Congressional Record, Volume 154 Issue 96 (Wednesday, June 11, 2008)

[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 96 (Wednesday, June 11, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5304-H5310]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

{time} 2030
ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

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, today, June 11 of the year
2008, we had an interesting happening in the Capitol. We have had $4
gasoline for some time now, we have had $5 diesel, record high natural
gas prices approaching $13 per thousand, the most expensive energy
America has ever known.
We had a chance today in committee the deal with this issue. I was
stunned. I have been working on this issue for many, many years. We
passed a major bill in 2006 with good bipartisan support, a lot of
Republicans, but we had probably 40-some Democrats. A lot of people in
this Congress realize that we must produce more energy in America if we
are going to deal with the prices in America.
Today the Interior subcommittee met. I offered an amendment to open
up the Outer Continental Shelf. As you look at the chart to my left,
that's the east coast and the west coast and down

[[Page H5305]]

here in the gulf on both sides of Florida. The red or pinkish areas are
locked up. There's 86 billion barrels in those areas, by old standards,
by old seismographic tests which was 30-some years ago. Most people
feel there is many times that. There is 400 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas there.
My amendment today would have removed the moratorium. For 27 years
Congress has had legislative language that says we cannot produce here.
It's locked up. This Outer Continental Shelf is from 3 miles offshore.
The first three miles is controlled by the States. Next 197 miles is
owned by us, the taxpayers, citizens of America. Not by any company,
not by the President, not by Congress, but owned by the citizens, not
by any State. It's our resources.
The interesting and troubling fact is my amendment would have opened
it up from 50 miles to 200.
Every country in the world that has energy offshore produces it. It's
the most environmentally sensitive place to produce energy.
In most places the fisheries are better, they like the platforms,
they like the places to hide. The fishermen love them being there
because it's where the best fishing is.
Down here in this little blue area, 40 percent of our energy comes
from there that we produce in this country, that little bit of the
gulf.
Now there they produce right up to the shoreline. We were given a 50-
mile buffer. There has not been an oil spill on a beach from a well
except for the one in Santa Barbara in 1969, pretty good record, in my
view. There has never been a natural gas well that's ever caused an
environmental problem that I know of.
But today we had a vote of nine ``noes'' for the Democrats and six
``yeses'' for the Republicans. I don't like to be partisan. I like to
have bipartisan support, and I worked very hard on this amendment. I
thought I had strong support from both parties, and I was stunned
today.
I guess it's another example of Speaker power.
I have been in the legislative business for 31 years, 19 years at the
State and 12 years here. I have seen legislative bodies that were good
process bodies where you debate the issues from the subcommittee to the
full committee to the floor. Then when the House and Senate meet in a
conference committee, that really gives you seven shots at a bill.
That's not happening here.
This is the most top-down legislative body I have ever been a part
of. Today showed that. I would bet the farm there are members on this
subcommittee that wanted to vote for this, but for some reason chose
not to. I am not going to name them, I am not going to second-guess
them, but I was stunned.
I think America would be stunned. I believe this Congress is way
behind the folks, approaching 60 percent of Americans at a recent poll,
who want us to produce offshore, on shore, wherever we have energy. I
find, in talking to town meetings and large groups, when you discuss
the issue and explain the facts and explain the alternatives, almost
all Americans want energy produced so it's affordable.
Our economy was built on affordable energy. The problem we have, the
arguments today were that there are 68 million acres already leased,
and that's enough. This is the percentage, and, actually, it's less
than 3 percent, of the Outer Continental Shelf where there is a lease
that has been offered. So there is a very small part of the continental
shelf that actually has a lease on it.
They said, well, there are 68 million acres, we need lease no more.
Well, if you have leased property--yes, there are leases, there are
leases that are not active--but if you have leased property and spent
millions and millions of dollars and you get dry holes, you don't drill
anymore. You find out there is not oil in there.
As we look on here a little bit, this is interesting, this is a map.
It's not as good as color as I had hoped to see. This is Cuba, this is
Key West, this is Florida. These are the leases that have been granted
by Cuba, China, Canada and Spain. I am not sure here, but these are the
ones that are being negotiated now. Canada is going to be producing
energy off our shores, and we absolutely disallow it.
Does that make any sense? No. Our biggest competitor, China, will be
possibly producing our oil and our gas, using it to compete against us.
Natural gas is the one that's really in trouble in America. We know
the oil prices today closed at $137, natural gas at $12.75. Natural gas
is the one that we don't talk enough about. Oil is painful, but every
country that competes with us pays that price. America may be the only
country paying--now, this is not the price people pay. This is what the
price today coming out of the ground is.
Now, what's sneaking up on Americans this year, they already know it
costs a lot to travel. Those who are on propane and fuel oil last year
know it was pretty expensive to heat their homes.
Natural gas did not rise a lot last year. But here is what happened
to natural gas this year. This is the chart of natural gas for this
year. This is what's happened this spring.
Never before have I ever seen natural gas prices--this is the time of
year when we are not heating and cooling much, it's call the shoulder
season for use, and this is when we usually put it in the ground for
next winter's storage to heat our homes. We are putting gas in the
ground at a price more than we paid for it last year. Now you have to
add storage costs, transmission costs and processing costs.
Americans will be getting somewhere between a 60 to 100 percent
increase of natural gas prices this winter. So those who are struggling
to pay $4 to drive their cars are now going to struggle to heat their
homes. The sad story is, with natural gas, our big employers like Dow
Chemical in 2002 paid $8 billion for natural gas for a year's use. This
year they are paying $8 billion every quarter, that's $32 billion.
Folks, here is what has happened to the jobs and what will continue
to happen if we don't deal with energy prices because the rest of the
world is. Natural gas will push petrochemicals, polymers, plastic and
many other steel and aluminum jobs--I predict, glass will be made
offshore, bricks will be made offshore. Bulk commodities will not be
made in this country because of natural gas prices, because you use so
much.

