[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15103-15109]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                                 ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Donnelly). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Westmoreland) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, it's good to be here tonight. And 
we're going to talk a little bit about what is on most people in this 
country's mind, and that's the price of gas, and the price of energy in 
general.
  We're going to be talking about gas tonight and the expense that it 
takes for American families to go on vacation, just go to work, even go 
to the store, Mr. Speaker. And so I know that's at the forefront of 
most Americans' minds today.
  Let me just start out by saying that what we want to do tonight, Mr. 
Speaker, is just point out a few things that may be not consistent with 
what's coming out of the majority's side about what we're doing about 
gas prices and what can be done about the price of gasoline now. And 
we've heard everything from, well, it will take 22 years to get any oil 
that's in the ground now, that's in our Outer Continental Shelf or in 
our national lands to the market. And that's not true. And so we're 
going to talk a little bit about that tonight. And I'm joined by 
friends of mine, the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from 
Illinois, and we're going to share some of those things.
  But first of all, Mr. Speaker, let me explain that about, I guess, a 
month ago I was approached by constituents in my district, and they 
were talking to me about petitions, and petitions that were on the 
Internet, calling and asking me if I had signed petitions. Some of them 
were ``increase domestic oil drilling,'' which American Solutions had, 
some are ``gas tax holiday'' that presidential candidate Senator McCain 
had, ``develop alternative energy sources,'' which is 
Energypetition.com.
  And then there were petitions against drilling in ANWR. Democratic 
Senator Barbara Boxer from California had one, and Mr. Speaker, the 
Sierra Club, Green Peace. There were different petitions. There was 
actually a ``cap oil company profits by new government regulations.'' 
There are some people in the majority that believe that we can actually 
regulate our way out of this energy crisis, so one of those was 
Moveon.org.
  After talking to my constituents about all these different 
petitions--and they were calling me and asking me if I had signed, they 
were going to these web pages and either signing or voicing their 
protest--I was at a service station at home and there was another 
petition there and it said, ``sign this petition if you want to lower 
gas prices.'' And I'm assuming that the proprietor of that station was 
doing that to give people something to do when they were paying for 
their gas rather than fuss at him. But what it brought to mind is we, 
in this body, Mr. Speaker, are beginning to see how our constituents 
feel about this.
  I know today we were at a press conference where American Solutions 
presented the minority leader in the House and in the Senate with a 
petition. And I think later on--I don't know whether it's this week or 
next week--they're going to present this same petition to the majority 
leader in both the House and the Senate, it may be even Mr. Reid in the 
Senate and Speaker Pelosi here in the House.
  But what I decided to do was to come up with a petition so our 
constituents would know how the Members in this body--the 435 Members 
that are elected to be voting Members, the seven delegates from the 
American territories here--I decided that, you know, it would be good 
for those constituents to be able to see how their representative felt 
about increasing our oil production to lower the gas prices because 
that's one of the things that is going to help us. And it's more of an 
``all of the above,'' but one of the key ingredients is just voting or 
having a vote that we could increase our oil productions, whether 
that's shale oil, oil coming from biomass--which is a new technology 
that's coming out today--whether it's drilling in the Outer Continental 
Shelf, drilling on Federal lands, drilling in ANWR, whatever the case 
may be. So I came up with a simple petition, and it says, ``American 
energy solutions for lower gas prices: Bring onshore oil online, bring 
deepwater oil online, and bring new refineries online.''
  And, Mr. Speaker, a lot of people may not realize that we have not 
built a refinery in about 30 years in this country. And even some of 
the refineries that are online today produce diesel that has to be 
exported because it does not meet the new sulfur limits that we have 
put on some of the diesel fuel that's used in this country. And so I 
came up with this, and then I made a simple petition, Mr. Speaker.
  And I think this petition is probably just too simple for some of the 
people in this body because it's not a piece of legislation, it is 
simply a statement, Mr. Speaker, to the people that they represent to 
let those people know how they feel about increasing U.S. oil 
production. And it simply says, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil 
production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' And that's about as 
simple as you can get because I think that's what the American people, 
Mr. Speaker, want to see is that we're doing something, that we're 
taking some action.
  You know, we have voted on several bills in probably the last 2 
weeks, ``use it or lose it,'' which a lot of my colleagues from the 
majority side went home and told their constituents that

[[Page 15104]]

this was a pro-drilling bill. Well, I disagree with that, it was not a 
pro-drilling bill; and it was actually very misleading in the fact of 
use it or lose it, and we'll go into that in just a minute.
  But so far, Mr. Speaker, we've had 191 Members sign this. We've had 
eight Democrats, 183 Republicans that have signed it. Of course it 
takes 218 to do anything in this body.

