[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 101 (Wednesday, June 18, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5552-H5559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICAN ENERGY NEEDS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Madam Speaker, it is great to be back tonight to
address some of the concerns that most Americans have today, and that
is the cost of energy.
Let me start out by saying that I have gotten numerous calls and e-
mails concerning the price that the average American is paying for gas
today. As most Americans realize, gas is up over $4 a gallon. When the
110th Congress started and the new majority took over, after telling
the American people that they had a commonsense plan to bring down the
skyrocketing price of gas, and keep in mind at the time it was about
$2.20 a gallon, we have seen the price of gas go up to $4.05 now.
I have had many people call and ask me if I had signed the petition
on several Internet sites, such as AmericanSolutions.com and some other
sites that were out there where the American people could go and sign a
petition telling us, Madam Speaker, Members of Congress, that they
wanted us to drill now, drill here, and bring down the price of gas.
And so as I was thinking about that, I thought, you know, we are
hearing from our constituents about they want us to do something, to
take action, to bring down the price of gas because that's what we do
in this Congress, Madam Speaker, is we are here to help the American
people, and especially with their pocketbook.
So as I got to thinking about that, I said you know we all hear from
our constituents, but sometimes our constituents don't know how we
really feel because a lot of times these issues are not brought to the
floor, or when they are brought to the floor they are so convoluted and
so hard to understand that someone could go home and answer their
constituency as to why they voted for a bill or why they voted against
a bill because you could probably take either side on any piece of
legislation that is passed in this body. I said I need to come up with
the simplest thing that I can to make sure that the American people
understand and there can't be any wiggle room from their Member of
Congress where they stand on bringing down energy prices.
And so I came up with this petition. What this petition says is
``American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring onshore oil
online. Bring deepwater oil online. Bring new refineries online.'' We
have not opened a refinery in this country since the late 1970s.
So what I did, this is the petition we have had on the floor all
today for Members to sign. What it says is very simple; very, very,
simple, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas
prices for Americans.'' That's about as simple as it gets. It's not
politics. It's not gotcha politics, it is the kind of change that I
think the American people want, honesty and common sense. Honesty and
common sense.
So today we have had a total to date of 126 people out of 435 sign
this petition. So 126 out of the 435, and I hope that it will continue.
But I hope, Madam Speaker, that people understand that they can go to
House.gov/Westmoreland and find out if their Congressman has signed the
petition or not. And if not, you might want to ask them why because the
thing is pretty clear. It just says ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil
production to lower gas prices for Americans.''
That's about as simple as it gets. So we are proud to have this
petition and we are proud of the American people, Madam Speaker, for
going to these Web sites to sign these petitions to let us know how you
feel about paying these outlandish gas prices at the pump.
What I want to do is make sure that the American people know how
their Congressman feels about the pain they are suffering at the pump.
I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that some Members of Congress
do more work than others, and I want to congratulate you on taking the
time and making the effort to get Members on record as to how they feel
about drilling for oil and natural gas to get our energy prices down
and get the price of gasoline at the pump down. You are to be
congratulated. I watched you on television the other night, and I just
wish you had more time to get into more of the details because what you
say on the floor ought to be heard by people all across this country.
I took a 5-minute special order before this one, and I didn't get a
chance to go into some of the issues in depth that the American people
ought to know about because they hear so much on both sides of the
aisle. On that side of the aisle they say, oh, my gosh, the oil
companies have so many leases, they ought to drill on those leases,
both on American soil and also on the Outer Continental Shelf.
The fact of the matter is there are an awful lot of leases already
out there, given to the oil companies, but they are not going to drill
in those areas unless they know there is oil there. And that's why
there are seismic tests that take place. And those tests don't take
place until they get the lease. And that lease is for 5 to 10 years. If
they don't move on that lease within 5 to 10 years, then they have to
give the lease up and it is re-bid, and somebody else might go for that
lease.
But chances are they will do everything they can to find oil in that
5 or 10-year period because they don't want to lose a lease that has a
lot of oil within it. So they do seismic tests to find out if there is
oil there.
If they drill on a lease that is next to another lease, sometimes
they do test drills, if it looks like it is a promising lease or leases
around that area, they
[[Page H5553]]
are going to drill on all of them. When they drill for oil off the
Outer Continental Shelf or on the Continental Shelf, it costs $2
billion, up to $2 billion to erect a platform and a derrick and the
drilling process, to drill down and get that oil out of the ocean.
An oil company is not going to do that unless they think that there
is oil down there. Why would you spend $2 billion unless you know there
is oil there. That's why they get the leases and do the seismic
testing. Once they do the seismic testing, if it looks like there is
oil there, then they drill. They have to go through a very strenuous
program of getting more and different kinds of leases so they can
drill. But once they find there is oil on those leases that are already
available, they will drill there because they want to get the oil, they
want to make the money.
The problem we have is we are only using 3 percent of the Outer
Continental Shelf. The other 97 percent we are not drilling on. That
really is troubling because there may not be an awful lot of oil in
that 3 percent where they have the permits right now. But the other 97
percent, we know there is oil out there.
I would like to give a couple of facts that I think my colleagues and
the people of this country ought to know.
{time} 1845
We use 21.5 million barrels of oil a day. ANWR, and I think my
colleagues talked about this, is the size of Dulles Airport. You're not
going to kill the environment of Alaska if you drill in the ANWR.
