[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 84 (Wednesday, May 21, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H4437-H4441]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY PRICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, let the record show that 
on Wednesday, May 21, oil hit $137 a barrel and closed at about $134. 
Natural gas has pushed by $11.50 per thousand and is approaching $12.
  Yes, this chart I have shows the growth in energy costs. Price of oil 
continues to skyrocket. I guess the part that's surprising is, as a 12-
year Member of this body, that it's not a crisis here. This Congress is 
not treating energy prices as if it was a crisis.
  I was looking at my notes before I came down from an October time 
when I came down to the floor, and we talked then, as we were kind of 
climbing through the eighties, and that day we had hit $94 a barrel. 
And we all shuddered that we might be approaching $100, and here we are 
a few months later, not only past $100, but at $134 and actually hit 
$137 today.
  Do we have a bipartisan task force by the House and Senate that would 
look at how we deal with this energy crisis and how we deal with these 
high prices that American consumers are struggling with? The answer is 
no. Do we have a special House committee looking for solutions? The 
answer is no.
  Yesterday, the House had a bill. It was defined and named to cut 
costs, cut gas costs. Will it? Well, the first part of the bill dealt 
with trying to figure out a legal way that we can sue the OPEC 
countries for not producing enough oil. Now, Saudi Arabia alone 
produces 12 million barrels a day, and many of the other countries, 10, 
9, 7, but we think they should produce more.
  It's interesting, on this floor a few months ago, when we had some 
energy bills pass that didn't have any energy in them, we claimed that 
it was a new era. The era of oil was over. We were moving into the 
fields, the new fields, and energy dependence on foreign countries 
would disappear.
  I've been in Congress 12 years. We've increased dependency almost 2 
percent a year every year I've been here, and we're on a pattern that 
by 2015, if we don't change, we'll be 85 percent dependent on foreign, 
mostly dictatorship, unstable countries, not always friendly to us.
  I think that's a serious crisis for the American people. It's a 
serious crisis for American businesses to compete. It's a serious 
crisis to our defense of this country.
  I wish our governmental leaders, White House and legislative 
included, were half as interested in energy prices as our military was. 
Because when I talk to the leaders of the Air Force specifically, who 
use a huge amount of our energy flying our planes, they want 60 percent 
of their energy to be non-foreign, and they're working judiciously to 
do other fuels from coal and fuels from gas and trying to have other 
non-oil fuels because in oil we're just becoming majorly foreign 
dependent.
  Today, the Senate determined that when they return after the May 
recess, they're going to deal in the week or two period with climate 
change. They're going to deal with carbon taxes because they think that 
a one-and-a-half percentage degree in temperature increase in this 
country, in this world, is a greater threat to our future than energy 
prices that most Americans can't afford, and most businesses can't 
compete in the global economy if they continue.
  But the Senate is not talking about energy. They're talking about a 
climate bill and a carbon tax which will increase energy prices 25 to 
30 percent. Much of America today hit $4 in gasoline. That means if the 
Senate acts as they say they're going to, a carbon tax

[[Page H4438]]

