[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10315-10319]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY PRICES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, let the record show that
on Wednesday, May 21, oil hit $137 a barrel and closed at about $134.
Natural gas has pushed by $11.50 per thousand and is approaching $12.
Yes, this chart I have shows the growth in energy costs. Price of oil
continues to skyrocket. I guess the part that's surprising is, as a 12-
year Member of this body, that it's not a crisis here. This Congress is
not treating energy prices as if it was a crisis.
I was looking at my notes before I came down from an October time
when I came down to the floor, and we talked then, as we were kind of
climbing through the eighties, and that day we had hit $94 a barrel.
And we all shuddered that we might be approaching $100, and here we are
a few months later, not only past $100, but at $134 and actually hit
$137 today.
Do we have a bipartisan task force by the House and Senate that would
look at how we deal with this energy crisis and how we deal with these
high prices that American consumers are struggling with? The answer is
no. Do we have a special House committee looking for solutions? The
answer is no.
Yesterday, the House had a bill. It was defined and named to cut
costs, cut gas costs. Will it? Well, the first part of the bill dealt
with trying to figure out a legal way that we can sue the OPEC
countries for not producing enough oil. Now, Saudi Arabia alone
produces 12 million barrels a day, and many of the other countries, 10,
9, 7, but we think they should produce more.
It's interesting, on this floor a few months ago, when we had some
energy bills pass that didn't have any energy in them, we claimed that
it was a new era. The era of oil was over. We were moving into the
fields, the new fields, and energy dependence on foreign countries
would disappear.
I've been in Congress 12 years. We've increased dependency almost 2
percent a year every year I've been here, and we're on a pattern that
by 2015, if we don't change, we'll be 85 percent dependent on foreign,
mostly dictatorship, unstable countries, not always friendly to us.
I think that's a serious crisis for the American people. It's a
serious crisis for American businesses to compete. It's a serious
crisis to our defense of this country.
I wish our governmental leaders, White House and legislative
included, were half as interested in energy prices as our military was.
Because when I talk to the leaders of the Air Force specifically, who
use a huge amount of our energy flying our planes, they want 60 percent
of their energy to be non-foreign, and they're working judiciously to
do other fuels from coal and fuels from gas and trying to have other
non-oil fuels because in oil we're just becoming majorly foreign
dependent.
Today, the Senate determined that when they return after the May
recess, they're going to deal in the week or two period with climate
change. They're going to deal with carbon taxes because they think that
a one-and-a-half percentage degree in temperature increase in this
country, in this world, is a greater threat to our future than energy
prices that most Americans can't afford, and most businesses can't
compete in the global economy if they continue.
But the Senate is not talking about energy. They're talking about a
climate bill and a carbon tax which will increase energy prices 25 to
30 percent. Much of America today hit $4 in gasoline. That means if the
Senate acts as they say they're going to, a carbon tax could easily,
everybody agrees, could increase energy prices 20 to 30 percent. So 25
percent of $4 is another dollar so we would go to $5 gasoline. And only
God knows what oil prices will be by the time they accomplish that.
Does America need to be in an energy crisis? I think not. We made a
decision several decades ago, in fact 27 years ago, a very foolish
decision. We locked up offshore production of energy on both coasts and
in much of the gulf. Every country in the world, Ireland, Norway,
Sweden, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, all green countries, all
environmentally sensitive countries, they all produce offshore. They
have different set-asides, some 20
[[Page 10316]]
miles, some 30 miles, some 15 miles. Eleven miles is the sight line.
Once it's past 11 miles, nobody can see it. All those countries, every
country produces.
Canada, thank God for Canada. We import more energy from Canada than
anybody else, our friend to the north. They produce both oil and gas
right off the coast of Maine, just above it, and right above the coast
of Washington. And since 1913, they've been producing natural gas only
in the Great Lakes, and today they're selling it to us. We get 15
percent of our natural gas from Canada, 2 percent from LNG, and the
rest we produce ourselves. We could be totally self-sufficient in
natural gas.
Now, a young lady said to me recently, she said, Mr. Peterson, I make
$320 a week. I lost my other job so I have to travel a fair distance
now to work. I'm now paying $130 a week to drive to work. She says, I
don't know how I can continue to raise my two children and make ends
meet.
