[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 5993]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        ENVIROMENTAL GROUPS ARE DRIVING UP THE PRICE OF GASOLINE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, oil prices have reached $112, $113 a barrel, 
an all-time high. Gas prices have reached an average of $3.50 a gallon 
and in some places even higher, and the only people who seem to be 
happy about this are Sierra Club and some of these other environmental 
groups. I have noticed that almost all of these environmental radicals 
or environmental extremists seem to come from very wealthy or very 
upper-income families. They are elitist types, and perhaps they're not 
concerned when their policies destroy jobs and drive up prices because 
who they're really hurting are the poor and the lower income and the 
working people in this country.
  As the previous speaker, Mr. Poe, pointed out, now some of these 
environmental groups, their policies are causing food prices to go up 
worldwide and, in many countries, leading to starvation. But once 
again, the environmentalists are hurting the poor and the lower-income 
and the working people. So perhaps they don't care.
  About a year and a half ago in one of my newsletters I wrote this: I 
said, many experts are still predicting that the price of oil, and thus 
the price of gas, is going to go way back up. Environmental groups 
think this is good because it will force people to drive less. However, 
many people already have difficulty paying their gas bills, especially 
people from small towns in rural areas where many people have to drive 
long distances to go to work.
  And I might add, Mr. Speaker, that when you drive these gas prices 
up, as some of these environmental groups want, to $4, or $5, or $6 a 
gallon so people will drive less, you'll put the final nails in the 
coffins of some of the small towns in rural areas. The environmental 
groups loudly complain about urban sprawl, but yet their policies are 
leading to more urban sprawl as they continue to drive up these gas 
prices.
  Syndicated columnist Walter Williams wrote recently, ``If I were an 
OPEC big cheese, I would easily conclude I could restrict output and 
charge higher prices were U.S. oil drilling restricted. I would see 
environmental groups as allies and make `charitable' contributions to 
help them reduce U.S. output,'' and that's something I thought for 
quite some time that these OPEC and countries and foreign energy 
producers I'm sure are contributing big money to these environmental 
groups, and they're receiving huge multi-million dollar contributions 
that they were refusing to disclose the source of.
  Leonardo Mangeri, of the Italian energy company ENI, said, there are 
proven oil reserves now, economically and technologically recoverable, 
of 1.1 trillion barrels, or 38 years of world usage. In addition, he 
says there are another 2 trillion barrels of recoverable reserves that 
will be obtainable as technology improves over the next few years.
  Also, the International Energy Administration, Mr. Speaker, estimates 
that at current prices, it will be economic to recover at least another 
2 trillion barrels of petroleum from tar sands and oil shale.
  Just a couple of months ago, I wrote in another newsletter this: Gas 
prices are far too high and probably will go even higher. They could be 
much lower, but very powerful environmental groups want them to go 
higher so people will drive less. Thus, we have put 85 percent or 611 
million acres of the outer continental shelf off limits to oil 
production. We will not allow drilling in 99.9 percent of Alaska where 
oil could be found, and have prohibited or restricted production in 
other parts of the U.S.
  We've also placed so many rules, regulations and red tape on all 
types of domestic energy production that small- and medium-sized 
businesses cannot compete or even enter these industries in the first 
place. All of these productions can be done in environmentally safe 
ways. Some of these environmental groups help the big business giants 
and foreign energy producers tremendously, but they are really hurting 
lower- and middle-income people.

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