Here's what the arguments were. This is what people want to use. This
is oil. From the middle over is history, this is what the Energy
Department predicts for the future.
I don't quite agree with this chart, because we are turning down coal
plants all over the country. The natural gas will be much wider, coal
will be much shallower. I don't see the growth in coal. We also all had
high hopes for coal-to-liquid. That's sort of on hold in this country.
Why, I don't know, because of carbon, I guess. The concern of carbon
has become a greater concern.
Nuclear, to stay here, we have to have 35 to 40 nuclear plants built
in addition to what we have to keep nuclear where it's at as 20 percent
of the grid.
Nonhydro, the amount, everybody wants--hydro is not growing because
we are not doing dams. Nonrenewables are mostly woody biomass and
hydro. That's what most of this is.
If we double wind and solar, and we hope we can, we are less than 1
percent of our energy needs in 5 years or 10 years whenever we do that.
That's the scary part.
Now here's the dependence part. When I came to Congress, we were in
the 40s. We are now 66.3 percent dependent on imports, and here is
where we get it. Canada is our best friend to the north, Mexico is our
next best friend, nonOPEC and Ecuador, and then we go down here.
These are the countries that are going to own us. These are the
countries where our wealth is going. In fact, I think I heard a speaker
a few moments ago on floor talk about the purchase of the Chrysler
Building by one of the Mid East countries.
Ladies and gentlemen, if America does not deal with energy, we will
not compete in the global economy of the world. We cannot have the
highest energy prices known anywhere and compete. We will not have
middle-class jobs. The middle class in America will disappear. That's
not the America I want.
Now, how we get past this partisanship, how we get past that we can
take the minuteness of wind and solar and replace fossil fuels, I wish
I knew. I am

[[Page H5306]]

for hydrogen. I belonged to the hydrogen caucus for years, but it has
not grown. Wind and solar has grown a very small amount.
Until we can store electricity, we are going to depend on fossil
fuels to make it. If we continue with the chart I just looked at to not
produce coal plants, that's going to come on natural gas. If we don't
open up the Outer Continental Shelf and much of the Midwest, we are not
going to have the natural gas--and natural gas, let's come back to the
natural gas chart.
Natural gas, in my view, is the clean, green fuel. We would have been
far wiser, in my view, to have used compressed natural gas in
automobiles than ethanol. Automobiles, with a couple of thousand
dollars addition can burn natural gas. That's a clean fuel.
If we open up the Outer Continental Shelf, if we opened up the Roan
Plateau in the west and some of the new areas that we know are
potentials in this country--but we have to drill a hole in the ground,
and why aren't we doing that? Well, here are the people that I think
have been successful.
I was having a debate late week with the Sierra Club on NPR radio in
California. When the debate was over she assured the audience that she
would be beating me back next week when I offered my amendment. They
won today.
The Sierra Club, they are against shale oil development. They are
against coal gasification, and they are against offshore energy. Then
we have Greenpeace, and they want to phase out all fossil fuels. They
want to eliminate all of these and replace them with these.
Now, I wish we could do that. They are opposed. Environmental Defense
Fund, no power plants, no smokestacks, League of Conservation Voters,
no coal-to-liquid, wrong way to go; Defenders of Wildlife, no offshore,
no coastal production; Natural Resource Defense Council, no coal, coal
is evil; Center for Biological Diversity, no oil and gas drilling.
That's devastating on public lands.

