[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12815-12823]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         AMERICAN ENERGY NEEDS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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. Madam Speaker, it is great to be back tonight to 
address some of the concerns that most Americans have today, and that 
is the cost of energy.
  Let me start out by saying that I have gotten numerous calls and e-
mails concerning the price that the average American is paying for gas 
today. As most Americans realize, gas is up over $4 a gallon. When the 
110th Congress started and the new majority took over, after telling 
the American people

[[Page 12816]]

that they had a commonsense plan to bring down the skyrocketing price 
of gas, and keep in mind at the time it was about $2.20 a gallon, we 
have seen the price of gas go up to $4.05 now.
  I have had many people call and ask me if I had signed the petition 
on several Internet sites, such as AmericanSolutions.com and some other 
sites that were out there where the American people could go and sign a 
petition telling us, Madam Speaker, Members of Congress, that they 
wanted us to drill now, drill here, and bring down the price of gas.
  And so as I was thinking about that, I thought, you know, we are 
hearing from our constituents about they want us to do something, to 
take action, to bring down the price of gas because that's what we do 
in this Congress, Madam Speaker, is we are here to help the American 
people, and especially with their pocketbook.
  So as I got to thinking about that, I said you know we all hear from 
our constituents, but sometimes our constituents don't know how we 
really feel because a lot of times these issues are not brought to the 
floor, or when they are brought to the floor they are so convoluted and 
so hard to understand that someone could go home and answer their 
constituency as to why they voted for a bill or why they voted against 
a bill because you could probably take either side on any piece of 
legislation that is passed in this body. I said I need to come up with 
the simplest thing that I can to make sure that the American people 
understand and there can't be any wiggle room from their Member of 
Congress where they stand on bringing down energy prices.
  And so I came up with this petition. What this petition says is 
``American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring onshore oil 
online. Bring deepwater oil online. Bring new refineries online.'' We 
have not opened a refinery in this country since the late 1970s.
  So what I did, this is the petition we have had on the floor all 
today for Members to sign. What it says is very simple; very, very, 
simple, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas 
prices for Americans.'' That's about as simple as it gets. It's not 
politics. It's not gotcha politics, it is the kind of change that I 
think the American people want, honesty and common sense. Honesty and 
common sense.
  So today we have had a total to date of 126 people out of 435 sign 
this petition. So 126 out of the 435, and I hope that it will continue. 
But I hope, Madam Speaker, that people understand that they can go to 
House.gov/Westmoreland and find out if their Congressman has signed the 
petition or not. And if not, you might want to ask them why because the 
thing is pretty clear. It just says ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil 
production to lower gas prices for Americans.''
  That's about as simple as it gets. So we are proud to have this 
petition and we are proud of the American people, Madam Speaker, for 
going to these Web sites to sign these petitions to let us know how you 
feel about paying these outlandish gas prices at the pump.
  What I want to do is make sure that the American people know how 
their Congressman feels about the pain they are suffering at the pump.
  I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that some Members of Congress 
do more work than others, and I want to congratulate you on taking the 
time and making the effort to get Members on record as to how they feel 
about drilling for oil and natural gas to get our energy prices down 
and get the price of gasoline at the pump down. You are to be 
congratulated. I watched you on television the other night, and I just 
wish you had more time to get into more of the details because what you 
say on the floor ought to be heard by people all across this country.
  I took a 5-minute special order before this one, and I didn't get a 
chance to go into some of the issues in depth that the American people 
ought to know about because they hear so much on both sides of the 
aisle. On that side of the aisle they say, oh, my gosh, the oil 
companies have so many leases, they ought to drill on those leases, 
both on American soil and also on the Outer Continental Shelf.
  The fact of the matter is there are an awful lot of leases already 
out there, given to the oil companies, but they are not going to drill 
in those areas unless they know there is oil there. And that's why 
there are seismic tests that take place. And those tests don't take 
place until they get the lease. And that lease is for 5 to 10 years. If 
they don't move on that lease within 5 to 10 years, then they have to 
give the lease up and it is re-bid, and somebody else might go for that 
lease.
  But chances are they will do everything they can to find oil in that 
5 or 10-year period because they don't want to lose a lease that has a 
lot of oil within it. So they do seismic tests to find out if there is 
oil there.
  If they drill on a lease that is next to another lease, sometimes 
they do test drills, if it looks like it is a promising lease or leases 
around that area, they are going to drill on all of them. When they 
drill for oil off the Outer Continental Shelf or on the Continental 
Shelf, it costs $2 billion, up to $2 billion to erect a platform and a 
derrick and the drilling process, to drill down and get that oil out of 
the ocean.
  An oil company is not going to do that unless they think that there 
is oil down there. Why would you spend $2 billion unless you know there 
is oil there. That's why they get the leases and do the seismic 
testing. Once they do the seismic testing, if it looks like there is 
oil there, then they drill. They have to go through a very strenuous 
program of getting more and different kinds of leases so they can 
drill. But once they find there is oil on those leases that are already 
available, they will drill there because they want to get the oil, they 
want to make the money.
  The problem we have is we are only using 3 percent of the Outer 
Continental Shelf. The other 97 percent we are not drilling on. That 
really is troubling because there may not be an awful lot of oil in 
that 3 percent where they have the permits right now. But the other 97 
percent, we know there is oil out there.
  I would like to give a couple of facts that I think my colleagues and 
the people of this country ought to know.