Alaska's almost three times the size of Texas, and the size of the
Dulles Airport is not much bigger than Capitol Hill here, and we could
drill there in an environmentally safe way and get up to 1 to 2 million
barrels of oil a day.
ANWR has 10.4 billion barrels of oil, more than double the proven
reserves in Texas. And in April, the U.S. Geological Survey announced
there was estimated, now get this, 3.65 billion barrels of oil and 1.85
trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Montana and North Dakota.
On our coast lines there's 8.5 billion barrels of oil and 29.3
trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And you can go on and on and on and
on. We have the gas. We have the oil necessary to become energy
independent. We can get it in an environmentally safe way. And as my
colleague from Georgia has said time and time again, we need to go
after it.
We shouldn't be giving our money to the Saudis. They're not our best
buddies. They're supporting these madrassas that teach Wahabiism, which
is a radical form of Islam, all over the world. And they're using our
money that they get from us buying the oil over there, and we can get
this energy right here in America. And we can also, as my colleague has
said, bring the price of gasoline down. And that's what I think
Americans want all over this country.
The problem is, they may be confused because this young lady that was
just down here, a new Member, she came down and started quoting all
these statistics like there's this many leases and that many leases and
why aren't they drilling there because they can drill.
You're not going to drill unless a seismic test shows there's oil and
you do a test well in the ocean. You're not going to drill on land
unless there's a study that shows that there's oil down there. We know
that there's oil in the ANWR and so we ought to drill there.
All I can say to my colleague and to anybody that's paying attention
across this country is that we need to get all of the Congressmen on
board. My colleague's working his tail off to get it done. We need to
get everybody on board so we can drill for oil and natural gas in this
country, get the price of energy down, get the price of gas at the pump
down to way below where it is now. And we can do it, but what we have
to do is get every Congressman in this body on board and in supporting
drilling in America. We can do it.
And the American people have done it in the past. They've written
letters in when we tried to hold, when we tried to tax the interest on
their savings in the banks, they sent us cards that looked like snow
coming down in this place. And we ended up reversing ourselves and
saying we weren't going to tax or collect taxes at the bank when they
got interest on their savings. They didn't like that.
So if the American people, and I say this to my colleague from
Georgia, if the American people want us to drill in America they need
to contact their Congressman and say get on with it. Quit messing
around. Drill for oil here. We want to be energy independent. We've
been talking about it for over 30 years. It's time to act.
With that, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend from Indiana for being here with
me and supporting this initiative that we have. And I want to just hit
on a couple of points that Congressman Burton made.
You can go to house.gov/westmoreland and find out who has signed a
petition that basically just says, I will vote to increase U.S. oil
production to lower gas for Americans. There are also some links to
some other sites where you can get some of these energy facts that
we're giving you and find the truth for yourself.
One of the things that he mentioned was the size of ANWR and where
we're drilling. And he mentioned that the drilling site is about the
size of Reagan Airport. And it is, in comparison to the total State of
South Carolina. Here is the comparison of ANWR to the Continental
United States. You can see the size of Alaska compared to the United
States. This is the wildlife refuge here, and we will show you, in a
moment, Madam Speaker, what this wildlife, the refuge area looks like.
Here is the drilling site up here. So you can see that this is, the
ANWR, the wildlife is about the size of South Carolina. And where
they're talking about drilling is about the size of Reagan Airport, in
comparison. You can see how much land is there.
The other thing the gentleman from Indiana mentioned was the amount
of land; 68 million acres is what the majority party claims is out
there, and that may be a true statement. I can tell you that 54 percent
of the exploratory holes that have been drilled between 2002 and 2007,
54 percent of them were dry holes.
Now, we all want to use common sense. We don't go to the hardware
store to buy groceries. So why would you drill somewhere that there's
no oil? You wouldn't do it. Or no natural gas. Why would you do that?
You would not do it.
And so after they do all of these tests that they do that is required
by the government for them to do, they find out on these leases that
have been offered up by our government that there is no oil. There is
no energy resource there, so why are we saying drill there?
Now, also I've heard that these energy companies are stockpiling
these leases. Well, that's not true. It's already in law that if they
don't drill, they lose it. If they do not go with the terms of the
lease, they lose that lease. And so if they have a problem with them
not drilling where they said they would drill in the time that they
said they would drill, according to the lease agreement with the
government, that's not their problem. That's our problem, that we're
not enforcing the laws that we have. And so, you know, there's a lot of
myth going on here, Madam Speaker.
But I did want to bring up one thing because I think this is really
what gets my blood boiling when I think about our dependence on foreign
oil. Let's look at Mr. Castro and Mr. Chavez down here. And I want to
read something to the American people, Madam Speaker, and to you and to
the people in this House. It says, in a recent interview on Al Jazeera,
Chavez called for the developing nations to unite against U.S.
political and economic policies. What can we do regarding the
imperialistic power of the United States? We have no choice but to
unite, he said. Venezuela's energy alliances with nations such as Cuba,
which receives cheap oil, are an example of how we use oil in our war
against neo-liberalism, he said.
Another quote, right down here under the picture of him hugging
Castro, or as he put it on another occasion, we have invaded the United
States, but with our oil.
The next thing over here, Madam Speaker, is a check that American
families and businesses write out every day to Hugo Chavez for
$170,250,000. That is a day. That money could be coming to American
companies and to
[[Page H5554]]
American workers and creating Americans jobs and bringing down the
price of gas at the pump for Americans.
Now, we're writing one of our enemies a check for $170 million a day
when we could be using that money to create jobs in this country.