{time} 2045

Friends of the Earth, no liquid coal, that is dirty.
Folks, we have technology in this country today. We can produce
energy cleanly. We can burn it cleanly. We have clean coal technology
we are refusing to build to replace the old plants.
If we continue, we are the only country I know of in the world that
is on a madness mission, I call it, that we are not going to use fossil
fuels. Now I want to grow all of these. I would be building hydrodams.
The only one that has grown on this chart, and I have another chart
that shows it better, woody biomass has doubled in the last decade.
That is wood pellet stoves. Almost a million Americans use them now.
That is using wood for generators, small plants for electricity using
wood waste, and heating small factories. I am from a wood area, the
greatest hardwood forests in America are in northern Pennsylvania, and
we dry kiln our wood. We used to use propane and natural gas, now we
use wood waste. Wood waste has found a marketplace, and it is
continuing. But that's the only one that has had measurable growth that
you can put on a chart. I don't have that chart here.
But folks, we need to have a comprehensive policy. But until we have
the renewables available to use, we have to use clean fossil fuels in
the very best manner we can. But if this Congress says no in full
committee a week from now, we will be doing our bill in full committee,
if they say no again, partisanly, and if they say no on this floor when
we do the Interior bill, America will miss its only chance.
My bill, the Outer Continental Shelf bill, has 170-some cosponsors,
and can't get a hearing or a discussion. We are not going to talk about
fuels in this Congress.
Now we passed a great bill a couple of weeks ago where the Democrats
proposed to enable us to sue OPEC. We are going to sue a group of
countries, I had the chart here a minute ago, that we don't think have
produced enough energy, when we refuse to produce it at all. Now what
is the logic of that? What court is going to listen to that, and how do
you even have a serious face. Back home, people laughed about that.
They thought it was stupid.
We also have proposals to tax oil companies. Who pays the taxes, the
energy users. I know there is hatred for the energy companies. They are
really a small part of the mix. The vast majority of energy in this
country is not produced by Big Oil. It is produced by small producers
in my district in Pennsylvania and all down through the south. It is
mostly independents. They are the brand names. They own some of the
refineries. They own a lot of product lines in their names, but they
are a small part of the production of energy. Yet we want to punish
energy production.
We passed a bill here once, fortunately the Senate didn't, that was
going to tax all energy companies. And I have two refineries in my
district, one who was struggling, American Refiners and United
Refinery, and we were going to make them pay higher taxes than the
businesses right down the road. Did that make any sense? No. That is
taxing American energy; not taxing imports but American energy.
I believe this Congress is way behind the American public. When I go
back to my office many times after giving one of these speeches, I have
phone calls for hours, I have phone calls for days saying I believe in
what you said; I believe America should be producing energy; thank you
for speaking out.
I believe the American public in the next election, I believe energy
availability and affordability will be one of the major issues that
they will be looking at because I don't think we are done. I don't
think $4.05 gasoline is the end.
We have these high prices today that have scared the American public.
I have people in my district who don't know how they are going to get
through the winter and how they are going to heat their house. They
don't know how they are going to make it. We have these high prices
today. We have not had a storm in the gulf, which interrupts a lot of
production when it happens, for 2\1/2\ years. Everyone is predicting we
are going to have major storms in the gulf, hurricanes, and that will
eliminate a lot of energy production and prices will skyrocket.
We have not had a successful terrorist attack on our energy supply
system. That could happen tomorrow. We have not had a major foreign
country, and I had that chart of countries we get our oil from, most of
those are dictatorships that could tip over. When there is a little
trouble in Nigeria, energy prices skyrocket. When there were problems
in Venezuela, prices skyrocketed. When Chavez was arguing with Exxon,
oil went up $20 just because they were arguing.
The reason is there is no surplus in the system. Historically we had
eight million barrels of oil that another country could produce if some
country couldn't produce. Today we are down to where this is about a
million barrels of oil. It is 86 million barrels a day countries use.
We use 21, and so there is only a one million barrel surplus. So if a
country has problems and produces three million less, there is not
enough oil.
Now the reason these gas prices that I showed you earlier are going
up, we are using more gas than we are producing. One of the big storage
companies told me a month ago, they are not sure they can get their
storage full this winter and they have always had it full by winter
because we cannot produce enough gas, we have to put it in underground
caverns and store it for winter.
I believe this Congress is at the root of the high prices of energy,
and three Presidents, too, I am not going to hold them countless,
because we have not had an adequate, thoughtful energy policy for
America. While the rest of the world is building an energy supply for
themselves, we are twiddling our thumbs and we are refusing to produce
fossil fuels.
I think if this Congress before we recess in July does not deal
effectively with energy and open up supply, you are going to see the
beginning of the decline of the America we know. It is a national
security issue. It is an economic issue. American companies cannot
compete, and when they can't compete here, they will diminish their
operations here and they will expand them over there. They have had
other reasons to do that, but the biggest one has been energy. So I beg
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's get by this partisan
bickering and let's support an energy policy for America.

[[Page H5307]]

The gentleman from Ohio has come to join us, and I yield to Mr.
Latta.
Mr. LATTA. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and he speaks the
truth. This country is in a crisis and we are not listening. The folks
back home get it. But we are not getting it. It is time we do.
I would like to start off with this. This is kind of sobering. Right
now the United States uses 21 percent of the world's energy. If you
look across this chart, in 2010 we still have energy supremacy and
usage over India and China. When you look at 2015, those two countries
together will be consuming more energy than the United States. When we
get to 2020, China is going to be consuming more energy than the United
States. And just look at the chart as it goes across, the United States
is barely moving while China is making leaps and bounds. The question
is, what does that all mean. It means this: energy means jobs. Those
are American jobs. The folks back home get it. Congress doesn't get it.

