[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 92 (Thursday, June 5, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5029-H5034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICAN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the recognition and 
the opportunity to say a few words on the topic that has been talked 
about here on the floor repeatedly as well as by our constituents on 
almost a daily basis.
  For those of you who may not have heard it originally earlier this 
morning, I want to harken back once again to that old movie, ``The 
Natural.'' As you will remember, the fictional team--the New York 
Knights--in an effort to try and stop their losing streak, brought in a 
psychologist to speak to them, to the team.
  As he was sitting there, talking to them, he simply said, ``The mind 
is a strange thing, men.''
  We must begin by asking what is ``losing.'' ``Losing'' is a disease 
as contagious as syphilis. ``Losing'' is a disease as contagious as the 
Bubonic plague, attacking one but infecting all. Now, imagine, if you 
will, you're on a ship at sea on a vast ocean, gently rocking, gently 
rocking, gently rocking, gently rocking.
  At that stage, Roy Hobbs, not being able to take it anymore, 
realizing the possibility that actually winning a game has nothing to 
do with talking to a psychologist or to a psychiatrist at the team 
meeting but that it has everything to do with performance on the field, 
just bolted out of the room and ran up there because he couldn't take 
it anymore.
  What Roy Hobbs realized is, if you are going to be successful, it has 
got to take action. You have to do something. There are too many people 
on this floor who have been talking and talking about energy. There are 
too many people who have tried to find scapegoats to blame for the 
energy situation we are in. They blame Big Oil. They tell you we're in 
an energy bubble of some kind. Yesterday, someone even suggested that 
Enron was the reason. The only thing we have done under the auspices of 
the majority party so far here is allow attorneys to go and sue OPEC 
countries so they'll give us more oil. Now, that is like talking to 
them and simply saying, ``Lack of energy is a disease.''
  Imagine you're on a ship, on a vast ocean of oil, gently rocking, 
gently rocking, but are not doing anything to get the job done. Indeed, 
if we continue on that pattern, we can be living in reality the words 
of the book, which are simply ``how we get along by freezing in the 
dark.''
  See, what Roy Hobbs understood in the movie was that, if you want to 
win, you don't get there by talking about it. You have to get out and 
do something. He went out on the field; he was given a chance to play, 
and he pounded the crap out of the ball. In so doing, he was able to be 
successful, and the New York Knights started to win, to win more than 
they ever had again.
  One of the things this party is talking about is, if given the chance 
to play one more time on the field, we will go out there, and we will 
do things. We will promote action. We will not be satisfied with simply 
the psychology of saying, ``We will freeze in the dark and accept it 
and be happy about it.'' We will produce energy to eliminate the need 
for the consumption. Because you see? It is, indeed, an attitude. Our 
attitude should be that we are not accepting the status quo and that we 
are not going to be satisfied until we have a new goal in this country, 
which is to be energy-secure and energy-independent. That has to be our 
goal and that we are going to do things now to do it.
  I hate to say this, but I am one of those who strongly supports 
American energy production. There was a time, if you actually admitted 
that in public, it was kind of like you're in favor of drowning 
kittens, but with gasoline's now costing $4 a gallon and being likely 
to rise, people's attitudes have now been changing. Some people used to 
say, if you were for American energy production, you were merely a 
shill for Big Oil. Unfortunately, there are still people who are saying 
that, but that's not the reality.
  Who I am fighting for are the people who are being impacted by our 
energy crisis. I am fighting for the thousands of natural gas users in 
my home State of Utah who are going to be asked to pay next winter to 
heat their homes at an increased cost of around 36 percent. It will be 
the largest increase in their ability to heat their homes in the 
history of this country.
  I am fighting for 1,100 citizens who lost their jobs last week and 
for the countless others who are going to pay increased ticket prices 
with the airlines because United Airlines announced it was cutting 
1,100 jobs and was removing 100 airplanes from its fleet because it 
could not contain the spiraling oil fuel prices.
  I am fighting for an Ethiopian-born, Washington, D.C. cab driver who 
for the first time since his kids started school was unable to greet 
them when they came home from school because, every day, he now has to 
work 2 hours longer just to make the same daily income he was making 
before this energy, gas price spiked.
  I am fighting for people like Christine of Utah, who is actually 
selling her plasma now to make ends meet with this high-energy demand.
  I am fighting for dozens of citizens in my State who are reportedly 
selling their jewelry, electronics--even one gold tooth--in order to 
cover the high cost of gasoline.
  I am fighting for a young father in Virginia who was not able to 
attend his father-and-son outing last month because the cost of the 
gasoline to go there was too excessive.
  I am fighting for the students in Nevada's Clark County School 
District who are facing a 62 percent budget overrun solely because of 
the amount of gas it takes to run the school buses in that county's 
district.
  I am fighting for citizens in my home State who choose to risk 
imprisonment in order to fill up their tanks. One Utah minivan and 
truck driver, a minivan and truck that belong to the Alpine Medical 
Equipment Company, had his gas tank drilled, and the sole motive was to 
steal the gas in his tank.