                              {time}  2100

  But this is not a discharge petition. This is just a simple pledge, 
or not really a pledge. It's just a petition that people can sign to 
let their constituents know.
  And what we have done to make it easy, Mr. Speaker, for people to 
realize or to understand if their representative has signed this is we 
set up a little Web page. It's www.house.gov/westmoreland. And on there 
we have people that have signed it, we have people that have refused to 
sign it, and then those that we have not talked to yet that have not 
signed. So, Mr. Speaker, I would encourage you, if you wanted to know 
how different Members in your delegation either signed or not signed 
and just for people would know that they could go to this Web site, 
www.house.gov/westmoreland, to find out.
  And it's interesting because of some of the articles and press 
releases that I have been reading, I guess, for the last week or so, 
what we have got is we have got people going home saying one thing and 
then coming back to Washington and doing something else or not doing 
what they said they were going to do for the people that vote them into 
office. So I would hope that we could finally make people match their 
walk to their talk. So I think this is just an interesting tool that 
people can use to find out if their Congress person is matching the 
talk.
  I yield to my friend from Illinois.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. I want to thank my colleague for yielding, and I 
appreciate all the work he's doing to raise these issues.
  I'm going to take a different tact tonight and respond to an e-mail 
that I got from a constituent in my district. And most of the e-mails 
we are getting are pretty angry about the high costs of fuel and 
energy. This one is asking for answers and debating some of our points; 
so if I might, and it's an e-mail that I usually don't get very much 
because he claims he's a tree-hugging constituent of mine. So I want to 
take this time.
  He says: ``There has to be a better way to go than this. I would 
rather pay more at the pump than risk poisoning the oceans and nature 
preserves up north any further with additional drilling.'' I want to 
address two of those points.
  There are people who are willing to pay more. But there are people in 
this country, the poor, the middle class, the lower middle class, who 
can't afford to pay more, and that's what is frustrating in part about 
this debate. We know that there are people who, because they are very 
wealthy, live in splendid homes, can afford to pay whatever the price 
to bear. But we know in our congressional districts those people who 
are making tough decisions or families who used to be able to travel 
away to their kids' sporting events and now have decided not to do 
that. So it's affecting everyday family life. So I get the point that 
some people can. I will tell you that the vast majority of Americans 
can't afford to pay more.
  And the other issue I would like to address on this is when energy 
costs go up, costs for everything go up. This whole food/fuel debate is 
really a food/energy debate. When a kernel of corn gets planted and 
then gets harvested and goes through the process and then goes all the 
way to the grocery store, it's going to travel about 1,500 to 2,000 
miles. Now double the cost of diesel fuel, and you could see the 
escalation of food prices. So although someone may be able to pay more 
at the pump, they are also paying more at the grocery store. They are 
actually paying more in taxes as we have to heat and electrify 
government buildings and all those processes. So I get the point that 
some people can pay more. The vast majority of Americans can't.
  And I will tell you the ones in my district in rural America, I have 
got some very proud, independent, tough people who can get through 
anything, but they live in small counties away from major cities, and 
to get to work, to get the food, to get the health care, they have to 
drive long distances.
  He also says: ``Wouldn't more funding for alternative fuels and 
infrastructure go a long way?'' And our response would be all of the 
above. We want that. But when people say let's just put more funding 
into these things, what that means is that if you're not finding a way 
to recover that revenue through oil and gas exploration, where does 
that new revenue come from? The new revenue to advance alternative 
fuels, the new revenue to increase infrastructure all will come on the 
backs of individual taxpayers. So now you're laying more energy costs 
on them; then you're laying more taxes on them; then you're getting to 
a point where, you know, this country was founded on tax revolt, 
taxation without representation, and these energy costs are a new tax 
burden on the middle class that they are revolting from, and they are 
looking to us for help.
  I wanted to talk to him about the alternative fuel standard. Most of 
us know about the renewable fuel standard, talking about biofuels, 
ethanol. But we have numerous times come to this floor on the 
alternative fuel standard, and alternative brings in other types of 
fuels. You have a chart up there of the Outer Continental Shelf. If we 
were to bring on more supplies of natural gas, we could take that 
natural gas, turn it into liquid fuels, and that could be part of a new 
alternative fuel supply which is cleaner than conventional gasoline.
  Many people know that I'm from Southern Illinois and I deal with 
coal. Taking coal and turning it into liquid fuel should qualify as an 
alternative fuel, not relying on imported crude oil, not exploration in 
the Outer Continental Shelf, not up in Alaska. It is right in the 
middle of our country, safe and sound from hurricanes, and if they 
would close the sea traffic, our own coal reserves would not be 
affected by that.
  He ends up by saying that we should be working harder and smarter. 
And I think our position has been we do because what we want to do is 
we are not saying no. Our problem is this: This trend line from $23 to 
$58, when the Democrats came in, to $145 is not sustainable. I think 
that's accepted throughout this country, and I think it's public 
opinion.
  So the question is what do you do about it? And you have offered a 
lot of options. And I like this. I have got the same chart here, the 
Outer Continental Shelf. We heard today that there is more pollution in 
the ocean and on the beaches based upon boaters and the normal seepage 
of oil and gas undersea than there is through oil and gas exploration. 
So, in fact, oil and gas exploration could take the pressure off the 
crude oil that's trying to seep to the top of the surface; so it could 
be at least helpful.
  Then you get the revenue. This is working smarter. We get the revenue 
from the folks who are in the Outer Continental Shelf, and you take 
those dollars, and you move that into wind and solar and alternative 
fuel technologies, efficiency standards, plug-in hybrids. We're for all 
of the above, and when you go through all of the above, you're talking 
about American jobs.
  GM announced a major layoff today, thousands of jobs. Why? High 
energy prices. Airlines are laying off thousands of jobs. Why? High 
energy prices.
  Here is the coal-to-liquid provision, where we're talking about 
taking U.S. coal, building a coal-to-liquid refinery, refining that 
into a liquid fuel, putting it in a pipeline in the United States, 
taking it to our airports. We can produce jet fuel from coal. South 
Africa has done it for 50 years.
  Finally, another option is the renewable fuels under attack. 
Biodiesel by soy or reformulated cooking oil, ethanol. Hopefully, we 
move to the cellulosic arena where we're out of the corn kernel and we 
move to really the trash of the trash. We can get there, and I say to 
my constituent who wrote, and

