[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 103 (Friday, June 20, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5787-H5793]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1445
PEAK OIL
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Loebsack). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett)
is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that my
colleagues for the last hour helped to make the point that oil is high
and gasoline is high because there is an imbalance between supply and
demand. There are a lot of differences of opinion as to how we got
here, why we're here and what we ought to do to reduce the price of
gas.
The next chart is really an historical one. This whole saga begins in
1956 when a geologist of the Shell Oil Company gave a talk to a group
of physicians on the 8th day of March in San Antonio, Texas. And he
made a prediction which was an audacious prediction then. At that time,
the United States was the king of oil. We were producing more oil,
using more oil and exporting more oil than any other country in the
world. Here we were in 1956. He predicted that just 14 years later, in
1970, the United States would reach its maximum oil production. That
was sheer heresy then. Nobody believed him. He was ridiculed. But right
on schedule, 14 years later, in 1970, the United States peaked in oil
production.
Now he was predicting this for only the lower 48 States, which is
shown here, Texas plus the rest of the United States. Then we found a
lot of oil in Alaska. We found some oil in the Gulf of Mexico. And we
learned more and more how to get oil from natural gas liquids. By 1980,
looking back, you can see, gee, M. King Hubbert was really right,
wasn't he? We did reach maximum oil production in 1970. I'm going to
keep coming back to that.
[[Page H5788]]
The next chart shows this same curve. If you will look at the red
lines, that is up to 1970 and after 1970. The yellow triangles
represent the prediction of M. King Hubbert for the lower 48. The red
diamonds are what we actually produced because we found additional oil
in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico that he did not include in his
prediction. But notice that that just produced a blip in the slide down
the other side of Hubbert's peak. And there was a lot of oil. Alaska
alone for several years was one-fourth of our total production of oil.
This chart is presented by Cambridge Energy Research Associates to
convince you that M. King Hubbert didn't know what he was talking
about. Now if you were a statistician, you might be convinced. But for
the average American, they don't see this yellow triangle curve being
meaningfully different from the green squares. And the intent of this
presentation by CERA was to convince you that you really shouldn't
believe M. King Hubbert when he predicted that the world was going to
be peaking in oil about now because he was wrong about his prediction
of peaking in 1970. I would think just about everybody would say, gee,
he got it pretty right, didn't he? He predicted this, and this is what
it was, and that seems to follow pretty closely.
Now what do we mean by ``peaking?'' By ``peaking'' we mean that the
oil field, the country, the world, whatever universe you're looking at,
has reached its maximum production for producing oil. And this happens
in each individual oil field. And that is how M. King Hubbert was able
to so accurately makes his predictions because he noticed in an
individual oil field that the production of oil increased and increased
until you reached a high point at about which half the oil was pumped,
and the last half logically is going to be harder to get than the first
half, and so it's going to be less and less oil as you went down the
other side. He predicted that the United States would peak in 1970. We
did right on schedule.
And then in 1979, he predicted that the world would be peaking about
now. And here we have the data from the two entities, the IEA and the
EIA, that track the use, production and consumption of oil. And as you
can see, they are in reasonable agreement. And for roughly the past 3
years, oil production in the world has been flat. By the way, if they
were drawing this chart today, it would be a much taller one. They
would have to change the scale for the price of oil because they had it
here about $95 a barrel. Now it's way off the top of the chart, off 130
something dollars a barrel. But these two curves are still plateaued.
The next chart is a quote from what I think will shortly be
recognized as perhaps the most insightful speech given in the last
century. That speech was just found a few years ago and was put on the
Web. And you can get it by doing a Google search for Hyman Rickover,
the Father of our Nuclear Submarine and energy speech, or you can go to
our Website, and there is a link there.
It really was a very prophetic speech. Remember, that was 51 years
ago, the 14th day of this past May, to a group of physicians in St.
Paul, Minnesota. And these are some of the things he said in that
speech. And I hope you will pull it up and read the whole speech
because it's really very insightful and very prophetic. There is
nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were
created by solar energy 500 million years ago, he says, and took eons
to grow to their present volume. The world as a whole and our country
included has appeared to behave as if these fossil fuels were
inexhaustible. The plea now to reduce prices is simply to drill more.
What we will see shortly is that, as everyone will know, if you stop
and think about it, that oil is finite. It is not infinite. There is a
limited supply. The only thing that can be argued is how limited is
that supply? He says, in the face of the basic fact that fossil fuels
are finite, now our behavior has been a denial of this reality. In the
face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact
length of time these reserves will last is important in only one
regard: The longer they last, the more time do we have to invent ways
of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our
economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift.
Have you noticed anybody anywhere doing what he suggested here? I
really love this next paragraph because I think it really describes us,
I'm sorry to say. Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent
and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass
on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish
and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care
not one whit how his offspring will fare. I have 10 children, 16
grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. When I am asked to vote to
drill in the Arctic National Refuge and our public lands and offshore,
I remind them of the fact that I have these children, grandchildren and
great grandchildren. And I ask them, wouldn't it be nice if I left a
little oil for my kids, my grandkids and my great grandkids? When they
appeal to me to vote to drill in these places, I ask them, if you can
pump ANWR tomorrow, what would you do the day after tomorrow? And there
will be a day after tomorrow.
