[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

[[Page H5792]]

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.

[[Page H5793]]

  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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