[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12808-12809]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ENERGY IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that happens 
when you come to the well and you debate somebody, a lot of facts get 
distorted and they're really not very accurate. So tonight I would like 
to quote some accurate figures for my colleagues in their offices. And 
if I were talking to the people of America--I know I can't, but if I 
were talking to the people of America, I would ask them to listen to 
these figures as well.
  We import 4.3 million barrels of oil a day, that's for gasoline, we 
import that much per day. We actually use 21.5 million barrels, but we 
have to import 4.3 million barrels of oil because we only produce about 
17.2 million barrels of oil. So we're short 4.3 million barrels of oil 
a day.
  We have an emergency stockpile, but that would only last a short 
period of time. In April of 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey announced 
that an estimated 3.65 billion barrels of oil and 1.85 trillion cubic 
feet of untapped natural gas exists in Montana and North Dakota. If we 
could go after those reserves, we could start reducing the price of gas 
at the pump and energy for people all across this country.
  In the ANWR, it holds the single largest deposit of oil in the entire 
United States. It's 10.4 billion barrels of oil, and it's more than 
double the proven reserves in the entire State of Texas. And according 
to the Department of Interior, there is an estimated 8.5 billion 
barrels of known oil reserves and 29.3 trillion cubic feet of known 
natural gas reserves along our coastlines, with 82 percent of the oil 
and 95 percent of the gas located in the Gulf of Mexico.
  Now, a lot of my colleagues have said, well, my gosh, the oil 
companies can go ahead and drill off the coast on the Continental 
Shelf. Well, let me just talk about that for a minute. Only 3 percent 
of the Continental Shelf has been given to the oil companies in the way 
of permits, and those permits run 5 to 10 years. Now, during that 
period of time they have to decide, with seismic tests, whether or not 
there's oil down there. If they think there's some oil down there, they 
drill a test well. And if they drill the test well and it doesn't show 
enough oil to make a profit, then they don't go ahead with it.
  So most of these things that they have there right now are not being 
explored because there is not enough oil to make a profit. Those 
permits are not allowing them to make a profit, so they're not building 
those derricks. Those oil derricks cost as much as $2 billion. Now, if 
you're going to invest $2 billion in an oil derrick, you want to make 
darn sure that there's oil down there. And only 3 percent of our 
Continental Shelf is being used, 97 percent is not being used. And we 
could explore for oil all along that coastline, but we

[[Page 12809]]

aren't able to because of the rigorous position that this Congress has 
put the oil companies in. And I'm not saying that the oil companies are 
totally free of any blame. You know, they have made an awful lot of 
profit. And my colleagues want to tax them on the windfall profits that 
they have been getting. If that's what they want to do, that's fine, 
but that's not going to give us one more drop of oil. The only way we 
can get one more drop of oil is to drill for it.
  The Department of the Interior estimates that there are untapped 
resources of about 86 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico and 420 
trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico.
  As I said, on the Outer Continental Shelf they have 1.76 billion 
acres of untapped resources and not leased on the Continental Shelf. 
And since the 1980s, the United States has prohibited oil and gas 
drilling on most of the Outer Continental Shelf, except for a limited 
area in the western Gulf of Mexico.
  We could be energy independent if we just looked at our own 
resources. Approximately 121 companies own the rights of the 
Continental Shelf, but they lease only 3 percent of the Continental 
Shelf. And about 15 percent of the U.S. natural gas production and 27 
percent of our oil production comes from that area.
  They invest billions of dollars to acquire and maintain their leases, 
and unless there is oil down there that they find from seismic tests or 
a test well, they're certainly not going to build a $2 billion oil 
derrick unless they can make a profit.
  I would just like to say to my colleagues, the problem is that we're 
buying oil from the rest of the world; we're importing oil from the 
rest of the world. We're dependent on them. And the appetite for energy 
is growing very, very rapidly: China wants more oil; Taiwan wants more 
oil; countries all across the world that are expanding want more oil. 
So we're in competition with them for oil. We could be energy 
independent and not have to lean on countries like Saudi Arabia or 
Venezuela, but we aren't doing it, we continue to import.
  One of my colleagues tonight said, you know, we want to clean up the 
environment. Well, if we import gas and oil, you think that's not going 
into the atmosphere? Why should we import Saudi oil when we can get our 
own? If we want to clean up the environment, we can do that the same 
way.
  Whether or not we import the oil or use our own oil, it makes no 
sense not to drill. We could bring down the price of gasoline and 
energy in this country very rapidly if we announced tomorrow that we 
were going to start drilling in the United States of America.
  Let me talk about one other thing that is very important. In 1981, we 
had 324 oil refineries in this country; today we have 148. We haven't 
built a new refinery in 30 years. And that's one of the problems, 
you've got to get the oil to market. You've got to produce gasoline and 
other energy products from the oil, and you have to have refineries to 
do that. And we haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years. And we 
had the refineries that we did have cut by more than 50 percent.
  This country ought to move toward clean energy, but in the process we 
should make sure that we use our reserves to create gasoline here in 
America and not have to import all that oil. We ought to be drilling. 
We could be energy independent if we really wanted to.

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