Gas Prices

GAS PRICES -- (House of Representatives - March 30, 2006)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, gas prices are rising and someone is to blame.

The root cause of the rising gasoline prices, as an editorial in this week's Wall Street Journal rightly states, is the incredible shrinking of supply of a gasoline additive called MTBE. The production of MTBE has been for 15 years the direct result of a Federal mandate that such oxygenates be included in the Nation's gas supply. It was mandated by a Democrat Congress seeking to help clean the environment.

Now, that mandate is expiring in May, in large part owed to the discovery of MTBE in some water supplies, a discovery that has trial lawyers salivating as they count down the days. And the main culprit for its seeping into water supplies is faulty, unrepaired, leaking underground storage tanks.

But the producers of those do not have the deep pockets of MTBE producers. Thus, when MTBE producers' liability protection expires in May, as the editorial states: ``Producers and refiners will face far greater liability, which has set off a race to exit the market'' because, as history has shown, the vultures in the lawsuit-happy trial bar will pounce on those with the deepest pockets.

In other words, the Federal Government mandated the production and addition of MTBE as a clean air additive to the Nation's fuel. But now the government says that mandate, while good for clean air, turns out actually to have been bad for groundwater. Now the government wants to let trial lawyers hold the industry accountable for environmental problems the government itself created with its original mandate. Meanwhile, the Nation's ethanol producers, who must now fill the additive void created by the widespread and predictable MTBE pullout, have already admitted they cannot meet the new market demand.

No MTBE and not enough ethanol will mean less gasoline on the market, less gasoline that can be prepared for the market, creating a shortage of supply and thus higher prices. In other words, come Memorial Day, gas prices, which are already higher than they have been since the early days after Hurricane Katrina, stand to spike even higher.

All of this economic analysis in the Journal's editorial, regrettably, is true. What is not true is the editorial's insinuation that congressional Republicans are to blame for it.

On the contrary, Mr. Speaker, House Republicans fought for years to include MTBE-liability protection in the energy bill. The bill was shelved in 2003 when a Democrat-led filibuster, joined by liberal Republicans, succeeded in killing it, an outcome brought about, the then-Democrat leader said, by ``the House Republican leadership's insistence on inclusion of retroactive liability protections for MTBE.''

So in 2004 the energy bill effectively died when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources chairman unilaterally pulled the MTBE provisions from the Senate version of the legislation. So, finally, in 2005 the MTBE-protection provision was described by the House minority leader as a ``disgraceful ..... giveaway.'' Enough Senate Republicans agreed with this false assessment to ensure that the energy bill was finally passed, after 4 years of effort, without the desperately needed MTBE provisions that House Republicans advocated for so long.

The result: the ethanol-MTBE fiasco, as the Journal puts it, is not the fault of Republicans on Capitol Hill, broadly speaking, but only about seven of them, all Senators, Senators who joined obstructionist Democrats and eco-extremists to punish an innocent industry.

House Republicans warned all along about the MTBE pullout, the ethanol shortfall, and the resulting spike in gas prices just in time for the 2006 summer traveling season, and we were right.

MTBE liability protection is the only thing standing between the American people and $3-a-gallon gas this summer. And the only thing standing between MTBE-liability and the President's signature is a collection of Senators, the long-term effects of whose shortsighted grandstanding are only now starting to be felt.

So, Americans, when it hits $3 a gallon, call the Senate.

Hopefully, yesterday's editorial will give MTBE-protection new life in Congress. And if not, drivers, especially in those States of Senators from New Mexico, Arizona, Maine, Vermont, Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, will know who to thank.

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