[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 97 (Thursday, June 12, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5362-H5365]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland, the 
majority leader, to tell us about next week's schedule.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the Republican whip for yielding.
  On Monday, the House is not in session. On Tuesday, the House will 
meet at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business 
with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. On Wednesday and Thursday, the 
House will meet at 10 a.m. for legislative business. On Friday, the 
House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The 
final list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of 
business tomorrow.
  We will take any pending votes on H.R. 6063, the NASA Authorization 
Act of 2008, which we will debate later today after this colloquy; and 
we will consider H.R. 5781, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave 
Act of 2008. We will also consider H.R. 5876, Stop Child Abuse in 
Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008; and we hope to consider and 
I expect to consider the Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental appropriations 
bill.
  I yield back.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that.
  On that last topic, I believe this is the third week straight that we 
said we hope to have the supplemental on the floor next week. My 
understanding is that if that supplemental is not completed, that our 
troops will begin to work without pay in July and civilian employees of 
the military would be laid off in July. We have next week and the week 
after that. I really have two questions here. One is do you think there 
will be a bill next week? And two, are we expecting a bill that will be 
vetoed or a bill that will be signed?
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  He observes that I said we hope to have it on the floor. I want to 
reiterate that I hoped each one of those weeks that we would have it on 
the floor, and I hope that we will have it on the floor next week.
  I would say to my friend that I hope we have a bill on the floor next 
week, pass it through the House and pass it through the Senate and that 
the President will sign that bill. Obviously, one of the reasons that 
we have not gotten the bill on the floor as quickly as I had hoped is 
that there have been very, very substantial discussions between the 
House and the Senate, between the House and the White House, and the 
Senate and the White House about what their thoughts are with respect 
to various aspects of the supplemental bill and what they would or 
would not consider a signable bill.
  So I think there have been extensive discussions on that. I am 
hopeful that

[[Page H5363]]

when we finally pass something to the President he will sign it and we 
will have that bill done. As the gentleman indicated, we are aware of 
the fact that it is timely that we pass this bill certainly within the 
next 2 weeks. And when I say pass it, not just pass it but have it 
signed by the President so we have a law in effect that gives the 
President and the Department of Defense the funds they need to continue 
the deployment that currently exists. That does not adopt the policy of 
the appropriateness of that, but it does recognize the reality of the 
fact that we have men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman.
  The bill that we talked about, the portion of the bill that would 
require furlough notices to go out, that portion of the bill has been 
here in the Congress for over a year now. I do hope we can deal with 
this before not only any members of the Armed Forces are asked to work 
without pay, but before civilian employees that run things like day 
care centers and things that work with families in the military are 
having to be notified that those efforts will stop because the Congress 
hasn't appropriated the money to provide those services.
  I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  As the gentleman will recall, we had a bill on this House to make 
those funds available. It did not pass. It did not pass as you recall 
because many of your Members voted present. I think they would have 
supported it, and many of our Members did not support that funding. 
They want to see the policies changed. I agree with them on the 
policies.
  The fact is that we now have that funding passed from the Senate in 
the supplemental to us and we are trying to resolve as you know the 
differences. But there is a desire to get that bill done in a timely 
fashion so that the problems that you portray, which I believe are 
accurate, do not occur.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that.
  This week we voted twice, including one vote yesterday and one vote 
today, on an unemployment insurance bill. I think the unemployment rate 
nationwide had gone up one-half of 1 percent. As the gentleman knows, a 
lot of our concern was that it was widely targeted, instead of States 
that had a significant unemployment problem. The Speaker said last week 
that ``America's families and workers can wait no longer, neither will 
the Congress. This bill will come to the floor of the House,'' and it 
did; and it did again.
  With a 75 percent increase in the price of gasoline during this 
Congress, Republicans have been arguing that we need to have an energy 
bill that would produce more energy on the House floor. Will the 
Democrats work with us to schedule that legislation that allows for 
more energy to be produced in the country.
  I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  As I said last week, with respect to more drilling in various parts 
of the country, whether it is in Alaska, in the Alaska National 
Wildlife Refuge or on the Outer Continental Shelf, I would like to 
reiterate the information I referred to last week, but before I do that 
let me say that we are very supportive of any legislation that will 
lead this country towards energy independence within the framework of 
what we think is necessary and needed. Now I say it in this context. I 
support and I think we support on this side a diversified clean energy 
portfolio. We think that is critically important for our country.
  In the area of supporting energy supply, I hope the Senate will 
return the tax extender bill which invests in alternative energy 
sources which can be put online so we can be more energy independent 
and not dependent upon the producers of petroleum, many of whom are not 
friendly to us, and others of whom are not as reliable as we would 
like.
  I have listened for some period of time in the last few weeks that 
all we need to do to solve this problem is more drilling. We don't 
believe that is the case. In fact, as I said to the gentleman last 
week, we have nearly a whole refinery's worth of capacity idle right 
now.