I come from the Fifth Congressional District of Ohio which is the
ninth largest manufacturing district of the 435 districts in Congress.
I also represent the number one agricultural district in the State of
Ohio. What does it mean, if we don't have energy, we don't have jobs.
Companies out there are looking, we look at this chart, companies are
looking at where can they get energy. How are they going to keep their
jobs and keep their people employed. Farmers are out there right now in
our State planting, and some people say farmers are getting these high
prices this year. Let's look at some facts.
When they are buying diesel and buying fertilizer that is also made
from oil, when they are buying their chemicals that they are putting on
the field made from oil products, they are not making that much money.
What does that mean to the consumer? Very simple, the consumers when
they go to the grocery store are finding that prices are going up for
milk, bread and cereal. It is all going up.
Looking down the road, when you are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline,
you are paying more for food and it is costing you more to get to work.
I have talked to a lot of my manufacturers in Ohio in my district, and
I asked how far do most people drive to work. It is not unusual to have
people say people are driving 50 or 60 miles to get to work. So when we
look at people who are driving maybe 100 miles round trip every day,
500 miles a week, and $4 a gallon for gasoline, some folks are saying
I'm not sure I can afford this job. We can't have that happen.
As the gentleman from Pennsylvania mentioned about Dow, we have a
company in my district, a float glass company, the price of their fuel
for natural gas in a 5-year period of time has gone from $10 million to
$30 million. What does that mean for America? There are only 37 float
glass facilities left in this country. The Chinese are building 40 as
we stand here today and bicker, unfortunately, about doing something in
this country about oil and our energy usage and needs. They have the
energy and they are going to have a cheaper labor supply, I am going to
ask you in the future, where are you going to buy a window pane that is
made in the United States of America? Or where are you going to buy a
windshield that is made in the United States of America? They will not
be made in this country at all. And the gentleman from Pennsylvania is
absolutely correct, more and more products are being made offshore and
those are American jobs. We can't afford that.
What made this country great is very simple. After the Civil War, the
Industrial Revolution really kicked into high gear. We had all the
natural resources in the country, and we were able to produce for the
world, and we produced for the world for years. We had the head start
on everybody, of course, after World War II when the rest of the world
lay in ruins and the United States' factories were humming. But the
rest of the world is catching up, if not surpassing us, and this chart
shows it. And we can't afford it.
What is the rest of the world doing? France, 70-80 percent of their
power is nuclear. They are exporting power to the rest of Europe.
Japan, 55 nuclear reactors, two under construction.
China, they are building 40 nuclear power stations in the next 25 to
30 years.
India, 30 plants in the next 25 years.
Coal. That was talked about earlier. China and India use 45 percent
of the world's coal. China is building coal-powered plants as we speak
and putting them online right now. They are investing $24 billion in
clean coal technology.
The gentleman mentioned they are also out there building the Three
Gorges hydroelectric plant. Again, it is a communist country and they
are not worried about displacing millions of people, but they are going
to have that power station producing electricity to make sure that they
are producing.
It has been mentioned how China is drilling onshore and offshore and
right off our shore. But the real question is what is the United States
doing on all of this? And this scares people, absolutely nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The last nuclear power plant to be licensed in this country was in
1977; 1977. The last one to go online was in 1996; 1996. We have 24
percent of the coal in the world; 24 percent. But what are we doing,
nothing. You mention coal in this Chamber, and it is an absolute no. We
have to have it.
In Ohio we have what they call high-sulfur coal so it is very, very
expensive to burn because you need to have it clean. But if you burn it
in a closed system, you don't have those emissions. What does that mean
for Ohio, we will put miners to work and we will have companies that
make steel to make the coal gasification plants out there, making those
parts, and we will have people building those plants. And we will be
able to consume that power in this country because when we have 24
percent of the world's coal reserves right now, we can get a lot done.
But what are we doing about it, absolutely nothing.
What about oil. Again, when you have China out there doing everything
it possibly can to make sure that they have their oil supplies up, they
are putting thousands of cars on the road. A lot of people say we don't
understand what is going on out there. Well, there is only so much oil
out there in the world right now, and only so much of it has been
refined. The whole world is now consuming more and other areas are
producing more, but not in this country.

