[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 70 (Wednesday, May 16, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H2796-H2800]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              DOMESTIC OIL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I will be joined during 
this hour by my good friend and colleague from California, Congressman 
John Garamendi.
  I would like to just begin this discussion on oil prices by recalling 
that in 2008, the constant refrain that was heard in this Chamber over 
and over again was ``Drill, baby, drill'' by my colleagues on the 
Republican side. And the good news is that's precisely what we've done. 
In fact, in USA Today, Citigroup analysts are quoted as saying in a 
recent report, Energy independence ``is no pipe dream. The U.S. is 
already the world's fastest-growing oil and natural gas producer. 
Counting the output from Canada and Mexico, North America is `the new 
Middle East.' ''
  So it's interesting to note that as much as we've been wringing our 
hands, there is oil being produced here in the United States. In fact, 
a lot of oil is being produced in the United States. And we're going to 
go over a few charts now to show how, in fact, things are looking a 
little bit better.
  This first chart really shows what happened with oil production. When 
George Bush was still the President of the United States, the price of 
gas hit $4.10 a gallon. It was very high. And then gas prices hit rock 
bottom when President Obama took office because of the global financial 
crisis that hit. When President Obama took office, there were fewer 
than 400 oil rigs operating in the United States, falling below 200 
rigs by mid 2009. Then, despite safety reviews after the BP spill, oil 
rigs operating in the United States quadrupled over the next 3 years. 
There are now more than 1,300--I repeat that, 1,300--oil rigs operating 
in the United States, more than all operational oil drilling in the 
rest of the world combined.
  So in the last 3 years of the Bush administration, we were producing 
1.78 billion barrels of oil; but in the first 3

[[Page H2797]]

years of the Obama, we have already produced 2 billion barrels of oil. 
The U.S. oil production has continued to increase under President Obama 
and is now at an 8-year high.
  Jim Burkhard, who is Cambridge Energy Research Associates managing 
director, said in Senate testimony in February of this year, ``A `great 
revival' in U.S. oil production is taking shape.''
  So for all the hand-wringing from my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle, talking about what isn't being done, the truth is a lot is 
being done, and we now have more oil rigs operating in the United 
States--some 1,300--than all the other places in the world combined.
  BP projects that the U.S. will get 94 percent of its energy 
domestically by the year 2030. That's going to be a huge benefit for 
all of us. Economists at Citigroup argue that North America can be 
energy independent by 2020. That's only 8 years away. We could be 
energy independent by 2020. Citigroup says, if that happens, we will 
create 3.6 million new jobs, and we will see the unemployment rate cut 
by 2 percent.
  An interesting example is that of North Dakota. Do you know what the 
unemployment rate is in North Dakota today? It's 3 percent. In 
California, it's 11 percent. In North Dakota, it's 3 percent. And North 
Dakota can now boast having the lowest unemployment rate in the 
country, and it is now the fourth-largest oil producer in the country 
as well.
  So we create new jobs. We reignite manufacturing and chemical 
businesses. And guess what. American families see a lot of savings, 
too. In fact, the price of natural gas has dropped substantially. And 
if we keep going the way we're going, it will drop some 80 percent, 
giving the American family a $926 a year savings.
  Georgia Power is another great example. Their fuel costs dropped 19 
percent. And guess what. All of their utility customers saw a decrease 
in their electrical costs, in their utility bills, by some 6 percent. 
So there is some good news in all of that.
  The second chart looks at U.S. oil production versus gas volatility. 
World market factors are really driving up oil prices. And if you look 
at this particular chart, you see that the oil production stays pretty 
much the same. It goes up a little bit in 2010, as you can see; but, 
for the most part, it stays pretty consistent. But what does change and 
changes dramatically up and down, as if you are reading an EKG, is the 
price of gas in this country. So gas prices are going up and down 
irrespective of the production of oil.
  The Associated Press conducted an investigation over the past 36 
years of U.S. oil production and gas prices and found that there is no 
statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells 
and the price at the pump. More U.S. drilling has not changed how 
deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, and we know that.