The next chart is another quote from Hyman Rickover. I suggest that
this is a good time to think soberly. This is 51 years ago. I think
this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our
descendants, those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. He may be the
first person that I can find who recognizes that there would be a
Fossil Fuel Age. In the 8,000 years of recorded history, Hyman Rickover
noticed that the Age of Oil would be but a blip in the history of man.
Wow. What a time it has been. We might give a break to these youngsters
by cutting fuel and metal consumption so as to provide a safe margin
for the necessary adjustments which eventually must be made in a world
without fossil fuels.
And one day, friends, there will be a world without fossil fuels. Now
that is not tomorrow. And we are not running out of oil. Half of all
the oil that will ever be recovered is yet to be recovered. What we're
running out of is our ability to pump this oil as fast as we would like
to use it. We now are, I believe, at the top of Hubbert's peak. We will
have a lot of oil pumped in the future, as much as all the oil we have
pumped in the past. But it will be ever harder and harder to get. Less
and less of it will flow. And it will come at higher and higher costs.
The next chart really helps us to put this in a perspective. I
haven't gone back the 8,000 years that Hyman Rickover mentioned. I have
gone back only 400 years in history because it wouldn't matter because
if I went back the rest of the 8,000 years, the use of energy would not
be as wide as the baseline here, and so it would still look like this
chart.
This shows the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It shows that
it started with wood, then, coal, and then gas and oil. And wow, did it
take off with gas and oil. Now we're going to see this curve in several
other charts. In most of those charts we will have expanded the
abscissa, so that this curve will look a little different.
What we have here is the incredible increase in the rate of the use
of oil up through the Carter years. Every decade up through the Carter
years we used as much oil as we had used in all of previous history.
Now that is an incredible statistic. What that means is that when you
use half of the oil, that only 10 years remain. Now that is not going
to be 10 years of increasing rate and then you're going to be fall off
a cliff, because that is not the way we can pump the oil.
The next chart introduces us to another reality that we really need
to be cognizant of. Not only is there a limited amount of oil in the
world, but how it's distributed in the world is important. The world
according to oil. This is what your planet would look like if the size
of the Nation was relative to how much oil it had in reserves. Saudi
Arabia dominates the landscape. It should. It has about 22 percent, a
bit more than one-fifth of all the reserves in the world. Iraq, Kuwait,
Iran, second, third and fourth, have huge amounts of oil. Russia and
Venezuela have large amounts of oil. Russia now I think is the number
one exporter in the world. They don't have the most oil in the world.
But they are very aggressively pumping it. We're very aggressively
pumping oil by the
[[Page H5789]]
way. Here we are, the United States, with 2 percent of the oil in the
world, and we are producing 8 percent of the oil in the world.
It is an interesting depiction here. It shows some really interesting
things. The first and third largest suppliers of oil to our country are
Canada and Mexico. Mexico just slipped to number 3. They used to be
number 2. Now that has been taken up by Saudi Arabia. But notice that
Canada and Mexico together have about as much oil as we. Canada doesn't
have much oil. They can export oil because Canada doesn't have very
many people. And Mexico's people are too poor to use it. So they can
export oil. I read one account that said within 8 years, Mexico, our
third largest supplier, will be an importer of oil. Notice that
Venezuela dwarfs everything else in our hemisphere.
{time} 1500
Another really interesting thing here is the size of China and India.
Here they are, China and India, and together, they don't have as much
oil as the United States, with more than 2.3 billion people and with
rapidly growing economies.
The next chart looks at this distribution of oil, where it is in the
world another way, and you could have seen most of this from that
chart. Here we look at the 10 largest reserves of oil in the world. Who
owns them? Ninety-eight percent of those big 10 are owned by countries,
not companies. Luke Oil, in Russia, is kind of independent, and they
have only 2 percent.
Now, who produces the oil?
In this country, we focus on the big 4, and some people think they're
gouging us. We have legislation now to look at whether they're gouging
us or not. But 78 percent of all of the oil in the world is produced by
those in the top 10--this is 78 percent of the top 10--by the 98
percent of the top 10 who have the oil. The big oil companies produce
only 22 percent of the oil, and the amount of oil that they own isn't
even large enough to show up in the top 10. Notice they don't even show
here.
The next chart is another way of looking at these realities. These
numbers, by the way, inspired 30 of our leading citizens--Boyden Gray
and Jim Woolsey and McFarland and 27 others, who are some retired four-
star admirals and generals--to write a letter to the President, saying,
``Mr. President, the fact that we have only 2 percent of the world's
oil reserves and use 25 percent of the world's oil and import two-
thirds of what we use is an entirely unacceptable national security
risk. You really have to do something about that.''
Subsequent to that, in a State of the Union message, the President
noted very correctly that we're hooked on oil. That's a good analogy.