could easily, everybody agrees, could increase energy prices 20 to 30 
percent. So 25 percent of $4 is another dollar so we would go to $5 
gasoline. And only God knows what oil prices will be by the time they 
accomplish that.
  Does America need to be in an energy crisis? I think not. We made a 
decision several decades ago, in fact 27 years ago, a very foolish 
decision. We locked up offshore production of energy on both coasts and 
in much of the gulf. Every country in the world, Ireland, Norway, 
Sweden, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, all green countries, all 
environmentally sensitive countries, they all produce offshore. They 
have different set-asides, some 20 miles, some 30 miles, some 15 miles. 
Eleven miles is the sight line. Once it's past 11 miles, nobody can see 
it. All those countries, every country produces.
  Canada, thank God for Canada. We import more energy from Canada than 
anybody else, our friend to the north. They produce both oil and gas 
right off the coast of Maine, just above it, and right above the coast 
of Washington. And since 1913, they've been producing natural gas only 
in the Great Lakes, and today they're selling it to us. We get 15 
percent of our natural gas from Canada, 2 percent from LNG, and the 
rest we produce ourselves. We could be totally self-sufficient in 
natural gas.
  Now, a young lady said to me recently, she said, Mr. Peterson, I make 
$320 a week. I lost my other job so I have to travel a fair distance 
now to work. I'm now paying $130 a week to drive to work. She says, I 
don't know how I can continue to raise my two children and make ends 
meet.
  What she didn't know was that the small house she has, her current 
natural gas bill, on a monthly basis, $175--she pays balanced billing--
what she doesn't know is that the $12 gas or $11.70 today we're putting 
in the ground now compares to $6.50 gas we were putting in the ground--
and you may say, what do you mean putting in the ground? Well, we have 
great storage caverns, much of them in my district in Pennsylvania, 
where we store natural gas in old salt caverns, and then we use it in 
the wintertime because we can't produce, we can't pump enough out of 
the ground in the heating season when we use tremendous amounts of 
natural gas. So we're putting it in the ground in storage today.
  Now, one of the major storage companies told me last week at a 
luncheon, they're very concerned; they have not had their storage this 
low in a long time, and they're very concerned because they've been 
unable to buy as much LNG as they want.

                              {time}  2200

  And they're very concerned. I said, why are you putting $11.50 gas in 
the ground? Why don't you wait until the price comes down? They said, 
we're afraid the price isn't going to come down. Because usually in the 
spring of the season, when we're not heating our homes and we're not 
running a lot of air conditioning, we use the least natural gas of any 
other time of the year. So that's when we have ample supply, the price 
comes down, it gets reasonable, and that's when we put it in storage 
for next winter.
  Later year at this time, it was $6.50, later in the summer it was $5 
something. And last year we had a moderate increase in natural gas 
prices, about 7, 8, 9, 10 percent, depending on what part of the 
country you were in. That was moderate. Well, those who heated with 
home heating oil and propane had huge increases last year. And the sad 
story for Americans is those who heat with propane and home heating 
fuel are going to have enormous increases this year on top of last 
year's increases. And those who heat with natural gas are going to have 
a major increase. We don't know how much yet.
  For the first time in 2 years we have not had a storm in the Gulf, 
the last two summers. That's historic. We always have storms in the 
Gulf, hurricanes, that disrupt oil and gas supply. And when it disrupts 
that supply, we never replace it, so it just takes it out of the 
system. And whenever we have a major storm in the Gulf--when Katrina 
hit, gas went from, like, $4 or $5 to $14. And that year we had a huge 
increase in natural gas prices because that's what we had to pay.
  Now, the LNG issue I mentioned, you know, I had a debate with the 
White House some time ago, and they felt that LNG was our answer to 
natural gas. I argued then, 3 years ago, and I argue now, it's not the 
answer. It's a little piece of the solution. Now, what is LNG? That's 
liquefied natural gas, we buy it from foreign countries a long ways 
from here. Gas is cheaper in those countries. They liquefy it. They 
fill these huge tankers and they come here, and then we build 
controversial unloading stations. They're really not unsafe, but people 
perceive them to be. And we were in a flurry to build more receiving 
stations. We found out we really haven't needed them, we're hardly 
using half of the capacity we have today. Why? Because we can't buy it.
  When a tanker with LNG gets loaded in one of these foreign countries, 
countries like Japan, who don't have any gas of their own, little 
countries like Spain, and on and on the list goes, they outbid us. 
Sometimes a tanker load of gas will be coming to the States, and they 
will get a higher price offered and they actually turn around and go to 
that country. In fact, in the heating season, when we need it, we can't 
buy it on a bet.
  So LNG has not been the silver bullet that many thought. And the 
Secretary of Energy went around the world trying to entice LNG for this 
country. And I argued that LNG is helpful, but it's not a silver 
bullet, it shouldn't be our solution because, folks, between major gas 
areas in the Midwest and in the Pennsylvania Appalachian region, recent 
find, offshore we have an abundant volume of natural gas.
  And natural gas is the clean, green fuel. And if it was more 
affordable, we could be using it in our auto fleets because autos can 
run on natural gas with a couple thousand dollar exchange of 
carbonation and storage tanks and so forth, maybe $2,000 or $3,000 a 
vehicle. We could run all of our school buses, short haul, all of our 
city buses, the Washington City. Many of them are on natural gas. State 
College in my district has been an all natural gas district for a 
number of years now. All of their bus system--it's the third largest 
bus system in Pennsylvania--they're all on clean, green natural gas.
  Natural gas should be our bridge fuel. But at $12 now, and if we have 
a storm in the Gulf, it would be 15 or more, those prices, it's not our 
solution. But it could be our solution if we would open up the OCS, if 
we would open up Alaska, if we would open up much of the Midwest and 
start producing our own clean natural gas.
  I have found it astounding that there is resistance to producing 
energy in America. What's really happened in America, and I'll just go 
a little bit more on natural gas here. Here is the natural gas prices. 
The blue line is what commercial pays--they pay a little less than 
households because they use high volume--and the red line is where 
residents are. And folks, this is today's price at the retail. In the 
fall, it's going to be off of this chart. There is going to be a huge 
increase, I predict, and everybody agrees. We will have to make a new 
chart because this chart won't work. Natural gas prices.
  Now, is that problematic? Yeah, it's problematic, because not only do 
we use natural gas to heat our homes and to run our businesses, we use 
it as an ingredient. Fertilizer, about 70 to 90 percent of the cost of 
making it is natural gas because that's what we make it out of. The 
corn we're growing for ethanol uses natural gas to make the fertilizer 
to grow the corn. If we go to a hydrogen vehicle, we will use a natural 
gas.
  The ethanol we use in vehicles today, the biofuels, biodiesel, those 
plants consume huge amounts of natural gas. One was just proposed in a 
southern State, and their projected natural gas costs for the first 
year was $3.5 million and they were looking for a cheaper fuel. Natural 
gas is the major ingredient in petrochemicals, polymers, plastics. We 
use it to bend steel, melt steel. We use it to treat all kinds of 
products. We use it to cook. We use it to bake. We use it in many, many 
commercial ways.
  And natural gas prices are making American businesses noncompetitive. 
Dow Chemical, in 2002, a petrochemical company, the biggest in the 
world, American company, a good company, they used $8 billion of 
natural gas in 2002. Then we had the big spike in gas prices. In 2006, 
their gas bill went to $22 billion. And I don't know what it is

[[Page H4439]]

today, certainly much higher. They started building their plants. These 
are the best blue-collar jobs left in America, petrochemical plants, 
fertilizer plants, polymer and plastic plants, plants that heat, treat 
steel and bend metal and shape things. They all use natural gas as 
their fuel.
  And they are being endangered because natural gas is not a world 
price. Nobody in the world pays this price but us. It's cheaper in 
Canada, a little bit. They're high because of us, because they're kind 
of hooked at the hip. It's cheaper in Mexico. At the wholesale side, 
it's $1 something in Trinidad, South America. In Russia, it's just 
barely over one dollar.
  Many parts of the world--all parts of the world, in those countries, 
China and India, our competitors, their natural gas prices are probably 
a third of ours. That puts our companies at a huge disadvantage, not 
just labor disadvantage, not just because of other high costs in this 
country, energy costs have driven more jobs out of America than any 
other issue, not that they wanted to leave, they just can't afford to 
stay.
  Now, with energy prices today, I talked about the young lady and her 
job, driving to work and her home, we're going to have seniors--you 
know, just the other day I had a gentleman tell me he put a new furnace 
in his mother's home. But when he went to visit her last winter, she 
had her temperature at 58 because she felt that was all she could 
afford. And he said, John, what do I do? I don't want my mother living 
at 58 degrees, I want her to be warm. So he's looking at some sort of 
heater in the one room where she sits in the evening so she can be 
toasty warm, maybe a pellet stove or a gas stove or something that 
keeps that room warm but the furnace down, not heating the whole house.
  I went into a hardware store 2 weeks ago and they had their coats on. 
It was chilly in there. It was a frosty morning, we had frost that 
morning. And I said, it's kind of chilly in here. And he said, well, 
with energy prices today, in the spring and the fall I shut my furnaces 
off. We're a lumber yard, we're a hardware store, people come in here 
dressed for the outside temperature, and so we just dress for the 
outside temperature in our work. It saves me $800 a month in the spring 
and the fall, that's 4 months, so that's $3,200 that I don't have a gas 
bill--that I would pay in a gas bill, $800. Now, in the winter I pay a 
lot more than that, but it's cold then and you have to have heat, pipes 
will freeze, people won't come in your store if they can see their 
breath.
  Folks, I don't think we have any idea what we're doing to the 
economic future of America, what we're doing to the quality of life of 
the average hardworking poor American. Now, those who are middle class 
will complain and groan and they'll pay because they have the money.
  But below the middle class and the working class and the poor in this 
country, when they pay their driving bill--and rural people, I 
represent rural, we don't have mass transit; we drive to school, we 
drive to work, we drive to church, we drive to the doctor, we drive to 
the mall, we drive everywhere. And in rural areas, when the economy 
shifts and you lose your job at a plant, you don't move away, you go 50 
miles down the road and you get a job and then you drive to work every 
day. I had a lady tell me today, my gas bill per week now is $180 a 
week. And now when she gets her heating bill next winter, will she have 
enough money to raise her family, heat her home, and drive her car? 
Many won't.
  The current energy prices have the potential of stalling this 
economy. I had a person who has been dealing with energy all his life. 
He is a government official. He told me about 9 months ago that he 
thought $75 oil would put us in a recession and stall the economy of 
this country, and in time, the world. Now he said we bounced through 
that. We were just by that, and we were in the $80s then. He said, my 
people and I may have been wrong, but there is a price that our economy 
cannot absorb these energy prices. And folks, $134 oil? I mean, it's 
almost like we're talking fantasy.
  How did we get here? How did we get to this situation? Well, here's 
some of the things--back to natural gas for a minute. In all of these 
products, natural gas is used in making them--steam, power, and all of 
these blocks. Huge amounts of natural gas. Even the skin creams that 
you ladies like to keep your skin soft, that's a direct ingredient of 
natural gas. The feedstock for making skin softeners is natural gas.
  Well, here's where we are in energy use. Let's try to figure out how 
we got here. You can see the big part of our energy is oil. And now, 
66.5 percent of our oil comes from foreign countries. Natural gas is 
the next largest, and coal--well, I guess coal would be the next, but 
let's go to natural gas. We're 83 percent self-sufficient. We get 2 
percent in fraction from LNG and about 15 percent from Canada, our good 
friend in the north who drills offshore where we won't.
  Now, coal basically is used in this country to make electricity, and 
about 50 percent of our electricity in this country is made from coal. 
Now, nuclear has been 20 percent of the energy in our electric system, 
not our energy overall, but our electric system. And of course the 
beige line here is hydro, and that's getting smaller because we're 
taking dams out. The environmentalists don't want dams. All the 
environmental community, they don't want dams in our rivers, and a lot 
of them have been tore out. And we're not adding hydro anywhere, so 
it's a declining factor.
  Now, as you look at renewables, this is scary. Renewables are wind 
and solar and geothermal and woody biomass. And the only one of those 
that actually had real measurable growth in volume is woody biomass. A 
little growth in wind and a little growth in solar, but the big one 
that has really grown measurably is woody biomass. How did that happen? 
Well, we have between 800,000 and 1 million Americans heating their 
homes with pellet stoves. That's a fuel made out of waste sawdust, a 
good use of biomass. We use it to heat factories. Most of the dry 
kilns, where you dry your lumber, that used to be heated with fuel oil 
and natural gas are now heated with wood waste. Many factories that are 
in the wood business are all heated with wood waste boilers.
  I have a company in my district now that builds very efficient wood 
waste boilers that actually burn wood waste cleaner than natural gas; 
it's an amazing ceramic-lined boiler. We recently placed those in a 
hospital in my district, that boiler, and that hospital is going to 
save 70 percent on their energy bill. And they're going to be using 
waste sawdust and wood chips. They can even burn green wood chips, like 
if a tree trimmer comes through and trims the trees and grinds it up--
and they usually find places to dump that--they can now blow that into 
a tractor trailer and use it for fuel, cardboard waste, paper waste. 
This hospital is going to burn all its cardboard, all its paper, all 
its clean fuel, and buy sawdust and wood chips. They are going to save 
70 percent on their energy bill.
  Woody biomass is finding a market of its own. Now, there have been a 
lot of windmills added, and they are going to be a lot more added. But 
the numbers are still, you know--I keep reading articles. I read one 
recently that in just a few years 100 percent of electricity could be 
from wind. Folks, that's just not accurate. I read an article last week 
that in a few years we'll have 20 percent of our electricity. Now, one 
of the problems, you know, the grid failed in Texas recently because 
they have some successful windmills. But there are two times of the day 
when we need a lot of energy, that's in the morning and evening, peak 
power. That's when we're running our homes and our factories 
simultaneously. We're running washers and dryers and we're running hot 
water and we're cooking and we're doing things, so we're using a lot of 
energy in the factory and at home. Those are called peaks.

                              {time}  2215

  Well, from 4 to 6 o'clock, if you just watch the weather, and I've 
watched it, you can have a very windy day, and between 4 and 6, for 
some reason, the wind calms down. There's not much breeze. So wind 
farms don't produce a lot of energy sometimes on a nonwindy afternoon 
from 4 to 6 when you need it. So what happens when it doesn't blow and 
it doesn't turn? You have to turn on a gas generator. For every wind 
and solar generator, we have to have a gas backup. Now, gas is 23 
percent. Gas is now 23 percent of our electric generation. Just a 
decade ago, it was less

[[Page H4440]]

than 7. We only allowed it to be peak power. We didn't allow 
electricity to be made from natural gas. We thought it was too clean 
and perfect to fuel and there were too many other uses for it, but 
we've changed. Now we are at 23 percent. And on a hot summer day when 
you have 100 degree temperatures across America and air conditioning is 
just sucking up all the electricity we can produce and our grid is 
struggling to stay up, every power plant that only comes on when it's 
peak is running 24/7 when we have hot summer weather. Now, that's 
changed things. We have never taken gas out of storage in the 
summertime until last year. Last year we had 2 weeks, 2 different 
weeks, when it was hot enough that we were producing enough electricity 
with natural gas that we fully had a negative flow of gas out of our 
storage areas for winter instead of in.
  Folks, if we were to have a terrible storm in the this year, and 
everybody says we're going to, and we went 2 years without it, and we 
would have a very hot summer where we would use a lot of peak power and 
a lot of natural gas for electric generation, we could be looking at 
unbelievable natural gas prices this fall.
  Now, I know the news I'm giving you is all bad news. But, folks, it's 
because this Congress and three Presidents have chosen not to produce 
fossil fuels.
  Now, I'm for every renewable source there is. I'm for hydrogen. I 
have been pushing hydrogen my whole time in Congress. We hope it 
becomes a fuel of the future. I'm for wind and solar. I'm for 
cellulosic ethanol because it's vital because I don't think we can get 
to where they want to be with biofuels with soybeans and corn. I don't 
think we can grow enough of it. I've been stunned that we haven't 
opened up a lot more farmland, but we haven't. Last year we grew 20 
million more acres of corn, and corn prices went from 3 something a 
bushel to $6.40 and $6.50 at one point. It's just under $6 now. We 
doubled and tripled grain prices. Food prices are skyrocketing because 
we used 20 percent of our corn last year to make biofuels, and this 
year we're projecting to use a third of our corn, and this year we are 
not growing 20 million acres more; I think we are only growing 8 
million acres more or we're growing 8 million acres less. Somewhere in 
there that number is correct. But we're not going to grow as much corn, 
and they're concerned now with the wet weather in the West that we are 
not going to get all the corn we need planted.
  Now, when you use grain long term and food long term for energy 
source, what happens when you have a bad crop year? You're not going to 
have food to eat and you're not going to have warmth. That's why 
cellulosic ethanol is so important.
  Now, cellulosic ethanol can be made out of switchgrass, it can be 
made out of garbage, and it can be made out of wood waste. Where I come 
from, we have lots of wood waste, and I think that will be of use. But 
I think the one that has the most potential if in the laboratory--and 
these are all ``ifs.'' But yet we have a mandate by 2030 that we have 
to have 36.5 billion gallons per year of ethanol, the first 15 made 
from corn and the next 20 made from cellulosic. This is a mandate, by 
law. This is a process where we have not yet proven we can make it cost 
effectively.
  Folks, we are in a crisis in this country because we have chosen not 
to drill for gas, not to drill for oil, no new fields. We have people 
come up here and talk about all the unused permits, all the land that's 
been leased and not drilled. Folks, if it's drillable and there's money 
there to be made, it will be drilled. And they all talk about big oil, 
but 80 percent of our energy is produced by small companies, people 
that are in our own States. Big oil are the named marketers, but energy 
is basically produced by independents. But we keep talking about these 
terrible oil companies and they're the problem.
  I think Exxon answered the question well. They were talking about 
their profits the other day, and they said, Folks, we would reinvest in 