                              {time}  1845

  We use 21.5 million barrels of oil a day. ANWR, and I think my 
colleagues talked about this, is the size of Dulles Airport. You're not 
going to kill the environment of Alaska if you drill in the ANWR. 
Alaska's almost three times the size of Texas, and the size of the 
Dulles Airport is not much bigger than Capitol Hill here, and we could 
drill there in an environmentally safe way and get up to 1 to 2 million 
barrels of oil a day.
  ANWR has 10.4 billion barrels of oil, more than double the proven 
reserves in Texas. And in April, the U.S. Geological Survey announced 
there was estimated, now get this, 3.65 billion barrels of oil and 1.85 
trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Montana and North Dakota.
  On our coast lines there's 8.5 billion barrels of oil and 29.3 
trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And you can go on and on and on and 
on. We have the gas. We have the oil necessary to become energy 
independent. We can get it in an environmentally safe way. And as my 
colleague from Georgia has said time and time again, we need to go 
after it.
  We shouldn't be giving our money to the Saudis. They're not our best 
buddies. They're supporting these madrassas that teach Wahabiism, which 
is a radical form of Islam, all over the world. And they're using our 
money that they get from us buying the oil over there, and we can get 
this energy right here in America. And we can also, as my colleague has 
said, bring the price of gasoline down. And that's what I think 
Americans want all over this country.
  The problem is, they may be confused because this young lady that was 
just down here, a new Member, she came down and started quoting all 
these statistics like there's this many leases and that many leases and 
why aren't they drilling there because they can drill.

[[Page 12817]]

  You're not going to drill unless a seismic test shows there's oil and 
you do a test well in the ocean. You're not going to drill on land 
unless there's a study that shows that there's oil down there. We know 
that there's oil in the ANWR and so we ought to drill there.
  All I can say to my colleague and to anybody that's paying attention 
across this country is that we need to get all of the Congressmen on 
board. My colleague's working his tail off to get it done. We need to 
get everybody on board so we can drill for oil and natural gas in this 
country, get the price of energy down, get the price of gas at the pump 
down to way below where it is now. And we can do it, but what we have 
to do is get every Congressman in this body on board and in supporting 
drilling in America. We can do it.
  And the American people have done it in the past. They've written 
letters in when we tried to hold, when we tried to tax the interest on 
their savings in the banks, they sent us cards that looked like snow 
coming down in this place. And we ended up reversing ourselves and 
saying we weren't going to tax or collect taxes at the bank when they 
got interest on their savings. They didn't like that.
  So if the American people, and I say this to my colleague from 
Georgia, if the American people want us to drill in America they need 
to contact their Congressman and say get on with it. Quit messing 
around. Drill for oil here. We want to be energy independent. We've 
been talking about it for over 30 years. It's time to act.
  With that, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend from Indiana for being here with 
me and supporting this initiative that we have. And I want to just hit 
on a couple of points that Congressman Burton made.
  You can go to house.gov/westmoreland and find out who has signed a 
petition that basically just says, I will vote to increase U.S. oil 
production to lower gas for Americans. There are also some links to 
some other sites where you can get some of these energy facts that 
we're giving you and find the truth for yourself.
  One of the things that he mentioned was the size of ANWR and where 
we're drilling. And he mentioned that the drilling site is about the 
size of Reagan Airport. And it is, in comparison to the total State of 
South Carolina. Here is the comparison of ANWR to the Continental 
United States. You can see the size of Alaska compared to the United 
States. This is the wildlife refuge here, and we will show you, in a 
moment, Madam Speaker, what this wildlife, the refuge area looks like.
  Here is the drilling site up here. So you can see that this is, the 
ANWR, the wildlife is about the size of South Carolina. And where 
they're talking about drilling is about the size of Reagan Airport, in 
comparison. You can see how much land is there.
  The other thing the gentleman from Indiana mentioned was the amount 
of land; 68 million acres is what the majority party claims is out 
there, and that may be a true statement. I can tell you that 54 percent 
of the exploratory holes that have been drilled between 2002 and 2007, 
54 percent of them were dry holes.
  Now, we all want to use common sense. We don't go to the hardware 
store to buy groceries. So why would you drill somewhere that there's 
no oil? You wouldn't do it. Or no natural gas. Why would you do that? 
You would not do it.
  And so after they do all of these tests that they do that is required 
by the government for them to do, they find out on these leases that 
have been offered up by our government that there is no oil. There is 
no energy resource there, so why are we saying drill there?
  Now, also I've heard that these energy companies are stockpiling 
these leases. Well, that's not true. It's already in law that if they 
don't drill, they lose it. If they do not go with the terms of the 
lease, they lose that lease. And so if they have a problem with them 
not drilling where they said they would drill in the time that they 
said they would drill, according to the lease agreement with the 
government, that's not their problem. That's our problem, that we're 
not enforcing the laws that we have. And so, you know, there's a lot of 
myth going on here, Madam Speaker.
  But I did want to bring up one thing because I think this is really 
what gets my blood boiling when I think about our dependence on foreign 
oil. Let's look at Mr. Castro and Mr. Chavez down here. And I want to 
read something to the American people, Madam Speaker, and to you and to 
the people in this House. It says, in a recent interview on Al Jazeera, 
Chavez called for the developing nations to unite against U.S. 
political and economic policies. What can we do regarding the 
imperialistic power of the United States? We have no choice but to 
unite, he said. Venezuela's energy alliances with nations such as Cuba, 
which receives cheap oil, are an example of how we use oil in our war 
against neo-liberalism, he said.
  Another quote, right down here under the picture of him hugging 
Castro, or as he put it on another occasion, we have invaded the United 
States, but with our oil.
  The next thing over here, Madam Speaker, is a check that American 
families and businesses write out every day to Hugo Chavez for 
$170,250,000. That is a day. That money could be coming to American 
companies and to American workers and creating Americans jobs and 
bringing down the price of gas at the pump for Americans.
  Now, we're writing one of our enemies a check for $170 million a day 
when we could be using that money to create jobs in this country.
  The other thing I think is important to realize is that not only have 
we not drilled and used our own natural resources for our own citizens, 
but we've not built any refineries. Our refining capability has not 
been added to since 1978. We have not built a new refinery.
  Now, we are importing, and listen to this--this is not oil, crude oil 
that we're importing--we are importing gasoline, a product that has 
been refined in another country, we are importing about 6.9 billion 
gallons of gasoline, refined crude oil into this country every year, 
and probably the same amount in diesel.
  There is no excuse for us sending our hard-earned dollars to foreign 
countries when we could be doing it ourselves, and especially, going to 
the pump and paying over $4 a gallon when this new majority for the 
110th Congress had a commonsense plan to bring down skyrocketing price 
of gas when it was $2.20.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say to the gentleman from Georgia, 
he mentioned that we haven't built any new oil refineries since the 
late 1970s, and he's correct. But there's one other thing that he 
didn't mention. I know he knows this.
  In 1981 we had 324 oil refineries. Today we have 148, less than half. 
There's no way that we can handle the oil that we could get out of the 
ground to lower the price of gasoline unless we build new refineries. 
And we've come up with an idea to put it on some of these closed 
military bases around the country, and our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle have not seen fit to agree to that.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Last month we had a motion to recommit that 
demanded that within 90 days we recognized three bases that had been 
under the BRAC, or the base realignment, to start looking at refineries 
and it was voted down by the majority.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Yes.
  Along those lines, they say, well, it's going to take 10 years if we 
start drilling. It's going to take 10 years if we start refining it. I 
don't think that's the case. Most people think in 2 or 3 years we could 
really be pumping a lot of new oil out of the ground if we were allowed 
to drill for it, and we could refine it and get it in the gas tanks of 
the people across this country.
  But even if it did take 10 years, when do we start? We were talking 
about this back during the Carter years in the late seventies. That's 
30 years ago. And we haven't done a darn thing about it.
  If we're going to keep the cost of energy down, with the demand for 
energy growing at a very rapid rate around the world, China wants more, 
everybody