{time} 2100

One of the things that we should be doing is, as the gentleman from
Pennsylvania mentioned, we've got to be drilling. We've got to be
exploring. And one of the places we've been talking about a lot is ANWR
in Alaska.
As has already been mentioned, how big are we talking here? We're
talking one-half of 1 percent of that area. Of 19.6 million acres,
total, we're only talking 2,000 acres.
Anybody who has ever done any title work, you know that a section of
land is only 640 acres, which is 1 square mile. We're talking a little
over 3 square miles. Three square miles. And we're talking about an
area of 19.6 million acres, and we're not allowed to go in there and
produce?
And there's estimated that we have 10.4 billion barrels of oil that
we can extract up there. What's it all about?
That's twice the proven oil reserves in Texas, almost half of the
total U.S. proven reserves of 21 billion barrels. What are we doing?
What's this Congress doing? Absolutely nothing.
But we are doing something that this past year we almost imported 65
percent of the oil that we need to use in this country; 65 percent of
the oil being imported into this country.
We talked about it a little bit earlier. We're watching our dollars
flow overseas. What's that all mean to America?
We have a $9 trillion national debt right now. What scares the devil
and daylights out of me is this little fact. $2.4 trillion of that
national debt is owned by foreign countries. The Chinese almost now own
almost one-half of $1 trillion of American debt. That's what's
happening.
You know, the American people out there, again, they get it. This
Congress doesn't.
Again, as the gentleman mentioned earlier, right now it's estimated
there's 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore and 86 billion
barrels of oil. 85 percent of that's off-limits, and we

[[Page H5308]]

can't afford that. We can't afford that for the future.
Onshore, it's estimated there's, on Federal lands, 31 billion barrels
of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And again, it's
restricted down to access, which does not allow Americans to be getting
that. 92 percent on Federal lands for oil and 90 percent for natural
gas. We can't get to it. What civilized country in the world allows
this to happen? Not very many. But right here in this country it's
happening. It's happening here, ladies and gentlemen, and we're doing
nothing.
The old saying is, ``Rome burned and Nero fiddled.'' That's what's
happening.
We haven't built a new refinery in this country, talk about problems,
in two-and-a-half decades. I'm fortunate in my district, just by
coincidence, that I have a company that produces solar panels. Over 99
percent of their production goes overseas to Europe. We have another
plant that's going to be constructed. Solar is another area out there.
It's good supplemental power.
We also have the only four wind turbines located in the State of
Ohio. I can see them out my back door in Bowling Green. We only have
four. There's a lot of objection now because people say they're
unsightly; they don't want them; build them someplace else.
But when you talk about wind-powered turbines, to kind of get an idea
how many you have to have to equal something, you have to have between
600 to 800 turbines to equal one coal-fired plant, or anywhere from
1,250 to 1,700 wind turbines to equal one nuclear power plant. If we're
having problems around Bowling Green in Ohio, getting turbines built,
how are we going to build 1,700 turbines if people are objecting to a
few?
Because now in Ohio the Division of Wildlife is going to have to
start making assessments what birds might be killed, or a bat. And it's
going to be blocking them.
We also have an ethanol plant in my district. We're working on
biofuels. It's all out there. But we've got to be acting and we've got
to be acting now. We can't wait. The American people can't wait because
we've got to be getting this done today.
This country, 10, 20 years ago, had the ability to make mistakes and
say, well, in a few years, okay, we can get it corrected. We can't do
that today. Why can't we do that today? Because the rest of the world
has caught on and they're moving. Every day that we do not act they
are, and we're falling farther and farther behind.
That's American oil, energy that we have to be producing, and we're
not doing it.
I introduced a House resolution not too long ago, 1206, and it's
really pretty basic what we need to be doing. Just a few points. We
have to expand the use of our renewables and alternative energy
sources. We have to increase the U.S. domestic refining capacity. We
have to promote, incentivize an increase in the conservation and energy
efficiency, expand and promote additional research and development
through new and innovative methods, such as public-private
partnerships, and enhancing the consumer awareness and education
regarding methods to increase energy efficiency and available
alternative fuel sources to reduce our dependence on middle eastern
oil.
But the time's getting short. The clock's ticking, and America must
act now.
I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and I yield back.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Ohio for his
very thoughtful comments.
I now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp).
Mr. WAMP. I thank the gentleman, and I'll try not to be long. But I
do want to start by saying that I seek not to blame anyone, because one
of the things that I'm the most turned off by in the modern era of
American politics is that everybody wants to blame everybody. And
Democrats always say Republicans are wrong. Republicans always say
Democrats are wrong. The truth is, neither party has a whole lot to
brag about, and more and more people are being frustrated or becoming
frustrated with the two parties.
But I will say, on this particular issue of energy, it's important to
realize that talk is cheap. Words are not worth much. And votes really
do matter. And the positions you take really do have consequences, and
we have to actually discuss that as we look at solutions, because what
I want to talk about is solutions; not blame, but solutions to these
major problems.
In my 14 years of service here, this issue now stings and hurts more
than any issue that I've seen. And I've served through impeachment,
through the Iraq war, through the awful response to Katrina, and I
would say that more people are angry and upset and concerned about
$4.05 gasoline than anything.
And it's easy to say, I told you so. The gentleman from Pennsylvania
can definitely say I told you so because I've served with him for 12
years, and he's been talking about supply of oil and gas and the
consequences of us not going after it and becoming more independent
ourselves for the whole 12 years; a very powerful and effective voice.
I too have a long history of talking about the problems that are
going to be associated with the energy crunch and was very concerned
following September the 11th that we would end up here tonight. I do
think that the nexus between national security, energy and the
environment is the most important challenge of our generation because
they're all connected now inseparably.

