[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 61 (Thursday, April 26, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H2193-H2197]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             ENERGY ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
  Tonight, I and other Members of the House are going to talk about 
energy issues in the United States.
  Probably a timely thing to start with are the recent comments by one 
of the individuals who works for the Environmental Protection Agency, 
the EPA. The more we learn about the EPA, the more we learn that they 
are hostile to real American energy for various reasons. Let me give 
you some historical perspective that makes this continuous assault on 
the oil and gas industry make sense to us now in 2012.
  It seems that back in 2010, 2 years ago, EPA Region 6 Administrator 
Al Armendariz stood up on his bureaucratic pedestal of power and 
spelled out the true intentions that he had and the goals of the EPA. 
He declared that the EPA--and he declared this from his marble palace 
here in Washington, D.C.--that the EPA would target the oil and gas 
industry, calling it an ``enforcement priority'' as if, Madam Speaker, 
the oil and gas industry were made up of criminals.
  He went on:

       I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff 
     about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was 
     probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the 
     meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said.

  And here is what he said, Madam Speaker:

       It was kind of like how the Romans used to do--you know, 
     conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a 
     little Turkish town somewhere. They'd find the first five 
     guys they saw, and they'd crucify them.

  That's right--they would crucify them--as if he is advocating 
crucifying the oil and gas industry. What a thing to say from somebody 
who works for the Federal Government.
  He said he would make examples out of the people in the oil and gas 
industry. Probably unknown to him, his speech was all caught on 
videotape that recently surfaced. In fact, it was on the Internet 
YouTube last night; but today, mysteriously, it seems to have 
disappeared and is no longer on YouTube. That was in 2010.
  These comments help us to understand the EPA's belligerent attitude 
against energy--American energy--against the oil and gas industry. What 
came after was one of the most aggressive assaults on the oil and gas 
industry we've ever seen. As a Wall Street Journal editorial once said, 
the EPA is at war with Texas. I think the EPA probably should change 
their name to the War Department because they are at war with America's 
energy. They certainly aren't concerned as much about the environment 
as they are about putting American energy out of business.
  The oil and gas industry supports 9.2 million jobs in the United 
States. I wonder how many of those workers Mr. Armendariz wants to 
crucify all in the name of his political agenda.
  Madam Speaker, we need a fair EPA, one that brings a balanced 
approach to the environment and to our energy industry. An attack on 
the energy industry is an attack, really, on the American people and 
American jobs. Mr. Armendariz seems to be at war with America. He does 
not want to really

[[Page H2194]]

help the oil and gas industry become environmentally safe. It seems to 
me he wants to kill it, and the effort will kill American jobs, kill 
our energy, and kill our national security.
  The video also shows he is not concerned about real science, not 
about true environmental science or, really, the facts. He just hates 
the oil and gas industry. So, Madam Speaker, he needs to go. He needs 
to be replaced with someone who cares more about the environment than 
personal crusades against industry.

                              {time}  1910

  Madam Speaker, I would like to place in the Record the Forbes article 
that was published today regarding the EPA official that I just 
mentioned.

                      [From Forbes, Apr. 26, 2012]

