[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 118 (Thursday, July 17, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6920-S6924]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS PRICES

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, America faces a great many challenges 
today, particularly with regard to our economy, but none greater than 
our dangerous dependence upon foreign oil.
  I have come to the floor several times in the past few months to talk 
about what I call the ``terrorism tax.'' The terrorism tax is the 
transfer of wealth outside of this country to import billions of 
barrels of foreign oil. A substantial portion of American dollars spent 
on foreign oil goes to countries that wish to do us harm.
  This year, with regard to oil prices, the terrorism tax will total 
$700 billion. That $700 billion could have been used to pay for health 
care, groceries, or alternative forms of domestic energy. That $700 
billion terrorism tax is more than the annual budget of the Department 
of Defense and is four times the annual cost of the war in Iraq.

[[Page S6921]]

  The record high price of gas has been hurting American families and 
benefitting foreign adversaries for way too long. It is now the No. 1 
issue on consumers' minds, and the Senate has been debating this issue 
for months. However, the Senate has failed to act on reasonable 
provisions to address historically high energy prices.
  Variable and oftentimes unpredictable forces impact cyclical gas 
prices. However, over the long run, increasing supply while decreasing 
demand will moderate, if not lower, gas prices for American consumers. 
The very simple equation is to produce more and to use less.
  A comprehensive national energy policy that is focused on finding 
more energy while using less will put us on the path toward affordable 
and reliable energy.
  Recently, the President made a historic announcement that he ended 
the Executive moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf energy exploration. 
Congress cannot wait another day to follow suit by lifting the 
congressional moratorium as well. This outdated moratorium is blocking 
access to offer 18 billion gallons of proven reserves in the Outer 
Continental Shelf. In addition to the proven reserves, an estimated 86 
billion gallons of undiscovered reserves exist off of our shores, 85 
percent of which is still off limits. Congress should give coastal 
States the right to explore for oil and natural gas more than 50 miles 
off their shores.
  Another promising area for domestic production is the development of 
oil and natural gas in section 10-02 of the Alaska Wilderness Wildlife 
Refuge. Congress authorized production in this remote area of Alaska's 
North Slope over 12 years ago. If it hadn't been vetoed by the Clinton 
administration, the United States would have an additional 1 million 
barrels of domestic production each and every day. One of the 
objections that gets raised by those who oppose exploration on the 
North Slope of Alaska is something that has been used for a long time: 
It would take 5 or 10 years to bring that energy on line. That is an 
old and tired argument. Evidence of that is when it becomes the 
punchline on the Jay Leno show. Jay Leno himself, in a monolog, has 
made that very same observation--that the argument being used today by 
our political leaders to avoid having to deal with this issue of 
developing some of our domestic resources is that it would take 5 or 10 
years to develop. That is the very same argument that was made by 
political leaders over a decade ago.
  It is important that we get past that argument, that we deal with the 
issue of our dangerous dependence upon foreign countries for our energy 
supply, and that we do so by developing the resources we have here at 
home, including the 6 to 16 billion barrels we know exist on the North 
Slope of Alaska.
  In addition to the traditional sources of oil and gas, unconventional 
sources of oil are an important solution to our energy crisis as well. 
Coal to liquids and oil shale in Western States and oil sands in Canada 
are abundant supplies of fuel and should be fully developed to meet our 
growing energy needs. Unfortunately, Congress is once again standing in 
the way of domestic energy production.
  The United States has an estimated 2 trillion barrels of oil shale in 
Western States--more than three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. 
Unbelievably, politicians here in Washington are keeping this resource 
off limits.
  As we continue to debate this issue, American energy companies stand 
ready to invest billions of dollars to make oil shale production 
economical and environmentally sound. This investment remains stifled 
since Congress is prohibiting the rules for such production from moving 
forward.
  In addition to oil and natural gas, the Federal Government needs to 
stand by its commitment to renewable energy.
  According to Merrill Lynch:

       Biofuels are making up a huge portion of oil supply growth.
       Biofuels are now the single largest contributor to world 
     oil supply growth.

