Energy Policy Act of 2003

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2003

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I associate myself with the remarks of my colleague from Arkansas who, along with our colleague from Texas, has organized and continues to organize a very appropriate tribute to our troops to let them know that while we work, while we try to fashion an Energy bill, while we pass trade legislation, while we attempt to pass the 13 appropriations bills that fund this Government, including the Department which funds their operations, we keep them in our minds. They are on our minds in the morning, at noontime, the early afternoon, and early evening, as it is today. I thank my colleague for her remarks, and I know she wishes the troops from Arkansas well and that they return home safely, as I do those from Louisiana, as does our whole Nation. So I thank her.

I will spend a few minutes speaking about the major issue at hand, and that is our Energy bill and our attempts to fashion an energy policy for our Nation. For a great part of the time since last Friday, the Senate has been engaged in a very
important debate on this very complicated and far-reaching subject. That debate has followed along several weeks of intense debate and hard work done on the part of Democrats and Republicans on the Energy Committee to try to fashion a bill a majority of the Senators could support.

I have been in meetings myself all day on and off the floor about that very subject, and hopefully those meetings are proceeding well, trying to come up with some compromises to move us forward, to proceed so we do not get stalled on this energy legislation.

I remain very hopeful at this hour that those negotiations will be fruitful so we can continue our push, our bipartisan effort, to fashion a bill that increases supply, reduces demand, puts new measures in place that require conservation and that also will protect consumers in a new, more deregulated way.

Those are high goals, but they are important goals because if we do it right, consumers can save a great deal of money. If we do it right, we can save jobs. If we do it right, we can help this economy to get a strong foothold toward recovery. If we do it right, we can help our industries be more competitive and, in doing so, save and preserve jobs in the United States and increase prosperity.

I wanted to take a moment, while we had this time, to focus on one of the most important aspects of an energy policy, and, first, to recognize that most of the debate this week has rightly been Senators expressing their outrage at what went wrong in the last 12 or 15 months: The description brought again so vividly to the Senate floor by the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell; the comments made by Senator Feinstein; the comments made by other Senators on the travesty that occurred in California and the outrage of the constituents there because of the doubling and tripling and quadrupling of energy prices.

I most certainly understand. We, ourselves, in Louisiana have been experiencing higher prices for different reasons. I understand that frustration.

As much as I support some—not all but some—of their efforts to remedy that situation, I will spend a few minutes talking about one of the real causes of that problem. While there was deception, there was manipulation, there was wrongdoing—and people like Ken Lay and others need to be on their way to jail, and we hope the prosecution will be vigorous for that wrongdoing—we would not be giving our constituents the whole picture if we did not talk for a minute about the underlying cause of that debacle. It is simply a lack of supply.

We have for the last 20 years implemented policies in this Congress that have mandated a dramatic increase in natural gas.
Yet we have also mandated the same policies or allowed policies to develop that decreased our chances of producing natural
gas.

As my chart shows, our main energy problem—what has happened and the reason we are spending weeks, and if we have to spend months, so be it—is we have to close this gap between natural gas demand and natural gas availability. That is what is causing the price of natural gas to be at historic highs and, quite frankly, at dangerous levels because it undercuts this economy.

Let me give a few specifics. Natural gas provides nearly 25 percent of the energy that powers our $10.5 trillion economy. I repeat: 25 percent of our entire economy rests on our natural gas policy. It is out of whack. When it is out of whack, it causes serious problems and serious consequences. That is what we are experiencing. More than 55 percent of residential customers use natural gas.

Visualize walking along any neighborhood in the country. In New Orleans, along Napoleon Avenue where I grew up; think about walking down Grand Isle, little Main Street on an island. I was just there a few weeks ago. Maybe you are in a suburb right close to Washington or maybe right on East Capitol Street. Every other house—50 percent of residential consumers—has natural gas access.

We have a shortage. When there is a shortage, prices go up. This country will see an increase, it is estimated, from $534 in 1999 to $900 in 2003. That means consumers—every other house, basically—will pay $70 billion more for gas in 2003 than they did in 2002. We gave a tax cut of $340 billion. Average it over 10 years, it is $34 billion. We are giving a tax cut of $34 billion. Yet because of our energy policy, we are taking $70 billion out of the pockets of residential customers.