  EPA Official Not Only Touted `Crucifying' Oil Companies, He Tried It

       Confirming what many in the industry long suspected, a 
     video surfaced Wednesday in which Al Armendariz, an official 
     at the Environmental Protection Agency, promotes the idea of 
     crucifying oil companies. Armendariz heads up the EPA's 
     region 6 office, which is based in Dallas and responsible for 
     oversight of Texas and surrounding states. The former 
     professor at Southern Methodist University was appointed by 
     President Obama in November 2009.
       In a talk to colleagues about methods of EPA enforcement, 
     Armendariz can be seen saying, ``The Romans used to conquer 
     little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little 
     Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they 
     saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town 
     was really easy to manage for the next few years.''
       Range was among the first to discover the potential of the 
     Marcellus Shale gas field of Pennsylvania--the biggest gas 
     field in America and one of the biggest in the world. 
     Armendariz's office declared in an emergency order that 
     Range's drilling activity had contaminated groundwater in 
     Parker County, Texas. Armendariz's office insisted that 
     Range's hydraulic fracking activity had caused the pollution 
     and ordered Range to remediate the water. The EPA's case 
     against Range was catnip for the environmental fracktivists 
     who insist with religious zealotry that fracking is evil. 
     Range insisted from the beginning that there was no substance 
     to the allegations.
       The Armendariz video (which appears to have been taken off 
     YouTube late last night) was shot around the same time he was 
     preparing the action against Range. Here's the highlights of 
     what he said.
       The Romans used to conquer little villages in the 
     Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town 
     somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they 
     would crucify them. And then you know that town was really 
     easy to manage for the next few years.
       And so you make examples out of people who are in this case 
     not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant 
     with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you 
     make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect 
     there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don't 
     want to play that game, and they decide at that point that 
     it's time to clean up.
       And, that won't happen unless you have somebody out there 
     making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an 
     industry, you find people violating the law, you go 
     aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective 
     enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very 
     quickly.
       That's what these companies respond to is both their public 
     image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial 
     pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry 
     to clean up very quickly.
       The former professor at Southern Methodist University is a 
     diehard environmentalist, having grown up in El Paso near a 
     copper smelter that reportedly belched arsenic-laced clouds 
     into the air. (Here's a profile of him in the Dallas 
     Observer.) Texas Monthly called him one of the 25 most 
     powerful Texans, while the Houston Chronicle said he's ``the 
     most feared environmentalist in the state.''
       Never mind that he couldn't prove jack against Range. For a 
     year and a half EPA bickered over the issue, both with Range 
     and with the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil 
     and gas drilling and did its own scientific study of Range's 
     wells and found no evidence that they polluted anything. In 
     recent months a federal judge slapped the EPA, decreeing that 
     the agency was required to actually do some scientific 
     investigation of wells before penalizing the companies that 
     drilled them. Finally in March the EPA withdrew its emergency 
     order and a federal court dismissed the EPA's case.
       David Porter, a commissioner on the Texas Railroad 
     Commission, wasn't impressed. ``Today the EPA finally made a 
     decision based on science and fact versus playing politics 
     with the Texas economy. The EPA's withdrawal of the emergency 
     order against Range Resources upholds the Railroad Commission 
     Final Order that I signed concluding that Range is not 
     responsible for any water contamination in Parker County. Al 
     Armendariz and the EPA's Region Six office are guilty of fear 
     mongering, gross negligence and severe mishandling of this 
     case. I hope to see drastic changes made in the way the 
     regional office conducts business in the future--starting 
     with the termination of Al Armendariz.''
       After an outcry emerged over the video on Wednesday, 
     Armendariz apologized for his statements Wednesday night, 
     reportedly saying: ``I apologize to those I have offended and 
     regret my poor choice of words. It was an offensive and 
     inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential 
     violations of our nation's environmental laws. I am and have 
     always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of 
     those laws.''
       He ought to resign as well. His comments in the video are 
     proof that facts and science don't matter to him, that he's 
     already made up his mind that the industry he has regulatory 
     power over is evil. When you lose faith in the impartiality 
     of regulators every action they take is tainted. He's the boy 
     who cried wolf.

  I want to continue my comments about America's energy by talking a 
little bit about gasoline and gasoline prices.
  I ask Members, people back in Texas, in southeast Texas where I live, 
how rising gasoline prices have affected them personally, and I want to 
give the House the benefit of some of those statements made by American 
people about the high cost of gasoline and maybe some things that we 
can do about the high cost of gasoline.
  Here's what they've said, and I'll take them one at a time.
  One individual from southeast Texas says:

       I spend more money on gasoline than I do on groceries.

  Another:

       Living in Texas requires driving greater distances to get 
     anything. We have no choice but to purchase gas, and it 
     definitely cuts into our food budget.

  You see, Madam Speaker, west of the Mississippi there are vast 
places, as the Speaker knows, where people roam and live in the rural 
areas, and it takes them a long time to get from point A to point B, 
especially when they're going to work sometimes, whether they work on 
the ranch or whether they work in small towns in America.
  So, because of that greater distance, a lot of Americans don't 
realize that the only mode of transportation for some Americans is to 
drive a vehicle. That's how they get to work. They don't drive subways. 
They don't ride bicycles. They don't have the opportunity to walk to 
work because they live in the vastness of the West.
  I'll continue:

       Seventy percent of all business requires people to have 
     discretionary income that's being siphoned off by higher gas, 
     taxes, fees, and it's only getting worse because of high 
     gasoline prices.