The other thing I think is important to realize is that not only have
we not drilled and used our own natural resources for our own citizens,
but we've not built any refineries. Our refining capability has not
been added to since 1978. We have not built a new refinery.
Now, we are importing, and listen to this--this is not oil, crude oil
that we're importing--we are importing gasoline, a product that has
been refined in another country, we are importing about 6.9 billion
gallons of gasoline, refined crude oil into this country every year,
and probably the same amount in diesel.
There is no excuse for us sending our hard-earned dollars to foreign
countries when we could be doing it ourselves, and especially, going to
the pump and paying over $4 a gallon when this new majority for the
110th Congress had a commonsense plan to bring down skyrocketing price
of gas when it was $2.20.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say to the gentleman from Georgia,
he mentioned that we haven't built any new oil refineries since the
late 1970s, and he's correct. But there's one other thing that he
didn't mention. I know he knows this.
In 1981 we had 324 oil refineries. Today we have 148, less than half.
There's no way that we can handle the oil that we could get out of the
ground to lower the price of gasoline unless we build new refineries.
And we've come up with an idea to put it on some of these closed
military bases around the country, and our colleagues on the other side
of the aisle have not seen fit to agree to that.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Last month we had a motion to recommit that
demanded that within 90 days we recognized three bases that had been
under the BRAC, or the base realignment, to start looking at refineries
and it was voted down by the majority.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Yes.
Along those lines, they say, well, it's going to take 10 years if we
start drilling. It's going to take 10 years if we start refining it. I
don't think that's the case. Most people think in 2 or 3 years we could
really be pumping a lot of new oil out of the ground if we were allowed
to drill for it, and we could refine it and get it in the gas tanks of
the people across this country.
But even if it did take 10 years, when do we start? We were talking
about this back during the Carter years in the late seventies. That's
30 years ago. And we haven't done a darn thing about it.
If we're going to keep the cost of energy down, with the demand for
energy growing at a very rapid rate around the world, China wants more,
everybody wants more oil to expand their economies, building new roads
and everything else. There's a war going on right now for the oil
that's available, the energy that's available in this world. If we're
going to be able to keep pace, which will help us economically, and, in
fact, maybe save us economically, we're going to have to drill in
America for oil and gas. We're going to have to get on with the
program.
I can't talk to the American people, but if I were talking to the
American people, like my colleague from Georgia would like to do, I'd
tell them get on with it. Call your Congressman. Write them. Sign all
these petitions and tell them we want to be energy independent; we want
to drill here in America.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you.
My friend, Mr. Peterson, who is a real expert on energy, I'm glad you
joined us tonight.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Well, it's a delight to join you. It's
a historic day. Natural gas hit $13.28 a thousand cubic feet. That's
almost double what it was last year at this time. What that means is
Americans heating their 60 million homes this fall will pay almost
twice as much to heat them as they did last year, on top of tremendous
price increases to travel in their vehicles.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. So if they think the price at the pump is painful,
wait till they start trying to stay warm.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. This has all happened without a storm
in the gulf, which always escalates prices, without any country having
a major coup or problem, or without any terroristic attack on the
system. I don't think anybody dreamed that we would have $135 to $140
oil at this time of the year. We are in the middle of June. We're not
even into the heat of the driving season yet, and here we are with $13,
I mean, we're within a few pennies of the peak of natural gas prices
after Katrina.
Dow Chemical made a statement just a week or so ago that in 2002 it
cost them $8 billion for natural gas to run their company. It now costs
them $8 billion a quarter.
Here's what's happened. They used to be 60 percent onshore. Those
were great American jobs. They're now 34 percent onshore.
In South America natural gas is a buck and a half. In Russia it's
barely over a buck. I mean, there's cheap gas all over the world. If
you're making petrochemicals, polymers, plastics, fertilizer, if you're
melting steel, melting aluminum, I want to tell you, if this Congress
does not change its view on offshore, shale oil and ANWR in the very
near future, bricks and glass will be made in Trinidad, South America.
They will be shipped here in a day and a half in a boat, and there will
not be a blue collar job left in America, because natural gas is the
mother's milk of manufacturing and processing.
{time} 1900
They use it as an ingredient. Even the skin creams that our women
love to soften, that's a derivative of natural gas. Natural gas is one
of the most unique--chemists say we should never burn it. It's too
valuable. But we are now using a lot of it for electric generation; 23
to 24 percent of our generation is now natural gas. And that is as we
cease to permit coal plants around the country, they're all going to be
natural gas plants. If the Senate continues its foolishness with carbon
taxes and CO2s, that's all going to push the business to a
natural gas which only emits one-third of the CO2 of other
fossil fuels. But we're not preparing. We need to.
Today we had a committee meeting scheduled, and my chart here shows--
it's interesting the Democrat talking points say that 80 percent of
available resources are available to the American companies. That's not
true. Eighty-five percent of our offshore is not available, period. The
whole west coast is not available. The whole east coast is not
available. About a third of the gulf is not available. That's where the
prime oil and gas is in this country. They have it locked up. They want
it locked up. They like these high prices because it's forcing
Americans to change to other fuels. That is true.
But let me tell you, I'm not sure how long the American economy can
handle $130 oil and $13 natural gas without collapsing. And once this
economy collapses and the world economy goes into a recession, we're
going to be a decade digging ourselves out of the hole. There will
never be money to balance the budget. There will never be money for
heat and helping people winterize their homes. This country is on the
verge of losing its economic base.