[[Page 15105]]

I will probably reply with an e-mail, that we can get there by working 
harder and smarter using the great resources.
  We are the only industrialized nation in the world where we see a 
natural resource and we say, ``Ah, an environmental hazard,'' instead 
of saying, wow, now we are placed in a strategic national advantage to 
compete against the world in manufacturing goods and services. We can 
take the royalties from that and we can help to decrease our reliance 
on imported crude oil.
  That's the future we are working for. It's a future of job creation 
for all America. It keeps us competitive around the world. And the 
first start is to allow us to start recovering the oil and gas reserves 
in this great country.
  I appreciate your leadership. I signed your petition. We're having a 
lot of fun helping to educate ourselves and to educate the American 
people, and I appreciate the time.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my friend from Illinois, and I want 
to just comment on a couple of things he said.
  Those things that you proposed would create American jobs, good-
paying jobs. Most of those refineries are union jobs, and these are 
jobs that are going out of the country right now because there's not 
enough work here. And building these pipelines, building the 
refineries, the oil rigs, the things to convert the coal to liquid, I 
mean these are American jobs and American money that are going overseas 
and out of this country. And we hear the majority complain all the time 
about our sending jobs out of the country. This is what we are doing. 
And not only that, for people who talk about our trade deficit, and I 
know my friend from Texas can talk about that, but these are all things 
that we need to take into account. And like my friend from Illinois 
said, this is an all of the above.
  The other thing that that brings up is we know that the three energy 
bills that were brought to the floor were under suspension. Now, Mr. 
Speaker, you know what ``under suspension'' means. And just to explain 
a little bit, ``under suspension'' means that you have about 20 minutes 
of debate on each side, a total of 40 minutes, no amendments, and 
typically there hasn't been a hearing, a committee hearing. So while we 
are passing these bills, and, in my opinion, it's been putting lipstick 
on a pig because some of these things that we have passed are already 
the law, just not being enforced, and other things I don't really 
believe are helping, they are just political correctness that we are 
trying to do, but there has been no input from the minority. A side 
that represents about 50 percent of the people in this country have no 
input into the process. So I know you would have some great input into 
the process if we could just be allowed to have an amendment on the 
floor. But for some reason, the majority is afraid to allow us to have 
a vote.
  I want to read one thing that Speaker Pelosi said yesterday about 
using suspensions. She said, ``We are trying to get our job done around 
here, and we work very hard to build consensus. And when we get it, we 
like to just move forward with it, as we did on the Medicare bill,'' 
which is one of the largest expenditures we have had probably this year 
in this Congress that was done under suspension, ``as we did with the 
SPR bill, and the list goes on and on. But it is not about a tool. It's 
about the legislative process and how we get a job done.''
  That legislative process that's being done in this House today is 
broken. And when the legislative process is broken, the product is 
flawed. And I think that's what we have seen because if you look at 
when Republicans took Congress, gas was $1.44 a gallon. When the 
Democrats took control, it was $2.10 a gallon. And now it's $4.11 a 
gallon. This is what you get from working with a broken process and 
doing political correctness over the people and using power and 
politics over doing what is right. So this is what you end up with.

                              {time}  2115

  And this is what the American people, Mr. Speaker, are complaining 
about and rightfully so. Because we have the ability to provide our own 
energy resources. But because of politics, we are being voted from even 
having discussions on this floor or taking a vote on anything that we 
believe would be both a short-term and a long-term.
  I would like to recognize my colleague from Texas, Mr. Conaway.
  Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman. And I'm glad he is hosting this 
hour tonight so that we may have an opportunity to have a bit of an 
exchange of ideas and dialogue on these energy issues.
  One of the catchphrases that has become popular among the uninformed 
is the ``use it or lose it'' phrase which trivializes an incredibly 
complex process. It trivializes the importance of an energy policy in 
this country and tries to reduce, as I said, a complex issue to a 
bumper sticker. It is demeaning to those in the business. And it 
demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of exactly how the 
process works.
  The idea is that oil companies in these United States, including 
major oil companies, are somehow warehousing good drillable prospects 
in the hopes that crude oil will go higher than it already is. Well 
$140 plus a barrel is plenty of incentive to drill almost everything in 
these United States. I want to walk you through a brief description of 
some of the things that go on in the development of a prospect, the 
drilling of a prospect and bringing crude oil to the market.
  Now this applies onshore and offshore. The onshore processes are a 
little quicker because the infrastructure is already in place. The 
offshore is staggeringly more expensive than the onshore. And it takes 
a longer time.
  The first thing you have to have is an idea of where you think oil 
and gas might be. You can't just willy-nilly drill in the United States 
offshore, or anywhere in the world, and expect to find crude oil or 
natural gas. You have to have a reasonably scientific guess as to where 
crude oil or natural gas might have occurred. You base that guess on 
other production in the area. You base that guess on the geologic 
history of that particular spot in the world. But you have to have some 
sort of an idea that there might be oil and gas in that place.
  Once you come up with that idea, you do some preliminary geological 
work trying to map what that subsurface structure might look like under 
where you're trying to drill. You may be able to do some preliminary 
geophysical work in that process to get this idea to a point where 
you're willing to invest thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions 
of dollars. And with respect to offshore, it's billions of dollars of 
shareholder capital, your money or the bank's money, depending on how 
you have financed this particular idea.
  So you have the idea. You have done the preliminary work. And you 
say, all right, here is an area where I think there is oil and gas. I 
need to make a deal, a trade, with the people who own the minerals 
under that dirt. Now the United States is one of the few countries in 
the world where individuals own minerals on their property. The 
government owns a lot of property. It owns those minerals. Private 
citizens own a lot of property. And they own those minerals, or they 
have sold those minerals or detached them from the surface rights. But 
somebody owns those minerals. You have to find all those people. And 
depending on the size of the block of acreage that you're wanting to 
put together, it could be one owner. It could be hundreds of owners 
that you have to make a deal with. So you go through that process.
  You finally come to a lease term. Let's do an easy one. The Federal 
Government owns all the minerals, has all the surface and you have one 
owner to deal with. You negotiate that opportunity with the Federal 
Government. The Federal Government then puts the leases out for bid 
across anybody who wants to bid. Well you have the idea in mind. You 
think you have nominated that prospect, that acreage for drilling. So 
you put your bid in. You win that bid. You negotiate that lease. You 
pay your upfront lease bonus money for the