It's ironic that the left wants to promote legislation and
conversation about global warming and climate change because actually
that will further restrict our access to energy, and everybody knows
that. And it will raise prices. It will increase regulation. It will
actually compound this problem. Yet they're promoting that agenda at
the same time that they're retreating from energy capacity. And these
votes really matter.
Now I come at this with 10 years of service on the Energy and Water
Appropriations Subcommittee, 8 years of service as the cochairman of
the Renewable Energy Caucus here in the House, which is a bipartisan
thing; the Representative that represents the premier energy research
facility in this country, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And I want
to start by saying that conservation is a very important piece of these
solutions.
As a matter of fact, conservation is not for wimps, as some people
would have you believe. Conservation is for warriors, in my opinion.
Not everyone is going to put on the uniform of our Armed Forces. We
should be grateful to everyone who does. But not everyone's going to do
that.
But every person in this country can contribute to our national
security by becoming more energy efficient, by conserving, by trying to
be more efficient in their daily life, and there are a lot of ways to
do that.
And I rolled out at the National Press Club, with some outside
groups, some very effective outside groups, the Drive Smarter
Challenge. You can go to drivesmarterchallenge.org, and you can save
yourself hundreds of dollars by following simple instructions of how to
conserve gasoline without cutting back on your travel. Obviously the
speed limit and how much you travel would be a good step. But there a
lot of other things you can do with your automobile, depending on how
much gas it uses, to save and conserve, because even in small ways, if
we reduce the demand, and the supply stays the same, the price will
come down. Demand and supply are connected to each other.
I'm also very, very much about new technologies. As I talk about
these solutions, understand that I'm here tonight, not because these
solutions are all technology-driven or conservation-driven, but I'm
here tonight because we have to go forward with an all-of-the-above
strategy. We can't afford to leave anything off the table. We can't
afford to pick winners and losers.
As a matter of fact, I can give you a good example of picking winners
and losers in the energy sector because in California, they said, we're
not going to use all of the resources for electricity production. We're
going to mandate that a certain amount of our electricity has to be
produced by these sources. They picked winners and losers. And guess
what happened? The lights went out. They didn't have any electricity.
That's the problem with picking winners and losers. We have to have
an all-of-the-above strategy.

[[Page H5309]]

I'm here tonight, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania laid out
earlier, because we have to increase capacity. We have to go after
these resources from the Outer Continental Shelf, from ANWR.
I've been in Congress 14 years. I've cast 24 votes to increase
capacity for oil and gas in this country. Twenty-four votes. As has
been said ad infinitum now, and I'm not a partisan guy--I don't want to
blame anybody--but these votes matter. And almost every time the
Republicans vote for new capacity, and almost every time the Democrats
vote against it. Even today, it happened again. And 2 weeks ago it
happened in the Senate again.
This is one of those issues that I don't want to be too partisan, but
you can't deny there is a huge difference between increasing capacity.
Frankly, even the wild-eyed environmentalist has to recognize that this
is painful to regular people. And you've got to get off of your crusade
to save every tree, you know, to save every form of wildlife at the
expense of our human beings who can't pay their bills and they can't
buy gas.
Be reasonable, people. That's not happening today.
But there's a tremendous amount of new technologies. I would argue
that we can literally grow our economy, a manufacturing-driven, export
robust U.S. economy, by being aggressive in this energy sector, because
we have the innovation.
What does everyone around the world still emulate about our country?
We would like to say it's our privilege to vote. That's important. But
they don't all emulate that. We'd like to think that they all would
freely worship as we do, and I cherish that. But they don't all emulate
that. We would like to think we all have freedom of the press.
The one thing they emulate is our private sector, our capitalistic,
free enterprise, innovative sector. We have that.
How did we balance the budget in the late nineties? I was here. Four
straight years. People think, oh, you cut spending. No we didn't. We
slowed the growth of spending, yes we did. We didn't cut spending. But
revenues surpassed expenses principally because of one sector of our
economy that roared, information technology. We led the world.
Microsoft is an example. There are many others. We led the world.
Revenues surpassed expenses.
That can happen again in this sector if we will lead and not be in
retreat and not regulate, not limit, but expand, go after it, create
new technologies, increase capacity. Be competitive.
As the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, it's important.

