[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 102 (Thursday, June 19, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H5707]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OIL DRILLING IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for Ms. 
Kaptur, who just spoke. She and I have been friends for a long, long 
time, and I agree with much of what she just said.
  We really need to move toward energy independence, and we need to use 
alternative methods of getting our independence. The problem is it's 
going to take time. If we use solar, if we use wind power, if we use 
all of these alternative sources, it's going to take time. It isn't 
going to happen in 1 year, 2, 3, or 4 years where we can not rely on 
oil or gas any longer. It's going to take time. In the meantime, 
Americans are paying $4-plus per gallon of gasoline because we don't 
have the oil necessary to keep the cost of gasoline down.
  She is absolutely correct. We depend too much on foreign sources of 
oil. We depend on Saudi Arabia. We depend on Venezuela, which is not a 
friend of ours. We depend on Canada, on Mexico and on other countries 
throughout the world. We ought to be drilling right here in America. We 
have enough energy in this country to become energy independent.
  Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, well, that's 
going to take time. It may take 10 years, if we get oil out of the 
ground today, to get it to market. Well, if that is the case, we still 
should do it, but experts whom I've talked to who have geological 
backgrounds say that we can start getting that oil to market within 1 
or 2 years, and we could force the price of oil down very quickly if we 
decide we're going to drill here because it's going to put pressure on 
those who are producing oil that we're using around the world. It's 
going to force them to reevaluate the cost that they're charging us for 
the oil we're getting from them.
  Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, oh, these 
oil companies have all of these permits, and they ought to be drilling 
where they have those permits now. Those permits run 5 to 10 years. If 
they don't drill in those areas, then those permits expire, and they're 
bid on by somebody else.
  So why would an oil company not want to drill if they have a permit?
  It's because, when they get that permit, they don't know how much oil 
is down there, and they're certainly not going to invest millions or 
billions of dollars to drill for oil when they know it's not there. 
Once they get the permit, they do a geological study, and they do 
seismic studies to find out if there's oil down there. If there is no 
oil there, they don't drill, and so they don't utilize their permits. 
That's why we need to get more land available for drilling.
  Right now, on the Continental Shelf, we're using 3 percent of the 
available area. Ninety-seven percent is not being explored. We can do 
that in an environmentally safe way, and we ought to allow these oil 
companies to drill in those other areas and get permits to do it. If 
there's oil there, they're going to drill there.
  Why don't they drill in some of these other areas where there might 
be some oil?
  Well, it costs $2 billion to explore and to build an oil derrick, a 
platform, out in the Gulf of Mexico or out on the Continental Shelf. If 
they can't make $2 billion back, they ain't going to drill there. 
That's why these permits, many times, are not useful, and that's why we 
need to explore in other areas.
  Now I'd like to also talk really briefly about the ANWR. They have 
done geological studies up there, and they know that there are billions 
of barrels of oil up there. If we drill there, we can get 1 million 
barrels of oil a day to help lower the price of gasoline in this 
country.
  So, Mr. Speaker, if I were talking to Americans tonight instead of to 
my colleagues--and I can't do that because we can't address Americans--
I would say this: You ought to contact your Congressman and Senators 
and say, ``I want my gas prices reduced, and I want you to drill in 
America. I want you to move this country toward energy independence.'' 
We talked about it 30 years ago under the Carter administration, and we 
never did it.
  If I were talking to them, Mr. Speaker, I would say that you ought to 
tell your Congressman to get with the program, to drill in America, to 
make us energy independent, and to bring down the price of energy, 
especially that of our gasoline.

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