[[Page 15106]]

right to then begin spending some really big dollars on trying to find 
out what that's done.
  Now let me talk a little bit about that lease, because this speaks to 
the ``use it or lose it'' nonsense that is currently permeating the 
debate in this House. This lease is a legal contract between the 
lessor, the landowner, in this instance the Federal Government, and the 
lessee. It has specific terms that the lessee has to abide by. One of 
those terms, of course, is a lease bonus payment typically based on the 
number of acres. So you put that money up front. It will have a fixed 
term. Onshore non-Federal lands, it could be 3 years, it could be 5 
years. Offshore it's generally 10 years just because of the timeline 
that my friend will show us here in a minute that it takes to move from 
point A to point B, selling the crude oil or natural gas off that. So 
there's a fixed term that you have paid upfront money to. You have the 
right to explore all of that acreage for the term, for the primary term 
of that lease.
  Now while you're exploring and not producing, you will have to pay 
annually delay rentals of some negotiated amount just to maintain your 
position in that lease. Once you have gone beyond that primary term, 
many leases, most leases, will have what is referred to as a continuous 
development clause in that you have to continue drilling wells, 
producing wells, at a fixed rate over some period of time in order to 
keep the acreage that you have not developed.
  If you decide that you have drilled all you want to, then the acreage 
that is outside your production unit, when you drill an oil well or a 
gas well, in Texas it's the Railroad Commission that will assign a 
spacing unit. Oil wells are typically 40 or 80 acres. Gas wells could 
be 160 or 640 depending on the depth. That is the aerial extent of the 
land that they think that one well will drain efficiently.
  So any acreage outside of that production unit after the primary 
term, and once you have quit meeting your continuous development 
clauses, reverts back to the original owner. So if I have leased a 
5,000-acre tract from the Federal Government, I've done all the G and G 
work, drilled it, found production and I know exactly where it is, I 
don't think the rest of that acreage is worth drilling, then once that 
primary term of that lease expires, all of that acreage under the terms 
of the written contract goes back to the Federal Government and can be 
leased by someone else throughout the process.
  Now you say, well, why would you let that acreage go once you have 
made that decision that you're not going to drill it? Well, A, you have 
invested a per acre bonus in all of that acreage, B, someone else may 
come up with the idea that they think there is oil and gas under that. 
Even though you don't, they may think there is oil and gas under that. 
You have paid your upfront bonus money. It's your property to deal with 
during that time frame under the terms of your lease. So somebody comes 
to you and says, I think there's oil under this piece of property. You 
have got the control of the minerals. You don't own them outright. You 
have them leased. Can I do a deal with you so that I will drill it? 
That is called a ``farmout.'' I will farm out that acreage and then you 
put your risk dollars up so I don't release that acreage when it's 
under the primary term because I have paid for it. I will keep it 
through the end of the lease. I am making the delay drill payments. 
Somebody else may have a better idea that there is oil under that 
place. There is a serendipity kind of thing. You never know when that 
happens.
  Once you have the lease in place, you then begin the complex G and G 
work that is on the property. Offshore or onshore, you will do 
additional geological work. You will shoot seismic perhaps, you will 
evaluate that seismic on 2-D, 3-D, go through a lot of work. In the 
meantime, while that is going on, you also begin the permitting process 
that on Federal leases is quite extensive. There are some 29 agencies 
that may get involved in your ability to drill on the lease that you 
have already paid for. You have to get EPA permission. You have to get 
Bureau of Land Management permission. You have to get drilling permits. 
There are all kinds of things that you have to go on. And all of that 
takes time. It obviously cannot be done instantly, because some of 
these permits are piggy-backed. You have to get one before you get the 
other. Some of them you run concurrently. And all of that work is going 
on while you are trying to pick the spot you want to drill that first 
well.
  Once you have the permitting in place and you have a reasonable idea 
of when you can start drilling, you then go through the process of 
negotiating all those contracts to drill the well. You'll have a 
contract with the drilling contractor for the rig. You'll have 
contracts to buy mud. You'll have contracts for logging, other 
services, casing, equipment, all those kinds of things. You have to get 
all that gathered up and moving toward your location. Now onshore it's 
a little easier than offshore but nevertheless, the process is still 
the same.
  You then put your rig up. You set up the rig or rig it up, and you 
drill your hole. And if you're lucky, one in six wildcat wells will 
discover oil. There is a little better percentage than that on 
development wells. But you will then go through the completion process. 
Once you have got it completed, you will build out the surface 
facilities, tank batteries, flow lines, all those kinds of things in 
order to move your product, either gas or crude oil, from that well 
site into a market.
  At that point, you also have to negotiate a contract to sell the 
product. Now, crude oil is a pretty quick contract. They are very 
standard. And the product has got a certain quality, and you sell it. 
Natural gas, on the other hand, is a little different animal. And the 
contract negotiations for natural gas take a lot longer.
  Once you have got the contracts negotiated and you have all the 
permissions to drive and do everything you've got, now you're ready to 
sell that first barrel of crude oil or that first Mcf of gas. And the 
length of time that can take varies. There's not a standard that you go 
by, because every single deal is different. Onshore is different from 
offshore. All the offshore deals are incredibly different than the 
onshore.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. If I could reclaim my time for 1 minute, could you 
comment on I believe it's the Atlantis platform and how many years it 
took and how many barrels a day it's now producing?
  Mr. CONAWAY. Yes. In the Gulf of Mexico there is a production 
platform, a drilling platform, a production platform and a crew 
quarters platform called Atlantis. It is about 150 miles offshore in 
the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know if it's technically in Louisiana or 
Texas. It's 150 miles offshore. It's in 7,000 feet of water. So you 
have 7,000 feet of water before you hit the seabed. And they have 
drilled 13,000 feet once they've reached the seabed. So it's about a 
20,000-foot well that they have drilled and they have I think five 
producing wells. This will produce about 150,000 barrels a day. It's 
rated for 200,000 barrels. Billions and billions of dollars are 
invested in this floating monstrosity that sits in the Gulf of Mexico 
and produces crude oil and natural gas. It's an incredible amount of 
investment. Now if you have invested in Atlantis or if you have 
invested in a prospect onshore, you get no return on your dollar. You 
get nothing back from your investment until you sell crude oil and 
natural gas. And therein lies the misunderstanding by some of our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle. There is no juice in sitting 
on production. At $140 a barrel, the only way I get my money back out 
of the investment I have got in this well is if I sell crude oil and 
natural gas. So I have no incentive to sit on it for any reason because 
there's no way for me to get money back out of my investment. So there 
are plenty of good business reasons why the oil and gas is being 
produced in a commercial properly developed manner.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. But they started the process in 1985.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Yes, in the time line. Leases were obtained in 1995. You 
walk through the step, the first production was September of 2007. The 
ship was commissioned for full operations in December of 2007, so 12 
years of activity