What she didn't know was that the small house she has, her current
natural gas bill, on a monthly basis, $175--she pays balanced billing--
what she doesn't know is that the $12 gas or $11.70 today we're putting
in the ground now compares to $6.50 gas we were putting in the ground--
and you may say, what do you mean putting in the ground? Well, we have
great storage caverns, much of them in my district in Pennsylvania,
where we store natural gas in old salt caverns, and then we use it in
the wintertime because we can't produce, we can't pump enough out of
the ground in the heating season when we use tremendous amounts of
natural gas. So we're putting it in the ground in storage today.
Now, one of the major storage companies told me last week at a
luncheon, they're very concerned; they have not had their storage this
low in a long time, and they're very concerned because they've been
unable to buy as much LNG as they want.
{time} 2200
And they're very concerned. I said, why are you putting $11.50 gas in
the ground? Why don't you wait until the price comes down? They said,
we're afraid the price isn't going to come down. Because usually in the
spring of the season, when we're not heating our homes and we're not
running a lot of air conditioning, we use the least natural gas of any
other time of the year. So that's when we have ample supply, the price
comes down, it gets reasonable, and that's when we put it in storage
for next winter.
Later year at this time, it was $6.50, later in the summer it was $5
something. And last year we had a moderate increase in natural gas
prices, about 7, 8, 9, 10 percent, depending on what part of the
country you were in. That was moderate. Well, those who heated with
home heating oil and propane had huge increases last year. And the sad
story for Americans is those who heat with propane and home heating
fuel are going to have enormous increases this year on top of last
year's increases. And those who heat with natural gas are going to have
a major increase. We don't know how much yet.
For the first time in 2 years we have not had a storm in the Gulf,
the last two summers. That's historic. We always have storms in the
Gulf, hurricanes, that disrupt oil and gas supply. And when it disrupts
that supply, we never replace it, so it just takes it out of the
system. And whenever we have a major storm in the Gulf--when Katrina
hit, gas went from, like, $4 or $5 to $14. And that year we had a huge
increase in natural gas prices because that's what we had to pay.
Now, the LNG issue I mentioned, you know, I had a debate with the
White House some time ago, and they felt that LNG was our answer to
natural gas. I argued then, 3 years ago, and I argue now, it's not the
answer. It's a little piece of the solution. Now, what is LNG? That's
liquefied natural gas, we buy it from foreign countries a long ways
from here. Gas is cheaper in those countries. They liquefy it. They
fill these huge tankers and they come here, and then we build
controversial unloading stations. They're really not unsafe, but people
perceive them to be. And we were in a flurry to build more receiving
stations. We found out we really haven't needed them, we're hardly
using half of the capacity we have today. Why? Because we can't buy it.
When a tanker with LNG gets loaded in one of these foreign countries,
countries like Japan, who don't have any gas of their own, little
countries like Spain, and on and on the list goes, they outbid us.
Sometimes a tanker load of gas will be coming to the States, and they
will get a higher price offered and they actually turn around and go to
that country. In fact, in the heating season, when we need it, we can't
buy it on a bet.
So LNG has not been the silver bullet that many thought. And the
Secretary of Energy went around the world trying to entice LNG for this
country. And I argued that LNG is helpful, but it's not a silver
bullet, it shouldn't be our solution because, folks, between major gas
areas in the Midwest and in the Pennsylvania Appalachian region, recent
find, offshore we have an abundant volume of natural gas.
And natural gas is the clean, green fuel. And if it was more
affordable, we could be using it in our auto fleets because autos can
run on natural gas with a couple thousand dollar exchange of
carbonation and storage tanks and so forth, maybe $2,000 or $3,000 a
vehicle. We could run all of our school buses, short haul, all of our
city buses, the Washington City. Many of them are on natural gas. State
College in my district has been an all natural gas district for a
number of years now. All of their bus system--it's the third largest
bus system in Pennsylvania--they're all on clean, green natural gas.
Natural gas should be our bridge fuel. But at $12 now, and if we have
a storm in the Gulf, it would be 15 or more, those prices, it's not our
solution. But it could be our solution if we would open up the OCS, if
we would open up Alaska, if we would open up much of the Midwest and
start producing our own clean natural gas.
I have found it astounding that there is resistance to producing
energy in America. What's really happened in America, and I'll just go
a little bit more on natural gas here. Here is the natural gas prices.