Cheap energy. I was born one mile from Drakes Well, the first oil
well. It changed the world. The whole manufacturing process of the
world began in this country because of cheap energy. We've had $10 oil
and $2 natural gas most of our lifetime. We had a spike in the 1970s,
we had a spike in the 1980s, and a spike in the 1990s. We went to
renewables. We tried to do other things, but it always came back to
cheap gas and cheap oil. Nothing could compete.
Well, folks, there's a philosophy around here that if we don't
produce fossil fuels, we're going to produce something else. I'm saying
``what.'' What are we going to produce? If we double wind and solar--
and I'm for that in the next 5 years--but that doubling something in 5
years is ambitious. We're still less than one percent of our energy
needs.
I mean, there is no renewable. The renewable that has been the most
generous to us and the most growth is woody biomass. Nobody talks about
woody biomass. Hasn't had any incentive. No tax incentives. There's a
million Americans this year probably going to help heat their homes
with a wood pellet stove. Burning sawdust pellets. That's biomass. Many
companies
[[Page H5555]]
in my district--I come from the finest hardwood forest in America,
northern Pennsylvania. Lots of mills. Lots of factories. The sawdust
now is a byproduct. They heat their factories with it. Some of the coal
plants use 20 percent wood waste because it allows them to sneak under
the air standards if the coal is just a little dirtier than it should
be. So it has found its marketplace.
And the cellulosic ethanol that we're betting on. We have a mandate
of 36.5 million gallons of--or 36.5 billion gallons of ethanol annually
by 2030. The first 15 to be corn, and we know what's happened there
where we're now at $7.86 corn as the market closed today. It was $1.80
just a short time ago. We're competing food with fuel. I didn't protest
it. I had my concerns. But $8 corn is not something you can afford to
burn.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Absolutely.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Isn't it true that we have a 54 percent tariff on
ethanol brought into this country? Fifty-four cents a gallon on ethanol
brought into the country, and already right now corn is at $7.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. What, $7.86.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. And with the devastation that we've had in Iowa, in
some of the corn-producing States, it would be nice if we just give a
temporary halt to that tariff to get this ethanol in.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That is true. But I want to make a
point there. I'm not against ethanol. After the 15 million they want to
go to--or billion gallons, they want to go to cellulosic.
But we have to remember we have a mandate on cellulosic ethanol that
still is in the laboratory. We do not yet have the design of a
successful cellulosic ethanol plant that we know will be productive
that will compete. So that's pushing.
I wish we were pushing coal to liquids and coal to gas with the same
fervor because we know Fisher Tropes and two or three other messes, we
could make gasoline, we could make fuel oil, we could make jet fuel out
of coal. But no. There has not been much pushing for that.
I am encouraged that the President came out for offshore, but that's
a big move. We've been pushing him a long time. He didn't come out
quite as strong as I had hoped. He said he would lift the Presidential
moratoria if we lifted the congressional moratoria. I think he should
have lifted his first and said, I'm lifting the Presidential. You lift.
But he didn't. But I want to give him credit for going there.
I want to give candidate McCain credit. He's come out. Offshore. That
was not his normal position. And someone said, Well, he's a flip-
flopper. Well, folks, when you see the light, when you see the facts--
you know, just a few years ago the argument was we should use theirs.
It was cheap. We shouldn't be using ours. Well, that's not true any
more. At $135 a barrel and $13 a thousand for gas, it's time to use
ours.
We enrich Americans. I mean, for us not to create the hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of jobs in the production of energy in this
country and put Americans to work producing our energy, we could be
self-sufficient in natural gas, we could have reasonable natural gas
prices. Natural gas could actually fuel a third of our auto fleet. All
of our short-hauled vehicles, all of our construction vehicles, all of
the little vehicles running around at the airport, all of those could
be on clean green natural gas. No NOX, no SOX,
and a third of the CO2. It could be compressed gas or it
could be propane. Either one. They all can run--that's known
technology. Why we're not going down that road, I don't know.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, Mr. Peterson, let me say this. We have that
technology, and there was a push in the late 1990s, mid- to late-1990s
to convert gasoline engines to propane. Then the EPA put such testing
regulations on the emissions testing for these different types of makes
and models of cars, a lot of people just got out of the business. It
was not a commonsense thing for EPA to do. They should have gone to
these people doing the conversions and said, What can we do to make it
easier and faster for you to do this propane conversion and the same
thing with natural gas?
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. It's hard for me to understand because
natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline. And as we were talking,
somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of our gasoline now comes from
Europe. How does Europe have extra? Well, they've switched to diesel.
They have diesel cars. They have extra capacity.
A year ago in the spring we had very high gasoline prices. Not this
spring but last spring. And remember they were higher than they were in
the fall when oil was much higher. I think oil was $60-some a barrel
and we had $3 gas and everybody wondered why. Well, in the spring when
we start switching and using more gasoline, Europe was short
themselves. They had used more gasoline. They didn't have the surplus
they normally supplied us, so they couldn't supply our needs.
So when you don't have enough, the market goes up. We didn't have
enough gasoline in the world market, and so we paid higher gasoline
prices last spring with $63 oil than we did last fall with $85 and $90
oil. Didn't make any sense, but that is the marketplace because Europe
could not give us. But we're dependent on Europe.
But back to natural gas. It just amazes me because here is what
scares me: $13 natural gas is not a world price. That's an American
price. We have the highest natural gas prices in the world. So many
Members of Congress can't seem to understand that that it's not a world
commodity. It's country by country.
