Gulf of Mexico Security Act of 2006--Continued

GULF OF MEXICO SECURITY ACT OF 2006--Continued -- (Senate - August 01, 2006)

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Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak in opposition to the so-called Energy bill that we have before us, on which we will be voting cloture later this afternoon. I want to make my position very clear. I am certainly not against drilling for oil and gas here in the United States or in the Gulf of Mexico. Fossil fuels are an essential component of our Nation's energy infrastructure, and I support appropriate steps to build our supply and use. For example, I have repeatedly, for several years, called for the construction of the Alaskan natural gas pipeline. I voted for last year's Energy bill which contained numerous incentives and provisions for the development of fossil fuels. In fact, I voted for previous Energy bills over the past several years.

However, unlike those previous Energy bills, the bill before us today is not comprehensive. Far from it; it is a narrow bill, focused strictly on drilling for oil and gas in certain portions of the Gulf of Mexico. There simply is not that much gas being made available under this bill.

I mentioned a moment ago the Alaska natural gas pipeline. Every day, they are reinjecting into the ground gas already discovered in Alaska that could be shipped to the lower 48 if we had a pipeline in place. In fact, if we had started on this several years ago we would just about be completed with that pipeline right now. The pipeline is projected to provide some 2.2 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas each year for the next 100 years. But the bill before us today would provide perhaps 5 or so trillion cubic feet lasting less than 3 years.

What does that all mean? It means there is about 40 times the amount of natural gas in Alaska than we would ever get from this bill before us in the Gulf of Mexico. That may not even be including the Mackenzie gas bill in Canada.

The Minerals Management Service indicates the gas made available under the bill before us, if you project 50 years into the future, could be about 2 1/2 months of supply. In other words, of all the natural gas we are going to need for the next 50 years, the bill before us will provide about 2 1/2 months of supply. Over the next 15 years--another way of looking at it--we get about 9 days' worth. And we won't get any at all until 2012. This is not going to have any significant impact on our supply.

As Senator Bingaman noted, in order to get access to this very modest amount of gas--as I said, perhaps 5 trillion cubic feet--we are locking away 21 trillion cubic feet in the eastern gulf until 2022 by placing these areas under a 16-year moratorium. What a deal for the American consumer. What a deal. We can get 5 trillion cubic feet, but in exchange for that we are going to lock away, for 16 years, up to 21 trillion cubic feet that could be made available in the eastern gulf. That is not a very good deal for the American consumer.

I think the better bet is for Congress to find a way to get the Alaska natural gas pipeline built. Yet we have done nothing on that. Unfortunately, key parties in the State of Alaska are not getting the job done, and we have not done anything to really move them in that direction. My understanding is that the legislature there is not satisfied with the concurrent contract proposal negotiated by the Governor, and he is not satisfied with them. It goes back and forth and back and forth.

Earlier this year, Senator Snowe and I wrote a letter to the Energy Committee asking them to investigate this and hopefully to come up with some suggestions so that in some way we here in Congress might break that logjam.

Anyway, there is little hope for them getting it settled by the end of the year, but we are focusing on this--5 trillion cubic feet, when we have 40 times that amount in Alaska that could be piped down. That is just one facet of how bad this bill is.

Second, this drilling legislation would drain the Federal Treasury of billions of dollars in lost revenue that would otherwise be available for urgent national priorities--priorities, I might add, such as agricultural and rural development assistance, health care and education, in addition, of course, to real energy security.

I know a number of farm groups--my farmers--need more natural gas. We use it to make fertilizer. We use a lot of it to make ethanol, also. The point here being that the amount of money we are going to lose under this bill means that we are going to be draining money away from the Federal Treasury that we will need in the next farm bill, which is coming up, which we are going to need for a safety net for farmers, which we are going to need for conservation payments, which we are going to need to provide more incentives for ethanol and biodiesel and biomass production.

Again, the offset is not good. Agriculture really comes up a loser.

The reason I say that--one other bad facet of this bill is that it provides 37.5 percent of the revenue from the new leases in areas beyond their areas to four Gulf Coast States. In other words, four States are going to get 37.5 percent of all the revenues from gas and oil that is way, way beyond their territorial waters.

I can't blame my friends from those States for fighting hard for this bill. I can't blame the Senators from Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama--they are making out. This is a heck of a deal for them. Like I said, I can't blame them, but what about the rest of the Senators here? We represent other States.

This is not unique. This came up once before back in 1952, when the President of the United States was Harry S Truman, from Missouri. The issue again was, to whom do these minerals, oil and gas, in the Gulf of Mexico belong? I want to read this for the RECORD. Here is what a courageous, gutsy President had to say:

The minerals that lie under the sea off the coast of this country belong to the Federal Government--that is, to all the people of this country. The ownership has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the Supreme Court of the United States .....

I am quoting Harry Truman. He said:

If we back down on our determination to hold these rights for all the people, we will act to rob them of this great national asset. That is just what the oil lobby wants. They want us to turn the vast treasure over to a handful of States, where the powerful oil interests hope to exploit it to suit themselves.

Talk about corruption. Talk about stealing from the people. That would be robbery in broad daylight--on a colossal scale. It would make Teapot Dome look like small change.

I got a letter from a fellow in Texas today, who is a friend of mine, and he was weeping over what the schoolchildren of Texas were going to lose if Texas didn't get its oil lands 9 miles out from the shore.