  As biofuel production increases, our infrastructure to transport and 
use this fuel must increase as well. Congress has to break the monopoly 
of oil on the U.S. economy by investing in renewable fuel dedicated 
pipelines, biofuel refueling stations, and by requiring the production 
of flex fuel vehicles. Approximately 7 million flex fuel vehicles are 
on the road today. This is significant progress from a few years ago, 
and American automakers deserve to be applauded for their dedication to 
biofuels. However, millions of vehicles are still being produced and 
purchased without the flex fuel option.
  That means the vast majority of Americans have no choice but to pull 
up to the pump and fill up on traditional gasoline at whatever price 
the oil company wishes to charge. In this sense, there is virtually no 
competition in our transportation fuel marketplace.
  Congress should also continue to promote the use of hybrid vehicles 
and create incentives for plug-in electric hybrids, which will lessen 
the use of gasoline and diesel fuel.
  Finally, we should enact moderate reforms and reasonable reforms to 
limit excessive speculation. Noncommercial investors are playing a 
historically high role in all commodities, including oil futures. Many 
analysts say this is adding a premium to the price of oil, which does 
not reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand. Congress needs to 
take commonsense steps to limit excessive speculation, without 
overreacting. Any overreaction will simply move trading overseas to 
markets with less transparency and oversight.

  It is important to note that regulation alone is not going to bring 
down the price of gas. We need a comprehensive plan that includes all 
promising solutions to our energy crisis.
  I want to make one observation, as well, regarding this issue of 
speculation, because I know a bill has been filed, and cloture was 
filed on a motion to proceed to legislation that would be a speculation 
response, or answer, to the energy crisis in this country. Frankly, I 
may vote for it. I haven't seen all of the details of it. I understand 
from people who are close to it that a lot of it is good--about 80 
percent, and 20 percent might be things I won't like. I might be 
willing to vote for something like that, but it cannot be that alone. 
That is a minimalist solution and we don't have a minimalist problem. 
This is a problem that demands a major and comprehensive solution and 
attention from the Congress that includes not only addressing that 
issue--the narrow issue of speculation--but also the important issue of 
domestic production, increasing our supply, increasing the production 
of energy in this country, and also looking at ways to reduce our 
demand.
  With regard to the issue of speculation, I want to read from an op ed 
in the Wall Street Journal by Martin Feldstein, back on July 1. This is 
what it says:

       Now here is the good news. Any policy that causes the 
     unexpected future oil price to fall can cause the current 
     price to fall, or to rise less than it would otherwise do. In 
     other words, it is possible to bring down today's price of 
     oil with policies that will have their physical impact on oil 
     demands or supply only in the future. For example, increases 
     in government subsidies to develop technology that will make 
     future cars more efficient, or tighter standards that 
     gradually improve the gas mileage of the stock of cars would 
     lower the future demand for oil and therefore the price of 
     oil today.
       Similarly, increasing the expected future supply of oil 
     would also reduce today's price. That fall in the current 
     price would induce an immediate rise in oil consumption that 
     would be matched by an increase in supply from the OPEC 
     producers and others with some current excess capacity or 
     available inventories. Any steps that can be taken now to 
     increase the future supply of oil, or reduce the future 
     demands for oil in the U.S., or elsewhere, can therefore lead 
     both to lower prices and increased consumption today.

  The best thing we can be doing for American consumers is not a narrow 
minimalist response to the narrow issue of speculation but one that 
addresses the fundamental issue of supply and demand, because that 
drives marketplace prices. I believe if the world market believes we in 
the Congress are serious about addressing that issue--the fundamental 
issue of supply and demand--it will be reflected in those future 
prices. That isn't to say we should not have a solution that addresses 
the issue of speculation as well.
  I am for a number of ideas being proposed. I think we need to have 
more cops on the beat. We need to authorize increased funding and staff 
for the CFTC, and I think we need to require the CFTC to gather 
information on index traders and swap dealers, to codify position 
limits and transparency for foreign boards of trade. Those are reforms 
that I think are important to address in any comprehensive energy bill.