  Another says:

       As a retiree, high gasoline prices affects everything I do. 
     Travel, possible vacation plans are no longer being discussed 
     in our family. Anything I do is planned well so as to cut 
     down on how much I drive. What I buy, because it is priced so 
     high in the stores. The price in stores has tripled because 
     stores are having to pay higher fuel prices to get their 
     products to market.

  Another one says:

       I drive for a living, and it hurts.

  Another Texan has written me and said:

       I drive 175 miles round trip to work every day. I work for 
     the Corps of Engineers, and the government doesn't give me 
     one red cent for gasoline. It costs me $900 a month for 
     gasoline that I used to could use somewhere else.

  Amazing number: $900. In some cases, that's how much people pay on 
the rent on their house or an apartment. Yet we have one American doing 
his job working for the people of this country spending that much money 
just on gasoline.
  Another individual wrote me and he said:

       I can't afford to commute. But by my long hours as a 
     businessowner, it makes it impossible to take mass transit or 
     a carpool. So I have no alternative since I have no carpool, 
     no mass transit, but I have to drive to get to work because 
     I'm a businessowner, and the gasoline is driving me out of 
     business.

  Another one has said:

       I drive 75 miles a day round trip for work, plus I pay $7 
     in tolls. Yeah, it's hurting. I love my job, but it's getting 
     to the point that what money I make is going straight back 
     into the gas tank.

  Another citizen has said:

       I drive a 2000 Ford F 150 as my work vehicle. It's draining 
     my wallet, but I need a full-size truck for my job.

  Once again, in the West, a lot of folks drive pickup trucks. They 
don't only just drive them to work. That is their work vehicle. They 
use that in their job. It is their office. They don't have the luxury 
as some do to work in tall

[[Page H2195]]

skyscrapers and an office, as we consider an office. Their truck is 
their vehicle, and the F 150 is the standard-operating vehicle, at 
least in Texas and other parts of the country. By the way, it's the 
number one selling vehicle in the United States.
  But Americans need to understand, and the government needs to 
understand, that's what Americans drive. That is their work vehicle in 
many cases. High gasoline prices affect their quality of life, and 
maybe we, as a body, ought to do something about gasoline that is now 
$4 a gallon.
  Another citizen told me:

       Last month I spent $600 on gas for my truck versus just 
     $300 a few years ago. Customers don't understand that the 
     materials are going up due to the rising costs and the 
     suppliers are raising the price to recoup the loss due to 
     fuel prices skyrocketing.

  What we pay at the grocery store or at any store where we do 
business, for a product, part of the cost of that product is getting it 
to market so Americans can buy it. It's costing more to get goods and 
services to market because of gasoline prices, and, of course, gasoline 
prices affect the price of goods, and therefore that is passed on to 
the consumer, to people in America who live here.

  Another one says:

       Where do I begin? I hated it, but I had to go from a 
     4Runner to a Corolla to handle my commute to work every day.

  Another one said:

       Since 2010, my food bill has gone from $95 a week for a 
     full cart to $130 per week for half a cart of groceries. We 
     are making more but keeping less. High gasoline prices affect 
     my quality of life.

  Another one says:

       I have spent less on food so I could fill up three times a 
     week at approximately $75 to $80 a tank.

  Another citizen wrote me his concerns:

       I had to find another job closer to home because it's 
     getting ridiculous, the cost of gasoline.

  An individual who uses his truck in his business said this:

       I drive a hot-shot delivery truck, and I have to pay my own 
     fuel. We do get a fuel surcharge, but it does not even come 
     close to paying for the fuel. I spend $200 to $250 a week on 
     fuel over what the surcharge pays me, and it's killing me.

  That's what Americans are saying about gasoline prices. These are 
people who work every day, support their families. Yet gasoline affects 
them in personal ways.
  Another individual wrote me about his religion is being affected, his 
religious commitment is being affected by the cost of gasoline. Here's 
what he says:

       Because the church my family and I attend is 30 minutes 
     away, we've chosen to attend Wednesday night church services 
     closer to home. Also, we've had to give up two church service 
     meetings during the week. It's upsetting for my fellow 
     members to ask me on Sundays if I've left the church. It's 
     also harder to maintain those close ties not seeing fellow 
     members but once a week, and it's all due to high gasoline 
     prices.

  Another southeast Texan writes this comment to me:

       We certainly have less ``disposable income,'' as the phrase 
     goes, and that means less money to spend in various 
     businesses in our city because of the high cost it costs my 
     family to buy gasoline.