It makes no sense. That is why people can say: Thanks for the tax cut, but I am not really feeling it because you are giving
it on the one hand and taking it away on the other.

We have a solution. Natural gas is not only a fuel but an essential raw material for feedstock. Each year, the U.S. chemical industry converts 20 percent or $20 billion of natural gas-based fuel and feedstock into more than $200 billion of essential consumer products. When people say to me, Senator, your State is a natural gas State, you are concerned about natural gas, I am concerned about natural gas because, of course, it fuels every other house in the country, but also because it fuels so many of the plants that create all of the products we use for a variety of our entities, a variety of goods in our economy that we use every day, from plastics to chemicals to fertilizers. More than a million people work daily in the U.S. chemical industry, and 5 million people work in dependent jobs; that is 6 million jobs.

If I have to stay on the Senate floor all day today, all day tomorrow, if I don't leave for the August recess, it is fine with me because we need to get people back to work. I know that even if we passed the most well-crafted tax policy, no matter if we pass the most well-crafted trade laws, no matter what we pass, if we do not pass an Energy bill that gives some vision for the future, confidence to the market and an increased supply and conservation, we are not going to be able to do
anything else here that will save these jobs or create jobs for Louisiana or for the Nation as a whole.

This is not just an Energy bill; it is a jobs bill. At a time when our economy is weak, this Senate needs to be about jobs. That is why I hope these negotiations will be fruitful. We need a good bill.

In my State of Louisiana, ammonia plants in particular are feeling the effects. For these plants, the cost of natural gas represents 70 to 90 percent of the total cost of manufacturing. If I cannot get them relief on their price of natural gas, if I cannot help get this bill through, and we do not have some relief in sight, these plants will close, thousands of jobs will be lost, they will move overseas, and they are not coming back.

It is not like closing an office temporarily until conditions improve and then everyone shows up a few months later. These plants are huge. There is a tremendous amount of steel and processing equipment. When they close, they are not going to reopen.

We have gone from nine companies employing more than 3,500 people to three companies employing less than 100.
There is a solution: Improving our drilling opportunities in appropriate places for natural gas—out West, in the gulf coast, and importing liquefied natural gas is a start.

In my last 3 minutes I will explain one basic issue that gets to the heart of what I am trying to communicate. Again, let me say so that no one can say that Senator Landrieu is not concerned about deception and manipulation and scams that went on, I promise, the manipulation, deception, and scams were not the primary cause of our dilemma today. It was a cause, it was a significant cause, and it was criminal in many cases, but it was not the primary cause.

The primary cause is some States, in the last 20 or 30 years, consumed a lot of energy, but do not produce energy. I have a chart illustrating statistics from our Energy Department, including all types of fuels and energy: Nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, wood, wind, waste, solar, oil, natural gas, and coal. This is from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Information Agency. This includes all types of energy minus consumption. The States in dark red on the chart are the States that consume much more energy than they produce. And they are rated from the top, which is California; the second is New York; third is Ohio; and fourth is Florida. And it goes down to the States that produce more than they consume.
They become net exporters of energy, the best State being Wyoming, then Louisiana, then West Virginia, Alaska, and it goes up.

Let me be quick to point out, because this is a very important chart, the country can never be energy independent until these States, and the regions they are in, become energy independent. One of the things the chairman, the Senator from New Mexico, has been trying to help this Congress understand is that you cannot even begin to be energy independent until these States and these regions come to terms with the fact that they are consuming huge amounts of energy and they are not producing. They have two choices: They can either cut their consumption, they can cut their consumption and can
conserve anything they want, or they can produce more energy.

So that is part of what our chairman and ranking member, both from New Mexico, have been trying to explain to us.
I am going to submit this for the RECORD.

We have an energy deficit in this Nation. No matter how you look at it, no matter how many people you put in jail, no matter how much consumer regulation you put in place, we have a serious energy deficit. Until this is corrected, no matter what we do, we are still not going to have the kind of energy policy in this Nation that will help us keep jobs in America and strengthen our economy.

In conclusion, I want to say how proud I am that Louisiana is a producing State and we not only consume what we produce but we export energy. We are proud to do that, and we will continue to do that in appropriate, environmentally sensitive ways.

I yield the floor.