[[Page S6922]]

But you cannot address the narrow issue of speculation and expect to 
impact, in the long term, the dangerous dependence we have on foreign 
sources of energy. We could address the issue of speculation, but what 
does that do to affect the basic fact that every single day we get 60 
percent of our oil from outside the United States? We use 20 million 
barrels a day in the United States, or about 24 percent of the world 
demand, and about 12 million barrels of that, or 60 percent, comes from 
outside of the United States. That is not a sustainable place to be for 
a country that is worried about the impact high gas prices are having 
on its economy, and the impact it could have on our economy in the 
future if we don't address that dependence upon foreign energy.
  We have to have production, and I think the American people get this. 
I think the American people are interested in this issue of 
speculation. I think they believe there is a role that plays in the 
price of oil and the price of a gallon of gasoline. I also think they 
understand we cannot solve the problem we have in this country absent 
addressing the issue of domestic production.
  Increasing our domestic supply, reducing domestic demand--that is how 
we go about solving, in the long term, an issue or addressing a problem 
I think will affect the economy for years to come and make future 
generations of Americans continue to be held over a barrel by countries 
around the world that are hostile to the United States.
  We cannot address the issue of energy by this bill alone. As I said, 
I am open to supporting and voting for the bill that is going to be 
introduced that addresses speculation, but that cannot be it. If that 
is all we do, we have done very little to address the long-term problem 
we have, and that problem is that we get 60 percent of our energy from 
outside the United States. You cannot say no to domestic production. 
You cannot say no to offshore production. You cannot say no to oil 
shale. You cannot say no to coal to liquids. You cannot say no to 
nuclear or to new refineries. You cannot say no to all those things 
that would help increase our domestic supply and affect that 
calculation, that basic equation of supply and demand, which is 
absolutely disastrous for the economy of this country.
  I have traveled my State, as most Members of Congress do, on a 
regular basis. I had a number of meetings over the Fourth of July break 
where I met with people who are impacted by energy. I met this morning 
with corn growers who are in town, and also with agriculture and the 
tourism industry--all of those types of small business interests, 
people who are impacted, and families who are impacted by the high cost 
of gasoline. In my view, there is probably no bigger issue in the short 
term, and no bigger issue in the long term, that impacts the American 
economy and that could do more harm to that economy than this issue of 
high gas prices and the dangerous dependence we have on foreign sources 
of energy. We cannot solve it by saying no. We have to say yes to 
additional domestic production, yes to conservation measures that will 
use less energy, yes to renewables and biofuels, and yes to addressing 
this issue of speculation.
  We need a comprehensive approach, not a rifle shot that deals with 
one aspect of it but doesn't solve the fundamental problem we have, and 
that is the fact that in every single State we pay a terrorism tax to 
countries outside the United States.
  There is $700 billion of wealth this year that we will shift outside 
of the United States and pay to other countries around the world--in 
many ways, petro-dictators--a ``terrorism tax,'' because we have to get 
energy from them. They set the price and we pay it.
  Until we change that fundamental calculation and dynamic, we are 
going to continue to see high gas prices and high oil prices. And that 
is not something this economy can withstand. It is certainly not fair 
to the American people for us to sit by and not take serious, 
meaningful action.
  When the markets recognize we are serious, I believe we will see 
relief for the American people on the price of a gallon of gasoline and 
the price for a barrel of oil. That is why we need a comprehensive 
solution.
  When this debate gets joined in the next week and following week, I 
am going to do everything I can to see that it is not addressing just 
one narrow issue but addresses this issue of production, addresses the 
issue of demand. That is the only way, in my view, that we will solve 
this problem.
  I look forward to that debate. I hope we have opportunities to offer 
amendments. I hope it is not going to be one of those deals where the 
tree gets filled and we do not have a chance to vote on meaningful 
solutions to our energy crisis. The Senate needs to be heard. All of us 
need to have an opportunity to offer amendments and have them voted on, 
and I hope the process will allow for that.
  I yield back the remainder of my time. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I have also come to the floor to speak 
about the direction I believe our country needs to move to lower gas 
prices and decrease our dangerous dependency on oil from places in this 
world that do not share our values and are not friendly, safe places to 
operate.
  I wish to associate myself with the remarks of my colleague, the good 
Senator from South Dakota. I have been very pleased to work with him in 
a group of five Democrats and five Republicans. We hope to expand our 
group as there is more interest in trying to find a centrist approach, 
a commonsense center core that can move us away from saying no to 
saying yes in a smart way, yes to more production--not everywhere but 
in certain places where we believe there are reserves of oil and gas 
that our country most certainly needs, in a safe environmental way that 
can protect our coasts.
  I know that issue is very sensitive to you, Mr. President. You have 
spoken eloquently about that on the floor, and you have made some 
excellent points, as other Senators. I know the Senator from New Jersey 
was here earlier today, and there have been Senators from different 
coastal communities.
  I am not insensitive to the needs of coastal communities. I represent 
one myself. We might not have the beaches that Florida, Alabama, 
Mississippi, and New Jersey have, but we do have very special coastal 
areas that we also want to keep clean and pristine because of our 
fishing, because of our boating, and because of our other recreational 
sports that involve more than just sitting or playing on a beach. We do 
a lot of water activity, and we need that water to be clean and 
pristine. So we are not unaware of those challenges.
  My colleague who just spoke is absolutely correct. Not only he but 
others have talked about the importance of saying yes, and this morning 
in a bipartisan energy summit conducted by the Democratic chairman, 
Chairman Bingaman, and the ranking member, Ranking Member Domenici, 
Daniel Yergin, who is the chairman of the Cambridge Energy Research 
Association, had a great deal of wisdom to share with us. I think, Mr. 
President, you were at that hearing. There were many good, insightful 
comments made. Statements were made this morning that could help guide 
us to a more secure approach.
  One that stuck with me--I am going to paraphrase it because I don't 
have his quote. He said something along the lines of it has taken us 20 
years to get into this tight oil market, and it is going to take us 
some time to get out, but there is a way out. He said it is imperative 
that we increase our supply of oil in the world, and particularly for 
the United States since we are consuming so much of it, and there are 
many places that production can be found and improved.
  He went on to say: We have made some real progress in conservation, 
but, of course, we have to do more.
  Again, we have been saying no for 20 years--no to this refinery, no 
to producing here, lawsuit after lawsuit, actions that shut down 
production. We must begin to say yes. Twenty years of saying no, and I 
am not leaving this, of course, at the doorstep of only Democrats, 
which is what some of our friends on the other side want, to blame just 
the Democrats. The Republicans have been in charge of this Congress for 
the majority of those years. Now they are claiming they were the ones 
saying yes all along. No, it was their Congresses that were saying no.
  But this is not about blaming Democrats or Republicans. This is about