The blue line is what commercial pays--they pay a little less than
households because they use high volume--and the red line is where
residents are. And folks, this is today's price at the retail. In the
fall, it's going to be off of this chart. There is going to be a huge
increase, I predict, and everybody agrees. We will have to make a new
chart because this chart won't work. Natural gas prices.
Now, is that problematic? Yeah, it's problematic, because not only do
we use natural gas to heat our homes and to run our businesses, we use
it as an ingredient. Fertilizer, about 70 to 90 percent of the cost of
making it is natural gas because that's what we make it out of. The
corn we're growing for ethanol uses natural gas to make the fertilizer
to grow the corn. If we go to a hydrogen vehicle, we will use a natural
gas.
The ethanol we use in vehicles today, the biofuels, biodiesel, those
plants consume huge amounts of natural gas. One was just proposed in a
southern State, and their projected natural gas costs for the first
year was $3.5 million and they were looking for a cheaper fuel. Natural
gas is the major ingredient in petrochemicals, polymers, plastics. We
use it to bend steel, melt steel. We use it to treat all kinds of
products. We use it to cook. We use it to bake. We use it in many, many
commercial ways.
And natural gas prices are making American businesses noncompetitive.
Dow Chemical, in 2002, a petrochemical company, the biggest in the
world, American company, a good company, they used $8 billion of
natural gas in 2002. Then we had the big spike in gas prices. In 2006,
their gas bill went to $22 billion. And I don't know what it is today,
certainly much higher. They started building their plants. These are
the best blue-collar jobs left in America, petrochemical plants,
fertilizer plants, polymer and plastic plants, plants that heat, treat
steel and bend metal and shape things. They all use natural gas as
their fuel.
And they are being endangered because natural gas is not a world
price.
[[Page 10317]]
Nobody in the world pays this price but us. It's cheaper in Canada, a
little bit. They're high because of us, because they're kind of hooked
at the hip. It's cheaper in Mexico. At the wholesale side, it's $1
something in Trinidad, South America. In Russia, it's just barely over
one dollar.
Many parts of the world--all parts of the world, in those countries,
China and India, our competitors, their natural gas prices are probably
a third of ours. That puts our companies at a huge disadvantage, not
just labor disadvantage, not just because of other high costs in this
country, energy costs have driven more jobs out of America than any
other issue, not that they wanted to leave, they just can't afford to
stay.
Now, with energy prices today, I talked about the young lady and her
job, driving to work and her home, we're going to have seniors--you
know, just the other day I had a gentleman tell me he put a new furnace
in his mother's home. But when he went to visit her last winter, she
had her temperature at 58 because she felt that was all she could
afford. And he said, John, what do I do? I don't want my mother living
at 58 degrees, I want her to be warm. So he's looking at some sort of
heater in the one room where she sits in the evening so she can be
toasty warm, maybe a pellet stove or a gas stove or something that
keeps that room warm but the furnace down, not heating the whole house.
I went into a hardware store 2 weeks ago and they had their coats on.
It was chilly in there. It was a frosty morning, we had frost that
morning. And I said, it's kind of chilly in here. And he said, well,
with energy prices today, in the spring and the fall I shut my furnaces
off. We're a lumber yard, we're a hardware store, people come in here
dressed for the outside temperature, and so we just dress for the
outside temperature in our work. It saves me $800 a month in the spring
and the fall, that's 4 months, so that's $3,200 that I don't have a gas
bill--that I would pay in a gas bill, $800. Now, in the winter I pay a
lot more than that, but it's cold then and you have to have heat, pipes
will freeze, people won't come in your store if they can see their
breath.
Folks, I don't think we have any idea what we're doing to the
economic future of America, what we're doing to the quality of life of
the average hardworking poor American. Now, those who are middle class
will complain and groan and they'll pay because they have the money.
But below the middle class and the working class and the poor in this
country, when they pay their driving bill--and rural people, I
represent rural, we don't have mass transit; we drive to school, we
drive to work, we drive to church, we drive to the doctor, we drive to
the mall, we drive everywhere. And in rural areas, when the economy
shifts and you lose your job at a plant, you don't move away, you go 50
miles down the road and you get a job and then you drive to work every
day. I had a lady tell me today, my gas bill per week now is $180 a
week. And now when she gets her heating bill next winter, will she have
enough money to raise her family, heat her home, and drive her car?
