To improve the energy security of the United States and reduce United States dependence on foreign oil imports by 40 percent by 2025.

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005--Continued

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I note the presence of the distinguished
Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, on the floor. We have agreed
heretofore that her amendment would now be the subject matter before
the Senate. I understand the Senator is prepared to offer it.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, yes.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, may we have a copy of the final draft of
the amendment?
Ms. CANTWELL. Yes, we will send the amendment to the desk.
Mr. DOMENICI. We have it. I wonder if we can discuss what the
Senator's pleasure is. We have nothing else pending but her amendment
for at least a couple of hours or more. How much time does the Senator
think she might need?
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know there are many colleagues who
want to talk on this issue. I do not know how many members on the other
side of the aisle want to speak. I would think we can dispose of this
within a couple of hours. That would be my guess.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we will not set a specific time, but
let's talk about a couple of hours. I gather that the Senator would not
need all that time continuously, if somebody desired to speak. I ask
the Chair to recognize the Senator to answer my question.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. That is correct. I think we will start the debate on
the Cantwell amendment, and if other Members want to address that or
other issues, we are happy for them to come down and address those
issues as the afternoon progresses.
Mr. DOMENICI. It is the understanding--and I hope Senator Cantwell
would comply--that there will not be any other subject matter come up.
I ask unanimous consent that no other amendments be in order while this
discussion is taking place, other than discussing the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, having said that, Senators on our side
have heard we will be on this amendment for 2 hours, probably longer.
If any of my colleagues desire to come down and debate the issue, I
would very much appreciate them letting us know or, in fact, come to
the floor and we will arrange for them to speak.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Energy
Committee for his participation and help in clarifying this next
segment of debate on the Energy bill. While I think we have several
issues left to discuss, I think it is very important to realize what a
milestone we have achieved. After a couple of sessions of the Senate
trying to get energy legislation, we are now on the precipice of having
an energy bill that has great bipartisan support.
I compliment the chairman of the Energy Committee for his hard work
and diligence in getting an energy bill that has such great bipartisan
support. As a member of the Energy Committee and as a relatively new
Member of the Senate, I can tell you how honored I was that Senator
Domenici visited me in my office to talk about the issues impacting the
Northwest--because we have been hard hit by an energy crisis in the
last several years--and his willingness to work with my office on those
Northwest issues, particularly related to the hydro system.
I can say with certainty that just about every member of the Senate
Energy Committee participated in the markup of this legislation by
getting ideas and concepts into the Energy bill. While each of us have
different perspectives because we represent different regions of the
country, people should realize that getting an energy bill is a very
important step forward in our Nation.
I contrast that to the House version. The House version reminds me of
where we were in the Senate version 2 years ago, except for the House
version just kept going in the wrong direction. It basically has what I
call ``gratuitous special interest deals'' relating to groundwater
pollutants. This includes letting MTBE manufacturers off the hook from
their liability, something I know the Presiding Officer has concerns
about. The House bill also has rollbacks of the Clean Air Act, the
Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Safe
Drinking Water Act. I think these are bad precedents to set.
I am trying to bring attention to the fact that the product we are
starting with in the Senate is good legislation. The next week and a
half will probably make this legislation even better, as Members who
are not on the committee bring up issues, some of which, Members who
are on the committee left to be discussed by all the Members on the
Senate floor.
Something of particular importance to the Northwest is the
electricity title in this legislation. Establishing the electricity
title was a very meaningful step toward responding to the scandalous
Enron crisis and the unethical practices of market manipulation. We are
really getting tough on energy traders and executives who perpetrate
the kinds of abuses that we saw in the western energy market. We are
sending a message to those industries and businesses that the consumer
will not provide the deep pocket for Enron kinds of bankruptcies.
I am grateful to the chairman and the ranking member from New Mexico
for their hard work on this legislation. There was a great irony taking
place the moment the Senate was about to make a decision on changing
the filibuster rules. Members of both sides of the aisle and all their
staffs were hard at work marking up a very comprehensive energy bill in
a very bipartisan fashion. If people were there, they would have
realized it was the Senate at its best doing its best work.
There are still outstanding issues that we decided we were going to
bring to the Senate floor. Some of those issues were related to a
variety of concerns that we thought were best addressed on the Senate
floor. One of the issues that I think is important to bring up is my
amendment on energy security. It is an amendment that will set a
national goal for getting off our overdependence on foreign sources of
oil. I am pleased to be able to offer that amendment with Senators
Durbin, Salazar, and Kerry because it is important that energy
independence be

