon in the fashion that we 
did, a Nation that can go to the moon in the fashion that we did has 
got to get the regulations and the taxes out of the way so that we can 
produce the energy that we need in the form of ethanol and biodiesel 
and wind and solar and nuclear and hydroelectric. And the list goes on 
and on and on, including coal, gas, diesel fuel, et cetera.
  Madam Speaker, it's commonsense to the American people. Let's first 
drill ANWR and send that message that this Nation is finally ready to 
produce energy. Let's do that, and let's take it a step at a time, or 
all at once if we can, but whatever we do, we owe it to our children 
and grandchildren to grow the size of the energy production pie in the 
United States of America.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence. It's a 
privilege to address you.

                          ____________________