[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9048-9055]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      AN ENERGY POLICY FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
on this special order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Utah?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, it is a great time, as we come together to 
speak tonight, things are going well, thank heavens, in Iraq and I 
think we will actually see a time and place in modern times when a 
country as strong as America is willing to go in and secure the freedom 
for other people. And so this is a time of great faith in America but 
it is also a time of problems. And, in fact, in Iraq in particular we 
see one of the side effects of that war has been a significant increase 
in the cost of oil and gas and energy for the people of America. So 
tonight 2 or 3 of us who are members of the Western Caucus would like 
to talk about energy policy in America and the need to pass the energy 
bill later this week.
  A couple of things are important as we do that. In the first place, 
we need to protect the environment. That is essential. In the second 
place, we need to have a secure source of energy, and that needs to be 
largely domestic. And, finally, we need to have a reasonable price for 
ourselves and for future generations.
  A little bit later I am going to talk about oil or gas exploration 
and development in America. I would like now to introduce a couple of 
my colleagues. I will start with the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) 
who will take a couple of minutes to talk about some of the big ideas 
here.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank my senior colleague from 
Utah.
  Mr. Speaker, when we entered this body a couple of months ago I was a 
high school teacher. And I have to admit it is somewhat difficult 
trying to raise 5 kids on a high school teacher's salary. One of the 
things that was most significant, most difficult, was always

[[Page 9049]]

dealing with those essential energy costs that were coming to us, the 
higher utility rates, increased gas, always seeming at the whim of 
foreign changes that took place, and always without a comprehensive 
energy policy that this country vitally needs.
  Those costs were ever escalating. And it does not take a rocket 
scientist to figure out, if you would just look at the chart we have 
here and follow the green line which is simply gasoline prices or 
gasoline production versus the red line which is prices. And you simply 
know as the green line goes down, prices go up. Now the inverse would 
also be true. If we could increase the supply, the cost would also go 
down.
  There are those who claim that there is no way we can possibly 
increase our energy source without totally destroying our environment. 
Mr. Speaker, I have to reject that failed philosophy of the past. It is 
possible for us to secure our environment. We all want to drink clean 
water, to breathe clean air, to secure the land. But we can secure our 
environment by relying on modern technology to also provide us with the 
energy source we need and a domestic energy source that we desperately 
need. And we can do so not by dealing with foreign powers, but on land 
that we presently own and control.
  In a minute, Mr. Speaker, I think one of my colleagues will go into 
detail about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which has potential 
that is there on land that was put aside for that very purpose. A 
common sense approach for providing for our energy needs could be 
easily accomplished.

                              {time}  2130

  If we do nothing as a country, my bill worsens, my situation becomes 
more desperate. We can easily balance our political policy needs for 
energy with good environmentalism both for today and for tomorrow by 
simply putting politics aside and simply doing what is right to provide 
for my family, as well as for millions of people on a fixed income who 
need a stable and predictable domestic energy source, and if we reject 
what modern technology can do to provide that and provide for our 
environmental needs, we are moving this country's policy back 20 years.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman answer a question?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Of course, I would.
  Mr. CANNON. As I look at this chart, the green line is not oil 
production in America. That green line is oil production that has come 
through the trans-Alaska pipeline. So this is essentially the Alaskan 
oil that has come into America, and yet even that relatively small 
portion of the oil we bring into America from Alaska through that 
pipeline has had a dramatic effect on the price of oil elsewhere, and 
that is because I think the markets are so tight that small 
fluctuations in our resources make a huge difference in that price. Is 
that what that chart is saying?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Utah is 
absolutely correct, and it clearly illustrates the potential we have to 