                              {time}  1500

  What I mean by that, Mr. Whip, is that our refineries were operating, 
at the end of last week, at 89 percent capacity. That is the lowest 
operational capacity of refineries in our country in the last 10 years 
at this time of year. So our refineries still have another 8 to 9 
percent capacity. 8 to 9 percent is a very significant portion.
  Now, we've introduced two bills today to make oil companies use their 
existing leases. Before we go to new leases, before we go to the Alaska 
National Wildlife Refuge or the Outer Continental Shelf, which is very 
controversial on both sides of the aisle, we believe that oil and gas 
companies should use the present leases they have. They hold nearly 68 
million acres of Federal land and waters on which they are not 
producing oil and gas. These 68 million acres of leased but currently 
inactive land and waters could produce, I tell my friend, an additional 
4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas 
each day. So that when we talk about looking for new spots to drill, we 
first ought to look at those spots. Vast acreage, millions of acres 
have already been authorized.
  If we took those actions, I tell my friend, the information I have is 
that it would nearly double total U.S. oil production and increase 
domestic national gas production by 75 percent. That is on existing 
leaseholds.
  It would also cut U.S. oil imports by more than a third, if all we 
did was use existing leaseholds. It would be more than six times the 
estimated peak production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  In other words, using existing leases that have already been 
authorized, would produce six times what the projections are, and the 
most optimistic projections are for the Alaska National Wildlife 
Refuge.
  Let me say that we also introduced two bills today to look at and 
study the investments in oil futures, in petroleum futures. We're very 
concerned that that is having an impact on price, not because of supply 
and demand, but because of speculation. Mr. Dingell and Mr. Barton, as 
you know, have cosponsored legislation, and I've cosponsored it myself 
with them.
  So I'm hopeful that we will move ahead vigorously, as I know the 
gentleman from Missouri wants to do, to see what can be done to make 
our country more energy efficient, to utilize the energy sources which 
are already authorized.
  I would say one additional thing in terms of refineries. There's been 
some discussion about refineries. There's been one application for a 
new refinery in the last 30 years. One application. It was approved. 
That refinery has not been built, notwithstanding the fact that the 
application was approved.
  And obviously, with refinery capacity not being at the capacity it's 
been at in the last 10 years, it would seem that a new refinery was not 
built because the oil companies made a determination that it was not 
needed because, at this critical time when demand is so high, they're 
not operating at peak performance.
  So let me just reiterate that we all want to work together to try to 
have our country be energy independent. We think that's important for 
our national security, our economic security. And indeed, we think that 
going to alternative energies is critically important for the health of 
our global climate.
  I yield back.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for that information. There are really 
two topics there I want to talk about just briefly. One is the refinery 
capacity itself. I think there's probably more reason than capacity 
that there's only been one permit in 30 years for refineries.
  But refineries are really a separate issue from whether the oil is 
available or not. In fact, you could argue, we'd have more refinery use 
if we had more oil available.
  I do know that we imported gas last year. I think importing oil is 
bad. I think importing gas and paying somebody to take that raw 
material of oil and turn it into gas is a worse idea. It's hard for me 
to believe that people that run refineries would be doing that if the 
refineries were the problem.
  In terms of the leases, clearly, in the last 7 years, the amount of 
leased public lands has almost doubled. Most of that drilling has been 
for gas. In fact,