  Another one says this:

       I've cut out everything extra, dine out less, fewer trips, 
     stay at home for entertainment, prices of food have tripled, 
     and I stretch leftovers as far as possible because of gas 
     prices.

  Another citizen and neighbor says:

       I only drive where I have to. I shop at Kroger to get extra 
     cents off of gas.

  The Kroger grocery store gives people the deduction if they buy 
gasoline from Kroger, and they have the little Kroger card:

       We just stay at home more than ever.

  And a fisherman says this:

       I am a commercial fisherman. Gas prices hurt at the pump 
     and it has in turn driven up the prices for supplies. It's 
     even driven up the price and cost of bait.

  Another one lastly makes this comment:

       It's just hard to make it these days.

  So gasoline prices, which we're not talking a whole lot about now, 
some Americans have just accepted it as the new normal. I refuse to do 
that. I refuse to accept high gasoline prices.

                              {time}  1920

  I'm old enough to remember when gasoline cost--I don't want to shock 
the Speaker, because you're a whole lot younger than I am. I remember 
when I could fill up my Chevy II Super Sport in the early seventies for 
26 cents a gallon. I know that shocks you, but gasoline prices have 
gone up. Of course in my generation, as Mr. Burton from Indiana knows, 
when gasoline hit 30 cents a gallon, we all were shocked about it. Now 
we're paying $4 a gallon.
  We don't have to accept that. The reason we don't have to accept it 
is because sitting over here are America's natural resources, our God-
given natural resources, just waiting to be developed. But as I 
mentioned earlier, we've got these bureaucrats down the street in their 
marble palaces called the EPA, and they regulate more than just light 
bulbs. They're regulating the oil and gas industry out of business, and 
I think it's a personal vendetta that they have for some reason.
  There are things we should do, things we can do, and it's important 
that we discuss those. And we'll continue to discuss those tonight with 
my colleagues.
  I do want to yield to my friend and colleague, Mr. Burton from 
Indiana, for as much time as he wishes to consume.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. First of all, I want to thank my good friend 
Congressman Poe of Texas for putting a face on the problem of high 
energy prices and high gasoline prices.
  I listened to all of the things that you were reading there from your 
constituents about not being able to go to work or buying huge amounts 
of gas two or three times a week, and it just breaks your heart. You 
know, I went to the store the other night and I bought two oranges. 
They were on sale at a dollar a piece. Two oranges for a dollar a 
piece. The reason for that is not just because they're growing them and 
it's costing more; it's because the transportation by diesel trucks and 
gasoline-powered trucks has gone up so much that they have to pass that 
onto the consumers with higher prices. If you talk to any man or woman 
who goes to the store, they'll tell you that they're feeling it when 
they buy their groceries, as well as at the gas pump.
  I'd like to tell you a little story real quickly. You'll find this 
humorous because you talked about gasoline being 20-some cents when you 
were a little bit younger. I presume it was a little bit younger.
  We were on a trip with some friends of ours, and we went to an island 
down off the coast of Florida in the Caribbean. This friend of mine and 
I, we rented two little motor scooters to go out to the corner of the 
island. Gasoline on the island was very high; it was 50 cents a gallon. 
He says, I'm not paying 50 cents a gallon for gasoline. So we took what 
we had in the cycles and we rode out there, and he ran out the 
gasoline. We had to get a coffee can and turn one cycle upside down to 
get enough gas in his cycle to get back. Well, we couldn't get my cycle 
turned back on. So he tried to pull me and my motorcycle, with my wife 
on the back, with a string back to the hotel room where we were 
staying, and we couldn't do it. It about broke my finger off.
  So they left me at a Portuguese gasoline station where nobody spoke 
English, and they didn't understand a thing I was saying. My face was 
burned to a pulp from the sun, and I ended up not getting back until 
late that night with an almost third-degree burn because he wouldn't 
pay 50 cents for a gallon of gas. Imagine what he would think today at 
having to pay $4 for a gallon of gas. The poor guy would just die.
  Let me just look at this chart. My colleague was talking just a 
moment ago--and I wish all of the people in America, if I could talk to 
them, could see this chart. It shows that back in the early part of the 
Obama administration, gasoline was about $2.68 a gallon, and now in 
some parts of the country it is over $4 a gallon. It's killing the 
economy, it's killing people who have to go to work, as Congressman Poe 
said, and we have the resources to deal with it.
  The thing I wanted to talk about real quickly was--and I talked to 
Congressman Poe about this--Interior Secretary Salazar, as well as the 
head of the EPA and the Energy Department, are having an all-out 
assault on Members of Congress who are pointing out that we have energy 
in this country that can be tapped to lower the price of

[[Page H2196]]

energy. They're attacking us, saying that we're just raising red 
herrings and not dealing with the problems as we should. I want to read 
this to you. Mr. Salazar, the head of the Interior Department says:

       It's in this imagined energy world where we see this 
     growing and continued divide in the energy debate in America. 
     But the divide is not among ordinary Americans; it is between 
     some people here in Washington, D.C.