[[Page 15107]]

that went on in investment, more importantly dollars invested because 
they had to pay for the building of that platform. The folks who built 
it didn't say, okay, when you start producing crude oil, you can pay 
for it at that point in time. They wanted their money up front. And so 
only major oil companies have the resources to be able to drill in 
7,000 feet of water. The technical aspects of drilling like that, many 
of them had to be developed on the fly because they didn't know how to 
do it. Bottom hull temperatures at 20,000 feet are very high. And the 
ability to maintain casing, maintain well, maintain the down hole 
structures, they had to figure that out, because no one else had ever 
done it in the world. So being able to do that is technically very, 
very complicated.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. And they are doing it in an environmentally safe 
way? There's been no spill or leakage or anything?
  Mr. CONAWAY. Absolutely. Absolutely.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Just reclaiming my time 1 minute. I would like you 
to explain just very briefly about the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, DFW, 
and the fact that this was State-owned property versus Federal property 
and how quickly that oil was produced out of that site. If you could 
just touch on that very briefly.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Sure. The Dallas-Fort Worth airport is a large facility 
in between Dallas and Fort Worth. Underlying all of that airport is a 
formation called the Barnett Shale. Barnett Shale is a gas-bearing 
formation that the industry has known about for a long, long time. It 
was not commercially producible on a vertical well bore because the 
formation would not give up enough gas on a vertical structure in order 
to be able to make your money back out of what it took you to drill 
that well. Someone had an idea and said, what if we drill the Barnett 
Shale horizontally, you know, go down 8,000 feet, and then drill a leg 
out 3,500 feet to 6,000 feet? I wonder what that would do? They did 
that. And all of a sudden, they got a commercial gas well.
  The estimates are for the Barnett Shale, which is very extensive from 
the middle of between Dallas and Fort Worth, just north of that area, 
all the way down toward Waco and out toward Abilene. They don't have 
the extent of where it's commercially producible at this point in time. 
But current guesses are that it's 26 trillion cubic feet of natural gas 
in the Barnett Shale. This is a gas plate that has been there and been 
known for 50 plus years, maybe even longer than that. But it's only 
been recently that they have developed it.
  Dallas airport sits over the Barnett Shale. So Chesapeake went 
through the airport authority and said, we want to drill. We want to 
negotiate those leases. My recollection is they negotiated the lease in 
2003 and paid the upfront bonus of $186 million to drill.

