[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9106-9108]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            HURRICANE SEASON

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I know the debate today and for the past 
several days has been focused on immigration. The Presiding Officer has 
been active in the negotiations, and I commend him for his good work. 
It has been a tough debate on a very important issue--an issue of 
security, fairness, and justice. It is an issue of economics, and it 
affects all of our States. It affects what America stands for. We have 
spent an inordinate and appropriate amount of time on that subject.
  Tonight, I come to the floor to speak about another issue very close 
to my heart and to the people of Louisiana, particularly with regard to 
the closeness of the arrival of the hurricane season. It is hard to 
believe that we are about ready to face another hurricane season again. 
June 1, a few days from now, is the first official day of the hurricane 
season. It comes this year bringing a lot more fright and anxiety to 
the gulf coast because we were hit by a powerful series of storms last 
year that devastated parts of Florida and a great part of the gulf 
coast from Mississippi through the whole of south Louisiana, into the 
city of New Orleans and the metropolitan area, and then on into Texas.
  And two of those storms were the worst to hit the United States of 
America. The devastation and the amount of damage is still climbing. A 
report I saw today was that the damage is now $150 billion and 
climbing. Hurricane Andrew, which was the greatest storm to hit the 
United States and to hit your State, Mr. President, was $40 billion. We 
are now at $150 billion and climbing. We have lost, of course, over 
1,300 people. People were killed by the storms and the flooding that 
ensued from the multiple breaks in the levees that have put a major 
American city and region--not just New Orleans, but St. Bernard Parish 
and Plaquemines, which often get left out of the debate. They are two 
of the parishes that lie south of New Orleans, as they hold the 
Mississippi River, if you will, that splits their parishes in half. It 
affected the southwestern part of our State as well.
  That doesn't get mentioned as much as it should--little towns such as 
Creole and big towns such as Lake Charles took a tough hit, and 
parishes such as Vermilion and little towns such as Erath, where almost 
every home was destroyed or very damaged.
  Having said that, it added insult to injury that this particular 
coast that got battered so badly by these storms is also America's only 
energy coast. This is the only energy coast in America, the only four 
States that right now will allow drilling of oil and gas off their 
shores to provide for the economic vitality of this Nation and to 
provide the oil and gas necessary to run the electric grid in this 
country and the transportation systems in this country, and to run 
energy from lights to the entire energy grid.
  I have been on this floor many times in my time in the Senate--now 
almost 10 years--to talk about this subject. I thought I would take a 
few minutes tonight, because we are approaching hurricane season, to 
remind the Senate that while immigration is a very important issue, and 
we want to bring closure to that this week, I hope that very soon we 
will get back to another issue of great interest and security for the 
Nation, and that is the issue of energy security. It starts, in my 
view, with providing some more understanding and more help to those 
States that are providing the oil and the gas for this Nation, as we 
seek to open up new places to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, which has 
become known as a section of the gulf called lease-sale 181. I hope 
that bill will be considered. It came out of the Energy Committee that 
the occupant of the chair and I serve on. I think that bill will come 
to the floor for some discussion.
  As that bill moves to the floor and we move to the focus on energy 
and energy security, I want to take a few minutes to talk about this 
gulf coast area and how much we contribute and how, without some stream 
of revenue--whether we get it from lease-sale 181 or from other 
offshore drilling--to secure the wetlands that we are losing at an 
alarming rate, to provide some energy-related protection of this 
infrastructure, to provide for the restoration of these wetlands this 
energy coast will continue to be at risk.
  If my colleagues and the people in Congress think that $150 billion 
is a lot of money, just wait until we go through a couple more 
hurricane seasons to really feel the effect of underinvestment over 
time, to a point where it is almost criminal. Let me repeat--an 
underinvestment over time that borders on being criminal.
  I have some new charts, since I have used all my old ones up for 10 
years of this debate. This is a satellite photograph from USGS of all 
of the pipelines and flow lines in the United States off of the shore. 
I have come down here so many times to say that the offshore oil and 
gas industry could not even exist if it were not for the partnership, 
which we have done thus far proudly and willingly--but that is wearing 
thin--we have done it proudly and supported the oil and gas industry 
for now almost 45 years off of our shores. You can see this is the 
Louisiana coastline. This is the Mississippi coastline. This is Texas.
  This is all of the pipelines and flow lines connecting thousands of 
wells that are in the Gulf of Mexico bringing oil and gas to a nation 
that is thirsty for oil and needing gas, because the supply is so low 
and the consumption is so high and the prices are going up. The four 
States that are putting their shoulder to the wheel every day are 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. This is the picture that 
proves it.