{time} 2115

Now, I have had the editor of Automotive News say that we're going to
be driving electric cars. That might be true. Ion lithium batteries
have some potential. GM and Toyota say that next summer they're going
to have plug-in hybrids. But I will also tell you that Volkswagon,
which is a premier automotive interest in the world, can make a three-
cylinder diesel engine, lightweight, gets 50 to 60 miles a gallon so
biodiesel, biofuels, as long as they're cellulosic in nature and not
corn based, are very important developments as well.
I will tell you what I don't think the Congress ought to do is pick
winners and losers. I think we ought to have an all-of-the-above
strategy. Let the market determine which one gets their best and first.
Let consumers choose and promote them all. Let the marketplace decide.
Let me say that if we do end up plugging our cars in, though, we don't
have the electricity capacity to keep them running. We have to have
nuclear energy.
The numbers--81 percent of France's electricity is generated by
nuclear power. They have 53 reactors; we have roughly twice that many.
They don't bury their waste, which we propose at Yucca Mountain. They
reprocess their spent full turning most of the spent waste back into
energy. Why don't we do that? Because we're still stuck in a Three Mile
Island time warp mindset that it's somehow not safe, and it is. And
there is no evidence that it is not. And we've not had any nuclear
incidences. We have 53 nuclear reactors. It is emissionless.
You want to reduce the carbon footprint? Promote nuclear. If you want
to reduce the carbon footprint in a meaningful way and you're against
nuclear, you're disingenuous. I don't care what your name is. You're
not living in the real world, or you're playing politics. We need
nuclear.
Now, another new technology is the stationary solid oxide fuel cell.
What is that? Well, it's developed out of Silicon Valley. Partnerships
around the country. We have a 100-kilowatt system now being
demonstrated in the Tennessee Valley. It looks like the HVAC system in
your home, but here is the special element of a solid oxide fuel cell:
It makes electricity, but it's not on a transmission grid. That's
pretty cool in the world we live in today because without a
transmission grid, you can't shut down the electricity through a
terrorist incident because not everyone is connected to the grid.
And in this stationary solid oxide fuel cell, which is also
emissionless, reducing the carbon footprint, it does have to be fueled
in one feedstock. It's an HVAC system with fuel cells that creates 100
kilowatts of power which is roughly a 30,000 square foot building.
Office building, commercial center, several houses. But you have to
have a feedstock, but it will run on anything, just about. It will run
on natural gas, it will run on solar in some places, ethanol, different
feedstocks.
But that's an important development. It has got tremendous
electricity potential especially if we start plugging in our cars and
we need this new electricity capacity.
I believe we ought to look at a follow-up stimulus bill that directs
resources to people that are stuck. And I'll tell you in the south, if
you're on the lower income, you probably have a very inefficient
vehicle and you probably drive a long way to work and you're stuck; and
those are the people that our next economic stimulus ought to help. We
ought to figure out a way in a bipartisan way to get them some
resources to move to more efficient transportation, one way or another.
Because people right now, they can't trade that big car. They can't get
for it what it's worth, and then they don't have the money to go to a
more efficient car. We should help them.
In closing, let me just say words are cheap and votes really do make
a difference, and the votes for energy capacity have been really
important in the past, and they're even more important today; and
they're going to be even more important tomorrow. And this is where we
have to bring this Congress together.
And the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate is way out of
touch with reality unless they get serious immediately about increasing
capacity because if we made moves that were published around the world
that we're going back in the energy-production business, prices would
come down overnight, not because the energy is there overnight, but
because they know we're going in the right direction because right now
we're going in the wrong direction.
We need help.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee.
The president of DOW Chemical said in a letter I received, he said,
We have a debate going on in this country and one side wants
production, the other side wants conservation and renewables. He said
you're going to need them all. You'll need them both. There's no room
for choice.
At this time, I'm glad to be joined by my friend from New Jersey (Mr.
Garrett).
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate the gentleman for hosting
this special hour tonight and also very much importantly for all of
your work all over the years on this very important issue.
And this issue really does strike at the heart of my constituents
back in my great State of New Jersey whether it's from my home County
of Sussex County, where over 60 percent of them have to commute out of
the county every day by car, or Warren County or Bergen County where a
host of so many commuters are being hard hit by this hard energy crisis
that we're facing right now.
I join with my friend from Tennessee where--I don't come to the floor
to blame anyone because the American public simply wants the Congress
to come up with answers to the problems

[[Page H5310]]