                              {time}  2130

  They will drill 303 wells on Dallas airport property. They will use 
52 pads to drill those 303 wells, and so obviously each pad will have 
multiple wells. The royalties will go to the airport. First production 
began in 2005, and they are now continuing to drill.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. So 2 years on State property versus 12 years on 
Federal land.
  Mr. CONAWAY. To be fair, doing things offshore, 150 miles from shore, 
is technically much tougher than it is doing it in the heart of an oil-
and-gas region like Fort Worth is. So there is a natural difference in 
time. Some of it has to do with the permitting and all of the other 
stuff that goes on. But also, it is tougher to drill 150 miles offshore 
where everything has to be brought out there.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. But there is still a permitting process that I want 
to talk about. And the very fact when we hear the other side say that 
it will take 22 years to get anything out of these wells, you are 
talking about 2 years to get natural gas.
  Mr. Speaker, let me say that natural gas was about $6.60 a thousand 
cubic feet last year, and it is about $12 this year. So while we have a 
lot of Americans feeling the pain at the pump this winter, they are 
certainly going to feel the pain at home.
  I want to point out that this chart takes in the leasing process. And 
this purple area right here is the preleasing process. The orange is 
the leasing process, and then the blue is the notice of staking and the 
green is the application to drill. This is on Federal on shore oil and 
gas leasing and permitting process. Every time you see one of these red 
dots here, this is a point of entry for legal action.
  And so you can see that this process is a lengthy process. When the 
majority talks about 68 million acres in the use or lose it, last night 
as we had an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to go back and forth for 2 hours 
with the majority, I think that they admitted that that 68 million 
acres that they are claiming, and we don't know, Mr. Speaker, where 
that 68 million figure came from because that was done not by the 
Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service but by a committee report 
from the majority in the Resources Committee. So we don't even know how 
they came up with the 68 million acres.
  But the point is that 68 million acres is somewhere in this process. 
It is somewhere in this process. So the use it or lose it is a very, 
very misleading statement.
  I would like to recognize my friend from Texas.
  Mr. CONAWAY. That use it or lose it is like telling General Motors 
you can only build one car at a time before you can start to build 
another car.
  Oil and gas companies, much like manufacturing companies, have a 
work-in-process scheme that includes all of these steps. They could 
have multiple number of prospects in their inventory that they are 
working diligently on to make that happen. So this use it or lose it 
phrase, in addition to being demeaning to the process and to the 
industry, is wrongheaded at best.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas.
  I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me, 
and also appreciate the gentleman for heading up this special order 
tonight to once again point a finger and a focus on the importance of 
the discussion of energy. And more important than that, to actually 
move some legislation through this House before we go into a recess 
during the August break.
  I will be brief because other colleagues would like to speak.
  I come, as I said, from the State of New Jersey. This past week I had 
an opportunity to be on some forums with some of my colleagues from the 
other side of the aisle where this was an issue that was discussed. One 
of the points that I made, coming from the State of New Jersey, is just 
how important it really is that Congress do something with regard to 
energy and the high price of energy production and supply in this 
country.
  Let me give you a few statistics from an independent source 
describing the State of New Jersey and our costs of energy. New Jersey 
consumes 3.4 percent of the Nation's energy. That is 13 percent greater 
than what the State's share should be based on the State's share of the 
Nation's population and employment. And that is possibly because New 
Jersey is one of the most densely populated States. It has been a 
manufacturing State and otherwise, and for that reason we do draw a 
high amount of energy for our State.
  Currently the State of New Jersey spends nearly $130 million annually 
on energy for its various State facilities alone, not talking about 
private and everything else out there.
  Furthermore, an economic survey points out that New Jersey business 
owners reported that many are concerned, and this is obvious, over 
rising energy prices. Forty percent of business owners state that over 
the next 6 months, higher energy costs will have the greatest impact on 
their business, up sharply from around 20 percent last fall. And 
because of the higher cost of energy, 43 percent of New Jersey business 
owners plan to pass along that portion of the cost in the form of 
higher selling prices to their customers, up from around 30 percent 
last fall.

[[Page 15108]]

