Domestic Energy

Floor Speech

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I think it is obvious all around our country that Americans are struggling right now with gasoline prices. The average American family spent more than $4,000 on gasoline last year, and it will be more this year, with the additional devastating price increases we are seeing now that will wreak havoc on our economy.

The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has gone up every single day for the last 3 weeks. In many parts of our country, prices at the pump are around $4 a gallon. But instead of encouraging an ``all-of-the-above'' approach, which the administration has said it is doing, the administration, instead, has been frustrating every domestic source of energy production that does not conform to a narrow view of alternative fuels.

The President is opposed to increased drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and opening additional areas of the Outer Continental Shelf off the Alaskan coast.

The people of Alaska have voted to support the ANWR drilling because they know ANWR is an area that is the size, approximately, of the State of South Carolina, and the part that would be drilled is approximately the size of Washington National Airport. So they know this would be good jobs for Alaska, and it would not harm the environment at all because the drilling area is so very small in this vast wildlife reserve.

The President has also restricted drilling on Federal lands, opposes the development of shale gas and coal, and will not open additional areas of the Outer Continental Shelf in the lower 48 States. Even though some State legislatures, such as Virginia, have said they would like to do it, the President has shut that down.

The President opposes further drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and nuclear energy is also now on the list, I guess, of moratoria. He has rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline.

What the President does favor is the Saudis increasing oil production and increased use of solar, wind, and algae at home.

Does that substitute for an energy policy? Is that something Americans can count on to increase the supply of energy in our country?

Last week, the President said: We cannot drill our way to lower gas prices. This statement is inaccurate. Increased domestic production will go a long way toward stabilizing gas prices. Why does this President want to turn his back on critical sources of domestic energy which seems incomprehensible to anyone looking at this issue?

So I have colleagues on the Senate floor who come from different States--States where unemployment is high and people are looking for jobs and looking for alternatives.

I would like to turn to the Senator from the great State of Missouri, Mr. Blunt, and ask the Senator from Missouri if he has a view. Is he hearing from his constituents in Missouri?

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Mrs. HUTCHISON. Would the Senator from Ohio yield.

I think the Senator from Ohio is making such a good point, because here the President is saying producing more will not lower prices. Does that seem like the fundamental supply-and-demand explanation that most economists have adopted in our country, that if you supply more the price will go down? Does not that seem like a non sequitur?

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Mrs. HUTCHISON. I want to say to the Senator from Ohio that I am very pleased Ohio is getting back into the drilling business. That is creating jobs in a State that I know has had high unemployment. It is so clearly in America's best interests to have our people working.

And, of course, the Keystone Pipeline, which our colleague from North Dakota is going to talk about in a few minutes, is the perfect place to create jobs; instant jobs with not one dime of taxpayer dollars. This would be private dollars invested in a pipeline that would bring oil from our friends in Canada all the way through the United States to the refineries in Texas, which it is estimated would produce 830,000 barrels of oil into gasoline a day--a day. Think of what that would do to the price.

The Secretary of Energy has actually made the statement that we want gasoline prices to increase along the lines of Europe. Oh, really? I wish to ask my friend from Missouri, how would the working people in his State feel about $8 or $9 per gallon, which is what they pay in Europe, as a cost at the pump? What would that do to the economy of Missouri? What would that do to the unemployment in Missouri?

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Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri for the point he made about trading with Canada, our ally and closest neighbor, our biggest trading partner, as opposed to having Canada ship the oil they are now producing in the Alberta sands over to China or over someplace else, and sometimes it would be shipped back in or we would be taking oil from the Middle East, and all the things that can happen when oil is being shipped from the Middle East to America are risks we would have to take.

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Mrs. HUTCHISON. The Senator makes the exact right point. Of course, they should look for markets so their people can be employed. The folly is that America would not be the logical place to say, yes, we want it, of course. Let me give a statistic, and I will ask the Senator from North Dakota his opinion. Frankly, he has been the leader in the Senate to try to get the Keystone Pipeline approved by the State Department and the White House. He has been the leader. I was amazed just yesterday that the White House did a kind of a double backflip with a twist.

The Wall Street Journal said it best: ``Obama's Keystone Jujitsu.'' What the administration did, in a mind-numbing kind of logic, was say: We said no after more than 3 years of environmental studies that all approved the Keystone Pipeline coming from Canada down through Oklahoma and into the refineries in Texas. Instead of approving it after more than 3 years of good environmental studies that came out positive, the President said no.

But yesterday, the President said: We will approve and say it is a good idea to do the pipeline from Oklahoma down to Texas. That is not bad; it is great to have that, but the problem is, if we do the 830,000 barrels a day that would come from Canada all the way down to the refineries in Texas, it would produce 34 million gallons of oil a day, or the equivalent of more than 16 million gallons of gasoline.

I ask the Senator from North Dakota, who could be bypassed with this new plan, how is that going to affect the rest of America--not the America between Oklahoma and Texas but the rest of America, including the State of North Dakota? Why would he think the President would think that is a solution?

I wish to make sure the Senator has up to 10 minutes, so I ask unanimous consent for that.

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Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield to the Senator from North Dakota for up to 10 minutes. I ask him, how on Earth does this affect the price of gasoline when we could be putting 34 million gallons of oil, or more than 16 million gallons of gasoline a day into people's tanks? How could the President say that would not lower the price?

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