[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7966-7968]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida.) Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Utah 
(Mr. Cannon) is recognized for the remainder of the leadership hour, 
which is now 20 minutes.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from New Mexico 
yielding his time back so that we can take a few minutes to talk about 
energy policy issues. I would like to immediately turn the time over to 
our colleague, the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg).
  Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for 
yielding to me on an issue that is so very important.
  There is an old Chinese proverb that says, the best time to plant a 
tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Just think back 
to 1979 when we were standing in line to buy gasoline, and some of us 
from energy-producing States said, what happened? Will this ever happen 
again? It happened again in the 1980s. We continually find that energy 
prices are going up. We find that OPEC ministers are holding us 
hostage, and yet this Congress and this country does not have an energy 
policy. Oh, it may not be the most sexy of issues, because every time 
the gasoline price in this country goes down, people go, whew, we 
solved the problem; now we do not have to deal with it.
  But we do. Because there is one thing that will create a problem more 
than any other problem in this world in the future, and it is not the 
national debt that we talk about, and that is very serious; the 
national debt can either be solved through increasing revenue or 
decreasing expenditures. No, the most serious problem this Nation faces 
is an energy shortage. One day we will not have an opportunity to drill 
one more well or dig one more shovel full of coal. If we have not done 
the things, if we have not put in place the environment to create the 
next generation of energy production, then we have done more damage to 
the next generation, far surpassing anything else that we could have 
done with our financial debt.
  Montana, my home State, is known as the Treasure State. Why? Because 
of the natural beauty, but also the natural resources that we can 
provide to the rest of this Nation under an energy policy. ``Oro y 
Plata'' is our motto: Gold and Silver. We have gold and silver, but 
beyond that, we have many of the things that this energy policy that we 
are discussing in this Congress have to offer.
  A couple of the ones that are most important to my State are clean 
coal and clean coal technology. The energy policy talks about the 
opportunities. Think about the native Americans in our country. We have 
reservations in Montana that need economic development. Just in the 
Crow reservation alone, they have the potential for 1 billion tons of 
coal, or the Cheyenne reservation, 1 billion tons of coal.
  One of the President's priorities was hydrogen fuel cell technology. 
We need electricity to put through the hydrogen fuel cells. How can it 
be created in America? Through coal. I traveled to Iceland last year. I 
watched them want to become the first nation to be entirely fossil-fuel 
free. How do they create the electricity for their hydrogen fuel cell 
technology? They use water, hydro, their dams. We certainly cannot do 
that. We need a source, whether it is natural gas or coal. Montana can 
fit into that, but we cannot without the incentives that are created in 
this energy policy. We need this bill.
  Marginal well tax credit. Mr. Speaker, in Montana alone, we have 
2,700 shut-in marginal wells. Why? Because they cannot afford to open 
them because the price of oil is so unstable that they do not know that 
if they open it, they will have to shut it down immediately or they 
will lose them. We are not talking about the major oil companies here. 
We are talking about independents; we are talking about Montanans, 
individuals who pay their income taxes that need the help. Within the 
energy policy there is a tax credit for marginally producing wells. It 
could replace as many as 140,000 barrels of oil a day, oil that we will 
not have to bring in from places like Iraq.
  Energy debt. That is what we are looking at in this country. I 
brought along a picture that I want to show my colleagues real quickly. 
This is my

[[Page 7967]]