[[Page H5364]]

our natural gas numbers are quite a bit better than they were before 
that started.
  Secondly, I think something like 52 percent of the exploration 
produces no product. It's a 10-year lease. Most of those leases are now 
beginning to get into the middle of that 10-year period of time. I 
certainly hope that we're encouraging, without doing anything that 
violates what we've already agreed to, that we're encouraging that to 
be done.
  And I think, frankly, I personally think, and have for a long time, 
that drilling in the ANWR in the area that was set aside for drilling 
by President Carter and the Congress in 1980, is part of the solution. 
But it's only part of the solution. And wherever we have those 
resources, we're the only country in the world where coastal drilling 
is possible that doesn't allow it to happen. I think we need to revisit 
that. And I think the American people are at the point that they want 
to revisit that as well.
  But this discussion is exactly the discussion we hope to have, a 
discussion that leads to more production and looking for the future.
  My good friend said that many on our side think that drilling's the 
only solution. I haven't heard that. What I've heard is many on our 
side think it's part of an immediate, short-term solution. But in the 
last Congress and the Republican Congresses before that, there was lots 
of legislation that encouraged alternatives, renewables. We want to 
still do that. Most of that requires a lot of transition in the economy 
and will take a while.
  Announcing that we were going to go vigorously after our own 
resources, I, at least, believe would have impact on that last topic 
you brought up, the futures market. If we announced we were going after 
substantial resources that we have, in fact, resources that are now 
believed to be significantly more substantial than they were 5 or 10 
years ago, that would have impact on the futures market. And we should 
be looking at that market and see what's driving that and what we could 
do about it, in addition to thinking we're going to just simply 
regulate a worldwide market from the United States of America.