And so when you have the highest prices for natural gas and your
company, like Dow Chemical uses $8 billion a quarter. That's $32
billion a year. You have got to produce your products where it's
cheaper, and when it's a fraction of our cost--it's not like a half or
a third--it's a fraction, sometimes, in some of those countries.
So we're going to lose all of the industries. We won't melt steel in
this country. We won't bend products. We will be cooking products in
other countries because you use a lot of gas for heat. Anything that
uses a lot of natural gas, if we don't get that under control--and the
silly part of that is, we could be self-sufficient in our total
lifetime. There is no shortage of natural gas, onshore and offshore,
and this country tried to lock up their own plateau.
In the last appropriations bill they locked up the shale oil in the
west, sneaked it in the bill. Of course, the prohibition of drilling
offshore is not legislation. It's stuck in the Interior bill. I was
here 5 or 6 years before I knew it was there, and when I started
talking about it, most Members of Congress didn't know it because it
started 28 years ago. We have a vote every year. You know, today that
vote was canceled. I'm not quite sure why.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Did the gentleman offer an amendment in the
appropriations bill that was voted down?
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. In the first subcommittee last
Wednesday we had six Republicans ``yes'' and nine Democrats ``no.''
Now, it's not totally been a partisan issue. This was the first time
they locked up their vote.
This new administration here, the Speaker and her team, have been
very good at locking up votes. You have to admire them. They can get
people to vote against their districts, vote against what they believe.
But they've decided they're not going to open up the Outer Continental
Shelf.
Now, we were interested today whether they would still lock them up,
whether they could hold them because in 2006 we passed a major offshore
bill. We had 40-some Democrat votes. There are a lot of Democrats here
who realize energy's important, and to produce your own is not some
evil thing. With 67 percent dependency on oil, and half of that comes
from unstable, unfriendly countries who gave us our tariffs, it would
seem to me that everybody could agree let's eliminate at least half of
our foreign dependence; let's stop feeding our enemy; let's stop
allowing giving them the cash to buy up our Chrysler building, buy up
our companies, buy up our industries. You know, industries in this
country are getting purchased by foreign countries, and most of them
are people who have our oil money.
I don't think this is the America that Americans want. But I want to
tell you
[[Page H5556]]
something. I have faith in the American people. There's a debate going
on right now. I have been on four different talk shows today. I have
been on probably five or six radio shows today. Lots of print media
yesterday. I did 15 different discussions. The American people are
angry.
Newt Gingrich came out with a poll: 73 percent of Americans want
offshore production. Rasmussen came out with a poll Monday: 63 percent
in their poll. It's going up daily because this is a discussion going
on in this country, and they're mad. They're mad as hell. And they
ought to be mad because we are locking--this Congress for 28 years has
locked up America's resources that every other country uses.
There is no country in the world--Norway, Sweden, are they
environmentally friendly countries? You bet they are. New Zealand,
Australia, are they environmentally-sensitive countries? You bet. They
all produce offshore.
Offshore is not a threat to our beaches, it's not a threat to our
shorelines. It's a savior. It's where our cities are, it's where our
population is, it's where our refineries are, where our gas lines are.
You know, in New York City in zero weather, sometimes we will pay two
and three times the American price for natural gas in zero weather
because they can't get enough there. The price when the world is paying
10, they'll pay 25 or 30 for a few days at a time because if we had
offshore production, we could feed them their--these cities wouldn't be
paying these outrageous prices when cold weather comes.
Last year for the first time--because we use so much for electricity
now--last year for the first time in the history of this country, in
two summer months when it was really hot, we made so much electricity
with natural gas because in a real hot week, all of the peaking plants
run all day long. They run all day long because that's the only way to
keep the grid up. We actually drew down gas out of the reserve.
See, at this time of the year we don't use all of our gas so we put
it in reserve. We're putting $13 gas in the ground for next winter. Add
storage costs, add pipeline charges, and a profit for the gas-
distribution company, you're talking about pretty expensive gas. Last
year we were putting $6.50 and $7 gas in the ground this time of year.
Americans do not know what is coming. The industrial users are
already paying 70 percent more this year because it passes through
quicker to them. But in my State, PUC, every 90 days they adjust the
price. This fall Americans are going to get hit with another bullet.
It's going to be expensive home heating. And we should be doing
something about it.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. We need to be doing something about it, and that's
what we're trying to do.
And to my friend from Pennsylvania, and thank you for coming down
tonight and helping Mr. Burton and myself with this because we know
that you are an expert on it and that you have been trying to correct a
situation. Even when the Republicans were in the majority, you were the
lone voice crying in the wilderness about this; and I really wish we
would have paid more attention.
But now is the time when natural gas is $13-plus, the price at the
pump is over $4, the price of oil in a barrel is up to about $140. And
the gentleman mentioned some of the Norwegian countries. And you know
Norway, you know, 30 years ago was dependent on foreign oil. And they
said, You know what? We're going to do something about it.
{time} 1915
Norway is dependent on tourism, fishing. I mean, they are very
conscious of their natural resources. Today, they are the third largest
exporter of crude oil in the world.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman would yield, the other
success story we all hear about is Brazil. Doesn't everybody say Brazil
is independent because of ethanol? Fifteen percent of their energy is
ethanol. They went offshore. They just had a huge oil find offshore,
but they are self-sufficient. They don't import energy anymore.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. And they're celebrating. I saw in the paper where
they found that big oil reserve offshore, and the Brazilian people were
celebrating over finding it, and we know it's there and can't even get
our country to drill.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. We keep hearing from over there that it
was all ethanol. Ethanol was just a piece. It was 15 percent. The rest
was normal oil and gas energy. But they had a plan.