[[Page H5030]]

Because of that, there were 30 needy people who did not receive their 
scheduled deliveries of oxygen tanks, wheelchairs and beds at their 
homes on that particular day.
  Now, to my Democratic colleagues, I want you to notice there was no 
mention in that litany of people of Exxon or of Shell or of Conoco or 
of BP or of Chevron or of all of the other Big Oil scapegoats that we 
often hear about. But let me make no mistake. I do support these 
entities because I am for a fair and level-headed recognition that our 
main focus, that our main mission in this country, must be to deliver 
and to develop cheap, affordable energy for American citizens. They are 
not public enemy number one nor should we try and push off on 
scapegoats the inability to do that. We have the ability. We have the 
resources. That's why we're fighting today, and I will not cower in 
support of average Americans who need this kind of support.
  Now, in so doing, the Western Caucus, of which I am a member, will be 
introducing a bill that is trying to do what needs to be done, which is 
to make sure that we have a comprehensive approach to energy 
development. Conservation is a key element in meeting our energy needs, 
but that alone will not solve the problem. Production of all means of 
energy because there is no one, single, silver bullet is a key element. 
That alone will not meet the needs. Innovation is also needed, 
innovation in some kind of effort that, when we have the new sources of 
energy that we can develop, we need to be able to deliver those sources 
of energy.
  So the three elements that have to be in any particular bill and will 
be in a comprehensive American energy act are the concepts of pushing 
conservation, of pushing production and of pushing innovation, not 
necessarily in any particular order. All three of them have to be there 
if we are ever going to meet the needs of the American people. It has 
to be there.
  There are some who would like to try and single out some particular 
area. There is a city in France that is kind of going back to the 
future. In fact, what the city in France did is they got rid of their 
entire municipal fleet, and instead of their municipal fleet of 
automobiles, they bought horse-drawn carriages. They are called eco-
friendly, horse-drawn carriages. Each one of those fleets costs 
$17,000. They feature disk brakes, signal lamps, removable seats. 
That's how they're trying to solve their energy problem.
  Now, the only thing I will caution once again, when we try to go 
backwards into history to try to solve our problems rather than using 
modern technology, is that, in 1900 in New York City, just before the 
automobile was introduced and everything was once again with those eco-
friendly, horse-drawn carriages, New York City produced 90,000 tons of 
horse manure every year, not to mention the millions of gallons of 
horse urine every year. I'm sorry. That had to be disposed of, most of 
it in the water.
  What they found in New York City is that it was impossible to get rid 
of all of the horse droppings, and therefore, there was on the streets 
a fine mist, a mist that was always in the air, and there was an 
endemic tuberculosis problem to the point where environmentalists in 
New York City, when automobiles were finally introduced, were happy 
because, for the first time, they could limit the amount of horse-drawn 
carriages and could actually improve the health of citizens in New 
York.

