[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 117 (Wednesday, July 16, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6860-S6863]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, let me add a few thoughts in the next 10 
or so minutes tonight about this energy debate.
  The Senator from Idaho just said we must increase production 
domestically, and he is absolutely right. It is so hard for me to 
understand how this Congress can continue to ask OPEC to increase 
production, ask our enemies to increase production, and we continue to 
refuse to increase production in our own country year after year, time 
after time, whether onshore or offshore.
  Now, I would know a little bit about this issue because I helped to 
lead, with the actual Presiding Officer tonight,

[[Page S6861]]

and many colleagues, one of the most successful efforts to open at 
least a portion of our area that was under moratoria. We opened, just 2 
years ago, 8.3 million acres, which was a tremendous victory. I am very 
proud of the Senators for doing that, and the House Members. It was a 
10-year effort. We passed that bill here by a substantial margin, but 
it passed by one--one--vote in the House of Representatives. It took 10 
years, and we just barely won. All we opened in that bill was a 
sliver--if you all can see this map of North America--was literally a 
sliver of land. I am going to have this map blown up so we can see it 
better. I hope the camera can see this right here.

  I wish to repeat this, because I know it is hard for people looking 
to believe it, but for 10 years, by 1 vote in the House of 
Representatives, we opened 8.3 million acres right out underneath 
Alabama and Mississippi, about 70 miles southeast of Venice, LA. That 
8.3 million acres is being prepared now to drill. It literally took an 
act of Congress that took us 10 years. At that rate, the price of oil 
could go up, perhaps double or triple or quadruple. I don't know. This 
is a big country. We can see how big it is here. There is oil in many 
different places in this country, and it is time that we strategically 
open some other places to drill.
  We should be careful. We should be deliberate. We do not have to open 
everything. So let me say to my Republican colleagues--not the Senator 
from Idaho, my friend, who did a beautiful job just now--but others on 
the Republican side who want to open everything right now: That is a 
foolish and unnecessary step, and it will do nothing but confuse the 
situation. It is like saying we are going to launch a space program 
right now. We have not created the rocket, and we don't have all the 
details, and we are going to go to every planet right now. It is that 
foolish. I wish to say directly to the President of the United States 
if that is your starting point, it is not a starting place for me, and 
I am as pro-drilling as you can get on the floor of the Senate, because 
it confuses the issue and it throws up red herrings and it leads the 
country into a false frenzy.
  We don't have to lift the moratoria everywhere, and I am not going to 
vote for lifting the moratoria everywhere, but we can strategically 
lift congressional moratoria, or provide some kind of local option for 
States. I am kind of open on this. I have come at it many different 
ways, including considering some local options for some limited numbers 
of States where we actually think there might be oil and gas to drill.
  Now, we do know there is a lot of oil and gas, because this purple 
spot right here represents the drilling that the States of Texas and 
Louisiana and parts of Mississippi and Alabama have been doing for 
generations, billions and billions of barrels of oil and gas that we 
were able to get out safely, securely, having less spills. And this is 
something that I want too, less spills than what is in the natural 
seepage of oil.
  I know this is going to be impossible for some people listening to 
this to actually believe it is true, so I am going to give the 
reference. It is the National Academy of Sciences. This is not Mary 
Landrieu's propaganda poster or Republican propaganda poster or 
Democrat. This is from the National Academy of Sciences. Now, they have 
National Academies of Science in England. I think they have them in 
Germany. Maybe you could go ask them, but you can also ask our American 
National Academy of Sciences. This is what they say: Natural seeps of 
oil--just natural, coming out of the formations--represent 63 percent. 
Cars and boats and other sources--which we are trying to clean up, but 
we are not doing a real great job of it but we have made some 
progress--are 32 percent of all the spills in the oceans. Petroleum 
transportation, which means the big tankers, the Exxon Valdez, the 