that we are all facing back in our district.
And I think really when you get right down to it, it's not that
complicated in one sense to take a look at the various policies or
ideas out there. It's easy, I think, one way to tell whether a good--
whether a policy is a good energy policy or not. All you have to do is
look at three things: supplies, cost, and security.
A good energy policy is a policy that will do what? It will give you
more energy. More supply. A bad energy policy will give us less supply.
A good energy policy is one that will lower costs for Americans. A bad
energy policy is one that is going to continue to raise or escalate
costs, meaning that American families are going to have to have less
money for their food, housing, education, and so on. And thirdly and
finally, a good energy policy is one that will make us a stronger, more
secure America. A bad energy policy is going to be one that makes us
less secure, less independent of foreign, unstable regimes like
Venezuela and overseas and Saudi Arabia and places like Russia and the
like.
So why don't we take a minute to see what has, quite honestly, the
other side of the aisle proposed for us. I have in my hand right here,
the Democrat plan to lower gas prices. You may recall that when
Democrats were campaigning for the 110th Congress, they said that they
had a commonsense solution to lower the price of gasoline and energy
for the American public. And we are now 18 months, I think, into the
110th Congress. And, well, there is absolutely nothing in the
Democrat's plan.
Their commonsense solution, and that's why we're so eagerly awaiting
it, and that's why we, on this side of the aisle, come to the floor
every night to hammer home the point that something must be done. But
we can look to see what has occurred over the last 17 months, 18 months
of the 110th Congress now that the Democrats have been in charge of
dealing with energy. On these three points: on supply, on cost, on
security.
On supply. As I stand here tonight, as was already indicated from the
gentleman from Pennsylvania, 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf
where our energy supply comes from, natural gas principally, but oil as
well, it's basically locked up off limits to us for further exploration
even determining what is actually out there. There was legislation to
do that just to say what's out there. Let's find out the information.
Off limits to us.
Deep sea exploration. Over 100 or 200--200 miles off sea totally off
limits right now. Eighty-six billion barrels of oil, 420 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas could be at our disposal to give us greater supply,
but it's not.
Oil shales In the Midwestern part of this country. Oil shales were
reported in the paper just today as it was going through committee and
will be coming to the floor later on, proposals to keep that off-limits
as far as greater supply for the country.

Let me give you some quick little number here. U.S. has two trillion,
that's with a ``T,'' two trillion barrels of oil that effectively are
involved here. And to put that in perspective, from 1859 from the first
days that oil was pulled out of the ground to today, one trillion
barrels of oil has been used. And we have basically two trillion
barrels over there that we could basically be getting in economically
viable ways.
Supply has not been addressed, unfortunately, during the 110th
Congress by the Democrats.
Costs. Well, when they were campaigning for office, I know in my
district you could buy gasoline for $1.80. Now, of course, it's up to
$4, doubling the price, and that's hurting the American family.
What else has occurred during these last 17 months? Four times
legislation has come through this House that would raise taxes on
energy costs. And who actually pays those taxes at the end of the day?
You and I do at the pump or any other ways where we buy our energy.
And finally, there are still proposals, believe it or not, from the
other side of the aisle that want to put more taxes on us like 50
cents-a-gallon gasoline taxes has been proposed by Chairman Dingell. So
the next time you go to the pump and you're paying around $4 bucks per
a gallon of oil, just remember the other side wants to add another 50
cents; and there is another proposal for a nickel as well by Chairman
Oberstar. So 55 cents more if they have their way in taxes.
Finally on security. Well, right now this country imports around 63
percent or is dependent upon foreign oil. Places like Saudi Arabia,
places like Venezuela, places like Nigeria where they have so many
problems, Down south in South America as well; and that number
continues to grow for the reasons I have just stated.
Gasoline. We have not built refineries in this country so now we are
like many countries across the globe. We have to import gasoline, 10
percent of our consumption of gasoline is coming into this country,
which makes us a less secure Nation because we do not have our own
supply of refineries right here at home.
Let me move off of what we're doing here on the floor to an outside
source to look at this. And the Investors Business Daily has taken a
look at this issue. And what they said is this. They said just going
back a couple of years, under the eight Clinton years alone, U.S. oil
production declined 1.3 million barrels per day, or 19 percent, while
our foreign imports increased 3.5 million barrels a day, or 45 percent.
During President Clinton's time, he vetoed legislation that would
have increased legislation that would have increased production of our
own vitally needed oil supply, not only for Americans but for our
national defense emergencies as well.
The article goes on to say--it poses this question. So were the
Democrats and Members of Congress together merely short-sighted with
only a few having any real business experience, or were they just
ignorant about economics, the fact that the law of supply and demand
determines the price of oil commodities such as oil, steel, copper, and
lumber? Or were they utterly irresponsible and incompetent in their
actions that led us to become dangerously dependent on increasing oil
imports from foreign companies? We think, it says, we think it was all
of the above.
The unintended consequences of the Congress Members' poor judgment
and meddling micromanagement of U.S. energy policy is that they
actually hurt most of the people that they profess to help: the average
American consumer, lower-income workers, and those in the inner cities
who can't afford an extra $100 a month to drive to and from work.
So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the dilemma we face here in the
110th Congress on a proposal, on plans that do not address supplies,
costs, and energy. And that is why I so commend the gentleman from
Pennsylvania for the solutions that he's offered over the years as well
and his legislation that goes to the issue of supply to increase the
amount of energy that the American consumer can attain, to lower the
cost of energy for the American family so that they have more
disposable income for other needs, and to increase national security to
strengthen America to make us more independent of these volatile
countries.
And with that, I thank the gentleman.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey
for his fine comments, and we yield back the balance of our time.

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