[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3225-3227]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, clearly some very serious subjects 
are being discussed today. I applaud my colleague from Kentucky for 
bringing up the tough stuff. We cannot escape reality. Our reality is 
in the entitlements; that we will finally grapple with the 
insurmountable debt we are faced with as a nation, some very difficult 
issues in front of us with equally difficult solutions. As we stand and 
present them, try to educate one another, much less those we represent, 
this is a critical time for us to be talking about all the issues that 
need to be on the table.
  One of the issues being discussed around family dinner tables is what 
is happening in this country as it relates to the price of oil and how 
that translates more personally to American families who, every time 
they go to fill up the tank, it is costing them more and more. Every 
time we pick up a newspaper, every time we turn on the TV, we see a 
story about the rising prices of oil. They are asking: What is going 
on. They look at the situation in the Middle East and the combination 
of international events that is driving it. It is also domestic 
policies that have helped to push oil above $100 a barrel.
  All of us are concerned about what those higher prices mean for us as 
a nation. We are committed to protecting the American people and our 
businesses and ensuring we have an ability to deal with rising prices 
at the same time we are trying to emerge from this difficult recession 
period. This is a tough time for us.
  I have come to floor to outline several steps I believe we can and 
should take to improve our energy policy.
  First, I wish to touch on how we again find ourselves in this 
situation. The civil unrest we are seeing, the political instability in 
other nations is certainly not new. They are facts of life in many 
nations that provide this Nation's imports. Iran now holds OPEC's 
presidency. They are perfectly comfortable with $100-a-barrel oil. It 
is far from guaranteed that OPEC is even capable of moderating any 
prices in the way it claims it can with spare capacity.
  With Libya's supply either offline or unreliable, any other 
disruption anywhere in the world can likely spike global oil prices to 
levels that will swamp our economic recovery and result in a genuine 
hardship for America's families.

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  It is not only the situation internationally that has brought us to 
this point. The costs and consequences associated with our dependence 
on foreign oil are largely our own fault. We have brought this upon 
ourselves. Over the years our lands have been locked up. Many of our 
most promising opportunities have been put out of reach. In this 
country we sit on tremendous oil reserves in the offshore, whether it 
is up in Alaska, in the Chukchi or Beaufort Seas, or whether it is in 
the Gulf of Mexico. We have onshore opportunities in my home State that 
are considerable. We have them in the Rocky Mountain West. We have 
massive shale formations that are not even accessible for research and 
development. We can't even begin to look.
  Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, wrote last year:

       We haven't run out of safer and more easily accessible 
     sources of oil. We've been run off them. . . .

  I couldn't agree more. Today our energy policy has gone beyond 
frustrating. It is irresponsible. The American people expect their 
government to help keep energy affordable and to see to it that we can 
benefit from our natural resource development in a responsible way. 
That is what they are asking for. They expect us to take an honest look 
at where increased domestic production is possible, how it can protect 
against the higher prices we are seeing now, how it can protect against 
potential supply disruption, and what domestic production will do to 
increase our security and restore our trade balance.
  That is what we are talking about today: generating government 
revenues, creating jobs. Right now when we import oil, we are exporting 
those benefits. It is our loss, and it is their gain.
  We ignore the positive benefits of domestic production at our own 
peril. About a month ago we had a hearing in the Energy Committee where 
there was a statement presented by the Bipartisan Policy Center. It is 
a pretty sobering reminder to us all. The statement was:

       A one-dollar, one-day increase in a barrel of oil takes $12 
     million out of the U.S. economy. If tensions in the Mideast 
     cause oil prices to rise by $5 for even just three months, 
     over $5 billion will leave the U.S. economy. Obviously, this 
     is not a strategy for creating new jobs.

