[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9390-9392]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            SENATE BUSINESS

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I take a few minutes this morning to talk 
about a topic to which we will soon be moving. We have properly spent a 
good deal of time on the budget. We spent a good deal of time on taxes, 
although that is not finished yet. I congratulate the chairman on his 
excellent work on the tax bill. It sounds as if we will be able to 
present that to the President and successfully give tax relief to the 
American people.
  We also have been heavily involved in education. We have not finished 
that area yet. We will soon be returning to it.
  Those have been the most current topics and perhaps, indeed, among 
Members the most important topics.
  There is another topic that is very important to everyone and one to 
which we are moving, and that is energy and energy policy. After having 
an energy policy, we will begin to implement that policy so we can make 
sure we can provide the necessary energy in a way that is careful and 
watchful about the environment. I think we can do this.
  One of the important things that has happened is there is now an 
energy policy from the White House that will be open, of course, to 
great debate and great discussion in the Congress and in the whole 
country.
  The fact is we have not had a policy on energy for a very long time. 
That is one of the reasons we find ourselves in the position we are in 
now. We have not looked ahead and we have not responded to the market 
messages that were sent in California. When we have consumption rising 
and production going down, there is a problem.
  In the case of energy, as is the case of most other industries, it 
takes a good deal of time to implement some change. I am very pleased 
we are moving in that direction and we will continue to move. I applaud 
the President and Vice President Cheney for the emphasis put by the 
White House on the energy issue and, specifically, the White House task 
force that completed its work in a rather short time. Of course, we 
have that energy package now. I think it will be the basis of our 
activities over the next several months, a very extensive booklet of 
issues pertaining to energy and the maintenance of our energy 
availability.

[[Page 9391]]