  This is out on this map about 200 miles of activity. So for some 
people who have said the drilling is so far off your coast that the 
people of Louisiana don't have anything to do with it, let me explain 
that you cannot access grids and rigs and oil and gas without 
pipelines, gadgets, widgets, drills, well heads, and supply boats. It 
is impossible. Every single widget, gadget, and supply boat either 
comes by boat or helicopter out of one of these many ports that have 
proudly supported this industry. You can see the line stops at the 
Mobile Bay. The reason is because Florida, which consumes more energy 
than almost any State relative to its lack of production--consumes but 
has not produced. Florida is not the only State. I could show you a 
chart of California and Michigan and New York--States that consume a 
lot of energy but have not been willing to produce it in any way, 
either by nuclear, by wind, or by strict conservation--except for 
California; I will give them credit for conservation measures. But 
other States won't do conservation or production.
  I don't know if you can see this thin line. Last year, the industry 
went ahead, because of this policy, and laid a pipeline all the way to 
Florida to provide gas to Florida. But we have to drill it off of 
Alabama's coast and then send it to Florida free of charge.
  I am going to show you another chart that says the same thing, but it 
is a little different. When I say that the gulf coast is America's only 
energy coast, this is another way to look at it. Every one of these 
green blocks--this goes out 200 miles into the gulf--were active

[[Page 9107]]

leases prior to 2003. That is the green. They are active leases issued 
in 2003, which were the last lease-sales; 185, 187, and 189 are the 
light yellow. And then the red have been withdrawn from leasing. Not 
many. The active leases issued in 2004.
  Basically, the green and yellow are leases. From these leases are 
produced, for the Federal Treasury--I remind everybody that we are 
running a serious deficit. So besides contributing oil and gas, we also 
contribute a lot of money to the Treasury. We are sending to the 
Federal Government every year $6 billion. It was $2 billion when I got 
here; now it is $6 billion. Before I leave, it will probably go up to 
$15 billion, assuming I can get here another term. So $6 billion goes 
from the royalties by passing all of the communities here that build 
the widgets, gadgets, supply boats--over all the heads of the workers 
that drill, over all their homes that are underwater and ruined, over 
all of the wetlands that are being infringed upon, and in a fairly 
critical way.
  Although we have made a lot of changes in our environmental laws, the 
problem is that a lot of these canals were drilled in the 1930s and 
1940s. I am sorry, I wasn't born to try to help protect them then. But 
like my daughter said the other day, I am born now. We tried our best 
in the last couple of years, with the little money Louisiana had to do 
some of this work, but we cannot possibly do this work on our own. We 
should not have to, Mr. President, because we send to the Federal 
Treasury--which is much wealthier than the State of Louisiana and 
Mississippi and Alabama, three of the poorest States in the Union--and 
even Texas has a lot of poor and lower middle-income people. We are 
subsidizing the National Government, giving them the oil, giving them 
the gas, and then giving them all the money. It just has to stop.
  We need some money to restore our coast, to build levees, and to 
protect the infrastructure that is at risk. We were very fortunate that 
even with this powerful storm, most everybody in the industry has 
worked very hard to create very good technology so that these rigs and 
platforms can withstand a lot of wind pressure and strong waves. Every 
time a storm comes, the industry, because it is innovative, gets better 
and better. But there were some close calls with these platforms. They 
are still not completely up in the gulf.
  I will show you one more chart. When people say what about gas, this 
is oil and gas. I will show you what the gas trunk looks like. This is 
billion cubic feet flow levels. The areas do not include LNG imports. 
This is just what we drill ourselves. If we put imports here, I don't 
know what it would look like because nobody wants to put a liquefied 
natural gas plant anywhere except where? Texas, Louisiana, and 
Mississippi again. Everybody has siting problems with liquefied natural 
gas that comes imported. Here we step up again and are building some of 
the largest liquefied natural gas plants so we can get gas from other 
places. Agriculture in every State, particularly the Midwest, needs 
these gas prices to come down. They are having a great deal of 
difficulty in the Midwest. They are having a great deal of difficulty 
in Illinois and in New Jersey and in Delaware.
  The chemical industry runs on very slim margins. So who comes to the 
rescue? Louisiana and Mississippi, all the gas coming through here to 
try to keep everybody happy and working. And we cannot get one penny 
from these royalties in any significant way.