  I guess they mean you and me, Congressman Poe.
  He said:

       It's a divide between the real energy world that we work on 
     every day and the imagined, fairytale world.

  And the President of the United States has said on a number of 
occasions that we're doing more drilling right now than we ever have 
and that the American people are being misled.
  In addition to the chart I have on gasoline prices, I brought this 
chart down. This chart, Congressman Poe, shows the number of 
applications for permits to drill and how they've been affected since 
the Obama administration has taken place. So I just want to go through 
these facts. If the President were paying attention, and if I were 
talking to him--but I know I can't--if I were talking to him, I would 
say, Mr. President, these are the facts. And I don't know who's giving 
you these facts down there at the White House, but, Mr. President, you 
ought to take a look at these facts because they're accurate.
  First of all, according to the American Petroleum Institute, the 
number of new permits to drill issued by the Bureau of Land Management 
is down by 40 percent, from an average of over 6,400 permits in 2007 
and 2008 to an average of 3,962 in 2009 to 2010. That's down by almost 
40 percent. We're not drilling where we can. They're not issuing the 
permits.
  During this same period, the number of new wells drilled on Federal 
land have declined. The number of oil wells have gone down by 40 
percent, and the number of new Federal oil and gas leases issued by the 
Bureau of Land Management is down by almost 50 percent. Is it any 
wonder we're not going after our resources, we're depending on the 
Saudis, the people in South America and Venezuela, many of whom don't 
like us very much? As a result, we're paying more and more and more at 
the pump.
  President Obama says that oil production is at an all-time high 
during his administration. However, the fact is oil production on 
Federal land fell by 11 percent last year, and oil production on 
private and State-owned land--where they couldn't touch it--did go up a 
little bit. That's what he's talking about. Where the government has 
control over permits, they're not letting us drill.
  Federal lands hold an estimated 116 billion barrels of recoverable 
oil, enough to produce gasoline for 65 billion cars and fuel oil for 
3.2 million households for 60 years. Western oil shale deposits alone 
are estimated to contain up to five times the amount of Saudi oil 
reserves. Seventy percent of this oil shale is on Federal land, and we 
can't get to it because the President and his administration will not 
let us.
  According to a recent CRS report, there are over 21.6 million acres 
of land leased by the Federal Government that are not currently 
producing oil or that have not been approved for exploration. Returning 
to the levels of 2007 and 2008, when the administration started, 
Federal leasing and permitting levels would have projected an increase 
of 7 million to 13 million barrels per year of domestic oil production, 
but they cut it back.
  According to the American Petroleum Institute, an estimated 12,000 to 
30,000 American jobs would be created in energy producing Western 
States over the next 4 years if we just went back to where we were 
drilling in 2007 and 2008. Furthermore, the Keystone XL pipeline, which 
the President has stopped dead, would bring to our economy thousands of 
new jobs and transport 830,000 barrels of oil to American refineries, 
which would be converted into oil and gasoline that would help this 
economy and lower gas prices.
  With gas prices, as my colleague said, very, very high at over $4 a 
gallon--and in some places here in Washington, it was up to $5 a gallon 
not too long ago. With gas prices that high and affecting every 
American, it's clear that the United States needs to become more energy 
independent and signal to the world that the U.S. is open to 
production. If we started drilling where we can and exploring where we 
can, make no mistake, the people who sell oil to us will lower the 
price because they want to be competitive and they don't want to lose 
market share.
  Whether it's the administration dragging its heels on approving 
permits for offshore drilling or drilling on Federal land, not opening 
up land for exploration, or not approving the Keystone pipeline, the 
Obama administration's policies are failing everyday Americans and 
costing millions in potential government revenue and thousands of new 
jobs.