  I applaud particularly the Vice President for working in this working 
group and including more than energy. The involvement of the Department 
of the Interior and the involvement of the Environmental Protection 
Agency are equally important, as in the involvement of the Energy 
Department itself. The things they do, the land they manage, the rules 
they promulgate certainly are as important as anything else that 
affects energy.
  One of the real problems we have had is we have become more and more 
dependent on imported oil and foreign countries to produce what we 
need. Obviously, there will be an effort to increase domestic 
production. That is certainly the proper goal.
  There has been some criticism that this study was not a public 
affair. However, the Vice President did talk to 265 different groups. 
This was not a public decisionmaking; this was the White House putting 
it out. How the Congress and the public will be involved. That is the 
proper way for the President to handle policy.
  Chairman Murkowski, from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, 
or which I am member, has a broad bill that deals with many issues. 
There is a hearing going on as we speak, and the Secretary of Energy is 
talking to the committee about this report and his ideas for 
implementation.
  The recommendations are extremely interesting and extremely 
important. Task force recommendations encourage fuel diversity--
something we clearly need--and to utilize all of our domestic resources 
rather than relying on a particular resource. We need to talk about 
coal, which is now producing 52 percent of the electricity used in this 
country. Our reserves of coal are greater than probably any other 
fossil fuel. There is great opportunity for their use in the future.
  There is also in this proposition, I think properly, a good deal of 
effort and money oriented towards continued developing technology and 
research in clean coal. I think that is something we ought to do.
  There is also recognition and support for renewables, whether it is 
wind energy or solar energy or, in fact, hydro. We do that now. We have 
been working at that for some time. Frankly, renewables now produce 
only about 1 percent of our energy requirements but, nevertheless, 
there are opportunities for them to be a much larger part as we do 
research.
  I come from the State of Wyoming. We have the highest coal production 
of any State and I think the largest resources of coal. We also have a 
considerable amount of wind and have some wind farms producing energy. 
Probably there will be a great deal more.
  I remember, a number of years ago, a meeting in Casper, WY, on 
energy. This was 10 or 15 years ago. A speaker--I think from Europe--
pointed out we have never run out of a fuel; we changed because we 
found one that was more efficient or more effective. We didn't run out 
of wood. We started using coal. We didn't run out of coal; we moved on 
to other things. I am confident we will move on, whether it is to 
hydrogen or solar or whatever, but I think we will be looking in that 
direction.
  As we look at our automobiles and our travel plans for this holiday 
weekend, oil and gas has to be one of the things most important to us. 
Those volumes need to be improved. Our biggest problem at the moment is 
not crude oil amounts; it is really refining. We are up to 98 percent 
of capacity. So we need to do some things in that area.
  I mentioned hydro. Along with that clean energy source, of course, is 
nuclear. Interestingly enough, most people do not recognize about 20 
percent of our electric generation right now is nuclear. It is the most 
clean source, certainly of electric generation. It has difficulties. 
One of them is the waste, what to do with nuclear waste. We have been 
trying to deal with that for some time. We have the question of 
permanent storage out at Yucca Mountain, NV. We have spent billions 
getting into that place and have more to spend. We now find resistance 
from the State. They didn't resist spending the billions of dollars 
there, I might add. In any event, we have to do something there, 
perhaps take advice from France and Scandinavia, where they recycle 
this and have less waste than we do.
  With Hydro, again, there are some paradoxes. Some of the 
environmental groups are critical if there is not enough emphasis on 
hydro but, interestingly enough, those are the same people who, a 
couple of years ago, were talking about tearing down the dams, the ones 
that generate the hydro. So there is always conflict in these things.
  We have to take into account, on the economic end, environmental 
factors. We need to find a way to produce more clean energy and more 
secure energy in our future. So our strategy ought to be, and generally 
is here in this policy book, to repair and expand the Nation's 
antiquated infrastructure.
  That is difficult. There is always a great deal of concern about 
electric transmission lines, of course. I suppose nobody really wants 
one in their backyard. On the other hand, if you are going to have 
electricity in California, you have to have a transmission line to get 
it there. We need to find a way to do that more expediently. We need to 
find a way to do that, frankly, with more respect for people's private 
property. The same with gas pipelines, we have to have an 
infrastructure to do that.
  We are still often dealing with outdated equipment, particularly in 
the area of gasoline refineries. There have not been any new refineries 
built for a very long time, so the ones we have, of course, are old. 
There have been some rules from EPA that have made it difficult to 
upgrade refineries. They have the new source rule, which says if you 
make it more efficient, or update the old refinery, you have to meet 
the environmental standards of a new plant. That has discouraged 
upgrading the plants we have now.
  Another thing we ought to be doing--and, again, it is in this 
report--is conservation. That is a choice you and I have to make. There 
is no question but what we can conserve. Look around your house. There 
are lots of times when we can be using less electricity than we are. 
The same is true, of course, with gasoline. We have to find more 
efficient use of this resource, and we can do that. I don't know if it 
always has to be a legislative question. I think we have some personal 
responsibility in that area of conservation.
  Boost supply, of course, alternative sources, encourage new 
technology--those are things we can do and must do.
  In the West, one of our greatest challenges is access to public lands 
and care for those public lands. In my State of Wyoming, about 50 
percent of the State belongs to the Federal Government. In some States, 
it is even higher than that. I think Nevada is almost 86-percent 
federally owned lands. So there are rules and regulations about access 
to those lands. Indeed, there should be. But the fact is, they are a 
resource that belongs to the American people and there ought to be an 
opportunity for access to these lands for all kinds of uses, whether it 
is hiking, hunting, grazing, mineral exploration. I think we can do 
that in a way that is consistent with preserving these resources. 
Indeed, we should.
  We have been developing energy for a very long time in Wyoming. For 
the most part, it has turned out quite well. We reclaim coal mines and 
the land recovers. When they are through, the land probably is more 
productive than it was before they started. You can see the deer and 
antelope come around to those places because there is more grass than 
there was before. We can do that.
  We have to recognize there are different kinds of public lands. There 
is a great deal of difference between a national park, which is limited 
in its uses, and should be--we are not going to produce energy in 
Yellowstone National Park unless it is out of hot water or something; 
we are not going to do that and should not.
  Wilderness--wilderness is set aside for singular uses. But most of 
the public land in Bureau of Land Management land that was never set 
aside for anything. It was there. It was there after they closed down 
the Homestead Act and these lands were unclaimed so they