Many won't.
The current energy prices have the potential of stalling this
economy. I had a person who has been dealing with energy all his life.
He is a government official. He told me about 9 months ago that he
thought $75 oil would put us in a recession and stall the economy of
this country, and in time, the world. Now he said we bounced through
that. We were just by that, and we were in the $80s then. He said, my
people and I may have been wrong, but there is a price that our economy
cannot absorb these energy prices. And folks, $134 oil? I mean, it's
almost like we're talking fantasy.
How did we get here? How did we get to this situation? Well, here's
some of the things--back to natural gas for a minute. In all of these
products, natural gas is used in making them--steam, power, and all of
these blocks. Huge amounts of natural gas. Even the skin creams that
you ladies like to keep your skin soft, that's a direct ingredient of
natural gas. The feedstock for making skin softeners is natural gas.
Well, here's where we are in energy use. Let's try to figure out how
we got here. You can see the big part of our energy is oil. And now,
66.5 percent of our oil comes from foreign countries. Natural gas is
the next largest, and coal--well, I guess coal would be the next, but
let's go to natural gas. We're 83 percent self-sufficient. We get 2
percent in fraction from LNG and about 15 percent from Canada, our good
friend in the north who drills offshore where we won't.
Now, coal basically is used in this country to make electricity, and
about 50 percent of our electricity in this country is made from coal.
Now, nuclear has been 20 percent of the energy in our electric system,
not our energy overall, but our electric system. And of course the
beige line here is hydro, and that's getting smaller because we're
taking dams out. The environmentalists don't want dams. All the
environmental community, they don't want dams in our rivers, and a lot
of them have been tore out. And we're not adding hydro anywhere, so
it's a declining factor.
Now, as you look at renewables, this is scary. Renewables are wind
and solar and geothermal and woody biomass. And the only one of those
that actually had real measurable growth in volume is woody biomass. A
little growth in wind and a little growth in solar, but the big one
that has really grown measurably is woody biomass. How did that happen?
Well, we have between 800,000 and 1 million Americans heating their
homes with pellet stoves. That's a fuel made out of waste sawdust, a
good use of biomass. We use it to heat factories. Most of the dry
kilns, where you dry your lumber, that used to be heated with fuel oil
and natural gas are now heated with wood waste. Many factories that are
in the wood business are all heated with wood waste boilers.
I have a company in my district now that builds very efficient wood
waste boilers that actually burn wood waste cleaner than natural gas;
it's an amazing ceramic-lined boiler. We recently placed those in a
hospital in my district, that boiler, and that hospital is going to
save 70 percent on their energy bill. And they're going to be using
waste sawdust and wood chips. They can even burn green wood chips, like
if a tree trimmer comes through and trims the trees and grinds it up--
and they usually find places to dump that--they can now blow that into
a tractor trailer and use it for fuel, cardboard waste, paper waste.
This hospital is going to burn all its cardboard, all its paper, all
its clean fuel, and buy sawdust and wood chips. They are going to save
70 percent on their energy bill.
Woody biomass is finding a market of its own. Now, there have been a
lot of windmills added, and they are going to be a lot more added. But
the numbers are still, you know--I keep reading articles. I read one
recently that in just a few years 100 percent of electricity could be
from wind. Folks, that's just not accurate. I read an article last week
that in a few years we'll have 20 percent of our electricity. Now, one
of the problems, you know, the grid failed in Texas recently because
they have some successful windmills. But there are two times of the day
when we need a lot of energy, that's in the morning and evening, peak
power. That's when we're running our homes and our factories
simultaneously. We're running washers and dryers and we're running hot
water and we're cooking and we're doing things, so we're using a lot of
energy in the factory and at home. Those are called peaks.