I think we ought to have a plan for North America. Stop and think
about Alaska and Canada. Canada is great. Canada produces oil and gas
right off our main coast.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. We import from them.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Fifteen percent of our natural gas
comes from them, and they are our largest supplier of oil by far.
Right off the Washington coast they produce. They have produced since
1913 in Lake Erie and sell us the gas. They drill gas only in Lake Erie
every summer. They don't do it in the winter, but they do it every
summer and sell us the gas. And we aren't even allowed to drill under
the lakes horizontally.
It makes no sense what we're doing in this country. Yesterday, I read
an article that we ought to be partnering with Russia because they have
so much resources and we need to be better friends with them. I'd
rather help Mexico because they have great resources but aren't very
good at producing them. They're not very efficient at producing energy.
But they have a lot of gas and a lot of oil.
If we had a North American game plan, where Mexico, the United
States, and Canada, and Alaska, where we said let's produce our own
energy, we could get there. I don't think we can be self-sufficient on
our own, I mean that sincerely. I don't see it ever will in our
lifetime, but we could be self-sufficient in North America, and we
could say to OPEC: ``So long, see ya.''
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If the gentleman would yield, first of all, I
would really appreciate if I could get the information on natural gas
that you just gave us tonight because I was aware that it was a major
problem, but I didn't know it was as big a problem as it is and is
going to be.
And I'd just like to say something about the polls that show that
people are becoming more and more concerned about energy and natural
gas and gasoline.
The people are ahead of Congress. The majority, not too long ago,
were saying environmental concerns were by far the biggest problem that
we face. Now, seventy-some percent are saying, hey, we want to clean up
the environment but at the same time we want to keep the economy moving
and we want gasoline at a price we can afford and natural gas at a
price we can afford. And so seventy-some percent now say drill in
America. They know. They see it.
And if our Congress doesn't do something about it, as you said, we're
probably going to suffer the consequences. I will make a prediction. At
that point, there will be a knee-jerk reaction and they will throw
everything to the wind, say drill everywhere, do whatever it takes, but
at that point, it is going to take a long time to catch up, and our
economy could suffer tremendously.
I'd just like to make one more comment about the Persian Gulf. The
Persian Gulf is a tinderbox right now. We don't know what Iran's going
to do. If Iran develops a nuclear capability, there may be a major war
over there because Israel is not going to want to be threatened like
they are threatened, and we could end up seeing a couple of ships sunk
in the Persian Gulf and see a large percentage of our energy stopped
flat, stopped. And if that happens, we're not going to have the energy
to keep this economy moving immediately, immediately, not to mention
the problems that you were talking about a minute ago.
I'd like for you to explain to me, if it's okay with the gentleman
who has the time, I'd like you to explain to me why the United States
can't be completely energy independent. Because when I look at these
statistics on the trillions of cubic feet of gas that's there and the
billions of barrels of oil that's there, it seems to me that if we just
dealt with our own resources, we could become almost energy
independent.
[[Page H5557]]
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Well, we're so far behind the curve
right now, we were talking to Minerals and Mines Management today. Many
of our rigs went to Russia to drill because there's so much more
activity there. The big owners go where the action is, and they're
being paid bonuses to go to North Africa to drill. We don't have as
many rigs in the gulf. Thirty percent of our rigs are gone. Our
infrastructure has dwindled because we've not opened up.
Now, the issue of can we be self-dependent, we would have to open up
everything. It would take years to get the rigs here. We'd have to do
coal-to-liquids, coal-to-gas. I mean, it would take a long time.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I guess the point I was trying to make is I
know it would take a long time because we are behind the curve, but if
the United States got with the program like we should have back in the
seventies, we could be almost energy independent right now.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Twenty percent of our grid is nuclear.
We need 45 new plants by 2030 online to stay 20 percent of the grid,
not grow. See, everything's shrinking. Hydro is becoming a smaller
piece because we're not building dams. Everything's shrinking.
Nuclear stayed even because all of our nuclear plants today are
producing beyond their design capacity. We have enhanced their ability
to make energy. I mean, America on nuclear needs to get on to what
France has been doing, the reprocessing and reuse the fuel we have
instead of storing it, where we use it, and when you get down to the
end, you have very little fuel.
But this country made a decision legislatively, we're not going to
reprocess, we're not going to go down that road. So we've made a lot of
bad decisions.
And I say, how did this happen? Eight years ago, natural gas was $2;
oil was $10. The argument was, do we use theirs or do we use ours? Just
10 years ago. In fact, we hit that a couple times 6 or 7 years ago. We
had some real cheap energy just for a few months there. We got so
complacent.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I wish you would really stress that point and
the gentleman from Georgia would stress that point that natural gas 10
years ago was $2.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. $1.80.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And oil was how much?
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. $10 a barrel. That's been most of our
lifetime.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And now it's 14 times that.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Unbelievable.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. To the point the gentleman makes, if we had started
back in the seventies or the eighties or the nineties, we'd be further
down the road. I don't want my grandkids to say, ``Pa Pa, why didn't
you start it in 2008?''
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. I don't want to have to answer that question to my
grandkids.
If you will remember, this Congress in 1995 passed drilling in ANWR.
President Clinton vetoed it. Today, we would be getting 1 million
barrels of oil a day from ANWR.