                              {time}  1745

  Sometimes, trying to go back in history or try to find a cheap, easy 
way is not the solution. The solution is technology. Technology can 
present solutions to all of our problems. Sometimes it's a long time in 
coming, sometimes it comes as rapidly as new cell phone plans.
  Consider in 1900 what Jules Vern must have thought as he predicted in 
the future in his writings. Did he ever realize we would go from radios 
to iPods, from antibiotics to organ transplants? Do you think he 
actually envisioned the concept of bottled water? All those things are 
results of technology.
  New technology will allow us to better use our existing energy 
resources, and that technology, which has to be part of this equation, 
the innovation part, has to be both in the public and the private 
sector. We need a major overhaul of the way Washington manages our 
input. We cannot solve all our problems by bringing in a bunch of 
experts to sit in a room in Washington. We must reach out with an 
aggressive national research effort.
  One of the reasons we want to produce more energy in the United 
States is because the royalties we use can, and in this bill, will be 
funneled back into research so that technology can find even better 
ways of doing things. We also have to realize that as we are looking 
for that, it has to be market-driven. We cannot have an over-reliance 
on old technologies and uneconomical resources simply because they 
happen to be politically successful here in Washington.
  The best way to destroy this effort of using technology is to allow 
government to pick winners and losers. It has to be done through the 
concept of the private sector. Federal mandates and massive government 
programs will not solve the problem. Certainly we will have government-
funded labs. But they cannot be the only solution. I do not believe it 
is the only, nor is it the most practical way of solving our problem. 
If we want to think of how we can spur on innovation, what we have to 
do is tap the greatest resource this country has, which is the American 
people.
  Just think of what American people have been able to do in history. 
In 1784, we invented bifocals, something I still don't use; 1794, the 
cotton gin, and it changed the world; 1805, Americans invented 
refrigerators, and the next year, coffeepots; 1837, it was power tools; 
1849, the safety pin; 1867, the typewriter, which revolutionized the 
way information is handled; 1867, it was barbed wire, which enabled us 
to secure the West. Even more important, and also in 1867, we invented 
for the first time toilet paper.
  In 1888, it was revolving doors. Three years later, it was 
escalators, which evolved into the Ferris wheel the next year. In 1903, 
crayons; 1905, windshield wipers; 1930, Scotch tape; 1945, microwaves; 
1955, nuclear submarines; 1957, polio vaccine; 1970, optical fiber; 
1972, the artificial heart. It continues on and on.
  Clearly, a country creative enough to come up with bifocals, the 
first oil well, the first blue jeans, the first telephone, the first 
crayon, not to mention airplanes, lasers, computers, everything else, 
is capable of developing the next source of energy and the technology 
to develop and deliver that energy.
  If we look at history, it's likely that we would have even begun it 
before we imagined it today. How are we able to do that? By doing what 
our bill proposes to do and presenting prizes for technological 
breakthroughs in innovation.
  I remind you that the British government offered a prize in 1714 for 
a device capable of measuring longitude, and John Harrison, a clock 
maker, got 20,000 pounds for devising the first accurate and durable 
chronometer that transformed the way we traveled across the oceans. In 
1810, the first vacuum-sealed food was produced, after 15 years of 
experimentation, because Napoleon offered 12,000 Francs as a prize. We 
still use that technology today.
  Will the Speaker be kind enough to tell us how much time remains.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 45 minutes remaining.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. In 1909, the first flight across the English 
Channel was spurred on by a prize from a newspaper. Charles Lindbergh 
made his flight, nonstop flight from New York to Paris because there 
was a prize offered. And a $30 billion aviation industry sprang out of 
that. The British Spitfire, which saved England in the Battle of 
Britain, was developed as a result of the Snyder Trophy, a prize for 
technological development.
  The United States Government also offers prizes today with its NASA 
Centennial Challenge Program, and it reaches out to nontraditional 
sources of innovation in academia, in industry, as well as the public.
  Americans have always looked to ourselves for solutions. If we just 
have the confidence in American ingenuity, American creativity to deal 
and to overcome our problems and to insist that we do it now, we do not 
wait, I am confident that we can do that.
  As I said, in all sincerity, if we are to solve the problem at the 
gas pump

[[Page H5031]]

today, there are three elements that have to be there. We have to be 
able to produce more, to conserve more, and especially to innovate.
  I am happy to be joined by my good friend, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) and ask him if he would join us and talk 
about one of these areas which is extremely important to him, and he 
knows so much about it, that is the production end that has to go along 
with the increased technology for the innovation, as well as 
conservation. But without production, we cannot make it fit.
  I am sure if we can have one of our good pages bring the easel and 
the first of the charts here, it can illustrate exactly what we are 
talking about as we move forward in this particular piece of 
legislation in an effort to try and make sure that we have a complete 
and rational policy towards energy production and solving the problems 
of people; letting them have their lives back with cheap and affordable 
American energy.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Utah, my 
good friend, for his wise words on innovation. I think we are going to 
be forced into innovation. That is good. But I will have to say the 
current prices of driving a vehicle and heating a home this year in my 
rural district are going to be prohibitive for some people being able 
to handle it.
  Their budgets are not prepared for the prices. Because as we have 
felt the oil prices, natural gas only increased marginally last year, 
but today the price for natural gas out of the ground is $12 and 40-
some cents. Last year at this time, it was between $6 and $7. We are 
approaching a doubling of natural gas prices.
  At this time of the year, we don't use a lot of natural gas because 
we are not cooling much and we are not heating hardly anything. So we 
have surplus. We are using it for industrial purposes, which is big, 
and to generate electricity and to run our plants, but we are not using 
it at the home as much. So this is the time of year we normally put it 
in the ground.
  Last year, we were putting $6 and $7 gas in the ground. This year, 
it's currently, in the last few months, $11, now $12 gas, and seems to 
be going up a few pennies every day. So we don't know where that is 
headed. But the fear is we have a storm in the Gulf, which always 
interrupts supply, we could have $15, $16 gas, and that would make home 
heating almost impossible next winter.