{time} 2215
Well, from 4 to 6 o'clock, if you just watch the weather, and I've
watched it, you can have a very windy day, and between 4 and 6, for
some reason, the wind calms down. There's not much breeze. So wind
farms don't produce a lot of energy sometimes on a nonwindy afternoon
from 4 to 6 when you need it. So what happens when it doesn't blow and
it doesn't turn? You have to turn on a gas generator. For every wind
and solar generator, we have to have a gas backup. Now, gas is 23
percent. Gas is now 23 percent of our electric generation. Just a
decade ago, it was less
[[Page 10318]]
than 7. We only allowed it to be peak power. We didn't allow
electricity to be made from natural gas. We thought it was too clean
and perfect to fuel and there were too many other uses for it, but
we've changed. Now we are at 23 percent. And on a hot summer day when
you have 100 degree temperatures across America and air conditioning is
just sucking up all the electricity we can produce and our grid is
struggling to stay up, every power plant that only comes on when it's
peak is running 24/7 when we have hot summer weather. Now, that's
changed things. We have never taken gas out of storage in the
summertime until last year. Last year we had 2 weeks, 2 different
weeks, when it was hot enough that we were producing enough electricity
with natural gas that we fully had a negative flow of gas out of our
storage areas for winter instead of in.
Folks, if we were to have a terrible storm in the this year, and
everybody says we're going to, and we went 2 years without it, and we
would have a very hot summer where we would use a lot of peak power and
a lot of natural gas for electric generation, we could be looking at
unbelievable natural gas prices this fall.
Now, I know the news I'm giving you is all bad news. But, folks, it's
because this Congress and three Presidents have chosen not to produce
fossil fuels.
Now, I'm for every renewable source there is. I'm for hydrogen. I
have been pushing hydrogen my whole time in Congress. We hope it
becomes a fuel of the future. I'm for wind and solar. I'm for
cellulosic ethanol because it's vital because I don't think we can get
to where they want to be with biofuels with soybeans and corn. I don't
think we can grow enough of it. I've been stunned that we haven't
opened up a lot more farmland, but we haven't. Last year we grew 20
million more acres of corn, and corn prices went from 3 something a
bushel to $6.40 and $6.50 at one point. It's just under $6 now. We
doubled and tripled grain prices. Food prices are skyrocketing because
we used 20 percent of our corn last year to make biofuels, and this
year we're projecting to use a third of our corn, and this year we are
not growing 20 million acres more; I think we are only growing 8
million acres more or we're growing 8 million acres less. Somewhere in
there that number is correct. But we're not going to grow as much corn,
and they're concerned now with the wet weather in the West that we are
not going to get all the corn we need planted.
Now, when you use grain long term and food long term for energy
source, what happens when you have a bad crop year? You're not going to
have food to eat and you're not going to have warmth. That's why
cellulosic ethanol is so important.
Now, cellulosic ethanol can be made out of switchgrass, it can be
made out of garbage, and it can be made out of wood waste. Where I come
from, we have lots of wood waste, and I think that will be of use. But
I think the one that has the most potential if in the laboratory--and
these are all ``ifs.'' But yet we have a mandate by 2030 that we have
to have 36.5 billion gallons per year of ethanol, the first 15 made
from corn and the next 20 made from cellulosic. This is a mandate, by
law. This is a process where we have not yet proven we can make it cost
effectively.
Folks, we are in a crisis in this country because we have chosen not
to drill for gas, not to drill for oil, no new fields. We have people
come up here and talk about all the unused permits, all the land that's
been leased and not drilled. Folks, if it's drillable and there's money
there to be made, it will be drilled. And they all talk about big oil,
but 80 percent of our energy is produced by small companies, people
that are in our own States. Big oil are the named marketers, but energy
is basically produced by independents. But we keep talking about these
terrible oil companies and they're the problem.
I think Exxon answered the question well. They were talking about
their profits the other day, and they said, Folks, we would reinvest in
America if offshore was open, if Alaska was open, if the Midwest was
open, but you forced us to go to foreign countries. Now we have foreign
countries nationalizing their oil patches and their oil refineries and
their oil production systems, and big oil is being gradually pushed
out, and oftentimes their investments have been captured. Sometimes
they have been paid for, sometimes not. And big oil is prepared to
produce here if we open up.
Folks, we need to open up oil and gas reserves in this country. We
need to have six or eight coal-to-liquid plants so we're not dependent
on oil forever because we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We need to
figure out how to have more nuclear plants. The 2005 bill streamlined
the process, and there are about 50 nuclear plants in the permit
process, and there are 3 or 4 about ready to be built. We need all 50
of them by 2030 to maintain 20 percent of the electric grid. Not an
increase. Hydro will continue to decrease.