[[Page S6923]]

starting all of us to say, yes, we can; yes, we can get prices down; 
yes, we can make America more energy independent.
  I would like to correct something I said the other day that is not 
true, and I am very sorry because I was not clear, but I am clear now.
  I came to the Senate floor with this chart and said that all of these 
light blue places represented moratoria areas. While it is true for the 
lower 48, all of this entire west coast is off production, the eastern 
Gulf of Mexico under Alabama and next to Florida is off production, for 
the most part, with very few exceptions, with wells here. All of this 
area on the east coast is off limits to production.
  I also said Alaska was off limits to production, and that is not 
true. This was changed very recently, and Alaska has now opened up, not 
ANWR, which is this little tiny point which is so hard to see on this 
map, but the rest of Alaska has opened up. I am going to show another 
chart that describes it a bit better.
  This is a more accurate chart, and it is up to date. Again, I 
apologize, but that was an old chart. This is all off limits. 
Everything on the west coast is off limits and has been for decades. 
All of this area on the east coast, except for this blue diamond, is 
off limits by executive and congressional moratoria. The President has 
lifted his moratoria. He has lifted the executive moratoria, but the 
congressional moratoria still remain.
  The place that has been the most open--and we are very proud of this 
in Louisiana and Texas--is the gulf. This is the western gulf, this is 
the central gulf, and this is the eastern gulf. The reason the eastern 
gulf is a different color than the rest of the chart is because this 
moratoria was extended actually under an agreement that was made on the 
Senate floor--and I was part of that action--to extend this moratoria 
longer than the moratoria on the east and west coasts.
  The west and east coast moratoria are year-to-year moratoria. They 
are done in the Interior bill, and they have been routinely passed year 
to year. The eastern gulf moratoria is in law, and it extends until 
2022.
  Alaska is now basically opened, these blue sections. It is going to 
be very hard for people to realize this because it is really shocking 
to me, and I look at this all the time, but this dot approximately 
right here, this little dot right here is ANWR. This dot is what we 
fight over really, let me say--we fight over this little dot. Here is a 
whole State with lots of opportunities, and yet every discussion for 
the last 20 years has been about this little dot.
  I know that little dot has a lot of oil and gas in it, and I voted to 
open it. But I am to the point now where we have to stop talking about 
ANWR and start thinking about other places in and around ANWR--with the 
help of our Senators from Alaska, who are very knowledgeable and 
very good on this issue, Senator Ted Stevens and Senator Lisa 
Murkowski--where we can get oil and gas in places that are not so 
remote where the infrastructure exists to move this gas from Alaska, 
which sits up north, to the lower 48, either by pipeline or by tanker 
to get oil safely to us.

  There are benefits to drilling in Alaska. There are not many people 
there to aggravate. There are only 500,000, and people in Alaska, like 
people in Louisiana, want to have oil and gas drilling. They believe in 
using their natural resources, whether it is oil and gas or trees. We 
believe in actually cutting a lot of our trees because they grow back. 
We don't believe in cutting old, primitive forests and special places, 
but we actually believe that cutting trees and growing them back helps 
provide the good products we need, and we know how to manage our 
forests.
  Alaska is a lot like Louisiana. We could find oil and gas here. And 
there is a lot of it. The problem is the transportation and the 
infrastructure, and there are some risks associated with moving oil 
through tankers. There is always a risk associated with long pipelines. 
We have that same infrastructure in the gulf where we have pipelines 
coming up from Louisiana.
  I would like to show what some of this infrastructure actually looks 
like so people get an understanding when we talk about opening areas to 
drill. This is the kind of infrastructure that it takes to actually get 
it done.
  This is a picture of the Gulf of Mexico. This is the tip of Louisiana 
and the coast of Texas and Mississippi. This is Mobile Bay, and this is 
the Florida panhandle, and it goes down. This pipeline, as the 
Presiding Officer knows, is a pipeline that is laid under the gulf to 
move gas to Florida from Mobile Bay because the eastern gulf is closed 
right now to production. But yet Florida has great need for gas, and 
the good people of Alabama send it to the people of Florida. There was 
a lot of controversy about this pipeline. There were people in Alabama, 
even Members of Congress, who said: Why send the gas to Florida? Let 
them drill their own gas. That is not part of this debate today, but it 
is a good question. There are answers to it. It is an interesting 
discussion.
  These are pipelines, every one end is a rig or at least a well. These 
platforms are large. They are very deep. They are almost like 
skyscrapers out in the gulf. You cannot see them from the shore. This 
is invisible to the naked eye. You don't really see this. If you are in 
a boat, plane, or swimming, it is all subsea.
  This is a picture of the network of pipelines required to move 
millions of barrels of oil from the ocean to people. If you took a 
snapshot onshore of where there is production in Wyoming or Utah or 
Colorado or New Mexico, you would see much the same thing--a maze of 
pipelines and wells--because it takes more than waving a magic wand for 
the oil to jump out of the ground and into people's tanks. There are a 
lot of steps that have to go into it.
  So part of opening the OCS and opening more onshore is you want to 
open it in places that it is likely for the industry to reach and to 
have people--because even though robots are doing a lot of this work, 
we need people to show up on the rigs to build the platforms. That is 
why I fought so hard for money to come from these activities. When 
people tell me and some of my colleagues say, But, Senator, this 
resource belongs to the United States of America; why should Louisiana 
share any of these resources, I say, because Louisiana is the platform 
for oil and gas production, just like Texas. And with all due respect 
to the United States of America, the United States could not access 
these resources if we did not allow these resources to be accessed and 
then brought through our shores for distribution.

  There is the distribution pipeline. It doesn't just affect Louisiana, 
it affects the entire country. I am going to show you the gas 
distribution system. This is not an oil distribution system, this is 
gas. All of the manufacturers in the Midwest and on the east coast need 
natural gas. There are very few places they can get it. They get it 
basically from the Gulf of Mexico. This is the trunk, in real terms, of 
how much gas there is. It says 6.4 billion cubic feet from the Gulf of 
Mexico production. The other big trunk comes from Alaska, and there is 
potential gas in Canada. This comes from Alaska. Basically, that is it. 
This is where the gas comes from.
  So when prices of natural gas are high, it is because there is only a 
limited source in America, and we are not opening gas reserves where 
there might be more here, there might be some more here, and obviously 
there are more in Alaska. So that is just an example. But as you can 
see, the production in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't just benefit the 
people in Louisiana and Mississippi. Without it, you couldn't keep 
lights on in this Chamber or in New York or Chicago and other places 
that are very important.
  I wanted to clarify that most of the OCS is off limits. Most of the 
OCS is off limits, and while you see lots of posters and pictures, and 
everybody is trying to move the numbers to justify their position, the 
fact is that in the lower 48--not counting Alaska, Alaska is not on 
here--less than 19 percent of the OCS is open to development, less than 
19 percent. All of this is off limits, this is off limits, and this is 
off limits. The only area we can drill is here.
  I would like to read this number here: It is 33 billion barrels of 
oil here on this side of the gulf. When people say there is no more oil 
in America, it is because we are not looking for it. There is plenty of 
oil onshore and offshore, not counting the oil we could actually get 
from coal--coal-to-liquids technology, clean--and not counting