tankers that sometimes run into the bridges in San Francisco Bay 
because they won't put in a pipeline, so they have tankers that come 
in. I keep explaining it would be better not to have the tankers, but 
they want the tankers there in that San Francisco Bay. They keep 
running into bridges. They keep spilling. So we have 4 percent of the 
spillage from the tankers.
  Now, look here: drilling and extraction. Drilling and extraction, 
this little green sliver, is 1 percent. Why is this? This is because we 
have gotten so good and clean and strong, the technology has improved 
so substantially since the 1940s and 1950s, that it is not true that 
this jeopardizes the oceans or the beaches. I will say to be completely 
honest that when there is a spill, it can look pretty bad and it does 
and it happens, but this is life, and there are risks associated with 
everything we do, but the risk is so minimal to the benefit of this 
Nation.
  I will tell you what the great benefit for me is: that we can stop 
funding both sides of the war on terror against ourselves, because that 
is what we are doing right now today. We are taking the people's hard-
earned money and supporting a war at the tune of $348 million a day, 
and then we are paying our enemies to buy missiles and weapons to kill 
our own soldiers that we are sending over there. That is actually 
happening today because we are afraid. We are afraid that 1 little 
percent might seep into some water that we couldn't quickly go gather 
up and push to the side.
  This is why America is angry, because America does not like to be 
wimpy. That is one thing about our country. We don't like it, because 
we are not a wimpy country. We are a smart country. We are a strong 
country. We are a bold country. This Congress has the American people 
feeling as if we are wimps.
  We don't again have to lift the moratoria everywhere. I am going to 
tell the Republican leadership they are barking up the wrong tree here, 
because you don't have to go to every planet, but we have to pick one 
or two. We just have to pick one or two planets we are going to go to. 
We should let our scientists pick them. We should figure out what is 
the fastest, best way to get some additional oil.
  China has already figured this out, because they are going to be 
drilling closer to our coast than we are. Let me repeat. There are 
leases right here off the coast of Cuba and they are leasing this land 
to China as I speak. So China will be drilling closer to the coast than 
we allow our own companies to drill, and that is why the American 
people are angry.
  How we open a little bit more of Florida to protect what we need, I 
am going to leave that to my colleagues. I have some ideas, but there 
are others who probably have better ideas, but there is a possibility 
here. I think there is a lot of possibility in Alaska, and thank 
goodness that both Ted Stevens, the senior Senator from Alaska, and the 
junior Senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, understand this and they 
know it. If we listen to them, they can help lead us to a way where we 
can get a great deal more oil out of Alaska. Now, it is going to take, 
because it is far away--Alaska is not part of the 48, as you can see 
here. There are distances that have to be crossed, pipelines that have 
to be laid, transportation infrastructure that can get this oil to 
where we need it.
  Let me tell you where we need the oil. We need the oil in the 
Northeast. If we don't get them some before this winter, there are 
going to be people in the Northeast who cannot afford to heat their 
homes this winter. These prices have never been this high. It is a long 
way from here to here. The industry can do that, but it takes them a 
while. It would be a lot easier to get the oil right here, but 
politically, that seems to be a problem. So we could move it from the 
gulf to there; we could move it from Alaska to there, but it is going 
to take some time. We can also get more oil here.
  The other part I should not forget to mention is you have different 
kinds of oil. There is sweet and it is light, and then there is heavy 
oil and harder to refine, and the refineries are having a hard time 
because Congress gives them no direction virtually whatsoever. They 
don't sometimes know what refineries to build, and I don't blame them, 
because we are so schizophrenic about it. So we now have refineries 
that only can refine a certain type of oil, and they take these big 
gambles, because Congress any day could wake up and say: Oh, we just 
decided we don't want that kind of oil. I have to learn a little bit 
more to talk more about it, but the general gist of it is that not only 
do you have to go get more oil from some places, we have to

[[Page S6862]]

make sure the refineries are there to be able to produce, but we can.
  Now, that is enough on oil and gas, because for the next 5 minutes I 
wish to talk about not just producing more oil, which we obviously can, 
but we also have to conserve. I have to say that I have not been the 
best person on this issue, so I am going to apologize now, and then we 
are going to move--I am going to move on to say I will be happy to vote 
for even things that I wouldn't have considered in the past because I 
feel as though it is very important. We have to move our automobiles 
off of gasoline. We have to move them to fuels that we can produce, we 
can grow such as sugarcane, such as biofuels, cellulosic ethanol, and 
it can't just come from corn. We know we can do this because there are 
automobiles on the street today, there are just not enough of them 
because the mandate is not strong enough, and when you talk about 
demand, that is where the demand is. It is in fuels for our 
automobiles. There are electricity problems. There are power generation 
problems. However, the real stranglehold that our enemies have over us 
now, and OPEC has over us, is in the fuel sector.
  So we have to do two things: We have to produce more fuel and we have 
to consume less. I hope our bipartisan energy bill will include some 
stronger mandates for our automobiles in some way that allows people to 
drive a big automobile if they want, but it can't consume a lot of 
gasoline. It can consume a lot of sugarcane, fuel made from sugarcane, 
or a lot of fuel made from something other than the corn itself, 
because that will drive up the price, but the technology is here and we 
can do it.
  The bottom line is we don't have to be wimps anymore. We can be what 
America always has been in every generation: bold, strong, decisive. We 
can protect our people from losing their homes, their jobs, and their 
businesses, and their ranches, which the Presiding Officer would know 
something about since he comes from a family of ranchers, because that 
is what is happening right now. People are losing the American dream 
while we sit and twiddle our thumbs talking about everything else that 
doesn't have anything to do with the price of gasoline. Let me back up. 
That is an overstatement. Speculation does have something to do with 
it, but not the fundamentals. So let's get on with speculation; try to 
get speculation out of the market and then talk about some other 
things.
  I am not going to put up any more posters tonight. I think that is 
enough for the night, but again, this is going to be a combination of 
expanding production, perhaps--I know there is an issue in the 
Presiding Officer's home State of oil shale. I am looking at him 
smiling because we will have this debate. I am learning a lot about 
that. There is a lot I don't know about the oil shale, which he does 
know about. I think there is some potential there. How we go about it, 
we will have to see. But I do know that there is a lot of oil and a lot 
of gas from traditional sources, but we have to let them find it, 
expedite the leases we already have, and make sure the infrastructure 
is there in this country to produce, and then move as rapidly as we can 
to new freedom fuels of the future, particularly in the areas of our 
automobiles.
  I know the people of Louisiana are anxious for this debate. We are 
proud of the production we do. We are very happy that Congress gave us 
now a percentage of the oil and gas off of our shore, 37.5 percent that 
we are going to use wisely to secure our coasts and to build some 
additional infrastructure in our State. I know not every State has the 
same attitude that Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi have, and I 
don't expect that.
  I don't expect that. That is too much to expect. We just have a 
tradition of it. We are happy to do it. But on the other hand, it is 
not fair for some States and some places to say they don't want to 
produce anything, and then expect the States of Wyoming and New Mexico 
on shore, and Louisiana and Texas to do all the production in this 
country. There are other places that can produce, and we most certainly 
need to do it. We owe it not just to our constituents today, but we owe 
it to future generations of this country to break the back of OPEC, put 
us on a path of independence, get these prices lower, and clean up our 
environment at the same time.
  You can get to the place sometimes--well, the Presiding Officer has 
played baseball--when the bases are lined up and the lights in the 
stadium are on, it is a perfect time to hit it out of the ballpark. If 
we can get the right batter up, with the right pitch, we can hit this 
out of the ballpark.
  We can do for the American people what they expect, which is to move 
beyond our comfort zone, from what we are used to, and do something 
that may actually make a difference in their lives.
  Thank you so much.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Landrieu). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I think it is very appropriate for the 
Members of this Chamber today to be talking to an issue which is near 
and dear and extremely important to the people of America, and that is 
how much we are paying for gas and the importance of energy 
independence for our Nation. It is an issue I know the Presiding 
Officer has worked on very long and hard, including her efforts in 
writing the 2005 Energy Policy Act, as well as her efforts in opening 
lease sale 181 on the gulf coast.
  I know how heartfelt the Presiding Officer also feels, as a Senator 
from Louisiana, in terms of having the domestic production that comes 
out of the gulf coast being a significant part of the portfolio that 
fills the supply lines for the United States of America. So I am 
hopeful that as we turn the page from the legislation we were on today 
to move forward and try to address the high price of gas in America, we 
look at the issue before us with open eyes and try to figure out ways 
of getting to the real answers and solutions to the problem of the 
energy crisis we face in America today.
  I think it is important as we do so to constantly remind ourselves of 
what is at stake today and what makes 2008 different, perhaps, from 
where we were in the 1970s. We all know then it was President Richard 
Nixon who came before the Nation and said: OPEC has been formed and, 
therefore, we as a nation need to move forward to energy independence.
  Then, not too many years later, we had President Jimmy Carter saying 
we needed to embrace energy independence, with the moral imperative of 
war.
  In those days, in the 1970s, we were importing about 30 percent of 
our oil from foreign countries. What happened through the 1980s and 
what happened through the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s? America 
slept. America slept. The result was, in March of last year we were 
importing 67 percent of our oil from foreign countries.
  As the Presiding Officer, in her role as a Senator from Louisiana, so 
eloquently stated, we have become hostage to those interests of the 
globe that have the world's oil reserves, and we in the United States 
end up funding both sides of the war on terror. It is important that we 
break our addiction to foreign oil and that we take on the national 
security issues of the United States in a bold and aggressive way and 
that we do that immediately.
  I believe what changed from the 1970s to today is the issues that 
drive us, and first and foremost is national security. We need to make 
sure we are not held at the end of a noose by the OPEC countries and 
held by those countries that hold most of the global reserves of oil.
  Secondly, we need to be cognizant of the fact that global warming is 
a reality. The days of the debate are over. Science tells us that we 
have to do something about global warming to make sure we protect our 
planet.
  Third, if we do this right and embrace a new energy future for 
America, we can create a host of economic opportunities for the United 
States. In