                              {time}  1930

  So no matter what the administration people are saying, like Mr. 
Salazar or the EPA or the Energy Department, the fact is we have enough 
energy in this country to move toward energy independence over the next 
5 to 10 years. But this administration wants to go to new sources of 
energy like windmills and solar panels and geothermal and nuclear. And 
all those things are important, but while we're starting to transition 
to new sources of energy, we need to use the energy that we have, which 
would lower the cost of energy to the average citizen and lower the 
price of gasoline so people, as Mr. Poe has said, could get to work and 
live a competent, fair, friendly life.
  With that, Mr. Poe, thank you so much for giving me this time. I'm a 
big admirer of yours.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Burton, for your comments. I 
appreciate the gentleman from Indiana.
  Several comments about what you said are important. The 
administration, the government, says drilling is up in the United 
States. That is true. But drilling on Federal lands is not up.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Down 11 percent.
  Mr. POE of Texas. The drilling is taking place on State-owned 
property or private property, but other lands other than Federal lands. 
If it wasn't for that, drilling would be down in the United States. If 
we go back to the Gulf of Mexico, the same situation we have in the 
Gulf of Mexico has been ever since the BP incident.
  Permitting is taking too long. It takes a record amount of days, 
sometimes months, to issue a permit in the deep water and in the 
shallow water. The shallow water guys operate with a very small amount 
of capital. They can't stay and wait around for the government to make 
a decision on a permit or not, so they aren't able to drill. In the 
deep water, those deepwater wells, those rigs, they cost $100,000 a day 
whether they're operating or they're sitting there, and that's why some 
of them have left the Gulf of Mexico to never return. They've gone down 
to South America; they've gone to off the coast of Africa, to drill 
where countries are friendlier to the drilling safely off of their 
coast.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If I might, we sent $3 billion of American 
taxpayers' money to Brazil at a time when we have almost a $16 trillion 
national debt, and they're drilling in deepwater areas like we would be 
drilling in off the coast of Mexico. But we can't drill there because 
of the oil spill and because we can't get permits, so we're sending our 
taxpayers' dollars down to Brazil so they can do what we can't.
  Mr. POE of Texas. If the gentleman will yield, we're not only sending 
money down there to develop their oil industry, when they develop it, 
we're going to buy their oil back. So we're paying them twice.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. That's right.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
  Now, I don't know and I don't really suspect that drilling would be 
the only answer for raising or lowering the gasoline prices, but it's 
one factor because of supply and demand. It's not the only factor, but 
it's one of those. It just seems to me that the United States is the 
only major power in the world that has an energy policy that is: We're 
not going to drill in the United States for all these reasons, but we 
want you to drill in your country your natural resources and we'll buy 
them from you. It seems a little bit arrogant on our part as a Nation.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that Sarah Palin, whom 
everybody

[[Page H2197]]

in this country knows, she will tell you, and she's told people all 
across the country when she speaks, that they have a huge amount of oil 
in the ANWR and other parts of Alaska, and because of the radical 
environmentalist groups in this country, they can't drill up there.
  Now, I've been up there. I was up there with Don Young. We saw the 
oil pipeline. If you look at the ANWR, there's nothing up there. You're 
not going to hurt any of the animals. There's a lot of bugs. There's a 
lot of vermin up there. But you're not going to hurt the animals by 
drilling up there, and it's certainly not going to hurt the 
environment. But it would help if we could bring that oil--millions of 
barrels of oil--down to the lower 48 States. It would have a tremendous 
impact, in my opinion, as well as you've said, off the Gulf of Mexico 
and off the Continental Shelf. We could really move toward energy 
independence over a period of the next 5 to 10 years. Like you said, it 
wouldn't happen immediately, but it would be a giant step in the right 
direction.
  Mr. POE of Texas. If the gentleman will yield, as you mentioned about 
ANWR in Alaska, years ago we came up with this idea of a pipeline from 
Alaska bringing crude oil into the United States, and the same people 
that opposed that pipeline still exist today and are opposing the 
Keystone Pipeline. It took years for the vetting of the environmental 
lobby to finally be put to rest. They were concerned about the caribou. 
Of course, I think the caribou are doing quite well now. Finally, 
Congress decided not to wait on that administration and go ahead and 
make an approval. But Congress went ahead and approved the Alaska 
pipeline on its own, which became law in spite of the administration. 
It didn't wait for its approval. And now we know the rest of the 
story--it's a success 25 years later. And that's what Congress needs to 
do with the Keystone Pipeline.