  Just to share with you, as he was talking about innovation and 
change, I come from Titusville, Pennsylvania. I live in the little town 
of Pleasantville, Pennsylvania, 5 miles from there. But I was born 1 
mile from Drakes Well, the first oil well in the world. It was drilled 
in 1859. And I vividly remember as a young boy, down the Oil Creek 
Valley, a stream called Oil Creek because it always had oil on it 
because the way oil perked its way out of the ground naturally. So 
there was oil on that stream.
  And when we had the rush of oil, those hills were naked. There was no 
vegetation. The trees were gone. But today, it's almost like a virgin, 
beautiful oak-cherry forest. And the streams there, Oil Creek naturally 
produces both trout and bass, which is not very common. And the brooky 
trout streams flow into it all the way down. It's a beautiful, pristine 
area. And nobody did anything. They just left nature purify it. So oil 
is not the horrible thing. It's a hydrocarbon. It went back to dirt. 
The trees grew and the streams are pure and wildlife is very abundant.
  Now I guess what we want to talk about is production. How did we get 
to $125 to $135 oil and how did we get to this tremendous price on 
natural gas? Many years ago, we had a legislative moratorium to lock up 
the Outer Continental Shelf. Now back then natural gas was $2, oil was 
$10, and many argued that we shouldn't use ours, we ought to use 
theirs. Whether that was a wise argument or not, I won't say, but they 
have won and it has been locked up ever since.
  In the early nineties, President Bush I put a Presidential moratorium 
on top of the legislative moratorium. Now what is a moratorium. The 
Continental Shelf is from 3 miles offshore. The States control the 
first 3 miles. Then the Federal Government, we the taxpayers, own the 
next 200 miles. That is considered our Continental Shelf. And most 
every country in the world, in fact, every country in the world 
produces there. Canada produces right above Maine. Canada produces 
right above the State of Washington, Great Britain produces on their 
continental shelf; Norway, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia. 
It's just common practice. In fact, everybody gives Brazil great credit 
for being energy independent, and they give credit for ethanol. Well, 
ethanol is 15 percent of their energy use. The rest of it, they opened 
up their Outer Continental Shelf, had a big find out there, and they 
are now self-sufficient. They don't have to buy from anybody. Wouldn't 
it be great if America would be self-sufficient?
  I think we have a lot more oil than was anticipated in this country. 
I know we have a lot of natural gas. We are currently importing 17 
percent of our natural gas. We wouldn't even have to do that. We get 15 
percent from Canada and we get 2 percent from LNG, which is from 
foreign countries similar to where we buy oil.
  So we have locked ours up. Now what does that do? Well, we have 
locked it up and so we have taken our supply off the market. Now what 
is this Congress doing to react to that? Two or three weeks ago, we 
passed a bill, very thoughtful bill. We said, We are going to figure 
out a way to bring OPEC into court. We are going to bring OPEC to 
court. We are going to force them to produce for energy so we have more 
petroleum. Currently, we import 66 percent of our petroleum, about half 
from that area of the world and about half from Canada and Mexico. So 
we are going to force them because they are not producing enough. I 
think Saudi Arabia produces 12 million, I think another one, 7 million; 
another one, 6 million; another one, 5 million. But someone has 
determined that is not enough so we are going to have to bring them 
into court.
  Now how you take someone to court for not producing enough oil when 
we've locked up our Outer Continental Shelf, we've locked up most of 
Alaska, we've locked up most of the Midwest, now how a country can 
think that we can sue our neighbors for not selling us enough oil when 
we have refused to produce our own doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
  My taxpayers back home laugh at that when they hear the debate, but 
it's not funny. But we actually passed a bill to do that, as if it 
would make a difference. And I don't know what court we would bring it 
into.
  Let's look at our energy use today. We are about 40 percent 
petroleum, 23 percent natural gas, 23 percent coal, 8 percent nuclear, 
2.7 hydro, 2.4 biomass. And this is the one people have not paid a lot 
of attention to. This is woody biomass. This one has grown measurably 
in the last few years. Eight hundred thousand Americans use a wood 
pellet stove today to heat their homes, and that is sawdust compressed. 
All our dry kilns in the country where we dry our wood uses wood 
sawdust to heat those rather than buy propane or fuel oil. A lot of 
factories in the rural areas are using wood waste also.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Would the speaker yield for a question?
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Surely. Be glad to.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It is my understanding that in the natural 
forests of the United States, owned by the United States, we grow about 
40 billion board feet of new growth a year.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Yes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. We have about 20 billion board feet of new death 
a year.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It's my understanding the Forest Service is only 
removing about 2 billion, not 20 billion, but 2 billion board feet a 
year. Is that not a potential plus for it, and is it also not true that 
this Congress prohibited any new development in that area?
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's one of the problems. Wood waste 
has great potential. I also have a company in my district that has 
built a wonderful wood waste boiler. It burns cleaner that natural gas 
and will burn even green wood, and it burns it cleanly. But the 
Democrats passed a bill that prohibits wood waste from public land from 
being utilized. We are not allowed to produce, which makes no public 
sense.

