[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 7, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1436-S1437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS PRICES

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, the American people need help because they 
are suffering at the gas pump. With the national average price for 
gasoline up at around $3.75 per gallon, representing an increase of 
about 40 cents from a year ago and about 20 cents from just 1 month 
ago, citizens are suffering and they need relief.
  It is important to point out in this context that when President 
Obama took office, gas prices were at about $1.85 per gallon. Now that 
they are up to about $3.75 per gallon we can see a steady increase. 
Over this 38-month period of time of his Presidency so far, gasoline 
prices have risen an average of about 5 cents per gallon per month. 
This is staggering when we think about the fact that if he is 
reelected--if he serves out the rest of this term and if he is 
reelected--that is a total of an additional 58 months. With that 
increase, gas prices will be up at around $6.60 per gallon.
  This is a lot of money. It is staggering. It affects everything we 
do--from the miles we drive to the products we buy at the grocery 
store. Everything gets more expensive when the fuel we use to transport 
ourselves and our products becomes more expensive.
  Now, to some extent, one could suggest this was not only foreseeable, 
but it was actually foreseen. To some, it was considered a desired 
outcome. Let's consider, for example, that in 2008, Dr. Steven Chu, who 
now serves as President Obama's Energy Secretary, said:

       Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of 
     gasoline to the levels in Europe.

  Well, Mr. Chu, it looks as though we are headed in that direction, 
and if we

[[Page S1437]]

continue to follow this administration's energy policies, we may get 
there.
  As a member of the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I 
was somewhat surprised when a suggestion was made just a few days ago 
that there are some who believe there is no relationship between U.S. 
production of petroleum and the price of gasoline in the United States. 
That simply is not true, and it cannot be true. With oil being the 
input ingredient into gasoline, it is the precursor for gasoline. 
Anytime we do anything that cuts off or restricts or limits the supply, 
that is necessarily going to have an impact on the price, and it does.
  The fact that it is indisputable that there are other factors which 
also influence the price of gasoline makes it no less true that we have 
to produce petroleum at home in addition to buying it from other 
places. In order to keep gasoline prices at reasonable levels, we have 
to produce more.
  There are some things we can do in order to help improve that trend. 
For example, we could open ANWR for drilling. We could open our 
country's vast Federal public lands to development of oil shale. It is 
a little known fact that in three Rocky Mountain States, a small 
segment of Rocky Mountain States--Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming--we have 
an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels of proven recoverable oil reserves 
locked up in oil shale. Now, 1.2 trillion barrels is a lot of oil. That 
is comparable to the combined petroleum reserves of the top 10 
petroleum-producing countries of the world combined--just in one 
segment of three Rocky Mountain States.
  Yet we are not producing it commercially, in part to a very 
significant degree because that oil shale--especially in my State, the 
State of Utah--is overwhelmingly on Federal public land, and it is 
almost impossible to get to it, to produce it commercially on federally 
owned public land. We need to change that.
  We need to create a sensible environmental review process for oil and 
gas production generally. We need to improve the permitting process for 
offshore development in the Gulf of Mexico and in other areas. We need 
to allow the States to regulate hydraulic fracturing without the fear 
of suffocating and duplicative Federal regulations. We need to keep all 
the Federal lands in the West open to all kinds of energy development. 
And, of course, we need the President to approve the Keystone XL 
Pipeline. This will contribute substantially to America's energy 
security and will provide an estimated 20,000 shovel-ready jobs right 
off the bat.

  There are things we can do to help Americans with this difficult 
problem--one that will affect almost every aspect of the day-to-day 
lives of Americans. We need government to get out of the way. We need 
the government to become part of what the President laudably outlined 
as an all-of-the-above strategy in his State of the Union Address just 
recently. We need to get there. We cannot afford gas at $6.60 per 
gallon, which is exactly where we are headed if we continue to do 
things as this administration has done, which has lead to an increase 
in the price of gasoline at a staggering rate of 5 cents per gallon 
every single month.

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