  So that means on top of the fact that we in New Jersey are paying 
more at the pump, and on top of the fact that home heating costs will 
go up dramatically in the area of fuel oil. As a matter of fact, the 
statistics on that are that New Jersey relies more heavily on petroleum 
and natural gas for home heating, with 86 percent of single-family 
homes heated by natural gas and oil compared to the national average of 
68 percent.
  I raise that point to point out that in my little forums that I was 
on with other Members from the other side of the aisle, they said, 
look, we really can't drill our way out of this. Petroleum is not the 
solution. Natural gas is not the solution. Conservation and alternative 
fuels are the solution. Well, I half agree with them. I half agree with 
them because yes, conservation is certainly one of the solutions; and 
alternative fuels is certainly the other solution. But it is really a 
three-legged stool as opposed to a two-legged stool, and that third leg 
of the stool is additional production of energy here at home in 
America.
  Why this is a controversial topic in the State of New Jersey is 
because we are a coastal State. I enjoy the New Jersey shore as much as 
the next guy from New Jersey; and hopefully I will have some time to 
enjoy the Jersey shore sometime during this August break. But while you 
sit on the Jersey shore, and this is something that the gentleman from 
the other side of the aisle whose name shall remain nameless at this 
point, was factually incorrect about.
  As you sit on the Jersey shore, if we are successful as Republicans 
in this House, and that is to pass legislation as the President has 
just lifted his executive order just 48 hours ago to allow for drilling 
on the Outer Continental Shelf, which means deep-sea exploration, and I 
always say offshore is a misnomer because offshore means you are 
sitting on the shore and actually seeing it. And that is what my 
colleague on the other side of the aisle said. He said if we build 
these rigs, you will be sitting on the shore enjoying your pretzel and 
your soda and seeing them. That is factually incorrect.
  Every piece of legislation that I have supported, and I know the 
gentleman from Georgia has also supported, has said that we will be 
doing deep sea exploration, using 21st century technology in the most 
prudent and environmentally sensitive manner as you can possibly do, 
and they will be, at the minimum 50 miles, and a maximum up to 200 
miles offshore. We all know that if you sit on the Jersey shore, you 
can't see any further than 20 miles out to sea because of the curvature 
of the earth. The bottom line is whatever we pass here, it will not be 
seeable from the Jersey shore. It will not have that detrimental effect 
on the shore nor on one of our biggest industries, which is tourism in 
the State of New Jersey.
  So I am proud to be one of the few Members of this House from the New 
Jersey delegation to say that we must do everything possible to bring 
down the cost of energy for our small businesses, our industry, and our 
homeowners, for the price of gas in the summer and home heating fuel in 
the winter, and we must do that by conservation, alternative fuels, and 
more production of American energy here at home as well.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend from New Jersey, and he is the 
only member of the New Jersey delegation who has signed a petition that 
says ``I want to lower gas prices for Americans.''
  It is now my honor to let my colleague from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey, 
have some time.
  Mr. GINGREY. I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to follow-on to what my colleague from New Jersey 
just said. The gentleman from New Jersey was just talking about the 
need in the northeast and how important it is to homeowners, 
particularly during the winter season, the cold season, in regard to 
fuel oil. So many homes, as he pointed out, in that part of the country 
are disproportionately heated by natural gas and fuel oil.
  He talked about the fact that these coastal States along the eastern 
seaboard, not just New Jersey, but Massachusetts as well, have been in 
opposition to opening up the Outer Continental Shelf because of all of 
these environmental concerns and the fact that you are going to spoil 
the view. As our colleague so rightly pointed out, you can't see oil 
rigs 20, 50 and indeed even 150 miles offshore, as my colleagues from 
Georgia and Texas pointed out earlier in regard to the oil rigs in the 
Gulf of Mexico.
  But here is the thing that I want to point out to my colleagues, the 
folly of what the Democratic majority is presenting to this House 
tomorrow. Tomorrow, under a rule, a regular bill, they are going to 
bring up this issue of the Taunton River in Fall River, Massachusetts.
  They want to designate this river, and I hope my colleagues can see 
this poster and see how industrialized and busy and developed the 
shoreline of I think at least 8 miles of this 20-mile river already is, 
and they want to make this designation of a Wild and Scenic River.
  Now they should have done that 50 years ago, maybe 100 years ago when 
this river may have been wild and scenic. You can look at it today, and 
it is anything but scenic. It may be wild, but it is certainly not 
scenic.
  But guess what, it allows them with this designation to deny the 
siting of a liquefied natural gas plant. And so that means that these 
tankers with liquefied natural gas that the northeast desperately needs 
to heat those homes in the winter time, to bring relief to those 
homeowners who are really struggling. What will they do? They will pass 
this bill. That means there can be no liquefied natural gas terminals 
along that entire river, and then I guess the Democratic majority will 
come back and put more money into the LIHEAP program so people can 
afford to pay their bills. It is absolutely ridiculous.
  I have another poster that I want to show because I think what we are 
talking about here tonight, when you cut right to the chase, is that 
the Democratic majority are creating all of these paper tigers. And 
this business about use it or lose it, I'm not going to comment on that 
because, thank goodness we have Representative Westmoreland and the 
gentleman from Texas, Mike Conaway, who has been in the oil business, 
and to have Members with that expertise explain it to us and the folly 
of that use it or lose it. If they lose it, who in the world is going 
to come back and be able to afford to drill these expensive oil rigs, 
especially offshore. I appreciate him pointing that out.
  Look at this poster, Mr. Speaker. Just a little cartoon. I think it 
is cute, but it is well to the point.
  Here's the Democratic leadership asking a question of the 
administration. ``We demand you energy companies do something about 
these high energy prices.'' It is the voice coming from the United 
States Capitol.
  The response from the energy companies: ``Clean coal?''
  And the response back from the Capitol: ``Well, that's out of the 
question.''
  The energy companies say well, ``We can drill in ANWR,'' that 2,000 
acres out of 19 million up in the frozen tundra of the north slope of 
Alaska.
  The response from our Congressional House majority and Speaker 
Pelosi: ``Forget it.''
  Well, okay, ``How about nuclear power?''
  The response: ``You're joking, right?''
  And then finally: ``How about offshore?'' How about this Outer 
Continental Shelf drilling for oil and natural gas? Millions of cubic 
feet, billions of barrels of petroleum.
  The response: ``Are you crazy?''
  So finally you throw up your hands and say, ``Huh?''
  And they say, the response: ``Well, don't just sit there, do 
something.''