[[Page 12818]]

wants more oil to expand their economies, building new roads and 
everything else. There's a war going on right now for the oil that's 
available, the energy that's available in this world. If we're going to 
be able to keep pace, which will help us economically, and, in fact, 
maybe save us economically, we're going to have to drill in America for 
oil and gas. We're going to have to get on with the program.
  I can't talk to the American people, but if I were talking to the 
American people, like my colleague from Georgia would like to do, I'd 
tell them get on with it. Call your Congressman. Write them. Sign all 
these petitions and tell them we want to be energy independent; we want 
to drill here in America.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you.
  My friend, Mr. Peterson, who is a real expert on energy, I'm glad you 
joined us tonight.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Well, it's a delight to join you. It's 
a historic day. Natural gas hit $13.28 a thousand cubic feet. That's 
almost double what it was last year at this time. What that means is 
Americans heating their 60 million homes this fall will pay almost 
twice as much to heat them as they did last year, on top of tremendous 
price increases to travel in their vehicles.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. So if they think the price at the pump is painful, 
wait till they start trying to stay warm.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. This has all happened without a storm 
in the gulf, which always escalates prices, without any country having 
a major coup or problem, or without any terroristic attack on the 
system. I don't think anybody dreamed that we would have $135 to $140 
oil at this time of the year. We are in the middle of June. We're not 
even into the heat of the driving season yet, and here we are with $13, 
I mean, we're within a few pennies of the peak of natural gas prices 
after Katrina.
  Dow Chemical made a statement just a week or so ago that in 2002 it 
cost them $8 billion for natural gas to run their company. It now costs 
them $8 billion a quarter.
  Here's what's happened. They used to be 60 percent onshore. Those 
were great American jobs. They're now 34 percent onshore.
  In South America natural gas is a buck and a half. In Russia it's 
barely over a buck. I mean, there's cheap gas all over the world. If 
you're making petrochemicals, polymers, plastics, fertilizer, if you're 
melting steel, melting aluminum, I want to tell you, if this Congress 
does not change its view on offshore, shale oil and ANWR in the very 
near future, bricks and glass will be made in Trinidad, South America. 
They will be shipped here in a day and a half in a boat, and there will 
not be a blue collar job left in America, because natural gas is the 
mother's milk of manufacturing and processing.