[[Page S6615]]

part of our strategy for a national energy policy.
Many Americans are feeling this overdependence at the gas pump today.
They know we are overdependent on foreign oil. They want to see more
competition in gas prices. Americans may not realize that now the
United States imports about 58 percent of our oil supply. That is about
11 million barrels a day. This number is expected to grow to about 62
percent by 2015. The underlying bill tried to address this by saying we
should cut our dependence on oil by a million barrels a day, but what
that underlying bill does is leave us worse off by 2015 than we are
today. It would leave us more dependent on foreign oil than we
currently are. The mathematics of the underlying bill need to be
improved.
My amendment would direct the President to develop and implement a
long-term strategy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by reducing
7.6 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. So, instead of allowing our
foreign oil imports to grow from the 58 percent that it is today to 68
percent in 2025, my amendment would reverse this alarming trend.

We can see where we are today and where we need to get to reduce this
dependence.
Under my amendment, this would be a 40-percent reduction by the year
2025. It is very important that this goal be included as part of our
energy legislation.
It should be no surprise because many of the Members have talked
about energy independence as part of the energy legislation. If my
colleagues believe in the underlying fundamentals of this legislation,
then they must believe that we can be successful in getting off our
overdependence on foreign oil.
What this legislation is missing is an adequate goal to actually
reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
It is no surprise that consumers and experts alike agree on this. In
fact, there was a recent poll which showed that 92 percent of Americans
are very worried about our dependence on foreign oil, and 93 percent of
Americans want our Government to develop an energy strategy that will
get us off our overdependence on foreign oil. In fact, the President
has joined in the call, saying that in order to make sure our economy
grows, we need to encourage small business sector growth and vitality.
We need to address a major problem facing our country, and that is our
Nation's growing dependence on foreign sources of energy.
The President has joined in this debate in saying that getting off
our foreign dependence is important.
We have had many others speak out, such as the leadership on both
sides of the aisle. In the House, Speaker Hastert said: Our Nation is
dependent on a fickle foreign oil market that is being stretched to the
limit by foreign demands.
National security experts, such as CIA Director James Woolsey, former
Secretary of State George Schultz, and others in the Energy Future
Coalition, have said that the possibility exists for future oil
embargoes and supply disruption that make us more dependent on the
Middle East.
In fact, those gentlemen, in their report, said: For the foreseeable
future, as long as vehicle transportation is dominated by oil, the
greater Middle East and especially Saudi Arabia will remain in the
driver's seat.
We have a chart that shows who owns the oil supply and who are the
top global oil companies in the world. If one thinks about these
companies on the chart, looking at the names, Aramco and various
companies, and they look at the countries that basically own these
companies, people will see that they are 100-percent owned by those
entities. We can see what countries they are. We can see where the
supply is.
If Americans look at this chart, then they know that we cannot leave
our economic future and our national security for future oil supply in
the hands of these governments and these countries. What we need to do
is to get off of our overdependence on foreign oil and diversify, and
that is specifically what my amendment calls for.
I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the Energy Future
Coalition that calls for major new initiatives to curtail U.S. oil
consumption be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Energy Future Coalition,