America if offshore was open, if Alaska was open, if the Midwest was 
open, but you forced us to go to foreign countries. Now we have foreign 
countries nationalizing their oil patches and their oil refineries and 
their oil production systems, and big oil is being gradually pushed 
out, and oftentimes their investments have been captured. Sometimes 
they have been paid for, sometimes not. And big oil is prepared to 
produce here if we open up.
  Folks, we need to open up oil and gas reserves in this country. We 
need to have six or eight coal-to-liquid plants so we're not dependent 
on oil forever because we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We need to 
figure out how to have more nuclear plants. The 2005 bill streamlined 
the process, and there are about 50 nuclear plants in the permit 
process, and there are 3 or 4 about ready to be built. We need all 50 
of them by 2030 to maintain 20 percent of the electric grid. Not an 
increase. Hydro will continue to decrease.
  This is a chart put out by EIA of the Energy Department. I disagree 
with them. We have had 60 coal plants turned down, clean coal, not 
dirty coal, clean coal, turned down by States because of the fear of 
the carbon issue. All of those will be built in gas plants, and when 
they are all built in gas plants, you will see this blue narrow and you 
will see the greens widen. Natural gas is where we will be going. It's 
the only place we can go. It's the clean, green fuel. But, folks, for 
it to be affordable, we need to produce a whole lot more of it.
  It's never polluted a beach. It's never caused pollution in this 
country. It's the cleanest fuel, no NOX, no SOX, 
a third of the CO2. It's almost the perfect fuel. It's 
cleaner than biofuels. But for some reason, three Presidents and 
Congress for 27 years have locked up not only our shorelines but much 
of the middle of this country and the part of Alaska that was set aside 
for energy production, 2,000 acres on a 70 million acre plot to produce 
energy. With modern drilling they drill multiple wells on the same 
site, and they go many directions. You don't have nearly as many sites.
  Folks, America needs energy. We need energy we can afford to pay. The 
working people of this country not only are not going to be able to 
afford to heat their homes and drive their cars, but many of them will 
lose their jobs because these energy prices, as I showed you earlier, 
$14 gas, America is the only place that someone pays $14 for gas. Every 
other part of the world is cheaper. Oil prices are the same everywhere. 
It's a world price. But for 8 years the Dow Chemicals, the 
manufacturers, the fertilizer companies have paid the highest prices in 
the world for natural gas and have been asked to compete with the rest 
of the world.
  Energy is a crisis in America, but Congress treats it like it's not a 
crisis. We do goofy things like trying to sue OPEC, and we know we 
don't have standing to sue other countries. They don't come under our 
court system. We're trying to wiggle our laws around so we can sue 
them. That's a waste of time. We need to produce energy.
  Also, I have a natural gas bill, the Outer Continental Shelf. In my 
bill it's natural gas only, offshore. We use the royalties for 
renewable research. We use royalties to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. We 
use royalties to clean up the Great Lakes, San Francisco Bay, the 
Everglades. Folks, if we would produce energy offshore, we can allocate 
the royalties to fund the renewables.
  Today we were arguing over and fighting over the extensions for the 
tax incentives for wind and solar and geothermal and all the 
renewables. We extended them for 1 year. Our investment companies are 
going to spend a billion dollars on wind and solar when in a year from 
now, there may not be that incentive there that makes it work.
  Folks, this Congress has failed us. This Congress continues to fail 
us. This Congress needs an energy policy. This White House needs an 
energy policy. And the people running for President of this United 
States need to prove to the Americans before they elect them that they 
have an energy policy that they're going to bring to this country to 
provide us with the gas and the oil and the renewables and clean 
energies and it's going to be affordable for Americans to live their 
lives, run their farms, run their businesses.
  Folks, I've listened to hours and hours of presidential debates. 
Energy was seldom mentioned, and it's certainly not been a platform of 
the current candidates. We need a person running for President, 
Americans need to demand of those running for President, ``How are you 
going to produce?''