[[Page 9392]]

became Bureau of Land Management lands. They are available, in my view, 
and in most cases they are for multiple uses. We need to ensure that is 
happening.
  However, since 1983, access to mineral reserves in the West has 
declined by about 65 percent. Less than 17 percent of the total mineral 
estate is leased as compared to 72 percent in 1983. I do not suggest we 
return to that, but we do have to take a look at accessibility. We have 
to take a look at good environmentally sound ways of exploring and 
extracting minerals. We can do that. The Bush-Cheney plan addresses 
this problem. Not only how to do it, but it talks about renewables. It 
talks bout the environment and issues we need to talk about.
  We have a great deal to do, but we have some great opportunities to 
do it. Here are a few of the things that are in the Bush-Cheney 
national energy policy. We help consumers in the short run. We increase 
LIHEAP funding to $1.7 billion. LIHEAP is for low-income people whose 
home energy bills went up. We double the weatherization funding, work 
with Governors to encourage regional energy planning, and work with 
FEMA so the emergency agency can respond to energy emergencies.
  There is a good deal of emphasis on conservation, increasing 
efficiency. Indeed, it is made a national priority in this book.
  We need to expand DOE's appliance standards programs to make 
standards higher. We need to take a look at the mileage standards on 
vehicles, and this plan provides incentives for fuel-efficient 
technologies. These things are all in this plan, and I think are a very 
important part of it.
  We need to increase the supply of conventional fuels. We can do that. 
I know there is great controversy about ANWR. Whether or not we end up 
in ANWR is not the issue; the issue is whether there is access to those 
lands that should be available for exploration and production. There 
are a great many of those lands. We have already extensive gas 
production. We need to increase the infrastructure there and have a 
natural gas pipeline; provide royalty relief for deep water and enhance 
that recovery, as well as low production wells. We can do that which 
would increase considerably production of energy here.
  There are a lot of things to do. We need to extend renewables and 
alternative fuels. This is a good one. As I mentioned, it currently 
only produces less than 2 percent--a little over 1 percent--of the 
total, but it has the potential to do a great deal more. And it is very 
clean energy. That is what a lot of people would like to do.
  It streamlines the hydroelectric licensing process. It expands tax 
credits, again, for the production of electricity from renewable 
sources.
  We hear from environmentalists that all that is talked about is more 
production of oil. That is not true. This book contains all these 
areas, with a considerable amount of emphasis on conservation, and with 
a considerable amount of emphasis on renewables. So we can do that.
  Obviously, one of the difficult things to do is strengthening and 
increasing the infrastructure so we can move energy. There is a good 
deal of talk in my State, again, about mine mouth generation. It is 
very efficient. But then you have to move it. You have to move it on a 
transmission line or a gas pipeline. We can do that. I think we have 
done some research to reduce the line loss that is in that kind of 
transportation. But that is probably our most available source of 
electric generation. It needs to be moved to where the market will be. 
We can do that.
  There needs to be a considerable amount of work done on refining. One 
happy thought is that there is a surplus of gas that is beginning to 
build up. I think we see a leveling off of the price. I met with some 
refiners the other day, and they say there is likely to be a turnaround 
here, probably after this weekend. It will not be a great rush, but we 
will see it at least not move up as it has in the past.
  Finally, I am a strong proponent of the environment. I grew up in a 
place right outside Yellowstone Park, where the environment is very 
close. In our plan, as we look forward to where we want this country to 
be in the next 20 years, in the next 50 years, we need a strong 
economy. And if we want a strong economy, we need jobs.
  We also need energy so we can provide for this economy and do the 
things we need to do, which includes the military and military defense. 
At the same time, we want to have an environment with a certain amount 
of open space protecting this environment so that we end up preserving 
the mountains in Teton Park, so that we end up preserving the open 
spaces in Nevada, so that we end up preserving the trees and the 
mountains and the hills in Vermont because those are very close to all 
of us and very important.
  So I think we have a great opportunity now. We have to move quickly 
because it is something that affects everyone. And it is starting to 
affect us now, of course.
  There is always this question of needing to do something today. We 
need to put in price caps. We need to do this. It is very difficult. 
Obviously, price caps have not been an asset in terms of causing things 
to happen over the long term, to cause investments to take place so 
that we do solve the problems.
  We took oil out of SPR, out of storage last time, and it had no 
overall impact. So we are going to have to sit down, probably look for 
conservation in the short term, and take a look at what we can do with 
infrastructure, with sources to develop our fuels for the future.
  I think we have a great opportunity to do that. We have guidelines 
for doing it in President Bush's and Vice President Cheney's national 
energy policy.

                          ____________________