                              {time}  1900

  They use it as an ingredient. Even the skin creams that our women 
love to soften, that's a derivative of natural gas. Natural gas is one 
of the most unique--chemists say we should never burn it. It's too 
valuable. But we are now using a lot of it for electric generation; 23 
to 24 percent of our generation is now natural gas. And that is as we 
cease to permit coal plants around the country, they're all going to be 
natural gas plants. If the Senate continues its foolishness with carbon 
taxes and CO2s, that's all going to push the business to a 
natural gas which only emits one-third of the CO2 of other 
fossil fuels. But we're not preparing. We need to.
  Today we had a committee meeting scheduled, and my chart here shows--
it's interesting the Democrat talking points say that 80 percent of 
available resources are available to the American companies. That's not 
true. Eighty-five percent of our offshore is not available, period. The 
whole west coast is not available. The whole east coast is not 
available. About a third of the gulf is not available. That's where the 
prime oil and gas is in this country. They have it locked up. They want 
it locked up. They like these high prices because it's forcing 
Americans to change to other fuels. That is true.
  But let me tell you, I'm not sure how long the American economy can 
handle $130 oil and $13 natural gas without collapsing. And once this 
economy collapses and the world economy goes into a recession, we're 
going to be a decade digging ourselves out of the hole. There will 
never be money to balance the budget. There will never be money for 
heat and helping people winterize their homes. This country is on the 
verge of losing its economic base.
  Cheap energy. I was born one mile from Drakes Well, the first oil 
well. It changed the world. The whole manufacturing process of the 
world began in this country because of cheap energy. We've had $10 oil 
and $2 natural gas most of our lifetime. We had a spike in the 1970s, 
we had a spike in the 1980s, and a spike in the 1990s. We went to 
renewables. We tried to do other things, but it always came back to 
cheap gas and cheap oil. Nothing could compete.
  Well, folks, there's a philosophy around here that if we don't 
produce fossil fuels, we're going to produce something else. I'm saying 
``what.'' What are we going to produce? If we double wind and solar--
and I'm for that in the next 5 years--but that doubling something in 5 
years is ambitious. We're still less than one percent of our energy 
needs.
  I mean, there is no renewable. The renewable that has been the most 
generous to us and the most growth is woody biomass. Nobody talks about 
woody biomass. Hasn't had any incentive. No tax incentives. There's a 
million Americans this year probably going to help heat their homes 
with a wood pellet stove. Burning sawdust pellets. That's biomass. Many 
companies in my district--I come from the finest hardwood forest in 
America, northern Pennsylvania. Lots of mills. Lots of factories. The 
sawdust now is a byproduct. They heat their factories with it. Some of 
the coal plants use 20 percent wood waste because it allows them to 
sneak under the air standards if the coal is just a little dirtier than 
it should be. So it has found its marketplace.
  And the cellulosic ethanol that we're betting on. We have a mandate 
of 36.5 million gallons of--or 36.5 billion gallons of ethanol annually 
by 2030. The first 15 to be corn, and we know what's happened there 
where we're now at $7.86 corn as the market closed today. It was $1.80 
just a short time ago. We're competing food with fuel. I didn't protest 
it. I had my concerns. But $8 corn is not something you can afford to 
burn.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Absolutely.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Isn't it true that we have a 54 percent tariff on 
ethanol brought into this country? Fifty-four cents a gallon on ethanol 
brought into the country, and already right now corn is at $7.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. What, $7.86.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. And with the devastation that we've had in Iowa, in 
some of the corn-producing States, it would be nice if we just give a 
temporary halt to that tariff to get this ethanol in.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That is true. But I want to make a 
point there. I'm not against ethanol. After the 15 million they want to 
go to--or billion gallons, they want to go to cellulosic.
  But we have to remember we have a mandate on cellulosic ethanol that 
still is in the laboratory. We do not yet have the design of a 
successful cellulosic ethanol plant that we know will be productive 
that will compete. So that's pushing.
  I wish we were pushing coal to liquids and coal to gas with the same 
fervor because we know Fisher Tropes and two or three other messes, we 
could make gasoline, we could make fuel oil, we could make jet fuel out 
of coal. But no. There has not been much pushing for that.
  I am encouraged that the President came out for offshore, but that's 
a big move. We've been pushing him a long time. He didn't come out 
quite as strong as I had hoped. He said he would

[[Page 12819]]