  Well, it is not true that we have not gotten one penny. What is true 
is that Senator Domenici, with his great leadership, recognized this 
and has been a wonderful help and supporter. Last year, in the Energy 
bill, he gave us, for the first time, a billion dollars. We were 
grateful. But it is a billion dollars over a few years. We have to 
divide it among the States. It sounds like a lot, but it doesn't go 
very far. We need a long-term commitment so that we can count on money 
year after year to do what we need to do in this community.
  I want to show one more that is even more dramatic. I am going to get 
to this for Texas and Mississippi and Alabama. But this shows the oil 
and gas wells inside the coastal zone. This is how many wells we have. 
If you would see our whole State, you could not believe it. Most of 
this land is private land, unlike the Western States that came into the 
union with a lot of Federal land. This is private land. So private 
landowners get a royalty. That is fine. The State gets some money. 
While it looks like a lot of money the State would be getting, these 
wells were drilled decades ago, in many cases. Some of them are still 
producing, but some of them are not.
  Outside this coastal zone--this is our 3-mile line--outside this 
coastal zone, according to the law which I am trying to change, we get 
no revenues from these wells.
  The final chart is pretty frightening, actually. This is a chart of 
the hurricane tracks from 1955 to 2005. This is how many hurricanes 
have hit the gulf coast and the east coast from 1955 to 2005. The blue 
line is the track of Hurricane Rita, and the yellow line is the track 
of Katrina. Both of these storms were at some point in their track 
category 5 storms. Within 3\1/2\ weeks, they hit the east side of 
Louisiana and then right to the Louisiana-Texas line.
  For the State, it was terrible to have two very big storms hit, but 
as a Senator, I have to tell you, I said a thanksgiving that it didn't 
hit Houston straight-on because if it had hit Houston and Galveston and 
put that energy sector out--Katrina had done a great deal to put out 
Port Fourchon, which is the only energy port in the Nation right on the 
coast--I don't know what would have happened to the lights in America. 
Maybe they would have all gone off. But nobody seems to care about 
that.
  I promise my colleagues, as sure as I am standing here, there will be 
a series of storms that plow into this gulf coast. The water is getting 
warmer. I don't know how many times people have to write articles, give 
speeches, or write books about the fact that global warming is 
happening. One can argue about its causes, but nobody can argue that it 
is actually happening. When the waters warm, any scientist will tell 
you these storms are going to pick up in intensity and in frequency.
  I need to ask the Congress: What more will it take? What more will it 
take before we act to give the gulf coast a portion of their revenues 
to protect themselves so that we can protect everyone else? What more 
has to happen? How many more storms? How much more loss of property? 
How many more close calls before we have to shut down the rigs and the 
pipelines and put America's lights out and put our economy at even 
greater risk?
  I go to my office and I ask my staff: Is there some other chart we 
can come up with that could show people the danger? Is there some other 
speech I can give?
  I might not be making myself clear, so I am asking the Senate 
tonight, as we wind down the immigration bill and as we think about 
moving to lease sale 181 or maybe a mini Energy bill because we have 
lots of problems in the energy sector, lots of challenges, can I please 
ask one more time: Can we please get some funding out of the new 
revenues that are being generated off America's only energy coast to 
give the people of the gulf coast some resources so they can protect 
themselves a little better?
  If somebody tries to tell me, Senator, why don't you just have 
everybody move, if I have to hear one more person say we have to get 
everybody to move or we have to move out of New Orleans--New Orleans is 
not even on the coast. We are not on the coast. Miami is on the coast. 
Savannah is on the coast. Gulfport is on the coast. Beaumont is on the 
coast. New Orleans is not on the coast. We are 100 miles from the 
coast. But if these wetlands continue to erode at the rate they are 
going, we are going to be talking about Little Rock as a coastal city. 
I know I am exaggerating a little bit, but I promise the Senate that 
this coastal erosion is moving at such a rapid rate that not only is 
New Orleans at risk, Baton Rouge is at risk, Lafayette is at risk, Lake 
Charles is at risk, and then we have Galveston, Beaumont, and Houston.

[[Page 9108]]

  We just cannot move everybody back 200 miles from the coast. In fact, 
the last time I looked at this data, all along the coast of the United 
States and growing mostly in Florida, people are moving to the coast. 
We may be the only State where people are actually moving away from the 
coast, but the coast is moving to us. We are not moving to the coast to 
build condominiums or golf courses. We can't build a golf course in a 
wetland, and we can't put a big skyscraper up in the wetlands.