Washington, DC, May 18, 2005.
Hon. Pete V. Domenici,
Chairman, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S.
Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: We are writing to follow up on the
letter we sent to the President in March, urging an
aggressive program to address America's growing dependence on
foreign oil, which in our judgment endangers our national and
economic security. We asked the President to ``launch a major
new initiative to curtail U.S. oil consumption through
improved efficiency and the rapid development and deployment
of advanced biomass, alcohol and other available petroleum
fuel alternatives.''
The signatories, representing a broad range of political:
views, support a new national commitment: to reduce U.S. oil
consumption substantially, through the accelerated
introduction of advanced technology vehicles and alternative
fuels. We believe domestic biofuels can cut the nation's oil
use by 25 percent by 2025, and substantial further reductions
are possible through efficiency gains from advanced
technologies. That is an ambitious goal, but it is also an
extraordinary opportunity for American leadership,
innovation, job creation, and economic growth.
Mr. Chairman, we recognize that you and the other Members
of the Committee are well along in the drafting process, and
we hope that legislation can be enacted this year that
addresses the critical energy challenges confronting the
nation. We want to commend you for the leadership you are
showing and the bipartisan approach you have pursued in
developing a comprehensive energy bill. You have demonstrated
a willingness to look anew at the facts on the ground and to
adjust to those facts as appropriate.
We come forward now in a constructive spirit, with
recommendations drawn from the work of several groups that
have recently examined this topic in addition to the Energy
Future Coalition--the National Commission on Energy Policy,
the Set America Free Coalition, the Apollo Alliance, Rocky
Mountain Institute, and others.
The President said last month, ``Our country is on the
doorstep of incredible technological advances that will make
energy more abundant and more affordable for our citizens. By
harnessing the power of technology, we're going to be able to
grow our economy, protect our environment, and achieve
greater energy independence.'' We could not agree more
strongly.
We see a broad and bipartisan consensus emerging at various
levels of government throughout the country on the need to
move to a new model of energy production and use. As
promising as that vision is, however, it won't happen by
itself. Public policy and investment are needed to hurry the
future, and now is the time to act, before a crisis.
Toward that end, we recommend certain first steps, outlined
briefly below. The cost of this package is small, relative to
both the risks and opportunities at hand, but it would begin
to change the nation's direction on this critical issue. We
would be pleased to work with you and your staff on specific
legislative language.
1. Reward technological innovation that increases fuel
efficiency--Transportation accounts for two-thirds of U.S.
oil consumption, and light-duty vehicles account for more
than half of all transportation demand. New vehicle
technologies, including hybrids and advanced diesels, can
dramatically increase the efficiency of that fleet.
The health of the U.S. economy is closely linked to the
health of its auto manufacturing industry, which affects one
out of every 10 private-sector jobs in America. The
industry's vitality in turn depends on its ability to
innovate and respond to rapidly changing customer
preferences.
We recommend tax incentives for U.S. vehicle and component
manufacturers that will enable them to retool existing
production lines for both cars and trucks and produce
advanced technologies that reduce fuel consumption and U.S.
demand for foreign oil. We also recommend tax incentives, as
the President did again last month, that will increase
consumer demand for these technologies. We recognize, of
course, that tax policy falls within the jurisdiction of the
Committee on Finance, and we will send a similar letter to
Chairman Grassley.
2. Support the next generation of advanced vehicles--Fuel
consumption is closely tied to vehicle weight. Lighter
vehicles are thus desirable as long as they do not compromise
safety or performance. Advanced materials--such as composites
now used in advanced aircraft--could allow dramatic gains in
fuel economy if they could be reduced in cost. We recommend
that the Federal government carry out a program to
demonstrate the feasibility of high-volume, low-cost
manufacture of these materials, which will have important
military applications as well.
Additional reductions in oil demand would flow from
extending the range that hybrid vehicles can travel on the
electricity stored in their batteries. This will require
further improvements in battery technology and the ability to
plug in to the electric power grid, but may have the
additional benefit of leveling peak utility power loads. We
recommend support for further development,