lift the Presidential moratoria if we lifted the congressional 
moratoria. I think he should have lifted his first and said, I'm 
lifting the Presidential. You lift. But he didn't. But I want to give 
him credit for going there.
  I want to give candidate McCain credit. He's come out. Offshore. That 
was not his normal position. And someone said, Well, he's a flip-
flopper. Well, folks, when you see the light, when you see the facts--
you know, just a few years ago the argument was we should use theirs. 
It was cheap. We shouldn't be using ours. Well, that's not true any 
more. At $135 a barrel and $13 a thousand for gas, it's time to use 
ours.
  We enrich Americans. I mean, for us not to create the hundreds of 
thousands, if not millions, of jobs in the production of energy in this 
country and put Americans to work producing our energy, we could be 
self-sufficient in natural gas, we could have reasonable natural gas 
prices. Natural gas could actually fuel a third of our auto fleet. All 
of our short-hauled vehicles, all of our construction vehicles, all of 
the little vehicles running around at the airport, all of those could 
be on clean green natural gas. No NOX, no SOX, 
and a third of the CO2. It could be compressed gas or it 
could be propane. Either one. They all can run--that's known 
technology. Why we're not going down that road, I don't know.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, Mr. Peterson, let me say this. We have that 
technology, and there was a push in the late 1990s, mid- to late-1990s 
to convert gasoline engines to propane. Then the EPA put such testing 
regulations on the emissions testing for these different types of makes 
and models of cars, a lot of people just got out of the business. It 
was not a commonsense thing for EPA to do. They should have gone to 
these people doing the conversions and said, What can we do to make it 
easier and faster for you to do this propane conversion and the same 
thing with natural gas?
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. It's hard for me to understand because 
natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline. And as we were talking, 
somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of our gasoline now comes from 
Europe. How does Europe have extra? Well, they've switched to diesel. 
They have diesel cars. They have extra capacity.
  A year ago in the spring we had very high gasoline prices. Not this 
spring but last spring. And remember they were higher than they were in 
the fall when oil was much higher. I think oil was $60-some a barrel 
and we had $3 gas and everybody wondered why. Well, in the spring when 
we start switching and using more gasoline, Europe was short 
themselves. They had used more gasoline. They didn't have the surplus 
they normally supplied us, so they couldn't supply our needs.
  So when you don't have enough, the market goes up. We didn't have 
enough gasoline in the world market, and so we paid higher gasoline 
prices last spring with $63 oil than we did last fall with $85 and $90 
oil. Didn't make any sense, but that is the marketplace because Europe 
could not give us. But we're dependent on Europe.
  But back to natural gas. It just amazes me because here is what 
scares me: $13 natural gas is not a world price. That's an American 
price. We have the highest natural gas prices in the world. So many 
Members of Congress can't seem to understand that that it's not a world 
commodity. It's country by country.
  And so when you have the highest prices for natural gas and your 
company, like Dow Chemical uses $8 billion a quarter. That's $32 
billion a year. You have got to produce your products where it's 
cheaper, and when it's a fraction of our cost--it's not like a half or 
a third--it's a fraction, sometimes, in some of those countries.
  So we're going to lose all of the industries. We won't melt steel in 
this country. We won't bend products. We will be cooking products in 
other countries because you use a lot of gas for heat. Anything that 
uses a lot of natural gas, if we don't get that under control--and the 
silly part of that is, we could be self-sufficient in our total 
lifetime. There is no shortage of natural gas, onshore and offshore, 
and this country tried to lock up their own plateau.
  In the last appropriations bill they locked up the shale oil in the 
west, sneaked it in the bill. Of course, the prohibition of drilling 
offshore is not legislation. It's stuck in the Interior bill. I was 
here 5 or 6 years before I knew it was there, and when I started 
talking about it, most Members of Congress didn't know it because it 
started 28 years ago. We have a vote every year. You know, today that 
vote was canceled. I'm not quite sure why.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Did the gentleman offer an amendment in the 
appropriations bill that was voted down?
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. In the first subcommittee last 
Wednesday we had six Republicans ``yes'' and nine Democrats ``no.'' 
Now, it's not totally been a partisan issue. This was the first time 
they locked up their vote.
  This new administration here, the Speaker and her team, have been 
very good at locking up votes. You have to admire them. They can get 
people to vote against their districts, vote against what they believe. 
But they've decided they're not going to open up the Outer Continental 
Shelf.
  Now, we were interested today whether they would still lock them up, 
whether they could hold them because in 2006 we passed a major offshore 
bill. We had 40-some Democrat votes. There are a lot of Democrats here 
who realize energy's important, and to produce your own is not some 
evil thing. With 67 percent dependency on oil, and half of that comes 
from unstable, unfriendly countries who gave us our tariffs, it would 
seem to me that everybody could agree let's eliminate at least half of 
our foreign dependence; let's stop feeding our enemy; let's stop 
allowing giving them the cash to buy up our Chrysler building, buy up 
our companies, buy up our industries. You know, industries in this 
country are getting purchased by foreign countries, and most of them 
are people who have our oil money.
  I don't think this is the America that Americans want. But I want to 
tell you something. I have faith in the American people. There's a 
debate going on right now. I have been on four different talk shows 
today. I have been on probably five or six radio shows today. Lots of 
print media yesterday. I did 15 different discussions. The American 
people are angry.
  Newt Gingrich came out with a poll: 73 percent of Americans want 
offshore production. Rasmussen came out with a poll Monday: 63 percent 
in their poll. It's going up daily because this is a discussion going 
on in this country, and they're mad. They're mad as hell. And they 
ought to be mad because we are locking--this Congress for 28 years has 
locked up America's resources that every other country uses.
  There is no country in the world--Norway, Sweden, are they 
environmentally friendly countries? You bet they are. New Zealand, 
Australia, are they environmentally sensitive countries? You bet. They 
all produce offshore.
  Offshore is not a threat to our beaches, it's not a threat to our 
shorelines. It's a savior. It's where our cities are, it's where our 
population is, it's where our refineries are, where our gas lines are.
  You know, in New York City in zero weather, sometimes we will pay two 
and three times the American price for natural gas in zero weather 
because they can't get enough there. The price when the world is paying 
10, they'll pay 25 or 30 for a few days at a time because if we had 
offshore production, we could feed them their--these cities wouldn't be 
paying these outrageous prices when cold weather comes.
  Last year for the first time--because we use so much for electricity 
now--last year for the first time in the history of this country, in 
two summer months when it was really hot, we made so much electricity 
with natural gas because in a real hot week, all of the peaking plants 
run all day long. They run all day long because that's the only way to 
keep the grid up. We actually drew down gas out of the reserve.
  See, at this time of the year we don't use all of our gas so we put 
it in reserve. We're putting $13 gas in the ground for next winter. Add 
storage

[[Page 12820]]

costs, add pipeline charges, and a profit for the gas-distribution 
company, you're talking about pretty expensive gas. Last year we were 
putting $6.50 and $7 gas in the ground this time of year.
  Americans do not know what is coming. The industrial users are 
already paying 70 percent more this year because it passes through 
quicker to them. But in my State, PUC, every 90 days they adjust the 
price. This fall Americans are going to get hit with another bullet. 
It's going to be expensive home heating. And we should be doing 
something about it.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. We need to be doing something about it, and that's 
what we're trying to do.
  And to my friend from Pennsylvania, and thank you for coming down 
tonight and helping Mr. Burton and myself with this because we know 
that you are an expert on it and that you have been trying to correct a 
situation. Even when the Republicans were in the majority, you were the 
lone voice crying in the wilderness about this; and I really wish we 
would have paid more attention.
  But now is the time when natural gas is $13-plus, the price at the 
pump is over $4, the price of oil in a barrel is up to about $140. And 
the gentleman mentioned some of the Norwegian countries. And you know 
Norway, you know, 30 years ago was dependent on foreign oil. And they 
said, You know what? We're going to do something about it.