  That was about a month ago. Think about what has happened in the 
course of a month and where we have seen the price go. About a month 
ago, it was sitting at about $82 a barrel. We are now over $100 a 
barrel. We are looking at a rise of 20 bucks in the past month. What 
that means to us in terms of dollars that have been sent outside of our 
economy is about $15 billion.
  Last year, putting it in context of what went on at that time, we 
spent an estimated $337 billion on oil imports, a huge amount of money. 
As we are talking about how we deal with budget matters and decide 
which programs and services to continue, to terminate, this has an 
incredible impact on the discussion.
  Today I am renewing my call for a realistic and aggressive approach 
to our energy challenges. For the sake of our national security, for 
the sake of our economy, and for the sake of the world's environment, 
America should produce as much oil as it uses as possible. It is this 
balance, in concert with the resulting revenues we will see, the 
benefits to manufacturing and transportation industries, that will 
allow us to take control of our energy future.
  I have five concepts that will support greater domestic oil 
production. I will speak very briefly because we will have time to 
develop this.
  First, look north, north to Alaska. We used to have that on our 
license plates. We have an incredible supply of oil waiting to be 
tapped for the good of the Nation. The National Petroleum Reserve-
Alaska is sitting there waiting. Two thousand acres of the 
nonwilderness portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the 
Chukchi and Beaufort Seas hold at least 40 billion barrels of 
recoverable oil. That is enough to replace crude imports from the 
Persian Gulf for over 65 years. We can do this in one State. We have 
those opportunities in Alaska. All three areas right now, as we speak, 
are effectively off-limits to new development because of decisions made 
by this administration or prior administrations. We have an opportunity 
if we just look north.
  Second, end the ``permitorium'' and bring back production in the Gulf 
of Mexico. This administration has slowed permits for new deepwater 
development to practically a crawl. The Secretary of the Interior 
announced one new permit a couple days ago. That is a start, but we are 
just barely crawling. This could cost the United States an estimated 
200,000 barrels of new supply if left in place for a year, far more if 
left in place longer, and tens of thousands of jobs in the meantime. 
Courts have also ruled repeatedly that the administration's 
``permitorium'' is unlawful. A district court judge ruled last year 
that it was ``arbitrary and capricious.'' More recently the Interior 
Department was actually held in contempt for its ``dismissive conduct'' 
and ``determined disregard''--the words of the court--of previous 
orders to end this de facto moratorium.
  The third item we can do is cut redtape. Let's make this work. In 
January the President ordered his executive agencies to review their 
regulations to ensure that they are cost-effective, that they are not 
unduly damaging economic growth and job creation. A great task. The 
Interior Department, though, is sitting in a situation where they have 
an awful lot of work to do.
  In late 2008, the Interior Department stated that ``the number of 
required plan and permit approvals is on the order of about 25 to 30'' 
for a typical oil lease. Yet over the past 2 years, instead of reducing 
that, this administration has sought to add even more layers to these 
already significant requirements which are a major reason leaseholders 
need years to begin production. We just can't get to it.
  Fourth, we need to look at how we as a nation consider this all-of-
the-above energy policy. The alternatives to conventional oil, to 
natural gas, to coal should not be limited to the favored sources: 
wind, solar, geothermal. We have so much we can be doing. We recognize 
that. I have stood before this body on many occasions talking about the 
different ways we can build our energy portfolio, how we can work to 
move the transportation fleet to that next generation, whether it is 
electric vehicles or fleets powered by natural gas.
  The final item in terms of what we can do to help address our 
Nation's energy policy is to shelve bad ideas. There is an awful lot of 
bad ideas holding us up. This is the stop-the-bleeding element of the 
proposal. With oil prices on the rise, the administration and many in 
Congress seem to have forgotten that the oil industry actually provides 
Americans with energy and jobs. Yet sometimes they are viewed as an 
untapped source of government revenues.
  Proposals to take more from oil companies have included a range of 
tax increases, the use-it-or-lose-it proposal and similar fees, and 
substantially shorter lease terms. All of these antiproduction efforts 
deprive companies of stable operating environments and reduce their 
willingness to invest in America. We need to look at what we are doing. 
If they are bad ideas, let's set the bad ideas aside. Let's adopt a 
constructive approach instead of seeking to punish. Let's figure out a 
better way forward so we can tap into more of America's vast resources 
and then make good use of the resulting revenues.
  We clearly do have options. I look forward to discussing them more in 
detail, how we can develop these goals of a national energy policy. For 
today, I emphasize that responsible domestic production will reduce our 
energy prices, create jobs, improve security, raise revenue to pay down 
debt, and allow America to invest in technologies for the future. We 
cannot afford to wait on any of these benefits.
  I urge Members, as we talk about ways to reduce our budget, ways to 
create more jobs for the country, we need to look critically at what is 
happening with our energy policy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

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