Deficit Reduction Act of 2005--Conference Report

DEFICIT REDUCTION ACT OF 2005--CONFERENCE REPORT

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the comments of my colleague and my friend, the senior Senator from Alaska, giving us some of the historical perspective about some of the process we have seen in the Senate.

As we take up the issue of the Defense appropriations bill and as it contains within it the issue of energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is fair to say there has been a hue and cry of ``This can't be done. We can't have this included in it,'' and almost a sense of outrage that such a controversial issue would be inserted in a bill that truly our troops, our national security depends on.

We know this is not a new issue in the Senate. This is not a new issue in the Congress. The Alaska delegation has been fighting this issue for just about three decades now. Senator Stevens has indicated that for 25 years he has been working on this issue. My father, who held this office before me, spent the 22 years of his career working to advance ANWR; trying to get our colleagues here in the Senate to understand the issue and to move it through the process, to convince the Congress of the merits of opening the Coastal Plain to environmentally sensitive energy development. We have debated this issue so many times on this floor, I have some of my colleagues saying: Can't we just pass ANWR so we don't have to keep hearing this debate year after year after year? And we have been successful, twice here on the Senate side and numerous times on the House side, where the measure has moved through. We were successful in moving the ANWR provision through the Congress, both Houses, in 1995, only to have President Clinton veto it, and we were successful just several months ago in passing the ANWR measure through on the reconciliation bill. So this is not new debate. This should not come as a surprise that this is a priority, not just for the Alaska Senators, but a priority for the Congress, a priority for this country.

Senator Stevens spoke to the issue of national security and how ANWR can assist us in that.

When we talk about the ``whys,'' why we should open ANWR to limited exploration and development, what we are talking about with ANWR is not an insignificant quantity of oil. It is not the ``drop in the bucket'' that some people suggest. It is not the ``mere months of supply'' that some people suggest. At predicted prices, at what we are seeing today, we recognize that the expectation out of ANWR is between about 6 billion barrels of oil and 14.65 billion barrels of oil. So the mean figure that we use, a conservative figure, is about 10 billion barrels of oil for this country. This is by far the largest known source of domestic onshore oil in this country today. The estimates lead us to make the statement that we believe that the ANWR field, or oil find, could rival that of Prudhoe Bay, which has been supplying this country with about 20 percent of our domestic needs for about the past 25 years.

Now, when we recognize what high oil prices are doing to this country in terms of the health of our economy, in terms of our ability to travel. Face it, the energy costs this country are facing are a burden on hard-working Americans. And what is the expectation? Do we expect the price of oil is going to be dropping? Right now, we are looking at future prices in the area of $60-a-barrel oil. The Energy Information Administration, EIA, 2006 forecast has predicted the price of oil is going to remain between $50 and $55 a barrel for the next couple decades. We have to recognize that everything we can do to bring down that cost of oil through increased production domestically is going to help us.

We have always talked about the jobs, the jobs aspect that ANWR will help bring about. It will bring about hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just in my State of Alaska, but all around the country.

And as we talk about these issues we must remember the deficit we face as a nation and the balance of payments deficit that we face. This especially is where ANWR development can make a dramatic improvement in reducing our balance of payments deficit. If we are at peak production with ANWR, anticipating 1 million barrels a day, this will reduce our country's balance of payment deficit by just about $20 billion annually. This is significant, folks. This oil is coming from the United States. This is domestic production.

Now, the big debate today, of course, is the fact that this provision, the ANWR provision, has been included in the Defense appropriations bill. Is this the perfect place for this? Well, when we started several months back, at the beginning of the year, it was not in this bill. It was in the reconciliation bill. We took criticism, great criticism, at the time for inserting it in that legislation as well. But let's talk about why it makes sense, why it is not illogical to place the ANWR provision in the Department of Defense appropriations bill.

My colleague from Alaska made mention that there is a great tie-in between ANWR and our national security and meeting the needs of our military.