                              {time}  1915

  Norway is dependent on tourism, fishing. I mean, they are very 
conscious of their natural resources. Today, they are the third largest 
exporter of crude oil in the world.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman would yield, the other 
success story we all hear about is Brazil. Doesn't everybody say Brazil 
is independent because of ethanol? Fifteen percent of their energy is 
ethanol. They went offshore. They just had a huge oil find offshore, 
but they are self-sufficient. They don't import energy anymore.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. And they're celebrating. I saw in the paper where 
they found that big oil reserve offshore, and the Brazilian people were 
celebrating over finding it, and we know it's there and can't even get 
our country to drill.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. We keep hearing from over there that it 
was all ethanol. Ethanol was just a piece. It was 15 percent. The rest 
was normal oil and gas energy. But they had a plan.
  I think we ought to have a plan for North America. Stop and think 
about Alaska and Canada. Canada is great. Canada produces oil and gas 
right off our main coast.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. We import from them.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Fifteen percent of our natural gas 
comes from them, and they are our largest supplier of oil by far.
  Right off the Washington coast they produce. They have produced since 
1913 in Lake Erie and sell us the gas. They drill gas only in Lake Erie 
every summer. They don't do it in the winter, but they do it every 
summer and sell us the gas. And we aren't even allowed to drill under 
the lakes horizontally.
  It makes no sense what we're doing in this country. Yesterday, I read 
an article that we ought to be partnering with Russia because they have 
so much resources and we need to be better friends with them. I'd 
rather help Mexico because they have great resources but aren't very 
good at producing them. They're not very efficient at producing energy. 
But they have a lot of gas and a lot of oil.
  If we had a North American game plan, where Mexico, the United 
States, and Canada, and Alaska, where we said let's produce our own 
energy, we could get there. I don't think we can be self-sufficient on 
our own, I mean that sincerely. I don't see it ever will in our 
lifetime, but we could be self-sufficient in North America, and we 
could say to OPEC: ``So long, see ya.''
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If the gentleman would yield, first of all, I 
would really appreciate if I could get the information on natural gas 
that you just gave us tonight because I was aware that it was a major 
problem, but I didn't know it was as big a problem as it is and is 
going to be.
  And I'd just like to say something about the polls that show that 
people are becoming more and more concerned about energy and natural 
gas and gasoline.
  The people are ahead of Congress. The majority, not too long ago, 
were saying environmental concerns were by far the biggest problem that 
we face. Now, seventy-some percent are saying, hey, we want to clean up 
the environment but at the same time we want to keep the economy moving 
and we want gasoline at a price we can afford and natural gas at a 
price we can afford. And so seventy-some percent now say drill in 
America. They know. They see it.
  And if our Congress doesn't do something about it, as you said, we're 
probably going to suffer the consequences. I will make a prediction. At 
that point, there will be a knee-jerk reaction and they will throw 
everything to the wind, say drill everywhere, do whatever it takes, but 
at that point, it is going to take a long time to catch up, and our 
economy could suffer tremendously.
  I'd just like to make one more comment about the Persian Gulf. The 
Persian Gulf is a tinderbox right now. We don't know what Iran's going 
to do. If Iran develops a nuclear capability, there may be a major war 
over there because Israel is not going to want to be threatened like 
they are threatened, and we could end up seeing a couple of ships sunk 
in the Persian Gulf and see a large percentage of our energy stopped 
flat, stopped. And if that happens, we're not going to have the energy 
to keep this economy moving immediately, immediately, not to mention 
the problems that you were talking about a minute ago.
  I'd like for you to explain to me, if it's okay with the gentleman 
who has the time, I'd like you to explain to me why the United States 
can't be completely energy independent. Because when I look at these 
statistics on the trillions of cubic feet of gas that's there and the 
billions of barrels of oil that's there, it seems to me that if we just 
dealt with our own resources, we could become almost energy 
independent.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Well, we're so far behind the curve 
right now, we were talking to Minerals and Mines Management today. Many 
of our rigs went to Russia to drill because there's so much more 
activity there. The big owners go where the action is, and they're 
being paid bonuses to go to North Africa to drill. We don't have as 
many rigs in the gulf. Thirty percent of our rigs are gone. Our 
infrastructure has dwindled because we've not opened up.
  Now, the issue of can we be self-dependent, we would have to open up 
everything. It would take years to get the rigs here. We'd have to do 
coal-to-liquids, coal-to-gas. I mean, it would take a long time.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I guess the point I was trying to make is I 
know it would take a long time because we are behind the curve, but if 
the United States got with the program like we should have back in the 
seventies, we could be almost energy independent right now.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Twenty percent of our grid is nuclear. 
We need 45 new plants by 2030 online to stay 20 percent of the grid, 
not grow. See, everything's shrinking. Hydro is becoming a smaller 
piece because we're not building dams. Everything's shrinking.
  Nuclear stayed even because all of our nuclear plants today are 
producing beyond their design capacity. We have enhanced their ability 
to make energy. I mean, America on nuclear needs to get on to what 
France has been doing, the reprocessing and reuse the fuel we have 
instead of storing it, where we use it, and when you get down to the 
end, you have very little fuel.
  But this country made a decision legislatively, we're not going to 
reprocess, we're not going to go down that road. So we've made a lot of 
bad decisions.
  And I say, how did this happen? Eight years ago, natural gas was $2; 
oil was

[[Page 12821]]

$10. The argument was, do we use theirs or do we use ours? Just 10 
years ago. In fact, we hit that a couple times 6 or 7 years ago. We had 
some real cheap energy just for a few months there. We got so 
complacent.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I wish you would really stress that point and 
the gentleman from Georgia would stress that point that natural gas 10 
years ago was $2.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. $1.80.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And oil was how much?
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. $10 a barrel. That's been most of our 
lifetime.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And now it's 14 times that.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Unbelievable.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. To the point the gentleman makes, if we had started 
back in the seventies or the eighties or the nineties, we'd be further 
down the road. I don't want my grandkids to say, ``Pa Pa, why didn't 
you start it in 2008?''
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I don't want to have to answer that question to my 
grandkids.
  If you will remember, this Congress in 1995 passed drilling in ANWR. 
President Clinton vetoed it. Today, we would be getting 1 million 
barrels of oil a day from ANWR.
  The American people do not want us to stay here in the fetal 
position. They want us to act. And they don't want to hear the excuses 
that the majority is giving for us not taking action. We need to act, 
and some of the things that the gentleman has mentioned are so common 
sense.
  I mean, we can drill as environmentally sensitive as anybody in this 
world. Our technology is the best. We've got the smartest and the 
brightest. We can do what France is doing with their nuclear waste. We 
can do what France is doing with their nuclear power. We can do what 
Brazil is doing with the coal-to-oil. We can do what Norway's doing 
with being environmentally sound drilling.
  This is America. This is the place where we are the leaders of the 
world in so many things, and for some reason, we want to have our hat 
in our hand, going to even our enemies, begging them for them to 
increase their oil production, use their natural resources, because we 
are not willing to do it.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. America is a can-do Nation and we need a can-
do Congress. And right now, the Congress, and both the House and the 
Senate, which is controlled by the other party, they have a we-can't-
do, we can't do this, we can't do that. As a result, we're going to be 
short of energy, and the cost is going to go through the roof, and the 
cost of gasoline per gallon is going to go up, I believe, even further.
  What the American people I think need to do is call their Congressman 
and Senators and say, hey, we want a can-do attitude, start drilling, 
let's get energy independent.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman would yield, how did 
this happen? I know how it happened. I'm going to give you eight--and 
there's more than eight--eight organizations that are running this 
Congress when it comes to energy.
  It starts out with the Sierra Club. You know what their Web page 
says? They're against oil shale development. We're not doing it. 
They're against coal liquefaction. We're not doing it. They're against 
offshore energy production. We're not doing it. They're winning.
  Greenpeace: Phase out fossil fuels. We're trying to do it and we 
don't have a replacement. That's really what's going on. We've caused 
the world shortage.
  Environmental Defense: Must eliminate power plant smokestacks, enemy 
number one.
  League of Conservation Voters: Coal-to-liquid, wrong direction, can't 
do that. We're not doing it.
  Defenders of Wilderness: Every coastal State is put in harm's way 
when oil rigs go up. That's offshore. They're opposed. And they're 
winning.
  Natural Resources Defense Council: Coal mining is evil. And tell me 
coal isn't under attack. Coal is under attack. Close to 70 coal plants 
have been turned down by the States in the last 7 months.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. American jobs. We're losing American jobs.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. And those coal plants will all be 
natural gas plants which will further exacerbate the natural gas 
prices.
  Center for Biological Diversity: Oil and gas drilling on public lands 
has devastating effects and must be stopped. They're winning.
  Friends of the Earth: Liquid coal is dirty, costly, mustn't do it. 
They're winning.
  These eight organizations are running this Congress.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. To the point that you're making, and I think that's 
what, Madam Speaker, the American people don't understand, the reason 
the majority is failing to act on our ability to drill in our own lands 
is that their base wants gas to be $10 a gallon at the pump because 
they do not want us driving cars, and they want us to be dependent on 
them.
  And so they are not doing anything. They are laying in that fetal 
position in a hunkered-down state because their base does not want this 
to come down. They don't want us to drill. They don't want us to use 
the shale-to-oil or coal-to-oil. They don't want us to use the clean 
coal technology that we have. They don't want us drilling for this 
natural gas.
  And this is one of the things that we were just talking about. The 
gentleman from Pennsylvania mentioned these different organizations. If 
you receive something in your mailbox about the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge, you may get some pictures like this.
  The reality of it is that is a real picture of the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge right there. It's a tundra. It's a frozen tundra. It's 
what it is. I don't even see a tree on it.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I wish you'd hold that chart up again that 
shows how big the ANWR is. I think the American people are under the 
impression that the ANWR is a huge place. It's the size of--you said 
Reagan airport, I said Dulles, but airports are airports.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. This is the part that is talking about being 
explored for oil.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. The very small part of the yellow at the top 
is where ANWR is.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. That is the part that we know the billions of 
gallons of oil are under. That's the part.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. They have twice the amount of oil there that 
they have in Texas, and I just cannot understand why we're not drilling 
there.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. See, this is a picture of it. It's a frozen tundra.
  It goes back to the fact that we are continually getting further and 
further behind. I think the American people, Madam Speaker, are at a 
point where they're saying we are wanting some action. And that's the 
reason we came up with the petition for Members of Congress to sign 
because we are the ones that can create the action. The American people 
can't create the action. It's our duty to create the action.
  And so we started the petition, and this is a petition for just the 
Members, the elected Members of this body.
  It says: American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring 
onshore oil online, bring deepwater oil online. And I guess we need to 
add natural gas to that, too, because that sounds like something we 
need to get on in a hurry. But also bring new refineries, bring new 
capabilities of refining this oil where we don't have to import 6.9 
billion gallons of gas into this country a year.
  And so what we did, we came up with a petition that's simple. This is 
not hard for anybody to understand, and you can't dance around it. It 
basically says: I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower 
gas prices for Americans. And we've got every Member, even the 
Delegates, a place to sign

[[Page 12822]]

here. So far, out of the 435 Members, plus the Delegates, I don't know 
if that's seven delegates or whatever it is, we have 126 signatures. 
And so it's going good, and you can go to house.gov/westmoreland to 
find out if your Member of Congress has signed it or not.
  We're trying to make this as simple as we can, to make us a 
responsive body, a body of action, rather than just laying here saying 
``we can't'' to ``we can.''

