[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 117 (Thursday, July 30, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8547-S8548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on my amendment to the 
fiscal year 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
  This amendment prevents the Department of Energy from spending 
taxpayer dollars on companies that invest significant resources or do 
business in Iran's energy sector to fill the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve.
  Earlier this year, the Department signed contracts with energy giants 
Shell, Vitol, and Glencore to add almost 17 million barrels to the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Open source material indicates that these 
three companies make up a majority of Iran's gasoline imports.
  Companies that sell gasoline to Iran should not receive the support 
of the American taxpayers, and this body has now gone on record 
multiple times opposing government contracts with companies that have 
substantial investment in or do business with Iran's energy sector.
  My amendment does not penalize the Department of Energy for this 
activity, but prevents this sort of thing from happening again. Ending 
taxpayer support for Iran's energy sector is a commonsense step and 
crucially important. Most major importers of gasoline to Iran have 
substantial ties to the U.S. Government, and unanimous adoption of my 
amendment sends a clear message to those involved in Iran's energy 
sector: You can do business with us, or you can do business with Iran--
not both.

[[Page S8548]]

                     Modeling and Simulation R & D

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, during yesterday's consideration of the 
fiscal year 2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill, I 
noted that the managers included certain report language related to 
modeling and simulation capabilities for an unconventional fossil fuels 
program. I would like to ask the chairman and ranking member of the 
subcommittee if their intent was to improve modeling and simulation for 
unconventional fossil energy technologies, by working in collaboration 
with universities and industry to establish joint programs for research 
and development.
  Mr. DORGAN. Yes, that is our intent. This legislation would spur 
innovation and improve modeling and simulation efforts.
  Mr. WARNER. I am pleased to learn that, because the Virginia Modeling 
and Simulation Center--VMASC--at Old Dominion University has extensive 
experience in modeling, simulation, and visualization of complex 
systems and events. Its capabilities include a complete suite of 
visualization software that can incorporate geospatial information with 
simulation and analysis of energy-related systems and the impact of 
those systems on various aspects of the environment. It also has 
extensive experience modeling critical infrastructure components of 
fossil fuel, electric and natural gas systems. VMASC has also developed 
capabilities for modeling policy aspects of global warming that can be 
adapted specifically to fossil fuel systems, and help to identify 
unconventional oil, natural gas, and coal resources.
  VMASC has developed capabilities to model the production of 
unconventional resources using a combination of computational 
techniques that can be adapted to simulate a wide variety of scenarios 
associated with the fossil fuel industry and its relationship to 
environmental impacts.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman, I worked to develop this initiative to 
incorporate a capability that the Department has failed to cultivate, 
yet offers tremendous potential to develop our domestic fossil energy 
potential. The University of Utah's Simulation and Computing Institute 
which has worked with both the Office of Science and NNSA computing 
programs is a leading computing program with tremendous potential to 
contribute to this effort. This outstanding computing capability is 
coupled with the vast oil and gas production capabilities at the 25 
year-old Energy and Geoscience Institute. This organization operates on 
seven continents and shares research and technology with its 66 
corporate members that all have energy production experience. The goal 
of this program will be to facilitate the development of unconventional 
fossil energy resources utilizing state of the art computing simulation 
and modeling capabilities.
  Mr. DORGAN. I agree that high performance computing applications are 
important research tools that can help lead to breakthroughs in energy 
production. North Dakota State University, NDSU, uses computational 
modeling and simulations to help analyze theories and validate 
experiments that are dangerous, expensive or impossible to conduct. 
Through its Center for High Performance Computing, NDSU is 
collaborating with the Department of Energy and its national 
laboratories on a number of energy research projects.
  The capabilities of VMASC, University of Utah, North Dakota State 
University and other institutions should receive due consideration as 
the Department of Energy executes this provision.
  (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to 
be printed in the Record.)

                          ____________________