                              {time}  1940

  The price of oil is determined on a global market. More oil 
production in the United States does not mean consistently lower prices 
at the pump. However, if we become less dependent on foreign oil, we 
will see some dramatic shifts take place in the country.
  So why does more drilling have so little effect on gas prices? The 
answer is because oil is a global commodity. The United States owns 
less than 2 percent of the global reserves and pays the same world 
market price that everyone else does.
  So, with that, let me introduce my good friend, Congressman John 
Garamendi, from the great area of Sacramento and the Valley.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Speier, and thank 
you for bringing this very, very important issue to the attention of 
the American public this evening as we spend this hour talking about 
gas prices in the United States.
  I was really struck by the charts that you put up. Wow. But they tell 
us that the story is we don't pump oil in America. Not so. We do. We 
really do. And they tell us that we're going in the wrong direction. 
But if you take a look at those charts, we're actually producing more 
and more energy. Today, in the Resources Committee, on which I have the 
honor of sitting, we had a debate about this. And our Republican 
colleagues were saying that we're not producing as much. And so we show 
them the energy institute's statistics, and they say they're wrong. 
That's an independent agency and they collect the statistics, and in 
fact they're right. And your charts clearly pointed out that we are in 
fact making it in America.
  This is my favorite chart. This is what I'm often on the floor 
talking about: Manufacturing in America and making it in America. It's 
not often that we take this subject of making our energy in America, 
building an American energy machine, one that will supply the energy 
that our Nation needs to meet a growing economy and the needs of our 
society.
  So very, very much what we're talking about here is making it in 
America. There are so many different pieces to this. I'm going to just 
bring up two of those, and then we'll carry on our dialogue here.
  First of all, conservation. I think you're going to talk about this a 
little later--about automobile conservation, the gasoline in 
automobiles, which is very, very important, but there's so much other 
conservation that we must be doing in housing, in commercial buildings, 
in this building. This building is over 150 years old. We've got 
serious lack of energy conservation here within the Nation's Capitol.
  But if we carry on a major effort on conservation, we will reduce our 
expenses and simultaneously make the available energy--the energy that 
is currently available--much more widely available and at a lower cost 
because of the market forces. So conservation is absolutely critical 
not only in oil and gas but in all of the other energy that we consume 
in this Nation.
  Now the second thing, and then I'll circle back around quickly, is 
what I call substitution. We can substitute energy forms for oil, and 
in doing so, increase our domestic availability for oil--and that's 
diesel and gasoline. And in the substitution we also reduce our 
importation of oil. So substitution is really important.
  So what is substitution? Well, substitution is going electric. We can 
go to electric cars, go to hybrids, which are a combination of electric 
and gasoline. There are many different ways on the transportation 
sector. But oil is also used in the production of electricity. Natural 
gas is the big thing today, and it is a wonderful substitution for 
coal. And we'll come back to that.
  Finally, biofuels. The point I want to do here leads me to this 
little chart that I've used before, and it talks about where your tax 
money is going. Where is your tax money going? Well, I'll tell you that 
about $5 billion of your tax money every year goes to the oil industry. 
It goes to the oil industry to provide a subsidy that's now been in 
place for more than a century. And in doing so, it worked. That subsidy 
worked. It created one of the wealthiest--not one of--the wealthiest 
industry in the entire world. That's the oil industry. And, again, I 
know you're going to pick this up and carry it a little bit further.
  But just here, our subsidies, our tax dollars handed over $5 billion 
a year to the Big Five, who earn billions and billions of dollars of 
profit every quarter. Why do we continue to do that when we really 
starve the substitutions?
  You look at here, this is the biofuel area. This is the green 
technologies--wind, solar energy, biofuels. This is ethanol down here. 
You just compare this. The subsidies from $70 billion a year going to 
coal and oil, that's well beyond the Big Five. And over here on 
this side we're talking about some $12 billion. And down here, some $16 
billion a year.

  So what's happened is that your tax money continues to subsidize oil 
and coal and just a little teeny, tiny bit on the substitutions, where 
the opportunity for real energy independence will exist. So we should 
keep this in mind as we look at how we use your tax dollars.
  Now there's a huge fight going on here in the Congress, appropriately 
so, about changing this substitution; that we ought to stop subsidizing 
the oil industry, put some of that money over here into the 
substitutes, that is the green technologies, and into paying off our 
deficit or taking care of our seniors and our sick. There's much, much 
more to be done on that.