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my State of Colorado, I have seen what has happened since 2004 when we 
passed a renewable portfolio standard, and we have gone from a point 
where we had almost no alternative energy, where we were not harnessing 
the power of the wind--we had almost zero energy being produced from 
the wind--to the point today where we are producing over 1,000 
megawatts of power from wind. That is about the equivalent of the power 
generated from three coal-fired powerplants.
  We were nowhere in terms of biofuels and ethanol. Yet because of 
policies we have passed in this Congress, today we have ethanol plants 
that have sprouted up across the eastern plains, giving a new potential 
and meaning for that part of rural America which has been so forgotten. 
So there are economic opportunities that also drive this agenda that we 
are on.
  I hope as we enter into this debate tomorrow, and perhaps in the week 
ahead, we join together to try to set America free. When I look at how 
we are going to do that, in terms of our overdependence on foreign oil, 
it seems to me there are a number of things that we can do to get rid 
of that overdependence on foreign oil and, at the same time, make sure 
we are trying to do everything we can within our power to provide some 
relief to the consumers of America, to the American citizens who are 
suffering every day when they fill up their cars at the pump. The 
farmers, who are filling up their John Deere tractors, are having to 
pay $1,000 every time they fill up the tractor or the combine; or the 
trucker, who is having to spend over $1,000--in fact, $5,000 for the 
big semitrucks--every time they have to fill their truck with diesel.
  I hope we embrace this and that we can be smart about it. I would 
offer four concepts, in general. First, I think there is a way in which 
we can produce more oil. We can do it in many areas, including from the 
Alaska petroleum reserve. There are a number of other places where we 
can embrace the production of more oil for America.
  Secondly, we need to stay the course in terms of pushing forward an 
aggressive agenda on alternative fuels. More can be done, including how 
we incentivize the production of biofuels.
  Third is that we continue to look forward to ways of using what we 
have more efficiently through conservation measures that we know can 
stretch out our supplies in a much more significant way, where we have 
not done what we should have been doing in the last 30 years.
  Fourth is research and the development of new technology. We now know 
the hybrid plug-ins and the new batteries that are being developed can 
help us create a national fleet that can be much more productive in 
terms of how we ultimately use this very scarce resource that we call 
petroleum and gasoline.
  So I hope we can, in fact, come together in a bipartisan fashion to 
put together a package that will make sense. I will make a quick 
comment about oil shale.
  Oil shale is a very important resource for our Nation. It is a 
resource that we understand in Colorado has been there for a long time, 
since the 1920s when it was predicted that oil shale essentially was 
going to be the panacea to all of the oil needs of the entire world. I 
recognize that most of the trillion or so barrels of oil that have been 
calculated to exist in the reserves of oil shale are actually beneath 
the lands of my State, beneath the lands of the western slope, one of 
the most beautiful places and congressional districts in the entire 
United States of America.
  So I believe we are already on a pathway to try to develop the 
technology to make sure that oil shale provides an opportunity for 
America in the future. That is why the research and development leases, 
which the Department of Interior issued under the authority we have 
provided to them, have been issued. That is why companies have invested 
to figure out whether the technology is there to be able to develop oil 
from the shale in place. That is why they are looking at what the 
requirements are going to be in terms of electricity that will be 
required in order to be able to heat the oil shale in place. That is 
why they are trying to figure out if this technology works, how much 
water it will take to develop this oil from the shale.
  So I think we have developed a thoughtful way forward, and I am 
hopeful we can support the thoughtful way forward that we have already 
developed. A few months ago, in the Energy Committee, the Assistant 
Secretary testified before the committee. I had questions that I 
directed to him about oil shale, where he thinks it might be going. He 
said to me in the line of questioning that, at the end of the day, 
there is no way we will be producing oil from shale until, the 
earliest, 2015. That was his testimony, 2015.
  I have a letter I have talked about before on the floor of the Senate 
from Chevron that also said the same thing--that it is a long way off. 
So I hope as we move forward on the debate about our energy future, we 
can be bold and aggressive and that we can provide relief as soon as we 
can to the citizens of America who are hurting so much, and that we can 
also take the long-term view in terms of what we need to do to set 
America free.
  As we look at the potential solutions, we need to look at them in a 
realistic way in terms of the technology we have available to us and 
the limitations that we also face as Americans.
  I thank the Chair for serving as the Presiding Officer and allowing 
me to make these comments.
  I yield the floor.

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