We are as hooked on oil as the drug addict is hooked on his drug. The
President made that very clear. We are less than 5 percent of the
world's population--1 person in 22--and we use 25 percent of the
world's oil.
As I mentioned before, we pump 8 percent of the world's oil, which
means we're pumping our oil fields four times faster than the average
in the world.
The next chart is one where, if you only had one chart to look at,
this chart has more information on it than any other chart that I have
seen relative to oil and relative to where we are and where we'll
probably be.
Here is the curve that you saw before. It was a very steep curve, do
you remember? I said that you would see it in subsequent charts, and
here it is again. We have really spread it out here. Before, it went
400 years. Now it goes 100 years, 1930 to 2030. You will see here the
recession that occurred in the 1970s.
There is an old saying: It is an ill wind that blows no good.
The good thing that came out of those oil price spike hikes in the
1970s was the reality that, gee, we could use this oil more
efficiently. Boy, we've really done that. There was a recession that
resulted in an actual drop in the demand for oil. Then we came out of
that recession, and we were focused on efficiency. Your air conditioner
is probably three times as efficient now as it was then, and so is your
freezer.
So now we are growing our economies at the same rate we were growing
them before, actually faster, because China and India were not really
involved then in using huge amounts of energy. Now the growth is much
slower. So let's be thankful for those oil price spike hikes in the
1970s, because it alerted us that we really could do better, and we
really are doing better.
These bars here show when we found the oil, and we found most of it a
long time ago. There were some huge finds back in the 1950s and some
really, really big finds in the 1960s to 1970s. Notice that, from about
this point on down, from 1980 particularly on down, it's down, down,
down, down. This is with ever better techniques for discovering oil--3-
D seismic and computer modeling. On the average, every year, we have
found less oil than we've found the year before.
Now what will the future look like?
It's obvious on this chart that, ever since about 1980, we have not
found as much oil as we're using, so now we've been dipping into the
reserves. This area here, which is volume of oil, has been made up with
using some of the reserves we found back here. So what will the future
look like? There are two things that will determine what the future
looks like:
One is how much oil we find and the rate at which we use the reserves
we already have.
Now, you can make a judgment as to how much oil we will find in the
future. I, personally, wouldn't have drawn this line. It won't be
smooth like that; it will be up and down, but I wouldn't have drawn
that line quite that high. I think it comes in a little lower if you're
looking at that, but let's assume that that's what it is.
The difference between what you find and what you're using is going
to have to be made up by dipping into the reserves back here. So you
make your own judgment as to what the future would look like, and that
will depend upon the rate at which we use these reserves and the amount
of new reserves that we find.
The next chart shows a projection of discoveries, which is totally
inconsistent with the chart we just saw. This is a projection of
discoveries by the Energy Information Agency. This is a very
interesting and kind of bizarre thing that has happened. The USGS does
some computer modeling, looking at: Gee, where will we be in the
future? How much oil will we find? They do some computer modeling, and
they put a lot of inputs, different ones, into the computer, and then
they get results out.
They took the mean frequency of that, and they compiled some data
which said that the mean of what we're going to find--the F, they
said--looks like this number. Well, somehow, when that got to the
Energy Information Administration, that F became a P for probability.
They make use of that, which, from a statistician's perspective, is
just bizarre.
They make the statement that the 50 percent probability is the mean--
of course it is not--and that the 50 percent probability is more
probable than the 95 percent probability. This is fairly old. This is
several years old now, as you can see, but they made a prediction way
back here that the 50 percent probability green line is the amount of
oil we were going to find in the future. We've been finding it at this
rate. This is the discovery rate. They said, somehow, it's going to
turn around, and it's going to go back up following that green line.
The 95 percent probability is the yellow line there. Well, obviously,
95 percent probable is more probable than 50 percent probable, and it's
no surprise that the actual data points have been following the 95
percent probability.
The next chart is from one of four reports that your government has
paid for and has pretty much ignored. Two of these reports came out in
2005. This is a quote from the first of those done by SAIC, a very
large, prestigious, international organization. This was paid for by
our government. It's called the Hirsch Report, after Robert Hirsch, who
was a principal investigator on the report. Another one came out a
little later in 2005 from the Corps of Engineers, and it says
essentially the same thing that this report says. Then in 2007, two
additional reports came out--one from the Government Accountability
Office and, later in the year, another from the National Petroleum
Council.
All four of these say essentially the same thing in different words,
that the
[[Page H5790]]
peaking of oil is a certainty; it is either present or imminent with
potentially devastating consequences. Now, that's the message of all
four of these reports.
This is a quote from the first of those reports: ``World oil peaking
is going to happen. World production of conventional oil will reach a
maximum and decline thereafter.''
That happened in our country in 1970. It is inevitable. It will
happen in the world. Oil is finite. The amount of oil in the world is
not infinite. There will be a time when we reach the maximum production
of oil, after which, it is going to be harder and harder to get, and
less and less will be available at ever-increasing costs. That maximum
is called the peak. A number of competent forecasters project peaking
within a decade. Others are less certain when peaking will occur. There
are a lot of things, a lot of complexities, that determine that:
Geopolitical things, the economies of the world. A lot of things
affected it. Technology affected it.