make life better for Americans if we just use what we have in a common-
sense approach to a domestic energy policy.
  Mr. CANNON. When people talk about the ANWR producing only a tiny 
fraction of the energy we need, what we are really saying is that a 
small fraction of the energy has a huge influence on the price we pay 
at the pump?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. 
Cannon), once again, is absolutely correct. It has a huge impact, and 
that small fraction is estimated somewhere in the neighborhood between 
5 and 16 billion, with a B, barrels of recoverable oil.
  Mr. CANNON. We have a chart later on that shows the various countries 
that produce oil that we bring into America and shows that that 
production in the new ANWR would actually be the second or third 
largest amount of oil we bring into America from any part of the world; 
is that not correct?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It would be exactly right. It would make a major 
impact on the domestic future and stability of energy sources in 
America.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, if I got this right from the chart there, we 
add ANWR to the system and bring that oil into America and prices, 
instead of spiking like the gentleman's red line shows there, prices 
tend to plummet like they have done as we have brought that oil from 
Alaska into the American market earlier?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. As I said, it does not take a rocket scientist to 
realize that is the way of protecting the future economic and energy 
needs of this country.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  Mr. RENZI. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CANNON. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. RENZI. Mr. Speaker, I was fortunate this weekend to visit the 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, with the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Pombo) and several Republican congressmen as well as 
our Democratic colleague, the gentlewoman from Guam (Mr. Bordallo).
  We began our visit by visiting the pristine environment in the 
southern Alaskan town of Valdez. Valdez is located at the southern end 
of the pipeline where wildlife and sea otters and clean crisp air and 
the oil shipping business co-exist in harmony.
  This is not rhetoric from some Congressman who has never set foot on 
the site. This is firsthand knowledge seen with my own eyes that we can 
truly balance our energy needs and our desire to protect the 
environment without disturbing the ecosystem.
  While in Valdez, we discussed suggested inferences that oil is 
seeping out of the pipelines and ruining the environment in great 
volumes. Let me say as a witness on the record that no such claims 
exist. In fact, if so much as a spoonful of oil or even brake fluid 
spills, an action report is filed, and there has been no such seepage 
at this site.
  We toured the engine rooms and the facilities of the oil transfer 
stations, and we found the conditions to be spotless and clean. The new 
technology and equipment used for transporting oil, the professional 
mindsets of the employees and the operations of the energy development 
company have become so advanced that together they now serve as a 
guardian of the magnificent environment of Prince William Sound and the 
southern Alaskan town of Valdez.
  We then flew from Valdez in the southern part of Alaska to the ANWR 
area, what they call the coastal plain, and we flew to the small Eskimo 
village of Kaktovik. It was almost 20 degrees below zero, and we were 
met there by over 200 people who turned out at their local community 
center for our field hearing. Everyone in attendance, except for a 
handful of non-Eskimos and one resident, was in favor of responsible 
energy development in their surrounding environment and on their lands.
  We met with the elders who were represented by an 81-year-old man by 
the name of George Atookchook. He described for us how life was very 
harsh growing up. He grew up in an igloo where they would gather 
driftwood on the beaches before school, and they would make fire out of 
this driftwood, and they would burn whale oil for heat. This whale oil 
would fill the room with deadly smoke, and this deadly smoke led to a 
generation of Eskimos, particularly his father's generation, who lived 
on average only until their late forties.
  During our hearing, the community leaders of Kaktovik taunted the 
extreme environmentalists. Let me quote the mayor of the north slope 
borough who said, We do not want to go back to our igloos, as some 
people want to see us. We want to grow by opening up ANWR.
  The only people who live in or around ANWR want oil development. They 
believe, and I quote my 81-year-old friend, ``that man was put on this 
earth to use the land,'' to draw from its resources and to benefit.
  The Americans out there listening tonight need to know that while the 
homelands of the people of Kaktovik have been returned, the extreme 
environmentalists will not allow them to