  I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding.
  My friend mentioned the Outer Continental Shelf, and I agree with 
him. But the facts I have are this. Four times more natural gas is 
available in areas already open to drilling. Let me reiterate that. In 
areas already approved and open for drilling, four times more natural 
gas is available than in OCS waters protected by the moratorium.
  In other words, that which is protected has only 25 percent perceived 
to be available than does the already approved available Outer 
Continental Shelf areas. So if we started vigorously pursuing 
exploration and drilling in those areas, we'd get 75 percent more than 
we get now.
  In fact, the figure is that we are using only 18 percent of the 7,740 
active leases currently available on the Outer Continental Shelf, only 
1,655 are in production; so that when we talk about the problem is that 
the Democrats are not allowing us to drill and explore and to recover 
resources that are in our Outer Continental Shelf or on our lower 48, 
that is not, I think, accurate. I think it's not accurate because of 
the extraordinarily high percentage of currently approved leaseholds 
that are not being utilized in this very day.
  Now, I'm sure that the oil companies, very frankly, want to increase 
supply and see prices come down. I say that somewhat with tongue in 
cheek. If perhaps we were finding more supply, utilizing those 
leaseholds, perhaps the price would not be quite as high and the 
profits wouldn't be either.
  But I will tell you that Americans are, at $4 a gallon, seeing the 
companies that are selling them oil receiving extraordinarily high 
profits. God bless them for getting profits. They have invested, 
they've worked hard. They put their capital at risk. I'm for that.
  But at the same time, when they are failing to use leaseholds that 
would bring more supply, that would presumably then bring down the 
price, I think the American public have a right to ask, why are we only 
using 18 percent of the currently available leaseholds on the Outer 
Continental Shelf and about one-quarter or a little less than one-
quarter of what's available on the mainland?
  I yield back to my friend.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for yielding.
  I was actually pleased to hear two things there. One is I heard my 
good friend use the word ``drilling'' in a positive sense, and that's 
good news.
  Mr. HOYER. I have an automobile.
  Mr. BLUNT. And two is the numbers I see for the deep water drilling 
of natural gas indicate that there is an 18-year supply in the deep 
water. If you're right, and there's four times that supply on public 
lands that could be drilled on, I suppose that means we have almost a 
100-year supply of natural gas if we just go after it. We should find 
out whatever it takes to go after that, and insist that that happen.
  My view is both, and wherever the infrastructure is most amenable to 
getting that natural gas and oil into the energy system the quickest, 
that's where we should be drilling the quickest. If we've got a 
leasehold that's 500 miles away from the nearest place you can hook it 
up to a line, that's probably less appealing than a leasehold somewhere 
in the deep water or other places that's near a current way to get that 
gas or that oil into the system.
  I do know in the 181 area that we opened in 2006 in the gulf, opened 
for a brief period of time, that there's one 2-acre platform there, at 
least I'm told there's a 2-acre platform there that's producing roughly 
10 percent of all the natural gas that we're producing in the United 
States of America.
  I do believe that these resources are greater than we thought they 
were 5 or 10 years ago. I think we ought to be pursuing that on all 
fronts.
  I saw where one of our colleagues in the Senate, the senior Senator 
from New York, said that if we had a million barrels more of oil every 
day, that that would reduce pump prices by 50 cents a gallon. I'm not 
sure how he calculates that, but I'm prepared to accept that.
  A million barrels is what we'd be getting from ANWR today if we'd 
started drilling there 12 years ago, or any of the other times that the 
Republican House sent a bill to the Senate that would have allowed 
that. There may be other million-barrel locations, as my friend has 
just suggested there were, that we should vigorously be pursuing, and 
we are eager to have that discussion on the House floor, see it had on 
the Senate floor, see something get on the President's desk that 
encourages American use of American resources for America's future.
  I yield.
  Mr. HOYER. My friend, at the beginning of his last comments, said 
``on public lands.'' I want to make it very clear that the implication, 
perhaps that we're not allowing that on public lands, there are, as I 
said, 80 percent of the already authorized spots on public land not 
being utilized today; so that this is not a question of where we have 
not authorized drilling. We're for that. We want to find more product.
  What we are saying is that we have now got the majority of authorized 
spots being unutilized. Now, why that is so, when the product is 
getting the highest price it's ever gotten, which ought to be 
incentive, in and of itself, to look for new product and to explore and 
to drill and to get new product to the market, which would then bring 
the price down.
  I hope that nobody is controlling supply simply to escalate price. We 
know that when demand goes up and supply is constrained, that prices 
inevitably rise. The American public is paying the price for that. 
Great profits are being made. But it is adversely affecting our economy 
and our families. And we share your view that we want to address this 
problem.
  But I want to say, we talk about today. Unfortunately, for too long, 
I'm old enough to have experienced the gas lines of the late seventies 
where you waited hours to get gasoline in your car. Hopefully that 
won't reoccur.
  But had we, Democrats and Republicans, Americans all, focused in a 
disciplined way on looking for, developing more efficient automobiles, 
more efficient refrigerators and other electric utilities, focused on 
conservation, focused on alternative sources of energy, we would be far 
ahead of the game.

[[Page H5365]]

                              {time}  1515

  In the final analysis, we cannot get distracted, in my opinion. We 
need to go down both paths, making sure today we have the most 
efficient process possible but that tomorrow we're energy independent, 
because in the final analysis, that will be the only way in which we 
will continue to keep our economy moving, our national security intact, 
and our environment clean and healthy.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend.
  I believe for those things that look toward better solutions for the 
future, better conservation now, we all should be focused there. We 
also should be focused on using American resources, and frankly asking 
every question why they haven't been used. Again, I will just conclude 
my remarks by saying I know that these leases have been almost doubled 
in the last 7 years. And how long it takes to develop, some of them 
issued only in the last 1 or 2 years for 10 years at a time, I don't 
know what the planning is on that, but I am absolutely committed to the 
most efficient and effective use of America's resources for America's 
future, and I would like to see this Congress work together to get 
there.

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