home State of Montana in the year 2000. These were the fires that 
burned a million acres of properties, a lot on Federal ground. 
Unfortunately, along with that, animals burned, pastures burned. We 
created an unhealthy environment and rather than doing that, we ought 
to do what other countries and, in some cases, States that are so far 
ahead of this Nation are doing.
  I took a delegation over to Sweden last year to look at biomass. They 
have cogeneration facilities where they put wood products through those 
generation facilities to create energy for schools and hospitals. It 
can be done in America. It is not being done to the extent that it 
could be, because we do not have an energy policy.
  When is America going to wake up? When are we going to say we are not 
going to let the opponents stop this plan because of one issue or 
another? And energy policy has a never-ending, expansive environment of 
creating an opportunity to become energy independent to fuel the 
economy and to fuel ourselves into the 21st century and beyond. Without 
it, we are creating an energy debt, and that is not fair to the next 
generation; and shame on us if we do not solve the problem.
  I thank the gentleman from Utah for his leadership in the Western 
Caucus and for giving me an opportunity to speak today.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for his 
interest, intensity, and clarity on this issue that is so important to 
the American people right now.
  I could not help but think as he spoke that, in fact, in America, the 
cost of energy is as regressive as any tax could be. That is that poor 
people drive cars and rich people drive cars. Sometimes the cars that 
are driven by the rich, though the car may cost more, uses the same 
kind of gas or even less gas than an old beater uses. The fact is, the 
cost of energy is significant to the people, even in a regressive way, 
to all segments of our society.
  We are speaking today as the Western Caucus. I want to thank the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), a member of the caucus who 
spoke earlier, and the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce). I hope 
we can get back to him. We also are joined by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), who is the communications Chair for the 
Western Caucus and also by the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop), who is 
the secretary of the Western Caucus. I would like to yield to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is great to join my 
friends from the West. I come from western Pennsylvania where the 
energy crisis started. I live 5 miles from Drake's Well, the first oil 
well ever drilled.
  The question is, do we need an energy policy? In my view, it is the 
number one need of this country. There is no issue that makes this 
country more fragile economically or in our defense than availability 
of energy.
  Why do we need to have a policy? We need a policy that will provide 
us with ample sources of all types of energy. There is no silver bullet 
in the energy issue. Every time we have an energy spike in this 
country, we then have a downturn in the economy because of the cost 
that takes out of our economy.
  I want to share with my colleagues some numbers that are a little 
surprising. These are world numbers. We all think that we are just days 
away from new energy sources that are going to replace fossil fuels. 
Currently in the world, we consume 39 percent, which is oil, 23 percent 
of energy that is natural gas, and 23 percent that is coal. Now, when 
we add those three together, that is 85 percent of our energy is fossil 
fuel.
  We have 8 percent nuclear and 7 percent renewable. Now, renewables 
are the ones we all hope and support and hope will be the supply of the 
future. But let us look at those numbers. Hydro is almost half of that 
7 percent, or 3.22 percent. Wood is .0266 percent, or just under 3 
percent. Wood waste is about a half a percent. When we add wind and 
solar together, we have just over a half a percent of the energy 
consumed in this country. Yet, we have a lot of people who keep talking 
like if we would just stop holding back wind and solar. Folks, nobody 
is holding back wind and solar. When the wind does not blow, we have to 
have a redundant source. When the sun does not shine, we have to have a 
redundant source. And it only blows about 38 percent of the time in the 
areas where wind power works. So those are not as quick a solution as 
many people would like to think.
  Now, transportation is where we use our oil. Thirty-nine percent of 
our energy is oil, and the vast majority of that is an oil-based 
economy: our transportation system. We have a little bit of ethanol 
which is growing, and we have a little bit of natural gas in there. 
Sixty percent of the oil we purchase will soon come from foreign 
countries, unstable parts of the world.
  Hydrogen fuel cells, I applaud the President. I have been supporting 
hydrogen for all of my 6 years in Congress. Hybrid cars is another one 
that has hope. But they are a long ways from solving the energy 
problems in this country.
  If we quickly look at natural gas, which is 23 percent of our energy, 
that is home heating, commercial, industrial, and mass transit. Eighty-
five percent of that is produced in this country and creates wealth 
from the ground to the source of use. Many of our best fields, though, 
in this country, and we were really putting a lot of horses on natural 
gas because we have added it to electric generation, are locked up. 
Most of the west coast shoreline is locked up, most of the east coast 
shoreline is locked up. Under the Great Lakes where we drilled down, do 
not even drill down through the lakes is locked up. Canada drills under 
the lakes and sells gas to us, and many of our best fields in the 
Midwest and all around Florida are locked up.
  Electric generation is today 52 percent coal, 20 percent nuclear, 60 
percent natural gas, 7 percent hydro, and 3 percent oil. So the 
electric that we supply in this country has basically, in recent years, 
all the new electric plants have been natural gas. Now, I have never 
been a fan of that, because we have always kind of held natural gas 
back for home heating, for commercial and for industrial. And we found 
this winter what has happened. Now that we are hooking up these big 
generating plants, we had natural gas prices just a month or two ago 
that reached $9 and $10 a thousand, which is devastating to those who 
depend on it for home heating.
  We should be using natural gas for mass transit and short-term 
transportation, in my view, not for future electric generation.
  I will conclude my comments with the following: every downturn in our 
economy has been preceded by high energy prices. Home heating and 
transportation, when those two costs spike, it comes right out of the 
family budget. Seventy percent of our economy is from commerce, and 
that is the same family budget. When we have energy spikes for driving 
our cars and for heating our homes, it will hurt our economy every 
time. We must have an energy policy so that we have ample energy supply 
in this country.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I could not help but 
think today about some of the things that the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania just pointed out. When one of my staffers came in and told 
me that gas prices today are up to $5.70 per therm, this is an amazing 
amount and an amazing jump in the springtime when energy demand is down 
for households, but forced up by this steady demand from large 
production, energy production facilities.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, there is not ample wells 
being drilled in this country to continue to hook up power plants to be 
produced by natural gas, from all of the experts I have talked to.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, that appears to me to be the fact of our 
life today, that we do not have the gas coming out of the ground.
  Now, the fact is, we have lots of gas. I mean, we could probably 
drill 50,000 gas wells in Wyoming alone today on where we know those 
reserves are; and between Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, in known 
reserves, we could probably