Oil peaking presents a unique challenge. Then they make a statement,
a stunning statement. The world has never faced a problem like this.
You cannot go back in history and find any precedent for this problem.
The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive
mitigation more than a decade before the fact--and apparently from the
data we just showed you, the fact is upon us. Without massive
mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be
pervasive and will not be temporary.
Previous energy transitions--wood to coal and coal to oil--were
gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.
The things that have been happening in the last few months are quite
revolutionary. I was surprised at how quickly food shortages developed
around the world.
The next chart is another quote from the first of these four reports
that your government has paid for: ``The peaking of world oil
production presents the world with an unprecedented risk management
problem. As peaking has approached, liquid fuel prices and price
volatility will increase dramatically.''
Wow, that's exactly what has happened, isn't it? It will increase
dramatically.
This, I believe, is the 46th time that I have come to the floor. I
began, I think, on the eighth day of March in 2005. When I first came
here, oil was 50-couple dollars a barrel. Now it's about $135 a barrel.
Gasoline, I think, was less than $2 a gallon. Now it's over $4 a
gallon. So it is true that these prices have increased dramatically.
The economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented, they
say.
The next chart--and I show this chart because it really depicts this
very clearly. I have two charts to address this problem. I just want to
make the point that drilling for oil is not the ultimate solution. This
chart assumes that we are going to find as much more oil as all the
reserves that now can be pumped. That's incredible. You will remember
that chart of the oil that we found going down, down, down. What is
going to turn that around? This chart assumes that we're going to find
as much more oil as all of the oil that is yet to be recovered. This is
that curve. I told you you'd see it again in several charts. Here it is
again, the dip in the 1970s, and here we are a little after 2000.
This chart was made a few years ago. This red line here is the mean
of 2 percent growth and 2 percent decline with what they say is the
mean, the expected value, of 3 trillion barrels of oil. You will see
data that varies a little bit, but it is the amount of oil that most
experts believe will ever be pumped. Now, discovered oil that will ever
be pumped is about 2 trillion barrels. This has it at 2.28 trillion
barrels. This predicts we're going to find, roughly, 800,000 more
barrels. Almost half of all of the oil that we have ever found they
predict is going to be found in the future. Even if we do that, that
pushes the peaking of oil out, they say, on this chart to only 2016.
Wow, that's not very far out.
Now, they have another line here which says, if you extend this
growth further and assure that you're going to have a very rapid
decline, then you can push the point out to 2037.
The next chart looks at these same data. Here, they have, roughly,
the 2 trillion again. I told you the numbers would vary a little bit.
Here is the 2 trillion again. This is 1.92 trillion. We would have
peaking about now if that had occurred. This is from CERA again. CERA
believes that we will find as much oil as all the oil that is yet to be
pumped, and they don't show me further on. I have no idea what that
curve will do and how abruptly it will fall after that, but even with
their predictions, they are pushing the peak out only--well, you can
see it here--to about 2030, which was the peak on the other chart.
Unconventional oil. This may be a good time to spend just a moment
talking about unconventional oil. We, actually, have some huge reserves
of unconventional oil.
{time} 1515
The most exploitable of these reserves is in Canada, it's the tar
sands of Canada, and they are huge, 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. That's
more oil potential there than yet all the oil yet to be recovered in
all the fields of the world. And they are producing about 1 million
barrels a day.
So why aren't we sanguine and the future going to be rosy? Because
what they are doing there, they know they cannot continue to do it,
it's not sustainable. They are using natural gas, which will run out,
and then they may have to build a nuclear power plant.
They are using water, which is a limited water supply. I understand
they are now using a shovel which lifts 100 tons. They dump it into a
truck which hold 400 tons, and they hook that with natural gas, maybe
using more energy than they get out of the oil, but, never mind, the
natural gas is stranded. By that we mean that there is not many people
to use it.
Natural gas is very hard to move from one place to another. It's
stranded and so it's cheap. Economically they are producing this, I
understand $18 to $25 a barrel and it's bringing $135 a barrel. That's
a really good profit margin.
But the profit margin you really need to be looking at here is the
energy profit margin. How much energy do you put in, and how much
energy do you get out?
Well, soon, when they have exploited this above ground, my
understanding is it ducks under an overlay and then they are going to
have to decide how to develop it in situ. They don't know yet how to do
that.
We have in our country huge potential reserves. It's not quite oil,
but with some manipulation it can be made into oil. These are the so-
called oil shales of our west. We have there at least probably 1.5
trillion barrels of oil again. But, so far, no one has found any
economically feasible way to develop these potentially enormous
reserves.
Now, we use, in the world, about 84, 85 or so million barrels of oil
a day. In our country we use 21 million barrels of oil a day. Each
barrel of that oil--and when I first saw this number, I couldn't
believe it--each barrel of that oil has the energy equivalent of 12
people working all year.
I thought, wow, that can't be true, just a barrel of oil, 42 gallons.
Then I thought how far that gallon of gasoline at $4 a gasoline, by the
way, still about the same price as water in the grocery store, how far
that gallon of gasoline took my Prius. It takes me 48 miles.
Now I can pull my Prius 48 miles, but that would take a long time
with come-alongs and cables and guardrails and trees and so forth to
pull it along that 28 miles.
What that means is that until very recently, when oil prices spiked
up, I can remember when oil was $10, $12 a barrel. When oil was $12 a
barrel you could buy the life-style improvement of one person working
for you all year for $1.
At $12 a barrel, one barrel is the work equivalent of 25,000 man-
hours of 12 people. No wonder Hyman Rickover in his speech said that
the poorest of people live better than ancient kings. This has enabled
us to establish an incredible quality of life.
When I look back at this, you know, I keep asking myself the
question, why didn't somebody, when we found this incredible wealth
under the ground, stop and ask, what can we do with this to provide the
most good for the most people for the longest time?
That is not what we did. What we did was no more responsibility than
the kids who found the cookie jar or the
[[Page H5791]]
hog who found the feed-room door open. We have just been pigging out. A
lot of my colleagues would like to continue doing that.
What they want to do is drill. I have 10 kids, 16 grandkids, two
great grandkids. I want to drill, but I want to use what we get from
drilling to invest in alternatives. My wife has a great--and I see I am
joined by a great friend, and I am going to yield to him in just a
moment--my wife has a great observation on all of this. She uses that
old country and western--it's too late now to do the right thing.
We have blown 28 years. I say that because by 1980 we knew really
well of a certainty that M. King Hubbert was right about the United
States peaking in 1970. By 1980 we knew that, no question about it. He
predicted in 1979 that the world would be peaking about now. I keep
asking myself the question, why haven't we done something about it?
I thank you, friend, for joining us. I am happy to yield to you.
Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to
congratulate the gentleman for bringing this to the floor of the House
many times and trying to explain to the public what peak oil mean. I
have to say I was a doubter, and over the period of time that you have
explained this to me I became a believer.
It looks, as you have said before, as the population growth, the
consumption factor and what we have available. It's sad that we haven't
addressed this issue.
Now I am one of the ones that believes in drilling as you mentioned
but I also agree with you that now we should step forward and solve the
problem for the future today.
We can do this with all the efforts--because if we don't, like you
say, your grandchildren and your great grandchildren and possibly your
greater grandchildren are going to face a great dilemma.
I am confident, as this Congress goes forth, or the people demanded
that we will find solutions to this. But right now it has been too easy
to buy oil from overseas, not realizing we were running out. We got
accustomed to it, like you say, going to the cookie jar and not looking
down the road.
Again, I want to thank the gentleman.
I mean, you are doing a great favor for this Nation to try to awaken
the people that, yes, we can drill and we can solve the problem, and we
may lower the prices temporarily.
But what we ought to be doing is utilizing some of our oil now and
taking the revenues that are generated and put it into that--and I
reluctantly say this--from Alaska, but into the bridge to the future,
so that we will have those alternative forms of energy.
We can move products with other than fossil fuels. We can manufacture
with other than natural gas.
There are a lot of things that we just must do. Again, I want to
thank the gentleman for doing this, and I am pleased to be part of your
effort and hopefully, as time goes by, this Congress will wake up.
Right now, they are not. But you keep doing it and maybe the public
will wake them up.
Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Thank you, sir. I am really honored you
came to join me.
You mention doing things. The thing that you mentioned is right on
our chart here. I was very pleased. I think I may be the only original
cosponsor on your bill to drill in ANWR and use all of the revenues to
invest in alternatives.
Because I have said for all the years now that I have voted ``no''
for drilling in ANWR, that because of my kids, my grandkids, and great
grandkids and their future that I would vote to drill in ANWR when we
used all the revenues we get from ANWR to invest in alternatives.
Your bill does that, and so I was proud to sign on. By the way, I
will note that there will be some environmental impact in ANWR. There
is always an environmental impact. When I go out the door and step on
my grass there is an environmental impact. But I think that my walking
on the grass is justified.
It's obviously a trade-off. If you have a dollar and you spend it for
a Coca-Cola you can't spend it for a candy bar. So everything we do in
life is a trade-off. I think that the environmental damages that will
be done in ANWR will be minimal compared to the advantages of our
country and our civilization resulting from the monies that we are
going to spend on the developing alternatives.
Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. If the gentleman will yield just one more time,
you are absolutely right. There is nothing that we do that doesn't have
an environmental impact. The only thing we can do to stop having an
environmental impact is stop living.
We can face up to that, what can be done, and we have done that, is
to do it as safe as possible, and that can be done. But the trade-offs,
if we don't drill, and take those dollars and put them in renewable
sources of energy, the trade-off is a disaster environmentally.
I have said this, if you want to see a disaster where they haven't
been able to develop, as they should, their fossil fuels, et cetera, go
to the countries that cut every tree down, because it's the only source
of power they have.