[[Page 9050]]

use their natural resources that are beneath their feet.
  While we fight to liberate Iraq from a brutal dictator, each passing 
day we become more dependent on foreign Middle East oil, and all the 
while, we have American oil located on the north slope of Alaska in an 
area inhabited by a wonderfully strong, native people who want to help 
us fulfill the energy needs of our Nation by using American oil in 
their backyard.
  The people of Kaktovik told us that they need the economic gains that 
will help their people live longer, healthier lives, economic benefits 
to build classrooms where they can teach their little ones their native 
languages, to build museums to display their traditions and cultural 
heritage.
  Mr. Chairman, domestic oil production also means more jobs for native 
American Eskimos and the entire Alaskan economy. New advancements in 
arctic frontier technology allows us to explore and develop oil with 
the highest environmental safeguards.
  Within this energy bill, section 3 of H.R. 39 requires the Secretary 
to ensure, ``that oil and gas exploration, development, and production 
activities on the North Slope result in no significant adverse effect 
on fish and wildlife, their habitat, their sustaining resources and the 
environment.'' This highest standard of environmental protection is 
reiterated many times throughout this energy bill in H.R. 39.
  Let us give the Eskimo village of Kaktovik what they want. Pass the 
energy bill. Return not just their land but the natural resources that 
are desperately needed to secure their future and ours.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Renzi), everybody I have talked to who has ever visited the area has 
had pretty much the same response. I have not been up there. I 
understand it is a phenomenal visit, and it helps to understand exactly 
what we are doing and why this is a reasonable bill, especially when we 
put it in the context of the people that are there locally.
  Mr. RENZI. Well said. One of the comments that was made to us was 
really how there have been a few people that have made it as far north 
as Anchorage, Alaska, but no one has taken the time to go all the way 
up to the arctic circle in the northernmost point of Alaska, the 
northernmost point of the United States of America, and hold a field 
hearing in a small Eskimo village.
  These people, the Inupiat Eskimos, they are a very proud and strong 
people, and they are tired of telling Americans, telling politicians in 
Washington, telling eastern environmentalists what they want, only to 
have Congress not do their will. We are dealing with native American 
lands where they cannot even drill their own oil to sustain themselves. 
They cannot even go after it. We stop them.
  We need to open up these lands. My colleague knows the issue well. It 
is well said.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I 
talked to many, many people about this, and to a man or woman on either 
the Democratic or Republican side, to the degree they have been there, 
their views are radically different from what they were before they 
were there. I think the gentleman expressed it very well.
  I know the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) also had some comments 
for the gentleman.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I noticed on the chart there that 
the gentleman has the current Alaskan pipeline that is there. How far 
is that from the area we would be moving into to provide this new 
domestic security?
  Mr. RENZI. I thank the gentleman from Utah for his question.
  Americans invested their tax dollars in building a pipeline that runs 
almost 800 miles from the coastal plain in Prudhoe Bay all the way down 
to Valdez, millions and billions of dollars, jobs and the economy back 
in the 1970s when I graduated from high school. Many of my classmates 
went and worked on the pipeline. Some stayed because of the magnificent 
beauty of Alaska.
  What we learned is that this pipeline at its highest production was 
producing about 2 million gallons or a little bit more. During the 
first Gulf War, under President Bush, we increased that to a little bit 
over 2 million because the production had fallen off to about 1.5 
million barrels a day.
  Right now, even though we are at war with Iraq, at maximum production 
we are only getting 1 million gallons a day, and that is because the 
reserves at Prudhoe Bay have fallen off, and yet to answer the 
gentleman's question, 74 miles is all we need to go with a little step. 
All we have to do is build off of the existing pipeline in order to 
reach ANWR, and of that 74 miles, 30-some odd miles has already been 
completed. So we are talking about 30 or 40 miles of more pipeline that 
we need in order to use a billion dollar pipeline that is already in 
existence.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask this one final question. With 
the risk of being somewhat of a leading question, I think the gentleman 
very eloquently stated the position of the people who are there. I 
guess I would, once again, want to try and somehow if the gentleman 
could reiterate in his own mind that one of the problems we have had 
with our failed philosophy in the past that has produced so many 
problems is trying to have a Washington solution, one size fitting all.
  Is the gentleman comfortable that the locals who know and understand 
the land, who know and love that environment, is the gentleman 
comfortable that they are positive that this is the appropriate thing 
that they want in their particular area and they know how to control 
it?
  Mr. RENZI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the question.
  We asked several of the city council members, current city council 
members, we asked several of the mayors from a local area, we asked the 
president of the student body of the high school, we asked all the 
villagers who were at the hearing, over 200 of them, what is the 
majority opinion, what do they feel. They said that, overwhelmingly, 
the people of this native American Eskimo village very much want to 
open it up.
  The reason is because in the beginning, when the drilling was being 
done at Prudhoe Bay, there was a fear. They were unsure what kind of 
neighbors the oil companies would be. Since that time, technology and 
equipment and the good, hard work of all kinds of Americans, including 
their own people, who work on this pipeline have proven over the years 
that this is a worthy investment, and they are worthy of their trust. 
So these oil companies have been good neighbors, and they know that 
that will continue with some of the finest new technologies and some of 
the finest advancements in arctic technology and equipment to pull that 
oil out of the subsurface terrain.
  What they know is they have good neighbors in the oil companies. What 
we do not know is how much oil really is under there, whether it be 6 
billion gallons, whether it be 15 billion or even more. What we do 
know, though, is that our Nation needs it as a bridge to take us from 
our current dependency on oil to this new generation of alternative 
fuels.
  We cannot just go to alternative fuels. That is so expensive right 
now, to think we are going to jump to the fuel cell or we are going to 
jump to hydrogen today. We need time to develop that technology, and 
the bridge from today until that day is that we use our American oil 
and not be so dependent on foreign oil.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from the 
neighboring State of Arizona for his insight into what the people of 
that particular region actually feel and think about this area they 
know and love so well.
  Mr. CANNON. In just a moment we are going to yield again to the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) to sort of explore what the meaning of 
the size of the disturbance is here.
  Let me just say to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi) that his 
discussion about alternative fuel is important. We actually have a 
chart here that shows at the highest expectation of alternative fuels, 
it does not get us very far in the foreseeable future, but