[[Page H2798]]

  I would love to see your charts and we'll get into this in some, 
hopefully, elegant way.
  Ms. SPEIER. The next chart that we're going to put up is one that 
you'll find particularly interesting. This is the Big Five oil 
companies and how much money they made just in 2011. As can you see, 
$137 billion last year--a 75 percent increase in the profits over the 
year before. And as you can see each of them: ExxonMobil, 31 percent 
increase; Shell, a 54 percent increase; BP, 114 percent increase; 
Chevron, 42 percent increase; ConocoPhillips, 9 percent increase.
  These companies are doing extraordinarily well and yet we're still 
giving them $5 billion in subsidies.
  I guess the question I have for you, Congressman, is one of the 
things that we're told by the industry often enough is that if you take 
away our subsidies, the cost of gas at the pump is going to go up. And 
what is the answer to that question?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, you have another chart there that showed the oil 
that is pumped and the price of gasoline. Congresswoman Speier, you 
used this before. And you asked me: If we take away the subsidies, will 
it increase the cost of gasoline? The answer is, categorically: No.
  First of all, it is an international market that sets the price of 
gasoline. I should add one little caveat to that. International market 
and speculation. And I'm going to come to the speculation in a little 
bit.
  Anyway, the international market sets the price of gasoline that 
these Big Five companies buy and the value of the oil that they 
extract. So the barrel of oil is set internationally. Now if it's set 
internationally and you take out the speculation, it remains fairly 
constant. Here's the production. And it has gone up, but it's been 
rather steady over this period of time.
  The subsidy is to encourage the production of oil. Well, they've had 
the subsidy and so the production has been rocking along here. The 
price of oil is set internationally. What explains this enormous 
variation in the price of fuel at the pump? Well, it's not production. 
That's from here. Is it the subsidies? The subsidies are a very, very 
small part. You're looking at a $137 billion total profit. The subsidy 
is $5 billion. So it's inconceivable that the subsidy has much to do 
with the bottom line, other than adding $5 billion, which would be, I 
guess, if you took the subsidy out, it would be $132 billion. Oh, my, 
let's whine about that. I don't think so.
  So the subsidy doesn't have much to do, if anything, with the price 
of gasoline. The price of gasoline, however, is set by those companies. 
And that leads directly to that bottom line there--this $137 billion. 
They choose to set that price.
  Now what are we going to do about it? Well, take the subsidies back 
and begin to move away from dependence on oil, whether that's imported 
oil or oil that is pumped out of the ground here in the United States, 
and move to these alternatives.

                              {time}  1950

  Move to the alternatives, electricity and natural gas and the 
biofuels. All of those will further reduce the demand for oil which 
will bring down the cost of a barrel of oil within this country and 
around the world and, in so doing, allow us to have a lower gasoline 
price; and to do that, capture the subsidies. It's not going to 
increase the cost of a gallon of gasoline at all.
  Ms. SPEIER. So we know that we're pumping more oil out of the ground 
in this country right now than ever before in our history, more than is 
being pumped anywhere else in the world--1,300 oil rigs. We know that 
we are still giving the industry a huge subsidy, and we know that 
they're making lots of money. Right? So what is going on? Is there, in 
fact, speculation? Is that driving the price of gas up?
  Now, Bart Chilton, who is a Commodity Futures Trading Commission 
commissioner, recently said that consumers are now paying what amounts 
to a Wall Street premium every time they fill up their car with gas. In 
fact, he said every time you fill up your Honda Civic, you're paying a 
$7.50 Wall Street tax, in effect. You're paying that because of the 
speculation that's going on in the market. If your car is a Ford 
Explorer, you're actually paying an extra $10.41. So over the course of 
a year, it turns into real money. You're now talking about $700 more a 
year that we're paying because Wall Street speculation is driving this 
price.
  Now, we've asked the Justice Department on three different occasions, 
the President of the United States has asked the Justice Department on 
three different occasions to look into, to investigate the speculators. 
And we're waiting. We're waiting for that particular review to take 
place because what we do know is that if we can get oil down to $70 a 
barrel, we're going to bring gas down to $3 a gallon, which will be a 
huge benefit to the consumers in this country.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. The speculation issue, this morning we had a fellow 
from the Connecticut Petroleum Retailers Association come in and talk 
to us about speculation. You and I didn't have enough time to put this 
together, we talked about this beforehand, because we were both taken 
by the information he provided. It is really not new information, but 
it is very interestingly put on the issue of speculation. Forgive me, 
general public and forgive me, Ms. Speier, but I just decided to put 
this together on the back of this Make It in America chart because 
America was taken to the cleaners in 2008.
  This is what happened to the price of a barrel of oil in 2008. Now 
keep in mind in 2008 the wars were going on, but there was no real 
change in the wars. In March of 2008, a barrel of oil cost $70 a barrel 
in the United States, and I guess worldwide also. So March of 2008, it 
was $70 a barrel. Nothing happened, no big change. The Straits of 
Hormuz were not shut down; Venezuela and Nigeria and other countries 
continued to pump oil, as they had before.
  But between March of 2008 and July of 2008, what's that, 4 months, 5 
months, the price went from $70 a barrel to $147 and gasoline was very 
close to $5 a gallon. So oil went from $70 to $147--doubled, doubled in 
price--in just a period of time from March, April, May, June until July 
of 2008. And then the speculators broke and the price plummeted between 
July to November to $32 a barrel.
  Now this has nothing to do with the production of oil around the 
world. It has nothing to do with major international crises of any 
kind. Obviously, we had a problem in the United States with our 
economy; but the consumption of gasoline remained about the same, but 
the price of a barrel of oil doubled and then in the same year, July to 
November, plummeted to $32 a barrel.