[[Page 7968]]

drill a total of 100,000 wells that would make gas available to 
everybody and reduce that cost so we are not at $5.70, but back to $2 
or so per therm that has been typical of the last 10 years.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. But so much of those best gas fields 
are locked up.
  Mr. CANNON. Yes. They are locked up by policy. I might just point out 
that the Constitution gives this body the control of policy. Anything 
the administration does is based on delegation from this body to the 
administration; and that is what we need to look at, and that is what 
this bill does. It takes great strides in turning that around so that 
we get that locked-up gas flowing to the homes of people who only 
should be paying $2 per therm instead of $5.70 per therm.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, we only can import gas 
from Mexico and Canada. We can import it from ships, but we only have 
two ports that can take liquefied natural gas, so we are really 
limited. We are dependent on what we can drill.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I think we are in fact dependent for heating 
our homes with gas on the gas we produce here incrementally in America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

                              {time}  1815

  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank my senior colleague from my 
home State of Utah for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and I have been here 3 months. In that 
time, I have found nothing more exciting than what I wish to speak 
about today, the potential of an Energy Security Act of 2003.
  This country has been for far too long without a comprehensive energy 
program. With energy prices rising and our dependence on foreign oil, 
we need to find a domestic source of our potential future energy. What 
this Congress needs to do to solve this problem and also to eliminate a 
future crisis is to look to the lands that are already controlled by 
the Federal Government.
  In the coming days, Congress will have the opportunity to debate the 
Energy Security Act of 2003. Within this critical bill is the 
authorization allowing drilling in Section 1002 of the Alaska National 
Wildlife Refuge.
  Now, contrary to popular belief, this is not the pristine cathedral 
of the wilderness or the last great unexplored frontier; it is 
thousands of acres of frozen tundra, uninhabitable, with its greatest 
summer crop being mosquitoes.
  More importantly, when Congress created this ANWR, we realized that 
within that there was the great potential for oil. We specifically put 
a portion of it, the portion in green on this map, aside for future oil 
exploration for the needs of this particular country.
  This section, known as 1002, it is noted, is not all to be used for 
oil development, only 2,000 acres within it. Let me try and explain 
what that means.
  ANWR is approximately the size of the State of South Carolina, yet, 
within the northern portion of that, the area in red is the only 
portion we are talking about, a grand total of 2,000 acres, about the 
size of the footprint left by the airport in this city.
  If we did another analogy, if we can consider a large conference 
table, we are talking about drilling in an area the size of a postage 
stamp. That is not, that is not an area that is going to despoil the 
future. Its disturbance is negligible.
  This area does not have, as some critics have said, only 6 months' 
worth of oil. We are looking at an area that has between 5.7 billion 
and 16 billion, B, with a B, billion barrels of recoverable oil within 
ANWR. If Members consider that within every day we import 10 million 
barrels, we can recognize that clearly this would go a long way as we 
compare the potential of ANWR to our other sources of foreign oil in 
providing the kind of natural domestic security that we desperately 
need.
  This cannot be minimized, it cannot be brushed aside. This is a 
crucial element of the puzzle. It is a crucial element for the long-
term viability of our Nation and our energy.
  One last point, very quickly. In addition to oil for the future 
energy needs of this country, we are producing spinoff jobs in almost 
every State of this Nation. These statistics are somewhat old, I have 
seen them elevated by as much as 20 percent, but we could produce 
between 500,000 and 700,000 jobs in this country. Can Members imagine 
what 500,000 to 700,000 jobs would do to spur this economy, well-paying 
jobs, in addition to the energy independence?
  There are two elements we need, stability and predictability of our 
source of energy. That is what will spur the future. That is what will 
give us our independence, our independence from foreign oil and our 
security at home.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Utah, 
and I would like to thank all my colleagues from the Western Caucus for 
the relatively short time we have taken on the floor today. I can 
assure my colleagues we will be back in future special orders, trying 
to flesh out for the people of America these issues and how important 
they are to the future of America, to the future of jobs, half a 
million jobs based on a decision made by this body whether or not we 
will open up a small area in Alaska for drilling. I think that is an 
important issue.
  The gentleman from Utah did a little magic trick with the chart and 
made it disappear for a moment. There is no magic, there is no magic 
for solving this problem of energy in America. We need to deal with the 
realities of these policy issues. We need to get away from demagoguery 
and toward the very important issue of the price of gasoline for our 
cars, the price of gas for heating our homes, the price of energy for 
running our factories and creating jobs for the American people.

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