[[Page 9051]]

in addition to that, let me just say that I firmly believe that people 
who are local have an understanding of what their environment is, and 
they have a terrific interest in maintaining it.
  We have had this problem in Utah where we have ranchers who care 
enormously for the land, and we have had outsiders who said, No more 
moo in 1992, trying to get rid of all cattle grazing in 1992, for 
instance.

                              {time}  2145

  And it turns out we find now that the cattle grazing is remarkably 
important for the health of the land. So locals have a tendency, since 
they are responsible for it, since they interact with it, they are more 
reliable in how they operate and work on their lands.
  Mr. Speaker, I now wish to yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. 
Bishop).
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman one more time, 
and if I could reiterate what the gentleman from Arizona stated by just 
pointing out that this entire refuge is about the size of South 
Carolina. The only area we are talking about is the area in green, 
which from the beginning was set aside for the purpose of oil 
exploration. That was part of the common sense approach we had when we 
preserved this land.
  The only part we are talking about, as he so brilliantly put it, and 
the closeness of the original pipeline, is this small little red dot. 
That is the entire area. If we view the second shot, we can see that 
that small dot is only about 2,000 acres. That is the footprint, which 
is smaller than Dulles Airport, which services Washington, D.C. The 
amount of area we are talking about is less than what is Dulles Airport 
compared to the size of the State of South Carolina.
  And as the gentleman from Arizona said, this could be a significant 
find in giving us domestic security with the domestic source of energy 
we need. And as we see by this particular chart, the amount of oil that 
is recoverable in the ANWR area is second only to what we receive from 
Saudi Arabia. If we want to eventually solve problems in the future and 
have some kind of independence with a domestic source of energy, this 
is a significant piece of the puzzle.
  Mr. CANNON. Reclaiming my time for a moment, Mr. Speaker. Everybody 
in America knows we are struggling. We are paying a lot higher prices 
for our gas. That really bugs me personally.
  If we go over there four or five points, and if the camera will focus 
on that chart, we see the red piece there. That is the amount of oil 
that we get from Iraq, and that looks to me like it is less than a 
third of the amount of oil that we would get daily from this new area 
in ANWR. Am I reading that correctly?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. The gentleman is correct. Iraq plays almost an 
insignificant role in the energy sources for the United States. But the 
other countries that we have here, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Mexico, and 
especially Venezuela, they are key elements in our foreign policy 
dependency. When changes take place there, when problems develop in 
those countries, we receive the brunt of it with higher costs for 
utilities, higher costs for gasoline.
  Mr. CANNON. If I have what the gentleman is saying, and again 
focusing the camera on that chart, ANWR produces almost as much gas or 
oil as Saudi Arabia does. The next largest importer of gas or oil to 
the United States is Canada, and that would be about the same amount we 
would bring in from ANWR. And then the next largest exporter of oil and 
gas to America would be Mexico, and that is a little less than the 
amount of gas that we would bring down from ANWR if we did that 
drilling. And then the next largest supplier, which is significantly 
less than what we would get out of ANWR, is Venezuela.
  Now, of course, part of our problems today, and I should not blame 
this all on the war in Iraq, because Venezuela has had its problems in 
recent times, but we can replace virtually any one of those suppliers 
with just the oil we get out of ANWR.
  And when we get to the next step, we drop way down on that chart, to 
the point where Nigeria is only giving us a quarter, or a third of the 
oil that we would get from ANWR.
  So ANWR represents a pretty huge step in energy independence in 
America. Is that what I am seeing here?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. The gentleman is correct. And these are once 
again what we assume to be the average daily oil productions in these 
areas.
  The gentleman is correct in pointing out how much we receive from 
Canada. If my colleagues would simply note what the Canadians are doing 
in providing that oil is simply the area on the other side of this 
region that we want. That is the production lines that they are having. 
They understand the purpose of it. And the Canadians are able to use 
modern technology to produce the oil and not to spoil the environment. 
It does not have to be one or the other, where we either have the 
energy source or we have the environment. We can have them both. We 
have the technology to make it possible to protect our environment and 
protect a domestic energy source at the same time.
  Mr. RENZI. If the gentleman will yield, he makes a great point about 
the environment. I think in our argument we need to point out some of 
the truths about the environment. Seeing that I was there 3 days ago, I 
would like to describe for my colleagues exactly what is there. And I 
would like to use the words from a letter that I received while there 
during the hearing.
  First of all, the environment when I was there was about 20 below. 
And we are dealing for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, with 
a vast, sheer flow and flat surface. This is not mountains and streams 
and brooks and riparian areas. This is not sensitive areas where the 
musk oxen are hiding out of the wind, as we have seen on some of the 
environmental videos. This is a flat, frozen area.
  Let me take the words from Herman Aishanna. He is a whaling captain 
and serves on the Kaktovik City Council. He is the former Mayor of 
Kaktovik. These are his words, not mine. ``For any who think they can 
make this rich and fully peopled country of the Kaktovik into a 
wilderness, they should be aware not only that we the living are here, 
but also that the spirits of our people since the time immemorial are 
here. No matter how blind, no matter what anyone wants to call it, this 
country is hardly a wilderness and it will never be a wilderness. This 
country has a people and today you are looking right at them.''
  Now, he gave us this letter as a welcoming letter but also as a 
warning. He does not want to be locked out by some sort of 
environmentally imposed wilderness status, particularly given the sheer 
vast areas that his people inhabit, the habitat of his people. Now, 
this man is a leader in his community, and he very much has reached a 
point, and again and I would like to reiterate, where he is tired of 
going to hearings time and time again all the way down in Anchorage, 
Alaska, traveling down there with his people. He says, ``We know that 
they do not listen because they do things we told them not to do. We 
know they do not listen to us because we see them telling people how we 
feel about this, and they get it all wrong.''
  Again, a good leader in his community frustrated with the idea that 
we would create a wilderness area at ANWR, lock his people out from 
using the snowmobile machines, lock out the ability to use the 
airplanes for hunting, lock it up and set it away without him being 
able and his people being able to go into the lands and draw out the 
natural resources.
  Mr. CANNON. I could not help thinking, while the gentleman was 
talking, that the former mayor sounds like a very articulate, 
thoughtful guy. And if he figures out people in Washington do not 
listen to him, he is probably pretty smart too.
  But as I listened to what the gentleman was saying, I call to mind an 
article that was printed about a year ago in the Atlanta Monthly which 
challenges the notion that the people in the Americas were savages when 
Columbus arrived. In fact, frankly it was suggested that the 
populations of Native Americans were much higher. And

[[Page 9052]]