You go to Ethiopia, you go to other countries of Africa. There is no
living thing that can be burning because there is no other forms of
energy. That's what I don't want to see this Nation--let's look for, as
you mention, let's recognize it as an invite. Material oil will run
out, let's use the revenues now and plan for the future and have
availability of energy.
If we do it now, then we are going to be in good shape in the future.
Not you and I, but you and your grandkids.
Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Thank you, sir. I am honored you came to
the floor to join me.
Here is a list of the things I have been personally involved in, the
Senate 2821, Senators Cantwell and Ensign, passed it 88-8. It's a bill
that extends renewable energy tax credits.
Our companion bill to that, H.R. 5981, simply picks up the Senate
bill. If we pass that bill in the House, then it goes directly to the
President.
This is a bill I was just talking about with my good friend, Don
Young, renewable domestic resources, ANWR, I am happy to be I think the
only original cosigner of that bill. I am honored that he gave me that
opportunity.
Peak Oil Caucus and resolution, I started the Peak Oil Caucus with my
good friend, Tom Udall.
H. Res. 12 is a resolution that says that the Congress recognizes
that there is such a thing as peak oil. I mean, how can you not
recognize that the sun comes up and the sun comes down. Of course,
there is such a good thing as peak oil.
I proudly supported a new law not yet fully supported by our
administration, ARPA-E. This is patterned after the enormously
successful DARPA that has brought a lot of things to fruition. We
wouldn't have an Internet if it weren't for DARPA. We wouldn't have
pilotless airplanes if it weren't for DARPA.
I want an ARPA-E. We are going to have very limited resources, very
limited time. What are we going to invest it in? There are some things
that businesses with its short sight and the next quarterly report just
can't invest money in. That's what DARPA has been doing for years with
such enormous success, just investing in these things that are really
risky but have enormous payoff. That's what DARPA has done very
successfully. That's what I hope ARPA-E will do too.
I voted to increase CAFE standards. I was driving to work the other
day and one lane in front of me was an SUV with one person in it. In
the lane next to it was a Prius. By the way, I bought the first one in
Congress and the first one in Maryland, now driving a second one. There
were two people in the Prius, and I noted to myself, the people in that
Prius are getting six times the miles per gallon, per person, as
compared to the people in that SUV.
We have enormous opportunities for conservation, and there is only
one thing that will reduce the price of oil tomorrow. Drilling will not
do it, because no oil will flow for years after we start drilling.
As a matter of fact, it will make the problem a bit worse tomorrow,
because it takes energy to drill, and that will simply compete for
additional energy. Only one thing will reduce the price of oil
tomorrow, and that's use less of it. There are only two ways we will
get there.
One of those the market will provide, and that is if we wait until
oil gets so
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high that it destroys the world's economies, and then those economies
will collapse and the demand for oil will collapse, demand destruction,
they call it, and then the price will drop. That's a very painful way
to get the price down.
The only other way to get I down, by reducing demand, is to simply
voluntarily reduce demand. We have a lot of opportunities to do that.
Let me run through this chart. I have a self-powered farm. If a farm
can't produce all its own energy and a little bit left over for
somebody else, we are in trouble for the future, aren't we, as we run
down this other side of this fossil fuel curve.
Tax credits for hybrids, I would like to expand that so that more
people would be encouraged to buy them, to give more tax credits for
those.
Then the DRIVE Act, the DRIVE Act would require that all of our cars,
for about $100 extra--maybe less than that with our max production--
would be flex-fuel cars and they could use any fuel. By the way, every
car produced in Brazil today is a flex-fuel car. They look just like
ours. They cost just a trifling more to do. Who knows what the fuel in
the next 16 years will be. A fleet turns over every 16 years, roughly.
So we ought to be prepared for that. We really do need flex fuel cars.
The next chart, and this one points out another reality of the world
in which we live, and this is who owns the oil? Now, we have looked at
that another way previously, but this looks at the countries that are
buying oil.
You can see a dollar sign there in a few places, not very--I have to
look to find them, by the way, but I really don't have to look to find
the symbols for China. They are everywhere. They are everywhere.
They are Russia, they were going to buy Unocal in our country. They
are heavily invested in south--not only are they buying oil, they are
buying goodwill. Do you need a soccer field? Hospital, how about roads?
So China is out there very aggressively buying oil all over the world.
{time} 1530
The next chart, and I would like to put where we are in context and
look at all of the power we are using. We have been looking just at
transportation. That is where the real challenge comes in the future.
This looks at U.S. energy consumption by sector. Electric power,
transportation, and we have been talking primarily about liquid fuels.
So 2 or 3 percent of this is produced by diesel, but we are using gas.
And gas is not thought of as a liquid fuel, but you will see the city
buses running on gas, and so it is appropriate to look at that.
Here is transportation, industry, residential and commercial.
The next chart looks at the reality of the future. It is very obvious
that oil is finite, that it will not be here forever. Hyman Rickover
was the first that I know of who in a very dramatic way called our
attention to that.