  If there is ever, ever a situation that says somebody is speculating 
in this market, it's this extraordinary change that occurred over a 
period of time from March to July to November. And there's no supply 
and demand, no international crisis that could even begin to explain 
this extraordinary shift in prices. It is, I think, beyond a doubt that 
all of this, this was the great gasoline crisis of 2008, was caused by 
speculation. Now, we need to do something about that.
  Here is an issue before the House of Representatives, and every day 
somewhere in the buildings here in Washington there are a group of 
Republicans that are doing their level best to eliminate the one law 
that we have been able to put in place to control speculation. This is 
the Dodd-Frank legislation. The Dodd-Frank legislation has very 
powerful tools to control speculation. And you can draw your own 
conclusions why our Republican friends would try to torpedo, to end, to 
eviscerate the Dodd-Frank legislation so that the speculators can 
continue this kind of activity.
  Now, keep in mind that this is not ending. If we go to 2010, 2011, 
the current period, my guess is that we would see something similar to 
this kind of speculation. So the Dodd-Frank legislation is the only 
tool we have available today to deal with speculations such as occurred 
in 2008 and is in all likelihood continuing today.
  Ms. SPEIER. An interesting point along the same lines, maybe 4 or 5 
years ago, the percentage of speculation in the oil market was 30 
percent. The speculators were involved in about 30 percent. About 70 
percent were end-users that were in the market. But interestingly 
enough today, those numbers have just flipped so that the end-

[[Page H2799]]

users of gas, of gasoline, that are betting on the future are 30 
percent, and it's the speculators that are 70 percent.
  The other thing that the experts said this morning, I don't know if 
you were there at the time, they were talking about Katrina. When 
Katrina hit, it blew out all of those oil rigs in the gulf. It shut 
down oil production for a period of time. And you know what happened to 
the price of oil? It went from $50 a barrel to $60 a barrel for about 4 
months, not from $70 a barrel to $147 a barrel. So over 4 months, it 
went up ever so slightly, but significantly nonetheless; and then it 
came down.
  So this, this is ripe for an investigation, I believe, because it 
would suggest that there is a lot of speculation going on in the market 
today.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I was there for that, and I was struck by the very 
same statistic. As you look at what happened then, $10 here, a doubling 
in price. Consider for a moment what it would mean to somebody that had 
purchased back here in March a million barrels of oil at $70 a barrel, 
and they come up to July, that million barrels of oil has doubled in 
value. So this is why speculation occurs. It occurs because somebody by 
playing the market, by speculating, is able to make a vast sum of 
money.
  There's the other side of that coin--somebody lost a vast sum of 
money coming down here. But the American public, however, was the 
single biggest loser in all of this because as that went up, the price 
at the pump also went up, and Americans paid more and more for the 
price of gasoline. It was about $5 a gallon when it came up here. And 
it didn't go down from $147 to $32; that proportion didn't happen. It 
did drop from near $5 down to $3.50, in that area.
  So the American public was stuck with an exceedingly high price which 
continues to this day, which leads to those extraordinary profits which 
you were showing just a few minutes ago. Now, I'm not saying the oil 
industry was involved in the speculation; but I will say this, the oil 
industry benefited from the speculation that left a very high price for 
oil into the future. This didn't last very long. This went back up to 
$70, and today it's over $100 a barrel.
  So we need to consider all of these things about what's going on in 
the oil market. The bottom line of this is we need to change. And this 
is, I think, where you want to go. You want to talk about conservation. 
You're the leader here, take us where you want and I'll follow.
  Ms. SPEIER. So let's talk about what the solution is to protect 
Americans from volatile gas prices and to kick our dependence on 
foreign oil. That becomes the secret.