This is a chart put out by EIA of the Energy Department. I disagree
with them. We have had 60 coal plants turned down, clean coal, not
dirty coal, clean coal, turned down by States because of the fear of
the carbon issue. All of those will be built in gas plants, and when
they are all built in gas plants, you will see this blue narrow and you
will see the greens widen. Natural gas is where we will be going. It's
the only place we can go. It's the clean, green fuel. But, folks, for
it to be affordable, we need to produce a whole lot more of it.
It's never polluted a beach. It's never caused pollution in this
country. It's the cleanest fuel, no NOX, no SOX,
a third of the CO2. It's almost the perfect fuel. It's
cleaner than biofuels. But for some reason, three Presidents and
Congress for 27 years have locked up not only our shorelines but much
of the middle of this country and the part of Alaska that was set aside
for energy production, 2,000 acres on a 70 million acre plot to produce
energy. With modern drilling they drill multiple wells on the same
site, and they go many directions. You don't have nearly as many sites.
Folks, America needs energy. We need energy we can afford to pay. The
working people of this country not only are not going to be able to
afford to heat their homes and drive their cars, but many of them will
lose their jobs because these energy prices, as I showed you earlier,
$14 gas, America is the only place that someone pays $14 for gas. Every
other part of the world is cheaper. Oil prices are the same everywhere.
It's a world price. But for 8 years the Dow Chemicals, the
manufacturers, the fertilizer companies have paid the highest prices in
the world for natural gas and have been asked to compete with the rest
of the world.
Energy is a crisis in America, but Congress treats it like it's not a
crisis. We do goofy things like trying to sue OPEC, and we know we
don't have standing to sue other countries. They don't come under our
court system. We're trying to wiggle our laws around so we can sue
them. That's a waste of time. We need to produce energy.
Also, I have a natural gas bill, the Outer Continental Shelf. In my
bill it's natural gas only, offshore. We use the royalties for
renewable research. We use royalties to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. We
use royalties to clean up the Great Lakes, San Francisco Bay, the
Everglades. Folks, if we would produce energy offshore, we can allocate
the royalties to fund the renewables.
Today we were arguing over and fighting over the extensions for the
tax incentives for wind and solar and geothermal and all the
renewables. We extended them for 1 year. Our investment companies are
going to spend a billion dollars on wind and solar when in a year from
now, there may not be that incentive there that makes it work.
Folks, this Congress has failed us. This Congress continues to fail
us. This Congress needs an energy policy. This White House needs an
energy policy. And the people running for President of this United
States need to prove to the Americans before they elect them that they
have an energy policy that they're going to bring to this country to
provide us with the gas and the oil and the renewables and clean
energies and it's going to be affordable for Americans to live their
lives, run their farms, run their businesses.
Folks, I've listened to hours and hours of presidential debates.
Energy
[[Page 10319]]
was seldom mentioned, and it's certainly not been a platform of the
current candidates. We need a person running for President, Americans
need to demand of those running for President, ``How are you going to
produce?''
We have those who talk about green collar jobs. I'm for green collar
jobs. But let me tell you, if we don't bring affordable energy to
America, the blue collar jobs won't be here. They'll be gone, and we
don't know how many of the green collar jobs. We need them both.
I'm for plants to build windmills. I'm for plants to build solar. And
when we learn how to store wind and solar so that we can make it during
the night when we don't need it and use it in the daytime when we need
it, then it will work. But until we do that, it's on the margins. If we
double wind and solar in 5 years, it will be less than 1 percent of our
energy. I hope we can do that, but that's still not very much energy.
But the American public have been led to believe that we are holding
renewables back, that we're not for these energy-efficient cars. There
are incentives, folks, of thousands of dollars to buy energy-efficient
cars. There are incentives to do wind and solar. Unfortunately, they're
not long term. Those who are investing are gambling because we just
renewed them a little bit at a time. We just renewed them for a year.
Folks, we need to renew them for 5 to 10 years. We need to have it out
there, and then if it isn't working, we stop doing that.
But, folks, there are those who say we need to conserve, and we do,
and we will at these prices. But let me tell you that in a later speech
sometime I'm going to show you the American people are using far less
energy in America per capita today than we did a few years ago. We've
done more than people give us credit for. We have more efficient
appliances and more efficient engines and things than we had many years
ago. We have done better than any other country in overall energy
conservation. Folks, we haven't done enough, but I want to tell you $4
gasoline or $5 gasoline and $14 gas to heat our homes are going to
force us to do a lot of things.