[[Page S6924]]

the oil we could potentially get from shale, which is boiling the rock 
into a liquid and producing the oil, which could be billions of 
barrels.
  I agree with Senator Salazar that the technology is not quite there 
yet, and maybe it is going to be too much of a drain on the water 
supply in the West. Perhaps it might be a very serious environmental 
problem. But we don't know. I think we should find out. That is my 
point. We don't know, but we need to find out because one day we may 
need to boil that rock, and if we need to, we need to figure out how to 
do it.
  There is plenty of oil here. But when people say ``the science,'' 
trust me, if there is a scientist in America who wants to come anywhere 
around Washington to say there is no oil because they have explored it, 
I will debate them until my last breath, because we have not looked. 
There has been some seismic--not a lot of seismic--and the technology 
is so improved now that we can be much more certain of where oil and 
gas is. Just to say there are 33 billion barrels of oil here and then 
to jump to the conclusion that there is no oil here, that there has to 
be no oil here and no oil here, is really defying common sense.
  I will end with this, Mr. President. Do we need to do more than 
produce? Yes, we do. Just increasing production is not the answer, but 
it is a step that must be taken. We are too great a nation to, every 
time prices hit $5, send a little piddling letter over to countries 
such as Saudi Arabia begging and pleading, as if we are some second-
rate power, asking them to increase their oil production when we won't 
increase it at home. It is not right. We must increase our production, 
and we can do it safely.
  I know there are others who wish to speak, so I will wrap up in just 
a moment.
  We need to also--and this is where my friends on the other side of 
the aisle have not been very good in their own right. They have not 
been for mandates pushing conservation, and we must start driving a 
different kind of automobile, and not just expanding mileage from 20 
miles per gallon to 27 miles, but CAFE standards reflecting 
efficiencies from 25 miles per gallon to 27 or 35.
  We need to move to a different kind of automobile because it is the 
fuel demand, it is the gap between the 20 million barrels we use every 
day and the 8 million we produce. There is a 12 million-barrel-a-day 
gap. If we could close 6 million of that by more production 
domestically and close the other 6 million by conservation, America 
would have no more problem, the price would come down, and we would be 
free and happy--a powerful, free people again. And we have to get that 
way.
  We once dominated in this industry. That is how we won World War II. 
We would not have won without our domination in the energy industry. We 
have to dominate again, and we can do it through conservation and 
production.
  I hope our leaders, both the Democratic leader and the Republican 
leader, understand that there is a group of us who don't want to go 
home until this is done and that we are going to do everything we can 
because I don't believe we should be drifting out of this Capitol 
anytime soon until we have given a clear and unmistakable signal to the 
American public that we hear them and that we understand the economic 
strain.
  Our economic model was not built for $5 gasoline, and we cannot 
sustain it. That is what we were told, and not by the Republican policy 
people or the Democratic policy people but by two of the brightest 
minds on this subject. They said the U.S. model cannot sustain this 
high price for long. It will cause and has caused serious economic 
disruption. It must be corrected.
  So I hope, Mr. President, that we most certainly do this. I am open 
to things that perhaps I wouldn't have considered in the past, and I 
hope my colleagues will have that same open mind. If so, we can perhaps 
get some extraordinary things done.
  Either tomorrow or next week, I am going to come back and talk about 
the myth of oil spills because the signs I see on this floor about oil 
spilling in the gulf--I want to continue to remind people that less 
than 1 percent of the oil in the ocean is caused from drilling in the 
ocean. The majority of it is natural seepage, and I am going to have 
some information that will show that. The people of Louisiana, Texas, 
and Mississippi are very proud of this industry that we have helped to 
birth not just for our country but for the world, and we are determined 
to help people understand that it can be done in a clean and 
environmentally sensitive manner.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.

                          ____________________