[[Page H5032]]

  I don't know who got the theory that letting every tree grow makes 
sense. When you thin a forest, it grows much faster, which takes 
CO2 out of the air. The biggest place to get rid of carbon 
in the air is plant life for us. And tree growth. Because you lock the 
carbon up. The log we cut down is carbon. We take it and put a roof on 
our house or floor in our house or windows in our house or furniture in 
our house. That is carbon.

                              {time}  1800

  You lock the carbon up. So we have taken it out of the air. Well, by 
not pruning the forest, your forest becomes like a jungle. It grows 
very slow, and it dies naturally, which turns to CO2. As it 
dies naturally, it turns to CO2 and emits into the air, just 
the same as we do when we breathe and when we burn something. So nature 
itself puts CO2 back in the air.
  But biomass is kind of a sleeper. I think it can do a lot. And if we 
could unlock the National Forests, if we could start marketing an 
appropriate amount from the National Forests. You know, 40 percent of 
America is owned by the government. I don't think people realize that. 
Almost 50 percent of America is owned by some level of government, when 
you include counties and State governments.
  My State owns about 5 million acres in Pennsylvania. Most States 
don't have that much forest land. But the whole northern part of 
Pennsylvania is heavily owned, some by the Federal Government, much by 
the State, and a lot of that is not marketed adequately either. But 
when you market a forest adequately, when you prune it adequate, it is 
sort of like a garden. You prune the old out and you leave the young 
grow, and it is very healthy for the environment. It is much better for 
wildlife, and it is certainly better for clean air.
  Geothermal, a good form of energy, but it is expensive installation. 
Wind, solar.
  Now, here is the problem we face. How did we get here? I am going to 
tell you who I blame. I blame Congress. But who influenced Congress? 
Congress has pressure. Well, there is an organization. I made this 
statement the other day that Hugo Chavez and the Shah of Iran don't 
need lobbyists to keep us as a customer. The Democrats and the 
environmentalists continue to lock up domestic reserves, and that 
forces us to send billions of dollars over there to buy their oil.
  Now, the Sierra Club is number one. They are against oil shale 
development, they are against coal liquefaction, they are against 
offshore energy production that I talked about a minute ago.
  You have got Greenpeace. They want to phase out all fossil fuels. 
That means from here up, 86 percent of what we are using today has to 
go away. That is Greenpeace.
  Environmental Defense says power plant smokestacks are public health 
energy number one. Folks, that is 51 percent of our electricity.
  League of Conservation Voters. Coal to liquids. Most of us believe 
that coal to liquids or coal to gas is our future because we are the 
Saudi Arabia of coal. And when we learn how to do it, if carbon is the 
issue, I think we can could learn how to sequester the carbon, right 
along with the ability to make liquids from coal. Then we wouldn't be 
buying oil from other countries. We would be using the liquids made 
from our coal.
  Defenders of Wilderness. It says every coastal State is put in harm's 
way when oil rigs go up in our coastal waters. Well, you know, folks, 
every country in America produces energy out there and has the rigs out 
there.
  Next Wednesday, we are going to offer this Congress the first real 
chance we have for production. We are going to be offering offshore 
production. We are going to have legislation, an amendment to the 
Interior Committee, that will remove this. In the Interior Committee 
every year there is legislation that locks up, that says we cannot 
spend a dollar to lease the Outer Continental Shelf. That is 200 miles 
offshore.
  We are going to remove that from 50 miles out. Now, 50 miles is 
giving a big cushion. A lot of countries do 20. Some do 25. Most don't 
do 50. We are going to give 50. Eleven miles is sight, so after 11 
miles, it is four times the sight line, more than that, so there will 
be nothing anybody can see. And every person in the energy business, 
MMS, that is the minerals and mine management people who manage this 
program, said that the most environmentally sensitive way to produce 
energy is offshore. It improves the fishing. It doesn't hurt it. You 
are not disturbing wildlife. You are not disturbing anything. So 
offshore energy is our most environmentally friendly way to harvest 
energy and use it.
  So we are going to give this Congress a chance next Wednesday, not 
the whole Congress, but just the Interior Subcommittee, to remove that 
moratorium. Then we will have to maintain it in full committee if we 
win and then maintain it on the floor, and then we will have to deal 
with the Senate, which is always our tremendous challenge.
  So as we go down these, we have these groups, Natural Resource 
Defense, coal mining. They are opposed to coal mining. They want coal. 
That is 50 percent of our electric grid.
  Center for Biological Diversity. Oil and gas drilling on public lands 
has devastating effects.
  Folks, it is a new era. You talked about technology. We have new 
technology. We know how to do it right. You drill a 6 inch hole in the 
ground. With gas, you just let gas out. With oil, you pump out oil. It 
does not have to be an environmental disaster.
  Then Friends of the Earth, the other one, the eighth one, liquid coal 
is dirty and a costly fuel.
  Folks, these eight groups, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Environmental 
Defense, League of Conservation Voters, Defenders of Wilderness, 
Natural Resource Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, and 
Friends of the Earth, those are the people you need to thank for the 
energy of America being locked up. It is their influence on Congress 
that has prevented us from a providing energy for America. They are 
wrong, folks. They need to lose that argument. We need to show them 
that we can produce energy.
  Now, as far as the world is concerned, you know, when it was $2 for 
gas and $10 for oil, maybe they were right. We should use their's. I 
remember that argument. Folks, at $125 to $130 a barrel, at $12.50 for 
natural gas, I think it is time to use ours.
  What is the other benefit of using ours? When we produce American 
energy, the landowner makes money, whether it is the government or a 
private person. The promoter of the well makes money. The pipeline guy 
makes money. The driller makes money. The hydrofracking people make 
money. The processing station, whether it is gas or the refineries for 
oil, make money. Millions of dollars of wealth are created. Billions of 
dollars of wealth created. Hundreds of thousands of people have 
wonderful jobs and can maintain a family and home. So producing our own 
energy will put a lot of Americans to work, especially in rural America 
where I live.
  Now, they claim, and when you hear all the talk, it is the bottom 
three that are ready to take over, with geothermal, wind and solar. If 
we double wind and solar in the next 5 years, we are less than three-
quarters of one percent of our energy. We are all for wind. We are all 
for solar. We are all for geothermal. I led the Hydrogen Caucus 10 
years ago. But, folks, we are not there yet.
  Now, what can keep us going? Here is what the Energy Department has 
in their chart. From this middle line towards me is history. That is 
where we have been. From that middle line out is where the Energy 
Department thinks we are going to be.
  To listen to many people, you would think we are ready. We have been 
holding back wind and we have been holding back solar and we have been 
holding back geothermal. We have been holding back hydrogen. We have 
been holding back electric cars. Folks, nobody is holding anything 
back. It has to compete. We have spent billions on every one of the new 
energies. But their projection is that not much is going to change.
  I don't quite agree with their chart, because I look for coal to 
decrease. This administration has not been friendly to coal. This 
Congress has not been friendly to coal. There have been 50 coal plants 
turned down in the last 6 months in this country. They will all become 
natural gas plants. And when you have a power plant and you switch to 
natural gas, this is going to widen.

