[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4468-4469]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         AMERICAN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND SECURITY ACT OF 2008

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes today to 
speak about legislation I introduced before we went on our 2-week 
recess. This is legislation that is cosponsored by my colleague, the 
senior Senator from Alaska, Mr. Stevens.
  It made great sense when the price of oil hit $111.72 a barrel, which 
is an all-time record high, and it still makes sense today, even with 
the price of oil having declined to $101, as it is today. It is a bill 
that will call for the United States to actually take steps to produce 
more oil, to actually help increase global supplies of petroleum to 
lower prices, and to use all the Federal revenues from the oil 
production to fund many forms of alternative energy and the programs 
that help Americans deal with high energy and food prices.
  The legislation is entitled the ``American Energy Independence and 
Security Act of 2008.'' This legislation would automatically open the 
Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska 
if the world price of oil tops $125 a barrel for 5 days. In return, it 
allocates all the Federal revenues that would come from that oil to 
both alternative energy development and to provide programs to help 
improve energy efficiencies to those in need.
  The revenue includes the estimated $3.5 billion of Federal lease, 
bonus, and royalty revenues within the first 5 years, plus all the oil 
production tax revenues over the life of the field.
  This is an estimated $191 billion to $297 billion to fund wind, 
solar, biomass, geothermal, ocean, landfill gas--everything covered by 
the two Energy bills we passed in 2005 and 2007, plus programs such as 
LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, that provides 
aid to help low-income residents pay for home heating and cooling, the 
weatherization program that helps people improve their insulation to 
cut energy costs, and also to the Women, Infants, and Children's 
nutrition program that provides a safety net for nutrition costs, when 
energy prices rise so high women cannot afford to buy food for their 
babies and young infants. By the way, the estimates of those total 
revenues are not my estimates that I have worked up; they were 
developed by the Congressional Research Service.
  We know there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington about what to 
do about record-high oil prices that are strangling our economy from 
the east coast all the way west and certainly up to Alaska. Rather than 
begging Arab oil sheiks to produce more oil, America should produce our 
own oil to send a signal that we are willing to increase our own 
supplies and drive down prices.
  Alaska's Arctic Coastal Plain is likely to hold the largest reserve 
of traditional oil left on land in Northern America. If the price rises 
any higher, we should explore the area and find out if there is oil 
there. And if there is, we ought to produce it and use the revenues to 
wean ourselves from the fossil fuels and to promote energy 
conservation.
  We know so many Americans are hurting every time they fill up their 
cars at the pump. And while prices may moderate fractionally, the AAA 
early this month reported gasoline prices have risen 26.9 cents 
nationwide since February 10. In Alaska, my home State, the average 
price of gasoline is $3.36 a gallon for regular. This is trailing 
California and Hawaii by a little bit.
  Americans are having an equally hard time affording their winter 
heating bills and will have similar problems with their summer air-
conditioning bills. So it only makes sense the revenues from finding 
and producing U.S. oil go to help the people who are having trouble 
making ends meet, given the high fuel prices we are facing.
  By this legislation, only 2,000 acres of the 1.5 million acres of the 
Arctic Coastal Plain can be physically disturbed. The bill includes a 
host of environmental protections. It requires directional drilling to 
be used to minimize disturbance to the wildlife. That means wells can 
be drilled from a single oil pad that can go underground up to 8 miles 
away to find the oil pockets. That means that there will be nearly 100 
square miles of habitat for caribou and musk oxen and the birds between 
these well pads.
  The bill mandates exploration only occurs in winter, when there are 
no animals on the Coastal Plain to be disturbed. It requires the use of 
ice roads that disappear in the summer to protect the wildlife. It 
allows special areas to be designated to protect key habitat to keep 
any activity out. It contains dozens of other stipulations to guard 
against noise, flight disturbances, spills or land-use problems.
  The bill also sets up a special fund to help protect Alaska and 
Canadian Natives should they face any disruptions because of the 
limited development that would be allowed.
  The bill earmarks not just the $3.5 billion of expected initial 
Federal lease royalties and the potential $192 billion to $297 billion 
of total Federal income taxes from the first 30 years of energy 
production, to be split evenly, half would be going then to alternative 
energy projects contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the 
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that we approved in 
December. The other half would be allocated evenly to LIHEAP, 
weatherization, and to the WIC programs.
  In a hearing we held earlier this month, there was a discussion about 
LIHEAP and LIHEAP funding. We recognized that LIHEAP needs $2 billion a 
year in additional funding to be fully funded. This legislation could 
do this for 30 years if we were to pass it.
  We need a balanced program to increase alternative energy development