We will eventually transition. Geology will ensure it. We will
transition from fossil fuels to renewables. We have some finite
resources to help us do that. We have already talked about the tar
sands and the oil shales. I have no idea how much we will get from
those. I don't know how much money I might win in the lottery, but I
don't plot my future on future winnings in the lottery. And I am going
to win no money in the lottery because I don't play the lottery.
So we need to have a plan B. Coal. In a few minutes I will have a
chart that looks at coal. We have a lot of coal compared to the rest of
the world. Our fabled 250 years of coal is not really 250 years. The
National Academy of Sciences recently looked at it. They say we haven't
looked at coal since 1970, and we have been using a lot of coal since
1970. They said we now probably have 100 years of coal at current use
rates. But be very careful when someone says ``current use rates.''
We have great difficulty in understanding the exponential function.
When Albert Einstein was asked after nuclear energy, what is going to
be the next great force in the world?
He said the most powerful force in the world is the power of compound
interest. Just 2 percent growth, so anemic that our stock market
doesn't like it and it tends to shudder when you only have 2 percent
growth, 2 percent growth doubles in 35 years. It is four times bigger
in 70 years, eight times bigger in 105 years, and 16 times bigger in
140 years. That is just 2 percent growth. And so this 100 years at
current use rates could easily shrink to 25-30 years with increased use
rates.
Then we have nuclear. I am a fan of nuclear. It has been very safe.
We produce roughly 20 percent of our electricity with it. And France
produces 75-80 percent with it. We use a light water reactor using
fissile uranium, and that will run out. Then we can go to breeder
reactors and as the name implies, breed fuel, and we won't run out of
that. But we do buy some problems with that of transporting weapons
grade material for further use.
But those I think are solvable problems. The only one that gets us
home free is nuclear fusion. That's harnessing the power of the
hydrogen bomb. By the way, we have a great nuclear fusion plant, it's
called the sun. That is how it produces its energy.
I happily vote for the $250 million a year that we spend on fusion,
but I think the odds of commercializing that are relatively small. I
would be delighted if we are able to do that, but I would not count on
that. You have to have a plan B.
Now we look at the renewable sources. And by and by, all of our
energy will come from sources like these and maybe a couple more that
we might add to it. Solar and wind and true geothermal. A lot of people
talk about geothermal where you are hooking your air conditioner to
ground temperature. Gee, do that please because what you are trying to
do in the summer when you air condition your house is heat the air
outside when it is already 100 degrees outside. It is easier to warm up
the ground which is 56 degrees; and in the wintertime, 56 degrees looks
pretty warm compared to the 10 degrees it might be outside.
But the geothermal I am talking about is tying into the molten core
of the earth. They do that in Iceland. I don't see a single chimney in
Iceland.
Ocean energy, an incredible amount of potential energy in the oceans,
but hard to harness. We are working at it.
Agricultural resources, soybean and biodiesel. Just a word about
those. I am a big fan of agriculture. I come from a farming background.
I hope that agriculture will play a meaningful role, but it will not be
a huge role.
The National Academy of Sciences has said that if we used all of our
corn for ethanol and discounted for fossil fuel input, it would
displace 2.4 percent of our gasoline. They said if we used all of our
soybeans for diesel and discounted for fossil fuel input, it would
displace 2.9 percent of our diesel. These are trifling numbers.
They noted that as far as corn ethanol is concerned, using all of our
corn, we use only a part and now we are driving up the price of corn,
wheat and soybeans because we diverted land, and droughts drove up the
price of rice and so now there is hunger around the world and we are
partly to blame for that. They said that if you tuned up your car and
put air in your tires, you could save as much gas as using all of our
corn for ethanol.
Methanol that you might get from wood, biomass, and the huge interest
now that I think is a bit overly optimistic is on cellulosic ethanol. I
am an old dirt farmer. Let me just note something that I think is
intuitive. I can't imagine that we would get a whole lot more energy
from our wasteland that wasn't good enough to plant anything on than we
could get from all of our corn and all of our soybeans which would
produce, for corn, replace 2.4 percent of our gasoline, and for
soybeans, 2.9 percent of our diesel. I can't imagine we are going to
get a whole lot more than that from our wastelands that aren't good
enough to grow anything on. If you want to mine those and rape them of
their organic materials for the next couple of years, you might get a
meaningful amount. But sustainably, at least to some measure, this
year's weeds grow because last year's weeds died and are fertilizing
them. Now we will get something from cellulosic ethanol.
There are two bubbles that have broken already. The first big bubble
that was going to be our savior was hydrogen. Remember that one? I
think people figured out that hydrogen is not an energy source; it is
an energy carrier. You will always use more energy producing hydrogen
than you get out of it.
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Why hydrogen. Because if we have a fuel cell where we can burn it and
use it at least twice as efficiently, and when you use hydrogen you get
water and that is pretty clean. So it is a great candidate for a fuel
cell. We are at least two decades away from a fuel cell.