[[Page H4441]]

  We have those who talk about green collar jobs. I'm for green collar 
jobs. But let me tell you, if we don't bring affordable energy to 
America, the blue collar jobs won't be here. They'll be gone, and we 
don't know how many of the green collar jobs. We need them both.
  I'm for plants to build windmills. I'm for plants to build solar. And 
when we learn how to store wind and solar so that we can make it during 
the night when we don't need it and use it in the daytime when we need 
it, then it will work. But until we do that, it's on the margins. If we 
double wind and solar in 5 years, it will be less than 1 percent of our 
energy. I hope we can do that, but that's still not very much energy.
  But the American public have been led to believe that we are holding 
renewables back, that we're not for these energy-efficient cars. There 
are incentives, folks, of thousands of dollars to buy energy-efficient 
cars. There are incentives to do wind and solar. Unfortunately, they're 
not long term. Those who are investing are gambling because we just 
renewed them a little bit at a time. We just renewed them for a year. 
Folks, we need to renew them for 5 to 10 years. We need to have it out 
there, and then if it isn't working, we stop doing that.
  But, folks, there are those who say we need to conserve, and we do, 
and we will at these prices. But let me tell you that in a later speech 
sometime I'm going to show you the American people are using far less 
energy in America per capita today than we did a few years ago. We've 
done more than people give us credit for. We have more efficient 
appliances and more efficient engines and things than we had many years 
ago. We have done better than any other country in overall energy 
conservation. Folks, we haven't done enough, but I want to tell you $4 
gasoline or $5 gasoline and $14 gas to heat our homes are going to 
force us to do a lot of things.
  But America doesn't have to be in this situation. Yes, we need the 
new kind of fuels, renewable fuels. But until they are ready, we can't 
decide, as a Congress and a White House, that we're not going to 
produce.
  Let me just tell you who some of the perpetrators are. The 
environmental groups of America own this Congress. Sierra Club rails 
against shale oil production. Over a trillion barrels of shale oil in 
the West. We can't do that.
  Green Peace says we must phase out fossil fuels. Folks, how do we do 
that? Ninety-six percent of our energy is fossil fuels. How do we stop 
that? That's what we're doing. We're phasing them out before we have 
the replacement.
  The Environmental Defense Fund: ``Power plants and smokestacks are 
our public health enemy number one, and we must do away with them.'' 
That's our jobs, our factories, folks.