The American people do not want us to stay here in the fetal
position. They want us to act. And they don't want to hear the excuses
that the majority is giving for us not taking action. We need to act,
and some of the things that the gentleman has mentioned are so common
sense.
I mean, we can drill as environmentally sensitive as anybody in this
world. Our technology is the best. We've got the smartest and the
brightest. We can do what France is doing with their nuclear waste. We
can do what France is doing with their nuclear power. We can do what
Brazil is doing with the coal-to-oil. We can do what Norway's doing
with being environmentally sound drilling.
This is America. This is the place where we are the leaders of the
world in so many things, and for some reason, we want to have our hat
in our hand, going to even our enemies, begging them for them to
increase their oil production, use their natural resources, because we
are not willing to do it.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. America is a can-do Nation and we need a can-
do Congress. And right now, the Congress, and both the House and the
Senate, which is controlled by the other party, they have a we-can't-
do, we can't do this, we can't do that. As a result, we're going to be
short of energy, and the cost is going to go through the roof, and the
cost of gasoline per gallon is going to go up, I believe, even further.
What the American people I think need to do is call their Congressman
and Senators and say, hey, we want a can-do attitude, start drilling,
let's get energy independent.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman would yield, how did
this happen? I know how it happened. I'm going to give you eight--and
there's more than eight--eight organizations that are running this
Congress when it comes to energy.
It starts out with the Sierra Club. You know what their Web page
says? They're against oil shale development. We're not doing it.
They're against coal liquefaction. We're not doing it. They're against
offshore energy production. We're not doing it. They're winning.
Greenpeace: Phase out fossil fuels. We're trying to do it and we
don't have a replacement. That's really what's going on. We've caused
the world shortage.
Environmental Defense: Must eliminate power plant smokestacks, enemy
number one.
League of Conservation Voters: Coal-to-liquid, wrong direction, can't
do that. We're not doing it.
Defenders of Wilderness: Every coastal State is put in harm's way
when oil rigs go up. That's offshore. They're opposed. And they're
winning.
Natural Resources Defense Council: Coal mining is evil. And tell me
coal isn't under attack. Coal is under attack. Close to 70 coal plants
have been turned down by the States in the last 7 months.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. American jobs. We're losing American jobs.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. And those coal plants will all be
natural gas plants which will further exacerbate the natural gas
prices.
Center for Biological Diversity: Oil and gas drilling on public lands
has devastating effects and must be stopped. They're winning.
Friends of the Earth: Liquid coal is dirty, costly, mustn't do it.
They're winning.
These eight organizations are running this Congress.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. To the point that you're making, and I think that's
what, Madam Speaker, the American people don't understand, the reason
the majority is failing to act on our ability to drill in our own lands
is that their base wants gas to be $10 a gallon at the pump because
they do not want us driving cars, and they want us to be dependent on
them.
And so they are not doing anything. They are laying in that fetal
position in a hunkered-down state because their base does not want this
to come down. They don't want us to drill. They don't want us to use
the shale-to-oil or coal-to-oil. They don't want us to use the clean
coal technology that we have. They don't want us drilling for this
natural gas.
And this is one of the things that we were just talking about. The
gentleman from Pennsylvania mentioned these different organizations. If
you receive something in your mailbox about the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, you may get some pictures like this.
The reality of it is that is a real picture of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge right there. It's a tundra. It's a frozen tundra. It's
what it is. I don't even see a tree on it.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I wish you'd hold that chart up again that
shows how big the ANWR is. I think the American people are under the
impression that the ANWR is a huge place. It's the size of--you said
Reagan airport, I said Dulles, but airports are airports.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. This is the part that is talking about being
explored for oil.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. The very small part of the yellow at the top
is where ANWR is.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. That is the part that we know the billions of
gallons of oil are under. That's the part.
[[Page H5558]]
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. They have twice the amount of oil there that
they have in Texas, and I just cannot understand why we're not drilling
there.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. See, this is a picture of it. It's a frozen tundra.
It goes back to the fact that we are continually getting further and
further behind. I think the American people, Madam Speaker, are at a
point where they're saying we are wanting some action. And that's the
reason we came up with the petition for Members of Congress to sign
because we are the ones that can create the action. The American people
can't create the action. It's our duty to create the action.
And so we started the petition, and this is a petition for just the
Members, the elected Members of this body.
It says: American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring
onshore oil online, bring deepwater oil online. And I guess we need to
add natural gas to that, too, because that sounds like something we
need to get on in a hurry. But also bring new refineries, bring new
capabilities of refining this oil where we don't have to import 6.9
billion gallons of gas into this country a year.
And so what we did, we came up with a petition that's simple. This is
not hard for anybody to understand, and you can't dance around it. It
basically says: I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower
gas prices for Americans. And we've got every Member, even the
Delegates, a place to sign here. So far, out of the 435 Members, plus
the Delegates, I don't know if that's seven delegates or whatever it
is, we have 126 signatures. And so it's going good, and you can go to
house.gov/westmoreland to find out if your Member of Congress has
signed it or not.
We're trying to make this as simple as we can, to make us a
responsive body, a body of action, rather than just laying here saying
``we can't'' to ``we can.''
{time} 1930
And I think that the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman
from Indiana have made terrific points here tonight, and I want to
thank you all for coming.