  No one has ever accused Canada of being environmentally insensitive. 
Their regulations are as tough as the EPA's--or even stronger. But yet 
they've developed a way that they can bring crude oil through a 
pipeline down to southeast Texas--Port Arthur, my district--in a safe, 
environmental way, and also one of the newest and finest pipelines. But 
the administration says, Not so fast. And it's unfortunate because the 
jobs will stay in America. Create that pipeline. Canada is not a Middle 
Eastern dictatorship. They're kind of a normal country.
  We should approve that as soon as possible. I understand the concern 
in Nebraska. I'm glad to see the folks in Nebraska are working with 
TransCanada to reroute that 60 miles so there are no environmental 
issues and get this pipeline approved and start shipping that crude oil 
down to southeast Texas so we can use it in the United States.
  It would seem to me that the United States should maybe think about 
this type of energy policy: we should drill safely in the United States 
for oil and natural gas. And I say ``safely'' because that is 
important. But we should also partner with the countries next to us--
the Canadians to the north, who have natural resources, and the 
Mexicans to the south, who have an abundance of natural resources--and 
the three of us work together on a North American OPEC-type philosophy 
and be energy independent. Not just energy independent, but it will 
help out our national security.
  And if we do that, if we work with Canada, Mexico, drill in the 
United States, where it's safe, we can make the Middle East irrelevant. 
We can make that little fellow from the desert, Ahmadinejad, and his 
threats about closing the Strait of Hormuz, we can make him irrelevant. 
We don't care what he does. We don't need to continue to send our money 
to other nations over there that don't like us. So maybe that's 
something we need to do in the United States.
  Lastly, and then I'll yield to the gentleman, because of American 
technology, because of those folks that know how to drill safely for 
oil and natural gas, the United States now suddenly is becoming an 
abundant Nation with natural gas. And we could, if we developed it the 
way that we can, the United States--primarily Texas, but other States--
we could become the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We could export 
natural gas, we have so much of it, and bring that money into the 
United States, rather than constantly sending money throughout the 
world, all because we don't take care of what we have and use what we 
have.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, T. Boone Pickens said--and everybody 
knows he's one of the big advocates of natural gas, which is a very 
clean-burning fuel. He said, if we would convert the tractor-trailer 
units that bring commerce to all of us, we could lower the cost for all 
those tractor-trailer units, as far as energy consumption is concerned, 
by 50 percent--cut it in two--and that would have a dramatic impact on 
things that are transported by tractor-trailer units.
  I would just like to say that the President, when he took office--and 
I'll conclude with this, because you've done such a good job tonight. 
You've covered it very well. When the President took office, he said 
that his energy policies would, of necessity, cause energy costs to 
skyrocket. Well, as Ronald Reagan would say, ``Well, he did, and energy 
prices have skyrocketed,'' and we've got to do something about it.
  The American people don't want to pay $4 or $5 a gallon for gasoline. 
They can't live that way. It's causing a deterioration in their 
standard of living.
  So if I were talking to the President--and I know I can't, Madam 
Speaker. But if I were talking to him, I would say, Mr. President, why 
don't you get with the program. The American people really need your 
help. And if you don't pay attention to them regarding the energy 
policies, it's my humble opinion that there may be a big change in 
administrations next year. So for political survivability alone, you 
ought to take another look at what you're doing.
  And with that, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding to me.

                              {time}  1940

  Mr. POE of Texas. I thank the gentleman for his participation.
  Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the United States can make some 
decisions and solve some of our own problems. We can start with finding 
people in the EPA that do not have their own personal vendetta against 
the oil and gas industry, replace those individuals like Armendariz and 
get some fair and balanced bureaucrats to make sure we have a clean 
environment to work with our energy companies rather than against them, 
and stop the war against the energy companies in the U.S.
  We can work and bring down the price of energy in the United States. 
One way, not the only way, is to make sure that we have a supply. A 
greater supply, as we all know, of anything, does help reduce the cost 
of energy, so that people in southeast Texas who have a hard time 
getting to work and who are paying more for products that they have to 
buy, just like Americans throughout our Nation are having tough times 
because of high gasoline prices, we owe it to them to do that, to take 
care of ourselves and to work with Canada and to work with Mexico so 
that the three countries can be a strong ally, not just politically, 
but that we can be strong allies with our energy economy.
  With that, I'll yield back to the Chair.
  And that's just the way it is.

                          ____________________