                              {time}  2145

  Don't just sit there, do something. Well, I am going to tell you, the 
Republican minority wants to do something. The Republican minority 
wants to do a lot of things. The Republican minority hopefully soon to 
be the majority, when we tell the American people and show the American 
people that we

[[Page 15109]]

want to do something in a comprehensive way, and we want to get it done 
before we leave here for any kind of August recess. We are making that 
pledge, and that's why I am proud to be here tonight with my 
colleagues. I know that others want to speak, and time is short.
  But I hope that people will listen. I hope that our colleagues are 
listening. I know that there are Democrats who want to vote and support 
a comprehensive approach to this. There is some give and take. We can 
do this in a bipartisan way. But this business of use or take a little 
oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which would--all of that oil, 
that 750 million barrels that we have in reserve, if the Middle East 
cuts us off tomorrow, that would be exhausted in 60 days. That's why we 
don't tap that, just because we want to bring down the price of oil.
  I yield back to my colleague.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want thank my colleague from Georgia. Now I want 
to recognize my other colleague from Georgia, another doctor, seems 
like we have a lot of doctors in our delegation, but my friend from 
Georgia, Dr. Price.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank my colleague from Georgia.
  Dr. Gingrey, the two posters that he showed--because I think that the 
Taunton River, wild and scenic river poster that he showed, demonstrate 
the contortion to which the Democrat majority will go to not, to not 
increase supply of fuel, of fossil fuels for the American people, the 
contortions that they will go through to try to make certain that 
people pay more at the pump and have to pay more for heating their home 
in the winter. It is truly astounding.
  We believe in a comprehensive solution. We don't believe in just one 
thing. We don't believe in just conservation, we believe strongly in 
conservation, but not just conservation. We don't believe just in 
alternative fuels, we believe in alternative fuels without a doubt, but 
we don't believe in just alternative fuel. We believe also in 
increasing supply, because, as my friend knows, we believe in the laws 
of economics.
  The law of supply and demand is a law. That's why they call it a law. 
When you increase supply, you decrease cost, and that's what the 
American people know. That's why the American people are so supportive 
of the efforts that we are trying. Seventy-six percent support 
increasing oil drilling in the United States immediately, 76 percent.
  A year ago, that wouldn't have been that number. In fact, it might 
have been 25 percent, absolutely the reverse, 73 percent favor--said 
they favor offshore drilling for oil and natural gas immediately, 73 
percent. Sixty-eight percent said they supported increasing exploration 
for oil and natural gas immediately.
  These are the American people who understand and appreciate that when 
the price goes up that one of the ways to bring down the price is to 
increase the supply, increase the supply.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Just reclaiming my time for a minute, it's a shame 
that that 73 percent of the American people that my friend from Georgia 
commented on will never get to see a vote on this House floor, never 
get to see a vote on this House floor if the process remains the same.
  We heard from Speaker Pelosi yesterday, and her intention is to keep 
the process the same, closed rules and suspension bills.
  So that 73 percent that is saying, hey, drill here, drill now, drill 
in my backyard, wherever you got to drill, we need to bring down the 
price of gas, they will never get to know how their Congressman feels 
about that, because we will never have an opportunity.
  I yield back to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Many of my constituents ask me, well, why won't 
you have an opportunity to vote? They don't understand, they think that 
back in the fourth grade and the sixth grade when they learned about 
how Congress works, and they thought that votes just happen on the 
floor of the House whenever there was a bill that was introduced. Well, 
the challenge that we have is that the majority party, the Speaker, 
determines whether or not a bill gets a vote on floor of the House, and 
the Speaker will not allow a vote on this.
  That's all we are asking. We are not asking to game the system, to 
tell us what the result is going to be. We will let every Member vote, 
all 435 Members, let them vote. That's all we are asking. Let's vote 
for the utilization of deep sea exploration for oil, on-shore 
exploration for oil, use of oil shale, clean coal technology, 
increasing refining capacity, increasing energy for Americans.
  That's what we would like to see a vote on the floor of this House, 
and I know that's what the American people want to see. I am so pleased 
to be able to join my colleague from Georgia tonight and the leadership 
that he has shown on this issue.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my friend for that.
  You are right. What the Republican message has been is all of the 
above. You know, we believe in conservation. We believe in renewable 
energy. We believe in wind and solar, but we also believe in the new 
technology that's environmentally safe that we can use to drill in 
these deep-water areas of the Outer Continental Shelf that we can use 
to get shale oil out of the ground in the western States, which this 
Congress, in May of 2007--and I don't have the chart up here with me 
tonight--but in May of 2007 is when the speculation market shot sky 
high on the price of oil because they saw that night in May when Mr. 
Udall's amendment was passed that said we could no longer drill or mine 
for the shale oil in the western States where there are 2 trillion, 2 
trillion with a T, barrels of oil.
  It is off limits, and I want to say that H.R. 6, which was passed by 
this body, under a closed rule, which means there was no amendments, no 
amendments allowed whatsoever from the minority, that they passed it. 
We called it the no-energy bill. At the time it was passed, gas was 
about $2.25 a gallon.
  I want to read one comment that was made, this is on January 18 of 
2007, H.R. 6. ``It is sad to see the Republicans come to this. Now they 
are laughably saying that this will lead to higher prices.'' That was 
Mr. DeFazio from Oregon, and this was on the Democrat energy bill.
  We said then that it will lead to higher gas prices, and we were 
right. What we are saying now is let's look at all the measures, all 
the measures. We heard my friend from Texas say, in a 2-year period 
they were getting natural gas out of the wells at the Dallas airport. 
This can happen, but in order to happen, we have to get out of the 
fetal position. We have to get out of that political correctness mode 
and do what's right.
  In order to do what's right, we need to have an open-rule bill come 
to this floor so all 435 Members of this body can have some input and 
all Americans can be represented in this body and it not just be a 
closed place. Let me say this, when the process is broken, the product 
is flawed.
  This process is broken. We ask the majority--we ask the American 
people to help us create an open process so all views can be put out. 
Then all of the above that uses all the tools in our tool chest can be 
used to lower the price of gas and energy for the American people.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________