  We moved little communities so that we could construct a fishing 
industry for the Nation. We run the great ports that benefit the whole 
country, and we run the oil and gas industry that benefits the Nation. 
We are not on the coast sunbathing and building condos. But if the 
country wants everybody along the coast to move, then I suggest some 
agency come up with an evacuation and relocation plan that can proceed 
to move tens of millions of Americans because that is exactly what we 
are going to have to do because two-thirds of all Americans live within 
50 miles of a coast. But New Orleans is not 50 miles from a coast.
  The Netherlands has a much better plan. I am going to save that 
speech for another time. There are countries--not America--in the world 
that use their technology, use their resources, use their brains, and 
use the money they get from oil and gas by placing it into good levees, 
good dikes, good engineering, and they protect their people as best 
they can. We cannot stop these storms. Nobody can stop them. But a 
smart country, a country with good policies, mitigates and protects and 
puts up smart barriers and learns to work with the water and the wind 
much better than we are doing.
  With this chart in the background, I conclude by saying, let us move, 
after immigration, to an energy subject. Let us take the opportunity 
Senator Domenici is going to give us to bring lease sale 181 up for 
debate. I will show where it is. Lease sale 181 is going to be a new 
area, which sits on the border of Alabama and Florida, that we are 
going to try to open.
  I know, Mr. President, this is a sensitive subject for Florida 
because I have worked with you and Senator Nelson.
  The Presiding Officer and Senator Nelson have been outstanding in 
their advocacy of trying to balance the needs of Florida and their 
tourism industry, which we have as well, with the needs for the gulf 
coast.
  As we can see on this map, there is plenty of room to give a buffer 
to Florida that is reasonable and allow for more drilling. That is the 
idea. It has to be reasonable and provide some additional areas to get 
some oil and gas far enough off the coast so it will not affect the 
beaches because Florida does have a tourism industry based on beaches. 
Our tourism industry is not based on beaches. We only have two beaches, 
and they are only 7 miles long, and we can't hardly get to them. But we 
have great wetlands and we are proud of them. We have a lot of 
ecotourism, pirogues, canoes, hunting and fishing, which is 
extraordinary in our State, and we are proud of that, just as Florida 
is proud of its beaches.
  Mr. President, you heard me say this to you privately many times. 
Half the people of Louisiana have grown up on the beaches of Florida. 
We don't have that much money. We can't go that far. So we manage to go 
to the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida beaches. We are happy for the 
day or two spent on a beach in Florida. We are happy for it. But there 
is a reasonable compromise to be had.
  I have been proud to work with many of my colleagues to try to come 
up with a way to open up this drilling, provide revenue sharing for 
these States on the gulf coast that have given so much and that want to 
continue to give and benefit the Nation, and finally to give our people 
some hope.
  It has been a struggle to build the levees through the years. We 
needed to repair the levees that broke. The hope that we could give to 
our people all along the gulf coast as hurricane season starts June 1--
hurricane season starts June 1. Millions of people living along this 
coast are reading the reports that this hurricane season might be worse 
than last. Wouldn't it be wonderful for the Congress of the United 
States to say this is a security issue for America, that this means a 
great deal to us, and we are going to act now to provide some hope to 
the people of the gulf coast?
  We have lived in this area a long time, and we are going to stay 
living here. We have been living here for over 300 years. We were a 
colony before there was a country. We were living here, and we are not 
leaving. Whether the country helps us or not, we are going to stay here 
and keep doing our job. It has gotten to the point where it is so 
grossly unfair. We have to find a solution so that the people who live 
here can have hope that the country they live in actually cares about 
them, not just about how fast they can get out to the rigs to turn on 
the oil and gas for everybody else, but maybe we would care enough 
about their homes that have been flooded and the children's schools 
they can't go to or their churches that got flooded and help them to 
rebuild their homes, their schools, their churches so they can continue 
to work out on these rigs and send the oil and gas to New York and to 
Illinois and to Florida.
  We will build smartly, we have built smartly, and we will build even 
more in that way, but we cannot abandon this coast because if we did, 
who would keep the rigs working? Who would keep the pipelines open? Who 
would navigate the ships up the port?
  Mr. President, I have taken all or maybe more of my 30 minutes, and I 
appreciate the time. Again, when we get to lease sale 181, let's try to 
come together and come up with a reasonable solution, one that works 
for the Nation, one that works for the gulf coast States, and one of 
which we can actually be proud.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________