We have direct benefit through increased domestic oil production because we help our military to strengthen our national security by becoming less reliant on foreign sources. Sufficient reliable energy supplies are vital to our military. That is absolutely the bottom line. Consider that it takes eight times more oil today to meet the needs of the average soldier than it did decades ago during World War II. Our military today consumes on average about 4 percent of the oil we as a nation consume daily about 800,000 barrels per day. This is a reality. This is what we are dealing with.

Right now, the military accounts for about 80 percent of all the oil that our Government consumes daily. So when we look at what we can anticipate from ANWR--about a million barrels a day at peak production--that development will help us to fully meet our military's total fuel needs. This fact alone makes ANWR a worthy candidate for inclusion in the Defense appropriations bill.

Really what we need to be focused on is what ANWR does for us, how it helps facilitate our energy security and, in turn, our national security. Opening ANWR offers America the best chance for finding a secure supply of oil that helps to reduce our dependence on OPEC, on other nations; and it does this for decades.

You all heard that we are 58 percent dependent today as a nation on foreign sources of oil. We are expected to pass the two-thirds mark within about 20 years. When you put that into perspective and you recognize that such a quantity of our energy--more than half of our energy comes from elsewhere--particularly from OPEC or unstable Mideast regimes, that we have a vulnerability. Think back to some of the statements made earlier this year coming out of Venezuela, one of our leading sources of imported oil. Again, this should remind us that we need to do all that we can responsibly do to increase our domestic energy production. Look at the world picture--what is happening with China and India and a host of developing nations and their need for supplies of oil. That makes it all the more important to make sure we are doing what we can at home.

So we need to increase our energy independence, but we also need to do it in balance with our environment and diversifying energy supplies. I wish to talk about the environmental perspective for a minute because this is important. We just cannot develop for development's sake without a corresponding obligation to balance our environmental needs and requirements. But this bill containing the ANWR provision actually lets us address the environmental issues that have been raised about ANWR for years.

When the reconciliation bill was going through, because of procedural issues--notably the Byrd rule--we were not able to include, for instance, all the environmental safeguards in that that we might have liked. It could plain and simply only open ANWR. But contained within this Defense appropriations bill are the environmental safeguards, the provisions that we have been discussing for decades. It also has provisions that will require the best technology. We are talking about directional drilling to limit the surface disruption. It requires industry to maintain winter exploration drilling schedules, a technique of using ice roads so the wildlife isn't disturbed. The tundra remains protected. It includes the provision that we voted on not too terribly long ago that would limit ANWR oil from export, from going outside this country. There is an export ban that would be in place contained within this legislation.

For Alaska Natives, it finally allows them to develop their lands as long as the total disruption doesn't exceed 2,000 acres of the surface of the coastal plain. That is another point that needs to be made. We are not talking about disturbing the surface of the entire 1.5 million acres of Coastal Plain; we are asking for permission to explore and drill in the entire plain, but not to impact more than 2,000 acres in the process. For some in rural areas, that is the size of a small farm. For some in urban centers, this is size of your airports. That is what we are talking about. This bill allows us to place this language in it.

There was mention in the Washington Post this morning that somehow or other the language contained in the bill allows for an even greater area to be opened for oil exploration and development. That is not the case. The case is that the 2,000-acre limitation covers both federal and Native and state lands. What it does allow for is for Alaskan Natives who live up there to have the ability to gain their final land selections, but any development from those lands are subject to the 2,000-acre limitation. It is a 2,000-acre limitation in total.

We also require the Department of the Interior to consult with the Natives so that their local knowledge is considered to reduce the impact on the environment and their subsistence lifestyles. We have the support of those Natives who live there, work there, and send their children to school there, who want to see good infrastructure in terms of health facilities and schools. They support opening ANWR, but they want to do it in a responsible manner and in consultation, so that they know their voices are heard. We have put language in this bill that speaks directly to those wishes.

We have also included a provision that provides for local impact aid for any of the communities that may be subject to oil development impacts. These include the Inupiat of the North Slope, the Gwich'in south of the Brooks Range, and the municipalities and Native Corporation lands that border the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor.

And we included language that encourages project labor agreement talks and local hire provisions.