one of the points the article makes is that the Amazon jungle, which 
has very, very limited soil, is actually an artifact of man. In other 
words, we had millions of people living in that area and they created 
the jungle as people who were taking charge and being aware of their 
environment.
  It seems to me that many of the environmentalists are actually 
racists. They think that they have got the ideas and that man should 
not be involved and that we should go back to the way the Native 
Americans were when we got here, ignoring the possibility that there 
may have been 100 times as many Native Americans in the Americas when 
Columbus arrived. The article suggested that the antibody systems of 
the Indians in America were so similar that diseases came in and 
decimated them, nearly knocked out 98 percent of the people in the 
Americas. So, naturally, they did not seem to have the kinds of 
cultural achievements that were apparent, say for instance from the 2 
million acres of terrace lands in Peru.
  But it occurs to me that people who assume that they, the Native 
Americans, did it all wrong or did something else other than what we 
are doing is a pretty narrow and racist view of those folks. And it 
seems to me that we are doing exactly the same thing when we decide in 
Washington, we who have never been to that area and have never talked 
to those people, that we know best for them what should happen in that 
area and on land that they love and that they feel a kindred spirit for 
or feel close to because of their ancestors and the spirits of their 
ancestors who have been there prior to them.
  That is a pretty important point the gentleman is making.
  Mr. RENZI. The gentleman is so correct. One of the points that came 
up during our hearing was that the impact that the good Eskimo people 
have made on the land is an impact that they desire. There is a 
philosophy that they have that the earth was given to them as a gift; 
that the earth was given to them to use and draw out the resources.
  So the day that the generations long ago showed up on that coastal 
plain, the first day they killed the first whale, they believed the 
creator gave that to them to feed them, to clothe them. That first day 
they made an impact, and to this day they impact the environment. They 
want to be able to control their own destiny. They want to work with a 
sound environmental policy with an energy company who has been a proven 
neighbor to them in order for them to gain the benefits of the earth.
  It is really a beautiful holistic approach to the land.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, it sounds sort of like what we in America 
might call a stewardship.
  Mr. RENZI. It is very similar to our stewardships.
  Mr. CANNON. Since the gentleman was just there, let me ask him a 
couple more questions. In the first place, my understanding is that 
where we have had the transAlaska pipeline, and where we have drilled, 
the caribou herds have increased significantly; is that correct?
  Mr. RENZI. There was discussion during our hearing that the caribou 
herd actually uses the pipeline structure as a wind sheer or as a 
warming element to help them in their mating process.
  Mr. CANNON. Warm mating is always better than cold mating, I suspect.
  Mr. RENZI. I agree. But in essence there are two caribou herds. There 
are a lot of people who talk about the porcupine caribou herd, whose 
numbers are about stable; and then there is the coastal plain caribou 
herd, whose numbers have grown exponentially over the years. So all the 
research and science shows that there has been no significant impact on 
the caribou herds and, in essence, the caribou have grown in 
population.
  Mr. CANNON. Let me ask one other question, because the gentleman has 
been there recently, and he said it was 20 degrees below zero.
  My understanding is you drill in the wintertime there. You create an 
ice sheet and then drill down through that sheet, so that when you 
finish drilling and have the equipment gone, when the springtime comes 
the ice sheet melts and it is like it was never there in the first 
place. And, in addition, you only have a little bit of a box that 
protrudes where the oil goes through.
  Mr. RENZI. That is correct. One of the arguments that we are hearing 
is that the old oil technology, that old dark industry of the past, is 
going to ruin the environment. And it is a falsehood to think that new 
technology and lessons learned from the past are not going to be used. 
The language requires, absolutely requires that the newest and best 
technology of our oil industry, the American oil industry, be used at 
ANWR.
  The gentleman from Utah talked about the ice roads. What we are going 
to do when we go into ANWR, if we are allowed to drill, if we are 
allowed to remove those resources and provide for the energy needs of 
our country, we will build a frozen sheet of ice, many feet thick, in 
order for the tractors and the vehicles to move in on. So that when in 
the springtime the ice melts, there will be no impact to the tundra. 
Absolutely none other than the small areas where the oil is actually 
extracted.
  But that small impact has got to be weighed in balance, in a rational 
balance, with the needs of this Nation and the security of this Nation.
  Mr. CANNON. Well, I thank the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, and I think the 
gentleman from Utah is now going to shift to some charts that actually 
gives us a sense of the proportions that are involved. Does the 
gentleman have the chart that shows Alaska as part of the United 
States? Because if I could ask the gentleman a few questions.
  Alaska appears to me to be about a third of the land mass of the 
United States. And then we have that little yellow area up there that 
represents ANWR essentially.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. That is ANWR, yes.
  Mr. CANNON. Does the gentleman have the chart that shows what portion 
of ANWR we would have drilling in?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Yes.
  Mr. CANNON. And if we could focus the camera on that, we would 
appreciate it.
  So we have all of Alaska, representing about a third of the land mass 
of the United States. We have ANWR, which represents the little green 
peace, which expanded out indicates what is ANWR and then what would be 
the coastal plain. That coastal plain is tiny in comparison to Alaska, 
and the gentleman is actually touching that dot there, if the camera is 
focusing there at the top of his finger, a little tiny dot which 
represents the ANWR footprint, and down below there is a little square 
that represents about 2,000 acres.
  That is how much land we are going to disturb; is that about right?
  Mr. RENZI. That is correct.

                              {time}  2200

  We flew over the entire area, and the plane ride itself took just a 
matter of minutes, and we were in a prop.
  Mr. CANNON. And that was for the coastal plane?
  Mr. RENZI. That was for the coastal plane, the entire strip in the 
north.
  Mr. CANNON. If I am reading this chart correctly, we have Dulles 
Airport, and I am not sure we understand what is going on in Alaska, 
but most Members of Congress know Dulles Airport, and that is a total 
of 13,000 acres. So ANWR is less than a sixth. The area that would be 
disturbed in ANWR for drilling is less than a sixth of the size of 
Dulles Airport. It is all right for us to have an airport and mess up 
13,000 acres of trees, but we cannot let the people of Alaska or the 
people in the coastal area have a couple thousand acres that would 
develop jobs and energy for America that would displace 4 times over 
our dependence of oil on Iraq. That seems to me to be a no-brainer.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, in reading the letter of the mayor, 
it clearly illustrated what we sadly lack here in Congress, a common 
sense solution balancing the needs of the future and today with the 
heritage that is already there. They know it, they understand it. Using 
technology, they are

[[Page 9053]]

