Energy

ENERGY -- (Senate - January 18, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I come to the Chamber today to speak about efforts that are now underway in the 110th Congress to deal with an issue the American people have become tremendously sensitized to over the last couple of years--the issue of energy, the availability of energy, and the cost of energy. I believe it is important, as we look at cost and America's reaction to it, to recognize that while Americans are paying a higher price for energy today, there has never yet been a question about the availability of energy and the supply itself. I think we forget that when we paid, in midsummer, $3 at the gas pump for gas and substantially more for diesel, it was always there, it was always available, and that never became the issue.

What I believe is important for us today, in the new Congress, under new leadership in the House and the Senate, is to not only focus on the availability of energy but also move ourselves toward being a nation that becomes independent in its ability to produce its own energy--all kinds, in all ways--for the American consumer.

I find it fascinating that somehow, in the midst of all of this, we have forgotten that while the energy is still at the pump, the lights still come on when we throw the switch in our house in the morning, and America is awash in the use of energy, we have become increasingly dependent on foreign sources for a substantial portion of the very energy that moves this country. Here is a chart which I think demonstrates that. Today, arguably, we have become 60 percent dependent upon someone else producing our hydrocarbons--our oil to produce our gas and our diesel and, of course, the plastics our country uses as a derivative of that.

In this new Congress, we should focus as aggressively as we did in the last Congress in the creation of the National Energy Policy Act of 2005. We ought to now move a major step forward toward energy independence by not only encouraging the increased production of all forms of energy but looking to see if Government stands in the way of that.

Is Government promoting it or are we inhibiting it and forcing those who supply our energy to progressively seek offshore sources of that supply?

The new Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that I serve on, under the guidance of JEFF BINGAMAN, recently held a hearing on who supplies the oil for the world. Is it ExxonMobil? No. Is it Conoco? No. Is it Phillips? No, even though we think it is because that is where we get our fuel when we go to the gas pump. What we found out and what many have known is that 80 percent of the world's oil supplies are controlled by governments. And they are not our Government. They are controlled by government or government-owned companies.

I recently gave a speech to a group of oil producers. I talked about petro nationalism and a growing concern in this country that the world that supplies this portion of our oil can use their political muscle but, more importantly, the valve on the pipeline of the oil supply, to determine the kind of politics and international relations they want to have with us, knowing how we have become so dependent upon that supply.

I hope we continue to focus on supply and availability instead of doing what some are saying we are going to do. We are going to punish the oil companies because they are making too much money. We are going to tax them, and we are going to tax the consumer because somehow that will produce more oil? No, no, no. That is politics, folks. That is, plain and simply, big-time politics, to show the consumer you are macho, that somehow you will knock down the big boys who supply the oil.

Ask the questions, if you are a consumer: Will that keep oil at the pump? Will that keep gas available to me? Will that produce more gas to bring down the price? Those are the legitimate questions that ought to be answered when the leadership of the new Senate says: No, we will muscle up to the big boys and knock 'em down because somehow they may be price gouging. Yet investigation after investigation after investigation suggests that is quite the opposite. That simply is not happening.

Nowhere are they going to tell you in all of this political rhetoric that I would hope would take us toward energy independence and a greater sense of energy security in our country that the new deep wells we are drilling in the gulf that produce or new oil supply could cost upward of $1 billion a well in actual expenses before the oil begins to flow out of that well and into the ships or into the pipelines that take it to the refineries that ultimately put it in the pipeline that get it to the consumers' pumps. And the issue goes on and on.

I hope that in this Congress, while some will want to play politics, a good many will focus on the reality not only of what we have done, which has been very successful in the last few years--and that is the Energy Policy Act of 2005--but go on with the business of setting goals and driving incentives that move us to energy independence. It is phenomenally important we do that as a country. Long-term investment, new technologies, clean sources of energy are going to become increasingly important.

But more important is that we can stand as a Nation and say we are independent of the political pressures of the Middle East or the political pressures of Venezuela or the political pressures of Central Europe and Russia, that now control the world's supply of oil. That is what Americans ought to be asking our Congress at this time. Are you going to ensure an increased supply? Are you going to ensure a greater sense of independence by the reality of where our oil comes from?

This is not just an issue of oil. We know it is an issue of new technology. It is an issue of cleanness. It is an issue of nonemitting greenhouse gas sources of energy because today we are all about clean energy. And we ought to be. Yet we understand the agenda for climate change is going to be a punitive one, one that would obviously distort a market's growth toward cleaner supplies. It is called cap and trade or command and control instead of saying, yes, that is the old technology. Now let's invest in new technologies. Instead of penalizing, let's create the incentives that move toward new technologies and let us then lay down the old. That is how we cause America to become increasingly energy independent. I am talking climate change.

The Speaker of the House yesterday did something very fascinating. She couldn't get the climate change she wanted out of her own committee so she has created a new select committee on climate change to be headed up by Representative ED MARKEY. I remember Representative Markey over the years: All antinuclear, day after day, year after year. He lost that battle. Americans said: You are not going to go there anymore. You are going to start producing energy because it is clean. Now he has been assigned a select committee on climate change.

Congressman Dingell, who chairs the appropriate committee, said select committees are about as useful as feathers on a fish. Congressman Dingell gets it right.

What is useful, what is important in the argument of climate change, is new technology, it is incentives, it is producing energy in today's market that is, by any dimension, cleaner than what we produced in the past. You do not penalize the producer, you incentivize the producer to make sure that they move in the direction of clean energy. When you do that, you also say, as we said in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and as we sought to say again and again and again to the consumer, we are going to provide you with the tools to conserve, to become more efficient in your use of energy.

All of those things, in combination over the next 10 to 15 years, clearly ought to allow this country to stand up and say we have narrowed this gap; we are more independent as a Nation today in our supply of energy than we were in 2007, and we are more independent because our Government stood up, got out of the way, incentivized, created those kinds of tools that the private sector could effectively use for an ever-increasing supply of clean energy and that we, as consumers, were given the tools to become more efficient in the use of those clean supplies of energy.

I hope that ought to be and will become the mission of this new Congress, not to play games with the politics they thought brought them to power but to realize that the American consumer still is going to ask that the gas pump be full of energy, that the light switch supplies electricity in the morning and that, hopefully, it will come in a cleaner form and it won't cost any more than it has cost in the past in relation to cost of living and inflation.

Those are the realities of a marketplace that we ought

to help, not penalize. Is that politically wise to do? In the long run, it is very politically wise to do because then America can stand on its own two feet. It will not have to bow to the suppliers, such as Russia and the Middle East, and to let a dictator in Venezuela jerk us around because he has a major supply of oil. We can say: No, we supply our own. We are independent. We have been responsible in doing so, and we did it in a clean and diverse way.

It is a phenomenal challenge for us but a challenge that is important to meet.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov/