[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 15812]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS PRICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, today, gas prices since the price 
gouging post-Katrina climbed back over $3 a gallon average across the 
country, almost as high as on September 5 of last year during the 
frenzy of price gouging by the oil industry, using Katrina as an 
excuse. Now the excuse is unrest in the Middle East, despite very large 
inventories and no shortages on the horizon.
  But it is yielding one tremendous benefit, and the Republicans would 
have us believe that we all benefit: record profits for the oil 
industry. And since we are all now shareholders, according to the 
Republicans' theory of the world, we are all benefiting from the huge 
run-up in the prices of oil stocks and the dividends that are being 
paid by the oil companies. Unfortunately, most of the people I 
represent and I myself and many others I know do not own oil stocks, 
nor do we receive extraordinarily generous campaign contributions which 
the Republicans and the President do from the oil industry.
  So our reaction is not a collective yawn, and there is nothing that 
can be done about it, and it is just market forces. Ours is to say let 
us stop the price gouging of American consumers.
  Experts say that about 30 percent of this is pure speculation, that 
is, self-trading, oil being traded off the books purely to enrich the 
companies and traders.
  Another very significant portion comes from the fact that the oil 
companies, not the environmentalists, oh, the darn environmentalists, 
they have just been closing refineries left and right. Well, no. 
Actually, there has not been a single refinery closed in America, 
although many have been closed in the last 10 years, by environmental 
restrictions or litigation. They have been closed for economic 
purposes.
  There was a memo 10 years ago from the American Petroleum Institute 
that said, hey, guys, wake up, you are not making enough money on 
refining; if you could shrink down refinery capacity, you would have an 
excuse to drive up margins and the prices of refining. They have 
exceeded their expectations. In fact, refinery profits from the last 
year, 12 months, are up 60 percent, 60 percent.
  If we return to the historic average margins for refinery, which were 
profitable but not wildly, unbelievably profitable, gas would go down 
by another 40 cents a gallon.
  So you take out the speculation, you take out what they have done 
with the manipulation of refinery capacity and you are back down to 
$2.30 cents or so a gallon. Now that is not a long-term energy policy, 
but that is relief for American consumers. That is relief for American 
business. That gives us the opportunity to begin to invest in a more 
oil-independent future.
  The so-called energy bill that passed the House based on subsidies 
for the oil, coal and gas industry, you know, they are hurting, they 
need subsidies from the taxpayers. We need to borrow money to give to 
them or give them price breaks for their production on Federal lands 
and not realize those revenues to the Federal Treasury, if that excuse 
for a so-called energy bill would actually have us more dependent on 
Middle East oil 10 years from today than we are now.
  That is an energy policy? Look at the Middle East. Do we want to be 
dependent upon the Middle East? Do we want to be filling the coffers of 
Iran and Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries? I do not think so.
  We need a plan for energy independence in America. We need a plan 
that is going to develop new technologies here at home that we will 
market to the rest of the world, that will make Americans energy 
independent. Somehow Brazil was able to do it, but they tell us it is 
just not possible here in the United States of America, we cannot 
figure out a way to get to energy independence like Brazil.
  Now, I do not believe that. The President knows the American people 
are a little upset. So in his State of the Union he talked about how we 
need to do more about alternative fuels and alternative technologies. 
Unfortunately, the money did not follow the mouth. If John Fitzgerald 
Kennedy had applied that same amount of money to his mission to the 
Moon, we still would not be in the outer atmosphere of the Earth, let 
alone the Moon.
  There is no real commitment there because real commitment would mean 
that you are starting to threaten the wildly profitable oil industry.
  BP announced today, and they are supposed to be the weakest of the 
announcements this week, that their profits were up a mere 40 percent 
over the quarter for last year. ExxonMobil is likely to announce either 
the largest quarterly profit in history for any corporation on the face 
of the Earth this week on Thursday or maybe only the second largest. 
They made $100 million a day profit last year. They gave their CEO a 
$400 million retirement package. They are not investing in new 
capacity. They are not investing in alternative fuels. They do not care 
about energy independence for the United States of America. They like 
the addiction that they have got us on now.
  We need an energy policy and we need it soon, and the Republican 
Party is in thrall with the oil companies.

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