[[Page H5033]]

  Really, that is one of the reasons that we have expensive natural gas 
in America. Twelve years ago, we didn't use natural gas to make 
electricity. Only 8 percent of our electricity was made with natural 
gas. Today, 23 percent of our electricity is made with natural gas, and 
it has put tremendous pressure on natural gas.
  Clean, green natural gas is the fuel that we use to make ethanol, it 
is the fuel we will use to make hydrogen. It is the fuel we will use as 
the bridge. A third of our auto fleet could be on clean, green natural 
gas if it was less expensive.
  So I look at natural gas as the savior for us to get us to the new 
generations of fuels. But in the meantime, we are going to need a lot 
of oil. We are going to need coal. We are going to need nuclear. The 
energy bill in 05 gave incentives. It took 10 years to get a permit for 
a nuclear plant. We now force that to be done in 4. So they say 4 years 
to build one. So I say with delays and problems, we can build a nuclear 
plant in 10 years. There are 50 on the drawing board and there are 
three or four ready to go, and that is because of the 05 Energy Act. 
But we need all of those 50 on line by 2030 to remain 20 percent of the 
grid, because electric use is going up so fast.
  Folks, the energy problem in America is because of the environmental 
groups we have decided to stop producing fossil fuels, forcing us to be 
66 percent dependent on foreign and forcing us to cause part of the 
world shortage of petroleum and gas because we don't produce. So I find 
it very frustrating that here we are today with the highest prices.
  One more thing on natural gas. Natural gas is the one fuel that is 
not a world price. Neither is coal. When oil is $120 a barrel, it is 
that all around the world. But we have had the highest natural gas 
prices in America for 8 years.
  What does that do to us? That affects the petrochemical companies, 
the polymers and the plastic companies and the fertilizer companies 
that use huge amounts. They use it as an ingredient. Polymers and 
plastic, 45 percent of the cost of making it is natural gas. Fifty-five 
percent of the cost of petrochemical is natural gas. From 50 to 70 
percent of fertilizer cost is natural gas.
  Half of our fertilizer plants have left in the last 3 years. We have 
lost 300,000 polymer plastic jobs in the last 3 years. A great 
percentage of the petrochemical industry has moved offshore.
  Just to show you, our largest chemical company is Dow Chemical. They 
spoke out the other day about natural gas prices. In 02, they spent $8 
billion to purchase natural gas. This year, they will spend $32 billion 
for natural gas. That is a 400 percent increase.
  Now, here are the numbers that are scary. In 02, 60 percent of their 
revenue and jobs were in America. Today, 34 percent of their revenue 
and jobs are in America. Where are they? They are in foreign countries, 
where natural gas is a fraction of what it is here.
  Many of the plants I have mentioned, polymers, plastic, steel, 
aluminum, those plants are moving everywhere because of energy prices. 
They are building every kind of a plant you can think of down in South 
America in a place called Trinidad, about a day-and-a-half by ship to 
here. My prediction is if we don't deal with natural gas prices, bricks 
and glass, heavy bulky commodities will be produced in Trinidad and be 
on our shores within a day-and-a-half.
  Folks, that is not the America I believe in. If America is going to 
compete, we have to get gas prices under control. We have to get oil 
prices under control. We have to have energy that is affordable for 
Americans to heat their homes. We have to have energy prices that are 
affordable so companies will want to be here and produce the jobs here. 
I believe for the first time in the history of America we have to fight 
to compete with our competitors like China and India. They are huge. 
They are growing fast. They are building their own energy future.
  China will be producing oil 50 miles off the coast of Cuba and 50 
miles off the Florida coast, while we prohibit it. Does that make 
sense? I don't think so. They are going to be working. China, Canada 
and Spain will all have contracts to produce energy in waters that 
should be ours, off our coast, because we don't produce there and 
because it is an equal distance from Cuba.
  It is time for this Congress, it is time for this administration, to 
lead. Recently the President has spoken out three times on offshore. He 
has never supported offshore production. But he said we should be 
offshore and onshore producing more energy.
  I wrote him a letter 2 weeks ago and put a release out today that 
says the following: ``Mr. President, I commend you for speaking about 
offshore production of energy. But it seems like if you would lead by 
removing the presidential moratorium, that is yours, and urging 
Congress to remove their moratorium so we can start the process.'' It 
will take years to get out there. We have to get in a 5-year plan, we 
have to do the leases, we have to do the environmental impact 
statements, and then they have to go out and build the platforms and 
the pipelines and drill. It takes a long time.
  Every day we wait we endanger the economic future of America. I think 
we are almost past the point. We need energy production in America 
today. Not next year. Today. We need to unlock what this Congress and 
three presidents have locked up. We need to produce our energy. We need 
to conserve. We need to use the innovation that my friend talked about 
a little bit ago.
  We need it to do everything we can to produce every form of energy 
that is available. We need wind, we need solar, and we need to use 
less. We need to use it more wisely. But, folks, the day is today. We 
cannot solve this problem with just conservation. We have to produce 
energy.
  I believe if we opened up the Outer Continental Shelf, we would take 
what we call the fear factor out of the market and we would get Wall 
Street out of the marketplace and we could drop energy prices 20 to 25 
percent. The only other thing you and I can do is to use less and find 
alternatives. Folks, it is a crisis in America.
  I want to thank my friend from Utah and my friend from California who 
have joined us for the opportunity to share some time with them today.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who has 
done a great job in explaining the reality of the situation that we 
have and the reality of what our future can be if we are willing to 
take to the field right now and do it. So we are fine.
  What we hope to do when we do a comprehensive bill is actually 
provide 12 steps that will fit what Mr. Peterson was talking about and 
the three goals: Increasing our conservation, increasing our production 
and increasing our innovation.

                              {time}  1815

  Those 12 steps are very simple.
  First is increasing American natural gas. As Mr. Peterson just told 
you, we could heat 100 homes for the next 30 years with the natural gas 
we have available but not yet developed in this country alone.
  Step two, increase American oil resources that we have in this 
country. We have increased the amount of oil we import seven times 
since the 1970s, and we decreased our exploration and production of 
American oil in the 1970s because of American policies, government 
policies. And the only thing we need to do to increase that so we can 
recover American oil supply is change American government policies.
  Step three, look at coal, American coal. We have 200 to 300 years' 
worth of coal undeveloped, unsecured in this country.
  Step four, develop American oil shale. 70 percent of all the oil 
shale in the world is in three western States in the United States, 
where there is more undeveloped oil than underneath the entire country 
of Saudi Arabia.
  Step five, increase affordable and clean nuclear fuel. Since the 
1970s, we have had no new nuclear power plant built, while our friends 
in France in that same time period have built 58 plants. That has to be 
part of a future solution.
  Step six, we have to invest more in renewable sources of energy: 
Sunlight, wind, rain, tide, geothermal heat. All of those have to be 
increased. Right now, only about 7 percent of the total energy 
consumption comes from renewables. We are not going to solve the 
problem by this source alone; but if we could increase that, double it 
to 15 percent, 16 percent, 17 percent, we would

[[Page H5034]]

go a long way toward doing that. And part of the way of doing that is 
government policy again. When we try to improve our solar and wind 
power plants, if we would simply extend the investment tax credits by 
another 5 years we could start moving forward dramatically today in 
that particular area.
  Step seven, greater efficiency and conservation, and especially 
giving incentives for the government to do that, for individuals, 
business, as well as government. And the reason I actually put business 
in there, they are already doing it. The U.S. steel industry today uses 
45 percent less energy to produce 1 ton of steel. The U.S. forest and 
paper industry today uses 21 percent less energy to produce 1 ton of 
paper. We have the technology to do that. What the American government 
needs to do is to provide rewards for individuals and the government to 
do the same thing that the business community has taken on as a means 
of being profitable.
  Step eight, we increase our gasoline refinement capacity. We all know 
we produce in the United States about 17 million barrels of oil a day, 
but our consumption need is 21 million barrels of oil today. And we all 
know we haven't built a new refinery since 1976; and only 23 years ago 
we had 324 operating refineries, today we have 148 operating 
refineries. And for those who are operating, they are still only 
marginal because the market does not bear them. What we have to have is 
increasing supply of American oil going to American refineries; we 
need, and this bill calls for, an additional 10 new refineries 
immediately built on property owned by the Department of Energy to do 
that part.
  Step nine, to adopt common sense regulatory relief. Department of 
Interior suggests that we have about 80 billion barrels of recoverable 
oil and natural gas that are locked away because of regulatory controls 
that Congress has put on those areas. Our need for standards don't have 
to be sold out, but they need desperately to be reformed simply so we 
can make decisions faster, because we need relief now, not sometime in 
the future. That time was long ago. We need it now.
  Step ten, we have to improve our transmission and energy 
infrastructure. We have 5 million miles of electrical distribution 
lines; we have 1 million miles of natural gas pipelines, and they are 
incredibly outdated and they do not supply America's needs. We have to 
improve those. If we are going to improve them with ethanol and we are 
starting to unload ethanol, we have to have blending terminals. We 
don't have it. Department of Interior has right now been tasked with 
trying to develop energy corridors for the future, and there are people 
trying to stop them from at least identifying where we will have energy 
corridors for the future. That cannot be. We must identify them, and 
they must be useable.
  Step 11, we have to restore our domestic energy workforce. I hate to 
say this, but there are 90 percent fewer petroleum engineers and 
geoscientists who are graduating now than 20 years ago. Unfortunately, 
our workforce for the future and how we develop technology to innovate 
is simply not there. We have to provide some incentives, some rewards, 
some scholarships to develop that workforce. It has to be part of our 
program.
  Finally, step 12, we have to tap American innovation to develop our 
new energy technologies. And I mentioned how we did that, the same way 
we have in history: We prepare and provide rewards for people in 
America who can solve our problems.
  Now, as I said, one of the things my party is willing to do is move 
forward directly on this. Just like Roy Hobbs in The Natural realized 
sitting there listening to a lecture on the psychology of defeat does 
not produce a solution. Getting out on the field produces a solution. 
And what the Republican party wants to do is to get out on the field 
and make it happen, do the work now. And this comprehensive bill is one 
of those that have to take place.
  We are ready to move forward with an attitude that it can be solved, 
it must be solved, and we have the capacity to do it. And our goal will 
be to become energy independent and energy secure now, not in the 
future, but now, in our lifetime.
  I keep coming up here every day looking up at the top of this 
building with a quote by Daniel Webster up there which simply reads and 
tries to exhort to us: Let us develop the resources of our land, call 
forth its power, and see whether we also in our day and generation may 
not perform something worthy to be remembered.
  We have the capacity and the ability to do something worthy to be 
remembered, and the Republican party wants to get on the playing field 
to do that. That is our goal, that is our destiny. The American people 
deserve it. And we can't wait; we have to do it now.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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