[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12647]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                 ENERGY

  Mr. THOMAS. Madam President, I appreciate the time. I thank my friend 
from Arizona for his comments on energy. Certainly, I can't think of an 
issue that affects more people and is more likely to become a crisis 
again than energy. We had some touch of it and backed off of it a 
little. California is doing a little better than it was. Gas prices are 
tending to stabilize or even come down.
  The real cause of the problem is still there. I am surprised, 
frankly, that the Senate leadership hasn't been willing to go forward 
and at least give us a date as to the time in which we can undertake 
this question of energy and energy supply. We have gone now 8, 10 years 
without a policy regarding energy, not having any real direction with 
regard to what we are going to do. We have become 60-percent dependent 
on OPEC and overseas oil. We haven't developed refineries, new 
transmission lines, or pipelines in order to move energy from where it 
is to where it is needed, and still our leadership here refuses to move 
forward.
  I think we will again be facing the same kind of situation we just 
had if we don't move to find a long-term resolution, and we can.
  We now have a policy from the administration, one that deals with 
domestic production. There is access to public lands, much of it 
standing in Alaska or in many places that could indeed have production 
without damage to the environment. We can do that.
  We can talk about conservation. We can talk about renewables. We have 
to have a policy to cause us to do some of these things.
  The transportation is vitally important. In Wyoming, we have great 
supplies of coal, for example. In order to mine and move that energy to 
where the market is, you have to have some transmission. There are a 
number of ways to do that, and we can if we decide to and commit 
ourselves to do it.
  Research, clean coal: Our coal in Wyoming is clean, and it can be 
cleaner if we have research to do that.
  Diversity: We can't expect to have only one source of supply for all 
the energy we use. We are heavy energy users, and most of us are not 
willing to make many changes to that.
  I am grateful for the comments of my friend, and I hope we can get 
the leadership here to set the agenda to move toward doing something 
there.

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