ready to move forward if we just allow them the tools to do it, and 
they all can win. It does not have to be a lose/lose situation. It is a 
win/win. They understand that, and we need to gain that same insight.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Peterson), and then I will speak about oil and gas and we will 
conclude at that point.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  I come from Pennsylvania where the first oil well was drilled. I live 
5 miles from Drake's well. When we discovered oil in Pennsylvania, it 
changed the world. The whole industrial world as we know it today came 
about when oil became one of our energy sources. Since then, many 
energy sources have been added.
  What do we need? Do we need ANWR, you bet. Do we need to open a lot 
of the west and other parts of this country that are locked up to oil 
and gas drilling, you bet. I am going to try to explain why. When we 
look at the consumption figures for the world, 39 percent of the energy 
used in the world is oil. And of our oil, 60 percent of that comes from 
unstable, unfriendly countries. That is certainly not a good position 
for a country like the United States to be in.
  Mr. Speaker, 23 percent of our energy in the world comes from natural 
gas, and 23 percent of the energy that fuels the world comes from coal. 
Now when we add those three items together, that means 85 percent of 
the energy consumed in the world is fossil fuel. That is an alarming 
figure when we think about it. Eight percent of the energy consumed in 
the world is nuclear. Now we are up to 93 percent of our energy. That 
leaves 7 percent renewables. I support renewables every way we can 
support them. We need to do more hydro, we need to do more wood and 
biomass, ethanol, and wind solar. But when we look at the figures a 
little further, hydro is 3.2 percent so now we are at 96.2 percent of 
the world's energy. And when we add wood and biomass, we are now at 
99.4 percent of the energy in the world.
  I have been in so many hearings where people say if we would just 
stop holding back wind and solar, they would solve our problems. Wind 
and solar collectively is 6-10ths of 1 percent of the energy of the 
world. Am I for wind and solar, you bet. A company in my district has 
just developed some technical engineering that will help wind be far 
more efficient because it will automatically position the wind turbines 
so they face the wind properly. As the wind changes, they change. It 
adds to their efficiency. I am very proud of them for that. But the 
problem with wind is that it is only really available in a few parts of 
the world. Often those areas are far from transmission lines, and the 
wind only blows 38 percent of the time. The rest of the time we have to 
have a redundant source to take the place of the wind that is not 
blowing.
  Mr. RENZI. Mr. Speaker, when I grew up in Arizona, so many people 
were talking about wind as being the next technology. So many people 
were implying that the wind energy that we receive would be cost 
efficient. Now I am hearing they want us to take down the windmills 
because it ruins the view shed.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. The volume of wind turbines needed to 
supply a State like Pennsylvania would cover half of New England. The 
other part is that is not where the wind blows. In Pennsylvania they 
have found two places, up in the north central part of the State in my 
district and in the south central part of Pennsylvania. There are two 
areas where the wind is the best, and they have developed a wind farm 
at one and are talking about a wind farm at the other. Where the wind 
blows best in the far reaches of Texas where there are no transmission 
lines to get it out.
  With solar, there are only a few places in the country where solar is 
regular, and there is no solar power at night, and the few parts of the 
country that have the majority of the solar available are in places 
where there are no transmission lines. If we double wind and solar in a 
5-year period, we would be 1.2 percent of the energy needs of the 
world.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, Members can see on this chart that we have 
the biggest amount of use of energy being petroleum. Natural gas is 
second; coal third; nuclear, unless we do something significant there, 
and I remind Members of the fact that we have dozens of nuclear 
reactors on battle ships, on aircraft carriers and on submarines that 
have been operating for 30 or 40 more years without an accident, and 
they have been run by 18 year olds. We know a lot about nuclear, and we 
are going to have to come back and consider that.
  To the gentleman's point on hydropower, we have dammed all of the 
rivers that we are going to be able to dam. We will not have 
alternative power from hydropower. What we see is even if we doubled 
what we are anticipating, it would be irrelevant. We are not going to 
be able to do much with the huge increases in demand that we have in 
the future based on renewables. This is a graphic form to show what the 
gentleman is showing.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, what we need for the sake 
of our economy is we need reliable supplies of all energies, and we 
need to prevent spikes. The spikes from 2 years ago started us back 
into a recession. The spikes this winter are going to slow down our 
economy further. The one energy that is the greatest concern right now 
is natural gas. Many years ago in the last administration there was a 
decision made that coal was out and gas was in for electric generation. 
I personally am not a big fan of gas for electric generation. We used 
it for peaking power because I believe it has been the main source of 
home heating, commercial, and the main source for our industry, and it 
should be the main source for bus fleets and truck fleets in our city 
areas where we need clean air. The easiest conversion away from 
petroleum is natural gas for our transportation fleet. In my view, that 
would be a better use.
  But what has happened in this country in just a few years, natural 
gas, not generally used for power generation for making electricity, 
now the gas being used in this country, 13 percent of the gas is for 
power generation; 14 percent of the gas fuels all of commercial in this 
country. So power generation has caught up with commercial in a 5- or 
6-year period, and every day they are hooking up new power generation 
plants, and the rig counts in this country to produce the gas are not 
there. It is interesting, and I have a map here. I wish I had a blow-up 
of it. The dark blue on the map is where the energy is locked up.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, if the camera will focus, this is it.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Around the Great Lakes, this Congress 
voted not to allow slant drilling under the Great Lakes, yet we are 
buying gas and oil from Canada who is drilling under our Great Lakes 
and selling us the product. It does not make much sense. But if natural 
gas is the new fuel for electricity and we want to keep it reasonable 
for home heating and we want to keep it reasonable for commerce and 
reasonable for our manufacturing and industries, we have got to have a 
greater supply of it. We cannot import natural gas.
  A lot of people think we import natural gas from Mexico. Actually we 
buy some from them, but we sell more than we buy, so we are actually an 
exporter to Mexico. We do buy considerable natural gas from Canada, but 
about 86 percent of our natural gas that we use in this country comes 
from America, and our source and supply is dwindling because we as a 
Congress have locked most of those spots up, and some that are not on 
there, saying we cannot drill there.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, this map shows that. We have some pretty 
significant reserves off the coast of California, the West Coast, and 
off the East Coast. But the yellow or orange sticker underneath here 
points out that 100 percent off the coast on either side of the map are 
tied up. We cannot tap that.

[[Page 9054]]

  We have a pretty sizable reserve down in the Gulf of Mexico, but 56 
percent of that is off limits, we cannot tap that. There are other 
areas, and I will point out the gentleman is correct, there is a great 
deal of gas under the Great Lakes where we are not now drilling and 
have prohibited ourselves from drilling, and so that leaves the bulk of 
the gas that we are going to use to heat homes. And somebody said 95 
percent of our new generating capacity is gas, and it is gas because 
people say it is clean and we can get away with it environmentally. But 
where is the gas going to come from? Texas, which is a big producer of 
oil and gas, is building just gas generators. They are not going to 
export any gas in the future because they are going to run their own 
generators in Texas with that gas.
  Unless we take that 40 percent locked up now and make that available 
and make the rest reasonably available in the near mountain west, we 
are not going to have gas to heat our homes and to generate this huge 
amount of new power that we are going to be generating with gas-run 
turbines in America.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, in my district there are a 
number of caverns that are used to store gas for the New England area 
and the northeast. There are huge salt caverns that we pump the gas 
into in the summertime. The underground gas reserves in America are the 
lowest they have ever been historically. The concern is that with the 
amount of gas that we are using ongoing now to generate electricity, 
there is not going to be enough to fill them this summer. Last 
September we had the biggest, the largest amount of gas we ever had in 
this country. By late November, we had those reserves almost all used 
because we had an early winter and a cold winter all up and down the 
East Coast, and so we used more gas than usual.
  The problem is right now the average gas price is somewhere between 5 
and 5.50 a thousand. We were used to in this country $2 and $3 gas. It 
was $3 during the peak season in the winter, $2 in the summer when they 
would fill the reserves. We are now looking at filling reserves at $5 
gas if we had it to put there, or $6 gas. When we raise the cost of 
doing business that much, double energy prices and more than double for 
large businesses that use a lot of gas, we will put them out of 
business.
  Mr. CANNON. My understanding is that we have actually quadrupled.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. It was at 19 at one point.
  Mr. CANNON. Just in the last month we have been up to 19, so that 
reflects a lack of reserve. The gentleman said the reserves are at the 
lowest level ever. Reserves are a function of what we know is there.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. No, the reserves I am speaking about 
are the caverns where we store storage gas. Not reserves. There are a 
lot of reserves in this country, but a lot of them are under those 
orange areas where we cannot drill.
  Mr. CANNON. Reserves are a function of what we learn through science, 
and so reserves of oil and gas have gone up dramatically. We know that 
we had oil and gas in the ground at different places, and we did not 
have the technology to get it out, and so we did not count that as a 
recoverable reserve. We now have technologies that will get a lot more 
of that out, so our recoverable reserves have gone up on that basis, 
and also on the basis that we have explored more so we have found new 
reserves. So we have a couple of dynamics there.
  But those reserves are discounted by what we can reasonably legally 
get to. I suspect, in fact, we are at an all-time low, as reflected in 
the high price of oil and gas, with the reserves that we have access to 
today not because we have limited them or we have not discovered more, 
but because we have taken those reserves that we have and we have 
legally limited access to those reserves.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That is correct. And if we do not up 
the drilling in this country, because we are only importing a small 
part from Canada, and then we import 4 or 5 percent of liquid natural 
gas, but we only have two places, one in Louisiana and I think one in 
New Jersey, where ships with liquid natural gas can come here. They 
liquefy it in other countries, bring it here and then put it back into 
gas form in the pipelines, and it is used, whether in our homes or 
commercially or business.
  So we do not really have the options of importing gas like we do oil. 
You have to have a pipeline, and the only place the potential is up 
through Canada to ANWR. Now, ANWR is a huge gas supply. The ANWR field 
has tremendous volumes, but it is going to cost a lot of money and it 
is going to take years to build a pipeline to get that gas down to us.
  But the problem we face in this country I do not think a lot of 
people are looking at. I have been watching it for 3 years as we 
started hooking up power generation plants. You can talk about an 18, 
20, 24 inch high pressure gas line sucking gas out of our system. That 
heats a lot of homes.
  This year we had very high home heating prices. Next winter they are 
going to be much higher, because there is really no solution to the 
problem. Everybody all of a sudden is panicking because the gas supply 
is much lower than they ever anticipated, and since global warming sort 
of left us out this winter and we have cold weather in April in 
Washington, we are using gas at an unprecedented rate now, so they are 
still drawing out of the underground storage, and there is going to be 
nothing in storage, and if we fill, we are going to be filling at very 
high prices, which are now $5 to $6 dollars a thousand.
  Mr. CANNON. I would say to the gentlemen we have about 10 minutes 
left in this hour. It has gone quickly. I think which had some 
interesting information here. I would like to talk for about 3 minutes 
about the situation with oil and gas and other energy resources with 
some charts, and then I would like to let everyone take a couple of 
minutes to make some final comments.
  If I can put these back up, if the camera would focus on those 
charts, we looked at this, and just let me briefly reiterate, we are 
going to use a lot more oil and gas and other energy. Some of those are 
limited. There are no more rivers that we are going to go hydropower 
on. In fact, we are going to get rid of some of the dams I think over 
time that we are using for hydropower. The non-hydro renewables, even 
if you quadrupled the amount of growth we are dealing with here, are 
not going to be significant in the next 20 or so years.
  Nuclear could do something new and different, it could be very 
helpful in this process, but we are going to have to come to understand 
nuclear and the safety of nuclear.
  Now, if you look at this chart, there are a couple of things that are 
really interesting about it. In the first place, you note in the 
seventies and early eighties, we actually had a decline in energy or 
oil usage. That happened for a lot of reasons. We had a slight 
recession back then. We also got cars more efficient. But, most 
importantly of all, we had businesses that had an incentive to be more 
efficient. So in virtually all areas you had a little bit of 
improvement in efficiency there.
  Then we have gone up, if you see the line in the middle that shows 
the year 2000, essentially the present, we have gone from that nadir 
back up a little bit. While that energy has increased, let me just 
point out that our economy has almost doubled, so we have had a huge 
increase in output in our economy with a relatively small increase in 
energy.
  But we have gotten a lot of those efficiencies out, and maybe we'll 
have more in future, but we now have a pretty good idea where we are 
going to go as the economy continues to grow and we have more demand 
for energy.
  If we can focus on that chart, this is just the energy we use for the 
generation of power. So you note that the major source of power is from 
coal. The second major, historically, has been nuclear, which is now 
level. But you can see that green line of natural gas just spiking up. 
That is going to spike up because in America we have decided

[[Page 9055]]

to use natural gas because it is easier to permit new generating 
facilities with gas than with coal, although we expect more coal 
generation over time. So we are going to have a big increase in natural 
gas for electricity generation.
  But if you look at the chart, this chart now, this chart is about 
what percentage of homes are heated with various sources of energy. 
When you have got a little bit of blue in here developed by 
electricity, you see that is fairly constant over time. That is also 
generated increasingly by natural gas. But the vast majority of 
American homes are going to be heated by gas.
  Owning a home is good. We just had a study that was released this 
last week that indicated the way kids do better in school is by living 
in a home with their families, as opposed to an apartment or other 
circumstances. The American dream is to own a home. We are going to 
heat our homes with natural gas. We need natural gas to do that.
  That gets us back to our last chart. The bulk of the gas we are going 
to be using in America in the future is going to be in the inter-
mountain west, and to get that gas we have to drill and we have to 
change the legal structure that allows us to drill there.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, we need 
obviously a comprehensive energy policy. Fortunately, we are going to 
have the opportunity very soon on this floor to vote on a common sense 
approach that provides balance by using local ideas and technology to 
provide for our energy needs as well as protect our environment.
  But the question I have, especially if you go back to the chart that 
you just placed down there on the ground which shows where the future 
is, if we turn our back on this comprehensive energy policy, if we do 
not provide this kind of balance, looking at how homes are being heated 
right now, what is the future for my kids? What is going to be their 
future as they go out and try to develop their own homes, if we do not 
do something with the comprehensive energy policy now?
  Mr. CANNON. They are either going to be cold, and we know what 
happens to caribou when they are not warm. If you recall earlier, the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi) pointed out that the heat from the 
pipeline has increased the number significantly. Or they are going to 
be paying an arm and leg for heat in their homes. And that is, I do not 
think, an acceptable alternative.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi).
  Mr. RENZI. I will be quick. I would like my last statement to go back 
and reiterate what I saw during the last 3 days when I was up there in 
ANWR. I would like to go back and let the American people know what the 
people in Kaktovik really want. I spoke about my 81-year-old elder 
friend, the whaling captain. I spoke about the mayors and city 
councilmen.
  Let me speak about a young woman named Morgan who is the student body 
president of the high school, who wrote a letter. She started off by 
thanking us for coming to her village.
  She said, ``Personally I think that ANWR should be opened, because I 
think that we as a community would benefit greatly from it.''
  She says, ``I support the decision that we, the Kaktovik people, need 
to be involved, because it is us who knows best, us who knows best how 
to use the land. It is also important that other people from around the 
country, as well as yourselves in Congress, know that we are a 
community that uses the land around us for everyday purposes, that we 
care just as much about what happens and only want to see the best.''
  Finally, here it is: ``It is our responsibility to look out for what 
is in the best interests of our community, rather than a person who is 
trying to take it over and not make it ours.''
  What Morgan is talking about is the idea that rather than work 
together and solve the energy needs of America by environmentally sound 
methods, extracting the oil and the energy from ANWR, that we would 
pass a bill, a different bill than our energy bill, that would create a 
wilderness area, would lock out the people of Kaktovik, would lock it 
out for their food and resource needs, as well as the needs and the oil 
that lies underneath their very feet.
  I thank the gentleman for the time tonight and the ability to 
communicate the needs of the Kaktovik people to the American people 
tonight.
  Mr. CANNON. I thank the gentleman, and the gentleman from Utah (Mr. 
Bishop). We appreciate their contributions tonight. As members of the 
Western Caucus, we thank them for being here.
  I yield the last couple of minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Peterson) to wrap up for the evening.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think it is very vital 
that we pass an energy bill in this Congress and pass one that is 
meaningful. We must continue to improve efficiency and conservation of 
our energy use. I think in electricity we need to veer away from 
natural gas and go back to clean coal and nuclear for the interim, 
because if we continue to use natural gas as we are, we are going to 
threaten home heating. Gas should be saved for affordable home heating, 
commercial, industrial, and should be used for mass transit in our 
cities, which would help clean air there.
  Oil should be replaced in transportation as quick as we can, whether 
it is hydrogen fuel cells, the new cars that use multi-fuels or 
whatever, because we only have 2.5 percent of the world's oil and 
basically our transportation is funded with oil, and we do not have a 
long term source of oil.
  We need reliable supplies of all energy sources to prevent the price 
spikes. Why do I say that? Every time we have energy spikes in our 
country, we have a downturn in our economy and millions of Americans 
lose their jobs. Seventy percent of our economy is commerce, and when 
you take money out of home heating budgets, if home heating prices 
double, when transportation prices for driving our cars spike at the 
same time, all of that spending comes out of commerce. People do not go 
and shop, people do not go and spend money, because they have already 
paid it to their energy sources.
  It is vital for the business future of this country, for the home 
heating efficiency of this country, for an economy that is reliable, we 
need reliable supplies of all kinds of energy. It will not be easy. We 
are going to have to do a lot of things differently than we are today. 
We will have to change a lot of our priorities. It is vital to the 
future of this country.
  If there is one thing in my view that threatens the economic future 
of America, it is the lack of reliable, affordable energy prices that 
our businesses and our homes and people can use to fuel their homes and 
our businesses. Without that, our economy will be very difficult.

                          ____________________