                              {time}  1930

  And I think that the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman 
from Indiana have made terrific points here tonight, and I want to 
thank you all for coming.
  We've got about 8 minutes, so I'll give you a couple minutes a piece 
to close, and then we'll wrap it up.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, let me take just 1 minute and say that 
this is a critical issue. The American people know it's a critical 
issue, but I don't think they know how critical it is or how critical 
it's going to be, the natural gas, the gasoline, the lack of energy, 
the lack of electricity, possibly, if we don't get this.
  And so, you know, it is a critical time for us. And the American 
people really need to contact their Congressman and their Senators and 
let them know that they want to move towards energy independence by 
drilling here in the United States. We have the ability to move toward 
energy independence. We have the ability to lower the price of 
gasoline. We have the ability to lower the price of energy that's going 
to be needed to heat our houses and our businesses this winter, but 
we're not doing it. And if we don't get with it, as both my colleagues 
have just said, we're going to reap the whirlwind. The economy is going 
to really suffer. It's not going to just be individuals, it's going to 
be the entire country.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Peterson.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Well, it's interesting, we have the 
talking points of the Democrats that they have 68 million acres under 
lease; there are--some are saying 5,500 leases, some are saying 10,000 
leases: That's enough, they're not producing. I had one of them 
challenge me in a debate today that he wanted me to join on a bill with 
him to force the oil companies to drill where they are. Folks, if it's 
not productive, if they've drilled 10 dry holes, they're not going to 
drill anymore. And in some of those deep water leases, it's 7 or 8 
years before you get to productivity.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just add one thing. Each one of those 
drilling sites, if they drill and they find oil, it costs up to $2 
billion to drill there. And if they're not going to make any money, 
they're sure not going to do that.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. They're drilling platforms, and it 
takes years to get there. So some of these are in process. A lot of 
them are old, tired leases where we're now drilling between wells. And 
the return, we're drilling three times as many wells as we used to and 
we're getting much less oil and gas because we're in old, tired fields.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Twelve percent lower production and an increase in 
drilling.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right. We need to get out into 
the fertile fields where we'll drill less holes in the ground, but 
we'll get massive prime production where you get into a fertile field 
that's got great gas pressure and great oil pressure and we'll get huge 
volumes.
  We've been deprived. In fact, on the Outer Continental Shelf, we're 
showing here, we've not even allowed seismographic in the last 35 
years. We don't even have a modern measurement out there. We had old 
seismographic, what we're measured by; but new seismographic is like 
taking a black and white TV with a new modern flat screen TV. There's 
not much comparison, is there? No. Well, we've prevented that.
  I mean, I guess what's scary is that while we're talking about this 
issue, you know what's going on in the Senate? They're talking about 
climate change. They just voted down, thank God. And Mr. Markey's 
committee here has a new climate change bill. If we go down the carbon 
tax road, we're going to add another 20 or 30 percent to energy prices. 
Nobody disputes that. That's insanity. I mean, available affordable 
energy for America is the number one issue facing this country, and 
anybody who isn't for that doesn't get with the American people. They 
understand this.
  Let me say this: If we don't deal with this issue in this Congress, 
the middle class in America will be destroyed. We don't have more 
years, we're years behind. The middle class in America will disappear 
because by the time they heat their homes and fuel their vehicles, 
they're not going to have money. I have a neighbor lady who makes $300 
and something a week. She pays $175 a month annual gas bill to heat her 
home. She has two kids, $100 a month to buy groceries. She said, if my 
gas bill doubles, I don't have any food money. She's going to have to 
get a second job and still try to raise two teen-age kids with a second 
job to pay. Folks, that's not what America is about. Last year, we had 
seniors in my district keep their houses at 58 degrees because they 
couldn't afford to keep them warm. That's not the America we should be 
providing.
  If we don't deal with energy prices, the middle-class, blue-collar 
jobs are all going to disappear. The middle class is going to 
disappear. And we're going to have a country like so many other parts 
of the world where we have the rich and the poor. And the government is 
going to have to subsidize the poor because they can't afford energy.
  It's a crisis in America. In fact, I think we're 4 or 5 years beyond 
when we should have started. I don't quite know how we catch up. Every 
day we delay, every month we delay, the American people are going to 
pay a bigger price. This is not the America my father gave me in my 
inheritance. I want to return our young people with hope, with 
affordable energy.
  Eight years ago energy was cheap; it's never going to be cheap again. 
It's up to this Congress to do what's necessary and provide energy for 
America. And all those talking points that the Sierra Club have given 
the Democrats don't cut it.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you. And let me just close with saying this: 
You're probably going to hear later on tonight that there are 68 
million acres out there to drill on. Keep this in mind, Madam Speaker, 
we don't go to the hardware store to buy groceries. We're not going to 
drill on land that does not have resources under it. If you look at the 
Outer Continental Shelf and the lands that the Federal Government have 
inside this country, it is 2.5 billion acres of land. You're going to 
hear that the oil companies have these leases and they're not drilling 
them. It is law today that if a company that leases land does not honor 
that lease agreement, that lease is taken away from them.
  These arguments will not hold water. It is time to act, and the time 
is now. It is time that this Congress turns into a Congress of action 
that wants to move forward--our being less dependent on foreign oil--
and quit relying on our enemies in an unstable region to produce our 
oil, to produce our energy.
  So I want to thank the two gentlemen for joining me tonight. I hope 
you will go to house.gov/westmoreland and see the people that have 
signed up and believe in the fact that we need to increase U.S. oil 
production to lower the gas prices for all Americans.
  And Mr. Peterson, you can close.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the Democrats win this debate and we 
don't produce energy--if we use these old statements of 68 million 
acres and 80 something percent is leased, that is not factual; 2.5 
percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is leased, the good spots are 
not leased--then we are giving the future of this country away.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. And Madam Speaker, with that, I know you have 
enjoyed this, we yield back the balance of our time.

[[Page 12823]]



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