                              {time}  2000

  I mean, by every focus, if we kick our dependence on foreign oil, we 
are going to be so much better off.
  So let's look at this next chart. In 2005, America's dependence on 
foreign oil peaked at about 60 percent. Then it dropped down in 2010 to 
49 percent. Then last year, it dropped down even more to 45 percent. 
2010 marked the first time U.S. dependence on foreign oil fell below 50 
percent in 13 years, and our dependence on foreign oil is now at the 
lowest level in 16 years. At this rate, the Energy Information 
Administration predicts that the U.S. will slash its dependence on 
foreign oil to as low as 36 percent in the year 2035.
  The U.S. transportation sector consumed nearly 5 billion barrels of 
petroleum in 2009, accounting for over 70 percent of the consumption in 
the United States. The lion's share of that--45 percent of total 
consumption--was in passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks.
  So, what do we do about that gas guzzling that's going on? Well, the 
thing we do about that is to look at how we can change how many miles 
to the gallon we get. To the President's credit, his administration has 
put in place these new corporate average fuel economy standards--known 
to all of us as CAFE standards--that will nearly double the efficiency 
of the U.S. fleet of automobiles, achieving a fleet-wide average of 
54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025.
  So what does that do once we get there at 2025? Well, it means that 
we, as consumers, will save $1.7 trillion at the pump over the life of 
the program. A family that purchases a new vehicle in 2025 will save 
$8,200 in fuel costs when compared with a similar vehicle in 2010. So 
over the life of the program, the standard will save 12 billion barrels 
of oil and eliminate 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution.
  So the solutions are really there for us. The solutions are that we 
move to these CAFE standards, that we address the issues around 
speculation, and that we keep the robust drilling that is going on in 
this country right now so that we can continue to reduce our dependence 
on foreign oil.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, I took a look at that before we began this hour, 
and I go, Oh, my, do I have to wait until 2025 to buy that vehicle? No, 
not really. There are pure electric vehicles that are available today 
that get not 54 miles per gallon but like infinite, by using 
electricity only. You can buy those. Unfortunately for me, in my 
district where a Saturday run around the district is 600 miles, it 
doesn't make much sense yet, but it's coming.
  The battery technology is improving for automobiles. You can store 
that energy or take down that energy at night. This is part of the 
electric grid and the changes that are occurring in the electric grid 
all across this Nation. Given the low price of natural gas today--just 
over $2 per 1,000 Btus--we're seeing the electric utility industry 
shifting from coal to natural gas. As they do that shift, we get an 
enormous reduction in the carbon emissions--which is good for the 
environment and good for the climate change issue--and, simultaneously, 
we're able to then see a path to an electric vehicle, or at least a 
hybrid plug-in, hybrid electric vehicle. All very, very good. Biofuels 
will be part of that also.
  So it's very, very powerful that we continue to increase. And let's 
keep in mind that there had been no increase until the Obama 
administration came in. I think it was over 20 years that the standards 
had been in place, and then President Obama came in and said, Listen, 
we need to move to conservation. And the result is the incredible 
savings.
  I don't want to wait until 2025. Let's do something about it today.

  Ms. SPEIER. Well, we can certainly try to encourage it.
  I don't know if you have any more thoughts.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I have a couple more things that I'll pick up along 
the way. Let me just share one of them, since we're on the gasoline 
issue.
  You and I go back to our district every weekend. A month ago, 2 
months ago, the rage was the price of gasoline. I was doing town halls. 
I knew you were also, and so I was doing some research about where the 
gasoline is and what it's being used for and what the cost was.
  I came across a statistic from the Energy Information Institute that 
was absolutely surprising to me. The talk on the radio and on 
television and the talk radio and talk television was that we have this 
enormous shortage of gasoline, that the threat of a war in Iran was 
responsible for driving it up, and somehow problems in Nigeria or 
Venezuela--or wherever--were somehow shorting the market and that 
gasoline was in short supply. But the information, the statistics were 
exactly the opposite. There was a glut of gasoline in the United 
States, so much so--get this--so much so that the oil industry--
Chevron, Exxon, BP, all of the rest--were exporting 28 million gallons 
of gasoline a day. At the same time they were exporting, they were 
driving the price up towards $5 a gallon.
  And we go, wait a minute. What's this all about? You're telling me we 
have a shortage? If we have a shortage, why are you exporting 28 
million gallons of gasoline a day? And from the information I've been 
able to obtain, it appears as though that export continues to this 
day--an export of 28 million gallons of gasoline a day out of the 
United States at the same time that the industry is saying, Oh, woe is 
us. We have a short supply. Well, if it's short supply, it's because 
they are creating it to the deficit and to the harm of the American 
traveling public who has to buy that gasoline.
  Now, one other thing--and check me on this; I was trying to recall 
all of the information this morning--that in the last quarter of 2011 
and the first quarter of this year, the United States, for the first 
time in--help me here, 40 years?