We've got about 8 minutes, so I'll give you a couple minutes a piece
to close, and then we'll wrap it up.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, let me take just 1 minute and say that
this is a critical issue. The American people know it's a critical
issue, but I don't think they know how critical it is or how critical
it's going to be, the natural gas, the gasoline, the lack of energy,
the lack of electricity, possibly, if we don't get this.
And so, you know, it is a critical time for us. And the American
people really need to contact their Congressman and their Senators and
let them know that they want to move towards energy independence by
drilling here in the United States. We have the ability to move toward
energy independence. We have the ability to lower the price of
gasoline. We have the ability to lower the price of energy that's going
to be needed to heat our houses and our businesses this winter, but
we're not doing it. And if we don't get with it, as both my colleagues
have just said, we're going to reap the whirlwind. The economy is going
to really suffer. It's not going to just be individuals, it's going to
be the entire country.
I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Peterson.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Well, it's interesting, we have the
talking points of the Democrats that they have 68 million acres under
lease; there are--some are saying 5,500 leases, some are saying 10,000
leases: That's enough, they're not producing. I had one of them
challenge me in a debate today that he wanted me to join on a bill with
him to force the oil companies to drill where they are. Folks, if it's
not productive, if they've drilled 10 dry holes, they're not going to
drill anymore. And in some of those deep water leases, it's 7 or 8
years before you get to productivity.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just add one thing. Each one of those
drilling sites, if they drill and they find oil, it costs up to $2
billion to drill there. And if they're not going to make any money,
they're sure not going to do that.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. They're drilling platforms, and it
takes years to get there. So some of these are in process. A lot of
them are old, tired leases where we're now drilling between wells. And
the return, we're drilling three times as many wells as we used to and
we're getting much less oil and gas because we're in old, tired fields.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Twelve percent lower production and an increase in
drilling.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right. We need to get out into
the fertile fields where we'll drill less holes in the ground, but
we'll get massive prime production where you get into a fertile field
that's got great gas pressure and great oil pressure and we'll get huge
volumes.
We've been deprived. In fact, on the Outer Continental Shelf, we're
showing here, we've not even allowed seismographic in the last 35
years. We don't even have a modern measurement out there. We had old
seismographic, what we're measured by; but new seismographic is like
taking a black and white TV with a new modern flat screen TV. There's
not much comparison, is there? No. Well, we've prevented that.
I mean, I guess what's scary is that while we're talking about this
issue, you know what's going on in the Senate? They're talking about
climate change. They just voted down, thank God. And Mr. Markey's
committee here has a new climate change bill. If we go down the carbon
tax road, we're going to add another 20 or 30 percent to energy prices.
Nobody disputes that. That's insanity. I mean, available affordable
energy for America is the number one issue facing this country, and
anybody who isn't for that doesn't get with the American people. They
understand this.
Let me say this: If we don't deal with this issue in this Congress,
the middle class in America will be destroyed. We don't have more
years, we're years behind. The middle class in America will disappear
because by the time they heat their homes and fuel their vehicles,
they're not going to have money. I have a neighbor lady who makes $300
and something a week. She pays $175 a month annual gas bill to heat her
home. She has two kids, $100 a month to buy groceries. She said, if my
gas bill doubles, I don't have any food money. She's going to have to
get a second job and still try to raise two teen-age kids with a second
job to pay. Folks, that's not what America is about. Last year, we had
seniors in my district keep their houses at 58 degrees because they
couldn't afford to keep them warm. That's not the America we should be
providing.
If we don't deal with energy prices, the middle-class, blue-collar
jobs are all going to disappear. The middle class is going to
disappear. And we're going to have a country like so many other parts
of the world where we have the rich and the poor. And the government is
going to have to subsidize the poor because they can't afford energy.
It's a crisis in America. In fact, I think we're 4 or 5 years beyond
when we should have started. I don't quite know how we catch up. Every
day we delay, every month we delay, the American people are going to
pay a bigger price. This is not the America my father gave me in my
inheritance. I want to return our young people with hope, with
affordable energy.
Eight years ago energy was cheap; it's never going to be cheap again.
It's up to this Congress to do what's necessary and provide energy for
America. And all those talking points that the Sierra Club have given
the Democrats don't cut it.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you. And let me just close with saying this:
You're probably going to hear later on tonight that there are 68
million acres out there to drill on. Keep this in mind, Madam Speaker,
we don't go to the hardware store to buy groceries. We're not going to
drill on land that does not have resources under it. If you look at the
Outer Continental Shelf and the lands that the Federal Government have
inside this country, it is 2.5 billion acres of land. You're going to
hear that the oil companies have these leases and they're not drilling
them. It is law today that if a company that leases land does not honor
that lease agreement, that lease is taken away from them.
These arguments will not hold water. It is time to act, and the time
is now.
[[Page H5559]]
It is time that this Congress turns into a Congress of action that
wants to move forward--our being less dependent on foreign oil--and
quit relying on our enemies in an unstable region to produce our oil,
to produce our energy.
So I want to thank the two gentlemen for joining me tonight. I hope
you will go to house.gov/westmoreland and see the people that have
signed up and believe in the fact that we need to increase U.S. oil
production to lower the gas prices for all Americans.
And Mr. Peterson, you can close.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the Democrats win this debate and we
don't produce energy--if we use these old statements of 68 million
acres and 80 something percent is leased, that is not factual; 2.5
percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is leased, the good spots are
not leased--then we are giving the future of this country away.
Mr. WESTMORELAND. And Madam Speaker, with that, I know you have
enjoyed this, we yield back the balance of our time.
____________________