                              {time}  2230

  League of Conservation Voters; coal to liquids, wrong direction. 
Well, should we do coal to liquids or should we do more foreign 
dependence on the Mid East? That is our choice.
  Defenders of Wilderness; every coastal State is in harm's way when an 
oil rig goes up. Folks, that is not true. We haven't had an oil spill 
since 1969. We have never had a gas spill. When a gas well lets gas 
out, it goes in the air. Dissipates. Natural Resource Defense Council; 
coal mining destroys land. Coal plant emissions cripple and kill. We 
have clean coal technologies with much cleaner emissions than we have 
ever had, but we are turning them down and not building them. We are 
using old dirty coal plants because they can't build the new ones. 
That's our environmental policy.
  Center for Biological Diversity; oil and gas drilling on public land 
has a devastating impact. Does it have to? It can be done right. 
Friends of the Earth; liquid coal is dirty and costly. Liquid coal 
doesn't have to be dirty and costly. We have ways of doing it.
  North Africa, or South Africa, I guess, is leading the way with 
liquid coal. That is making gasoline and diesel out of coal. And we 
have lots of it. We need to be working at it and learning how to do it 
cleanly so we are not dependent. Folks, we are 66 percent dependent on 
foreign unstable countries. We have no control over prices. A storm in 
the gulf and we have another major spurt in energy prices.
  One of our sending countries, and here's who we get our energy from. 
We produce 33.7 percent of our own oil, we import 66.3 percent of our 
oil. Canada provides 12 percent of our oil; Mexico, 9.3; non-OPEC 
nations, 8.9; Ecuador, 1.3; Saudi Arabia, 9.6 percent; Venezuela, 7.5. 
Our friend, Venezuela, 7.5 percent of our oil comes from there. 
Nigeria, a stable country, questionable, 7.2; Angola 3.3 percent; Iraq 
3.2; Algeria, 3.1; Kuwait, 1.2; other OPEC is .06. That is our oil. 
That's where we get our oil from.
  Folks, we don't have to be dependent on it. America is rich in 
resources. Natural gas should be our bridge. Clean vehicles on natural 
gas. Natural gas should be the fuel of the future, and our industries 
shouldn't have to pay the highest price in the world for natural gas so 
they are forced to leave here. Americans shouldn't be forced to live in 
homes that are cold in the wintertime because they can't afford to heat 
them. People should be able to afford to drive to work.
  Folks, it's a crisis in America. It should be a crisis in this 
Congress. Today, the White House again spoke about we need to produce 
more energy. Tomorrow I am going to write the President a letter. You 
know, if he means that, he needs to lift the Outer Continental Shelf 
moratorium, because we don't have one moratorium, we have a legislative 
one by Congress for 27 years and we have had a Presidential one for 27 
years, and he can lift it in a moment. That is how it was put there.
  Bush I put it there for 5 years until we assessed the Outer 
Continental Shelf, what was there. We have never assessed that. We have 
never allowed seismographic out there. Then Clinton came in and 
extended it to 2012, and also vetoed the Alaskan bill, ANWR, which 
would be producing major oil for us today. He vetoed that. Bush II has 
ignored it and refused to talk about the OCS.
  Folks, we have three Presidents and a Congress with a 27-year history 
of not producing affordable available energy in America, and we are the 
only country in the world to lock up the Outer Continental Shelf, we 
are the only country in the world that has locked up most of our 
internal resources.
  Congress and Presidents have been our problem. Congress needs to get 
the message that it's time to stop being our problem, and we need to 
have a President that leads us to energy, affordable available energy 
for America.

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