[[Page H2800]]

  Ms. SPEIER. Sixty years.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. --60 years was a net exporter of oil, a net exporter. 
We had achieved energy independence. We were exporting more than we 
were importing for the last quarter of last year and the first quarter 
of this year. I don't know if that's going to continue, but it flies 
right in the face of what the oil industry was telling us as the fake, 
false crisis of the spring occurred. My guess is it was speculation. My 
guess is it was greed on the part of the oil industry.
  My solution is to end the subsidies, bring that money back and use it 
on the green technologies and conservation. My solution is to enforce 
the Dodd-Frank laws and to make certain speculators are not robbing the 
American people day in and day out. Those are two things we can do. And 
as you said earlier, we will continue to produce energy in the United 
States, and we'll Make It In America.
  I thank you so very much. I do have another meeting. I'm going to 
have to run, but this is good. It's good to get the information out 
there. Thank you for bringing us together tonight.
  Ms. SPEIER. Well, thank you, Congressman, for your great presentation 
and your passion around making it in America, which should be 
underscored, because one of the great things that happens in my 
district is a lot of innovation.
  Tesla, which is an electric car company that is making it in America, 
building it right there in Fremont, has a showroom right outside my 
district. And a gentleman came in to test-drive the sports--the 
Roadster, which has a hefty price associated with it, but very fast.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Is this the one that goes a gazillion miles an hour in 
5 seconds?
  Ms. SPEIER. Yes. It goes very fast, and it's all electric.
  So he took it for a little spin, came back and said, I want to buy 
it. The salesperson says, Well, you're the first person who has ever 
come in here and literally bought it after just a test-drive. The 
purchaser said, Well, my neighbor on one side and my neighbor on the 
other side have already bought one.
  Now, the funny thing about that story is not the keeping up with the 
Joneses so much, but the fact that in terms of the grid, having three 
electric cars on the same block charging overnight is going to create a 
little indigestion. So that's one of the good problems that we're going 
to get as more people are driving electric cars.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I was going to head out the door, but your Tesla story 
caught me as I was about to leave.
  The grid, we need to have a smart grid. This is one of the things 
that is in contention here. This is about energy research. Now, we need 
to understand, how can we make that grid smart enough and robust enough 
that we will be able to charge, on any given block, one, two, three, 
four, five, or six more homes at night?

                              {time}  2010

  To do that, we need to have research and understanding, not only on 
how we produce the energy in an environmentally sound way that reduces 
the carbon emissions, but we also need to know how to distribute that 
power and when it's going to be needed. That's called the smart grid.
  Now, to do that requires research. It requires us to invest in 
research to understand how the grid works, how it can be improved, how 
we can create the efficiency in the grid, how that power can be 
distributed to where it is needed when it is needed. That takes money. 
The Federal Government has, over the last several years, provided that 
research money in the budget that we're debating here now. Well, we're 
not debating it. It actually passed.
  The blueprint for the current budget from this House reduces the 
energy research in the United States. So it may be some time, if our 
Republican colleagues have their way about the energy research, before 
those three people will be able to plug that thing in at the same time 
at night.
  Ms. SPEIER. Well, let's hope we do it sooner than later so that they 
can be driving their Tesla Roadsters.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so very much.
  Ms. SPEIER. Thank you. And I think at this point we have covered all 
of the issues we wanted to cover during this Special Order tonight. And 
I just want to leave my colleagues with this message. Again, this was 
quoted in USA Today. Citigroup analysts declared in a recent report, 
energy independence in the United States is not a pipe dream. The U.S. 
is already the world's fastest growing oil and natural gas producer. 
Counting the output of Canada and Mexico, North America is the new 
Middle East.
  We've got many exciting things happening in the oil and gas industry.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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