The second bubble that broke is the corn ethanol bubble. I am
predicting that the cellulosic ethanol bubble will break. We will get
something from cellulosic ethanol, but it will not be the huge amounts
people are predicting we might get.
Waste to energy, great idea. And there is a good plant here in
Montgomery County, but what you are burning there is largely a waste
stream, the result of profligate use of fossil fuels. For the moment it
is a good idea; but long term in an energy-deficient world, you are not
going to waste so much. Remember, I grew up during the Depression:
Waste not, want not. That is certainly not our motto today when you
look at our landfills.
Gas hydrates. I want to mention that because there is more potential
energy there than all the other energy sources I have talked about.
These are little, frozen modules on the bottom of the ocean. There are
huge potential amounts of energy there. But let me note that there are
huge potential amounts of energy in the tides. The moon lifts the whole
ocean two or three feet. When I carry two 5-gallon buckets of water,
they are heavy. The problem with that energy and the tides and the
problem with the energy in the gas hydrates is that it is very
scattered and diffuse. Energy to be useful must be concentrated. And we
will get something out of all of those, but it will not be enormous
amounts.
This chart looks at a very interesting reality, and that is we are
very much like the young couple that had their grandparents die and
left them a big inheritance and now they have established a lavish
lifestyle where 85 percent of all of the money they spend comes from
their inheritance and only 15 percent from their salary. And they look
at the inheritance, and it is going to run out before they retire, and
so obviously they have to do something. They have to spend less or make
more. That is precisely where we are because 85 percent of all of the
energy that we use comes from fossil fuels, coal, petroleum and natural
gas; only 15 percent from renewables, a bit more than half of that from
nuclear. Here are the renewables we saw on the other chart. This is 7
percent. So solar was 1 percent of 7 percent; so 0.07 percent. Big
deal.
And I am a big fan of solar and it is growing at 30 percent a year,
but when you use 21 million barrels of oil a day, that is an incredible
amount of energy. It is a huge challenge to find alternatives that will
produce that amount of energy.
The next chart shows us the U.S. electricity generated by fuel
source, and notice some of this we can use in cars. In fact, we can use
a lot of the coal. Natural gas, buses run on natural gas. If you had
electric cars, you could do it with nuclear. And the others are much
smaller. Hydro is 6 percent a year or so depending on how much rain we
have.
The next chart shows electricity generation by renewables, and this
blows up the renewables part of it. The wood, wind, waste, geothermal
and the solar. This is 1 percent up here. The total amount we use is
100 times higher. So you see solar down there, it is just trifling. I
think it will be huge in the future. The most aggressive country in the
world for solar is Germany, and they have poor sunlight compared to the
United States. But they recognize that they have to do something to
transition.
The next chart, and I want to spend just a moment on this chart
because the reality is this should have led people to understand we
weren't going to get all we could want from corn. This bottom part,
this is the amount of energy that goes into producing corn. Almost half
is natural gas that is used to make nitrogen fertilizer. Before we
learned how to do that, the only nitrogen fertilizer came from barnyard
manure and guano. Guano is the droppings of birds and bats, and if we
wait another 10-20,000 years, we will have some more. But that is gone
now. It was a big industry doing that.
The amount of energy that goes into producing ethanol from fossil
fuels is incredible. This just looks at the energy that goes into
producing. Indeed, there are some who believe that we use more energy
producing ethanol than we get out of ethanol. Our Department of Energy
believes it is probably 80 percent, and the National Academy of
Sciences use that number, too. Probably 80 percent of the energy that
you get out of ethanol was put in there with fossil fuels.
I would like to put up the chart that we began our discussion of
things that could be done, and I would like to say in my closing
moments that I feel very exhilarated by this. There is no exhilaration
like the exhilaration of meeting and overcoming a big challenge. This
is a huge challenge. The American people are the most creative,
innovative people in the world. If they really understood what we
needed to do, they would do what the people of my generation did, and I
am 82 years old. I was born in 1926. I lived through World War II.
Everybody had a victory garden. We had Daylight Savings Time so you
could work another hour in the victory garden. We didn't do that
because somebody told us we had to, we did it because we knew we needed
to do that.
I think the American people, properly challenged, if they really
understood the challenge, I think the American people would rally, and
I think we could once again become a major exporting country, not just
exporting ideas to other people who then do the manufacturing. I want
to do the manufacturing here and be a manufacturing and exporting
country. We are the most creative, innovative society in the world.
Mr. Speaker, what we need is a program that has the total commitment
of World War II. Everybody in America needs to be involved. We need to
have the technology focus of putting a man on the moon, and we need to
have the urgency of the Manhattan Project. We are capable of that. The
American people are waiting for that.
The solutions that are now suggested to us are only partial
solutions. I am kind of glad with my 10 kids and 16 grandkids and 2
great-grandkids that we didn't drill every place that we might have
drilled. Now there is a little oil for them, and they will be involved
in this transition.
So I hope, Mr. Speaker, with more knowledge of where we are, that the
American people will rally to the challenge and the United States will
be what it has been in the past, a leader in technology, and a major
manufacturing and exporting country.
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