So we have been able in this legislation to take the concerns of some of our friends and colleagues who have been working with us--our friends from Hawaii wanted to make sure we had Native consultation provisions included. We have been able to add that in this Defense appropriations bill along with the environmental provisions that have been discussed for decades, ensuring that when we move forward with opening ANWR to responsible oil exploration and development, we have all of these provisions in place. This is key to us in the Senate, and it is certainly key to the Alaskans whom I represent, and most certainly to those who live and work on the Coastal Plain.

Now, I have to comment very quickly about a remark that was made yesterday by my colleague from Washington. In her argument against opening ANWR, she talked about ``toxic'' spills on the North Slope, and essentially argued that Alaskans are not being responsible somehow with our oil development. That does require a response.

Opponents have claimed there have been a high number of spills. But they fail to mention that the companies who operate on Alaska's North Slope have to report spills of most any substance that is more than a gallon in size, whether it is pure water, salt water, oil, or chemicals; whatever it is, it has to be reported if it is over a gallon in size.

According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, there has been an average of 263 spills on the North Slope yearly, seven times less than in the rest of the state yearly. The average oil spill, however, was just 89 gallons--that is about 2 barrels of oil--and 94 percent of that was totally cleaned up. Most spills are of water used in making ice roads.

According to the National Academy of Sciences's 2003 study, if you look at all the spills from 1977 through 1999, 84 percent of all those spills were less than 2 barrels in size. Only 454 barrels of oil per year have been released into the environment, compared to the 378,000 barrels of oil that enter North American waters yearly as a result of urban runoff, the drips we see at filling stations and other spills. That may be less oil than enters the Alaska environment naturally because of the oil seeps that come up from under the ground on the North Slope.

I wanted to take a second to correct the record on other point.

Senator Stevens spoke in his comments previously about how including ANWR in the Defense appropriations bill not only helps Alaskans in getting the pipeline from a status of half full, or less than half full, to full; but it is also important to point out how adding ANWR to the Defense bill is going to help Americans overall.

I have mentioned national security. I have mentioned the jobs. I have mentioned the economic security and the reduction in the overall trade deficit.

What we will also be able to do as a result of the ANWR proceeds and the revenues that will come forth is to aid Americans who have been impacted by the disaster on the Gulf Coast. The bill also allocates 5 percent of the revenues to go to fund increases in money for the program that will also help Americans with their energy costs. This is the LIHEAP program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. We know here it is getting cold, and it is going to be a colder winter as we move into January and February. Americans are looking at their home heating bills. They are looking at their utility bills, and they are seeing increases of 30 to 40 percent. We are going to see natural gas increases in our utility bills in excess of that.

This is a huge consideration for us as we try to balance our budgets within our own homes. So the ability to share with those who have been impacted by Katrina, helping to provide financing, if you will, for Gulf Coast rebuilding is a key of this bill. Under the Gulf Coast Recovery and Disaster Prevention and Assistance Fund about 25 percent of the total ANWR revenues will go into the fund--80 percent of the bonus and 20 percent of the longer-term royalties from ANWR production will go to the Gulf Coast States to help them recover from the effects of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Also, we are talking about the reduction of the Nation's budget deficit over the life of the field--tens of billions of dollars to reduce the budget deficit will come from the proceeds from ANWR.

What is coming from ANWR is not something that only benefits Alaskans, and there have been those who have suggested that. It is not something that benefits only oil companies, and there are some who have mentioned that. The proceeds from ANWR and what we will be able to do in terms of providing for jobs, for energy security, national security, funding programs such as LIHEAP, funding to the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida in the restoration fund, are significant; it is important, and it is appropriate that all are included in the legislation before us.

I, too, join my colleague, my senior Senator from Alaska, in asking our colleagues to end this debate once and for all, after the 25, 30 years we have been debating, arguing, and talking, and allow America to finally use its own resources to help our economy and protect our security.

Mr. President, I have several letters and resolutions I would like printed in the RECORD. These are a letter from the mayor and city council of the city of Kaktovik, addressed to Members of Congress; a board resolution from the Alaska Federation of Natives in support of opening ANWR; letters of support from unions; from the Chamber of Commerce; from Americans for Tax Reform; from the American Gas Association, as well as the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth. I ask unanimous consent they be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

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