[[Page 4469]]

and improve energy efficiency, but we also need to fund these programs 
without increasing our Federal debt. Look at the fights we are having 
to find the offsets to pay for extending tax breaks to further 
alternative energy. The best way to fund alternatives is by raising new 
revenue. Look at the pain we are having in crafting and approving the 
ongoing budget resolution.
  We know this pain is going to continue for years if we don't do 
something, and the best way is by using the funds from the fossil fuels 
to build alternatives. By doing that, we are using domestic oil as a 
bridge, as a bridge to pay for the alternative fuels that will allow us 
to reduce our use of fossil fuels and cut our carbon emissions.
  Opening ANWR does so many things. It makes us less dependent on 
foreign oil, it cuts our balance of payments deficit, it improves our 
economy, it keeps our jobs at home instead of exporting them to foreign 
oil producers such as Venezuela and the Middle East. More importantly, 
signaling we are finally serious about helping ourselves, that we will 
produce oil from ANWR, will help to drive down the psychology and the 
speculation that is currently acting to drive up world oil prices.
  Admittedly, if we were to open ANWR tomorrow, it is not going to 
produce more oil tomorrow, but it will or it can dampen the speculation 
that is helping to fuel higher prices. It is absolutely the right thing 
to do today, and it is vital if prices rise higher, as we believe they 
will.
  The U.S. economy is at risk if prices rise, not counting the health 
of our low- and middle-income residents. Folks are drowning under the 
high cost of gasoline and the high cost of heating oil. This bill helps 
to reduce that pain. If the prices get any higher, we have to produce 
more oil as a means of driving down market forces.
  This bill contains all of the environmental safeguards that will 
allow us to open a tiny fraction of the 40 million acres of the Arctic 
Coastal Plain in Alaska without harming the wildlife or the 
environment. It won't hurt the polar bears. It won't hurt the yellow 
loon. And doing onshore development certainly protects the marine 
environment and the whale and the walrus and the polar bear that spends 
90 percent of its life offshore on the Arctic ice pack.
  This bill is cautious. It doesn't open the refuge tomorrow, but it 
simply says if oil prices rise much further we have to take action to 
show markets that we are serious about helping ourselves and producing 
more domestic supplies of oil and natural gas. It responsibly takes all 
the proceeds and puts them toward alternatives and safety net program 
for those who can't afford these prices. Using these monies for these 
existing programs will free up funds in the Federal budget to help 
reduce the debt or fund other vital services.
  I am realistic about the fate of this legislation. I doubt that the 
leadership in this body will allow this bill to come up for a vote 
right now. But everyone here, from Senators who represent farmers who 
won't be able to afford to till their fields this spring during the 
planting season due to the high prices, to those who represent cold 
States, where home heating oil is a problem, to those Senators who 
represent warm States, where air-conditioning costs will be a concern, 
to those of us who represent fishermen who are worried about how they 
will afford the fuel to go out and earn their living, we should come 
together to support this commonsense way to help reduce prices and to 
actually help provide a real long-term solution to our supply problems.
  We owe to it our constituents to do what is right, and I believe this 
is what is right for our Nation's future.

                          ____________________