But America doesn't have to be in this situation. Yes, we need the
new kind of fuels, renewable fuels. But until they are ready, we can't
decide, as a Congress and a White House, that we're not going to
produce.
Let me just tell you who some of the perpetrators are. The
environmental groups of America own this Congress. Sierra Club rails
against shale oil production. Over a trillion barrels of shale oil in
the West. We can't do that.
Green Peace says we must phase out fossil fuels. Folks, how do we do
that? Ninety-six percent of our energy is fossil fuels. How do we stop
that? That's what we're doing. We're phasing them out before we have
the replacement.
The Environmental Defense Fund: ``Power plants and smokestacks are
our public health enemy number one, and we must do away with them.''
That's our jobs, our factories, folks.
{time} 2230
League of Conservation Voters; coal to liquids, wrong direction.
Well, should we do coal to liquids or should we do more foreign
dependence on the Mid East? That is our choice.
Defenders of Wilderness; every coastal State is in harm's way when an
oil rig goes up. Folks, that is not true. We haven't had an oil spill
since 1969. We have never had a gas spill. When a gas well lets gas
out, it goes in the air. Dissipates. Natural Resource Defense Council;
coal mining destroys land. Coal plant emissions cripple and kill. We
have clean coal technologies with much cleaner emissions than we have
ever had, but we are turning them down and not building them. We are
using old dirty coal plants because they can't build the new ones.
That's our environmental policy.
Center for Biological Diversity; oil and gas drilling on public land
has a devastating impact. Does it have to? It can be done right.
Friends of the Earth; liquid coal is dirty and costly. Liquid coal
doesn't have to be dirty and costly. We have ways of doing it.
North Africa, or South Africa, I guess, is leading the way with
liquid coal. That is making gasoline and diesel out of coal. And we
have lots of it. We need to be working at it and learning how to do it
cleanly so we are not dependent. Folks, we are 66 percent dependent on
foreign unstable countries. We have no control over prices. A storm in
the gulf and we have another major spurt in energy prices.
One of our sending countries, and here's who we get our energy from.
We produce 33.7 percent of our own oil, we import 66.3 percent of our
oil. Canada provides 12 percent of our oil; Mexico, 9.3; non-OPEC
nations, 8.9; Ecuador, 1.3; Saudi Arabia, 9.6 percent; Venezuela, 7.5.
Our friend, Venezuela, 7.5 percent of our oil comes from there.
Nigeria, a stable country, questionable, 7.2; Angola 3.3 percent; Iraq
3.2; Algeria, 3.1; Kuwait, 1.2; other OPEC is .06. That is our oil.
That's where we get our oil from.
Folks, we don't have to be dependent on it. America is rich in
resources. Natural gas should be our bridge. Clean vehicles on natural
gas. Natural gas should be the fuel of the future, and our industries
shouldn't have to pay the highest price in the world for natural gas so
they are forced to leave here. Americans shouldn't be forced to live in
homes that are cold in the wintertime because they can't afford to heat
them. People should be able to afford to drive to work.
Folks, it's a crisis in America. It should be a crisis in this
Congress. Today, the White House again spoke about we need to produce
more energy. Tomorrow I am going to write the President a letter. You
know, if he means that, he needs to lift the Outer Continental Shelf
moratorium, because we don't have one moratorium, we have a legislative
one by Congress for 27 years and we have had a Presidential one for 27
years, and he can lift it in a moment. That is how it was put there.
Bush I put it there for 5 years until we assessed the Outer
Continental Shelf, what was there. We have never assessed that. We have
never allowed seismographic out there. Then Clinton came in and
extended it to 2012, and also vetoed the Alaskan bill, ANWR, which
would be producing major oil for us today. He vetoed that. Bush II has
ignored it and refused to talk about the OCS.
Folks, we have three Presidents and a Congress with a 27-year history
of not producing affordable available energy in America, and we are the
only country in the world to lock up the Outer Continental Shelf, we
are the only country in the world that has locked up most of our
internal resources.
Congress and Presidents have been our problem. Congress needs to get
the message that it's time to stop being our problem, and we need to
have a President that leads us to energy, affordable available energy
for America.
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