Nine miles. Here we are talking about 100 miles, and more. This was 9 miles. Listen to what Truman was saying about the oil and the gas 9 miles off the shore:

And I composed a letter to him, and then didn't send it. I said what about the schoolchildren in Missouri and Colorado, and North Dakota and Minnesota and Tennessee and Kentucky and Illinois, do they have any interest in this at all? Evidently not, it should all go to Texas. Well, it isn't going there, if I can help it.

Boy, why don't we have a President like that today? Talk about telling it like it is. And Truman did veto it.

Here is his closing.

I can see how the Members of Congress from Texas and California and Louisiana might like to have all the offshore oil for their States. But I certainly can't understand how Members of Congress from the other 45 States can vote to give away the interest the people of their own States have in this tremendous asset. It's just over my head and beyond me how any interior Senator or Congressman could vote to give that asset away. I am still puzzled about it. As far as I am concerned, I intend to stand up and fight to protect the people's interest in this matter.

President Harry Truman, May 17, 1952.

Where is Truman when we need him today? Yet we read history and look back and say: Boy, that Truman, he was brave, he was courageous, he fought for real people. He was on our side. How, he said, can Members of Congress from other States--Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Illinois--how can they vote for something like this to give away a national asset to four States? Truman said it in 1952. Here we are back again, back again.

As I said, 37.5 percent goes to these four States. As Truman said--how did he say it? He said here, ``Talk about corruption. Talk about stealing from the people. That would be robbery in broad daylight--on a colossal scale. It would make Teapot Dome look like small change.''

Truman had it right then. He is right today, too.

Another reason to be opposed to this bill is it is such a narrow and controversial bill when we consider the components of what we really need for a 21st century sustainable energy policy for our Nation. By that I mean an aggressive and continuing effort to promote conservation and to ramp up renewable energy. It is as true today as it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago. It is cheaper right now to conserve a barrel of oil or a trillion cubic feet of natural gas than it is to go out and drill for it. It is easier and cheaper--cheaper to conserve. Yet we have this bill before us, this very narrow bill, very contentious bill, that gives all this--37.5 percent of these royalties--to these four States.

You might say the average American out there listening to this debate would say: HARKIN, why don't you amend it? If you feel so strongly about this, offer an amendment; see what happens.

Guess what. We can't offer any amendments. Yes, that is right. You may wonder, Is this the Senate? You mean we can't offer an amendment? That is right. I cannot offer an amendment to this bill because of the games the leader on the other side played in terms of how he brought it up under cloture and filled the tree, as they say. That is just gobbledygook, meaning the majority leader is able to engineer the way the bill is brought up so we cannot offer amendments to it. When the bill comes up for a vote, it is up or down. We can't even offer an amendment. We can't offer an amendment on conservation or renewable energy or to say maybe it shouldn't be 37.5 percent for four States, and maybe other States something else. Fifty amendments were filed on this bill. None of them will be considered.

We have time to talk for days around here about flag desecration and about gay marriage. I am not saying those aren't important issues. But let's get real, folks. We are talking about something here that affects every American every day. People are hurting out there with an unusually hot summer. People are struggling to pay these big gasoline prices--upwards of about close to $3 a gallon, 71 cents more than a year ago. Natural gas prices are the highest of anywhere in the world right here in America. Yet how do we go about achieving some energy price relief for my Iowans or other Americans? How do we go about it?

We have this bill--this very narrow bill. We should be discussing other parts of what we need for energy. The Senate leaders, Senator Frist and Senator Reid, were asking last week that we include a period for energy debate while addressing the measure before us. Again, we spent all this time this year debating this and that. And if we have time for those, we surely have time to debate America's energy security challenges, offer our amendments, debate them, and let's see what comes out of the process.

I filed two amendments to this bill. One contains the Biofuels Security Act. It is a bipartisan measure to improve our ability to deliver renewable fuels to motoring consumers. I am not going to explain every little bit of it, but basically it would increase the amount of renewable fuels we make.

Second, it would make E-85 ethanol available at gas stations across America.

Third, it would require the automobile companies to make more flexible fuel cars such as they are doing in Brazil right now so we could have E-85 pumps across America.

I filed a second amendment that would require the EPA to adjust the fuels standards to meet a 10 billion gallon target by 2010. That shouldn't be too much. We are going to meet that, anyway. We should do it higher.

We need to spur growth of cellulosic biofuel production--fuels made from fibrous materials such as corn stover, wheat straw, wood waste and switchgrass.

Lastly, in terms of conservation, I cosponsored an amendment with Senator Obama and others to increase vehicle fuel economy standards for the first time in two decades. Imagine that. We have not increased fuel standards in this country in 20 years. Yet here is a bill on energy and we can't amend it.

Conservation of energy coupled with increased availability of renewable fuels is the pathway to the future while at the same time doing what we can to increase our natural gas production.

The best thing would be the pipeline from Alaska.

As I said, I am not opposed to drilling for gas and oil in the gulf, but I am the way this bill is set up. If you do not have a component in the bill for renewable energy production, biomass, biofuels, wind energy for electricity and others, photovoltaics as a component of it, and also conservation, all this bill says is basically we are going to continue to do what we have been doing in the past--getting more fossil fuels. We may need fossil fuels, but the sad truth is that this bill before us is a missed opportunity to do big things for our energy future and our energy security.

Again, I assume that the votes are cut and dry on this the way they have it. I just want to make sure people know we can't offer amendments. We are being precluded from doing so. But hopefully we will be back and hopefully we can have a more serious discussion and debate about how we provide for America's energy security in the future.

I yield the floor.

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