[[Page S6616]]

demonstration, and deployment of these technologies.
3. Accelerate the introduction of alternative
transportation fuels--The production of ethanol has increased
dramatically in the last two yeas, but must grow much further
to displace a major share of U.S. oil demand. Technologies to
convert widely abundant plant fiber--cellulosic biomass--to
liquid fuels have been demonstrated at pilot scale but face
considerable financial and technical risk in moving to first-
of-a-kind commercial-scale production. A Canadian company,
Iogen, is currently producing ethanol from wheat straw, but
at relatively small scale. Biodiesel fuels--from sources as
diverse as soybeans, waste cooking oil, and turkey offal--are
also emerging as important alternatives.
A well-focused and adequately funded program to take these
technologies to the point of becoming low-risk commercial
choices should be pursued on grounds of national security.
This may be the only way that the U.S. can have--in years, as
opposed to decades--a significant supply of renewable
domestic fuels, chemicals, and other products for which we
now depend on imported oil or limited natural gas reserves.
The Federal government should be directed to conduct a one-
time technology competition, supporting private-sector
construction of at least 10 commercial-scale demonstration
plants within the next five years--testing the comparative
advantages of different conversion processes, feedstocks and
end products.
We also support an aggressive program to increase the use
of renewable fuels in the fleet (similar to S. 650, for
example) to encourage development of these fuels and their
use as fuel substitutes, not just as additives. Flexible-fuel
vehicles can use ethanol or gasoline interchangeably, and
some four million are already on the road. Because new cars
can be given flexible-fuel capability at negligible cost, we
recommend that this technology be rapidly introduced into the
fleet to give consumers a choice in refueling options. We
also believe the corporate average fuel economy program
should provide credit for the demonstrated use of alternative
fuels not based on petroleum, and we recommend that all
biodiesel blends be treated alike in the tax code.
Finally, we are not unmindful of the current budget
situation and its implications for the energy bill; however,
we think that a more rational allocation of scarce resources
would substitute the unfunded elements of this package for
the $2 billion ``ultra-deepwater and unconventional onshore
natural gas and other petroleum research and development
program'' contained in the House bill. As the President noted
recently, with oil at $50 a barrel, ``energy companies do not
need taxpayers'-funded incentives to explore for oil ad
gas.'' We should support instead a new direction in energy
policy that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, expand
the production of domestic transportation fuels from
agriculture, and create new jobs, economic growth, and
investment in America.
Mr. Chairman, we note that the Committee has held
conferences this year on natural gas supply and on the future
of coal, as well as hearings on other relevant topics, but
not on the subject of oil dependence and national security,
despite the remarkable rise in the price of oil over the past
year. We respectfully urge you to consider such a session and
offer our participation if you so desire. In any case, we
would be pleased to discuss these initiatives with you as you
consider incentives for innovative clean energy technologies,
as well as other provisions on renewable energy, fuels and
vehicles, and oil and gas.
These recommendations are the product of three years of
work by the Energy Future Coalition and others, who have come
together in a constructive and non-partisan effort to develop
politically viable answers to seemingly intractable issues,
so that we might have a national energy policy that responds
strategically both to the challenges we face and to the
opportunities they create.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Robert C. McFarlane.
R. James Woolsey.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Richard L. Trumka.
Charles B. Curtis.
C. Boyden Gray.
Timothy E. Wirth.
John D. Podesta.

Enclosures: Additional Signatories

Lt. Gen. John S. Caldwell, Jr., USA (Ret.); Adm. William T.
Crowe, Jr., USN (Ret.), Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of
Staff; Hon. John H. Dalton, Former Secretary of the Navy;
Vice Adm. Robert F. Dunn, USN (Ret.); Michael T. Eckhart,
American Council on Renewable Energy; Hon. Vic Fazio, Former
U.S. Representative; Hon. Robert W. Fri, Resources for the
Future; Brig. Gen. Gordon Gayle, USMC (Ret.); Hon. Sherri W.
Goodman, Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense; Hon. James
C. Greenwood, Biotechnology Industry Organization, Former
U.S. Representative.
Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, USN (Ret.); Institutes for Public
Research, Center for Naval Analysis; F. Henry Habicht II,
Former Deputy Administrator, EPA Commission on National
Energy Policy; David A. Harris, American Jewish Committee;
Hon. Gary Hart, Former U.S. Senator; Co-Chair, U.S.
Commission on National Security for the 21st Century; Bracken
Hendricks, Apollo Alliance; John P. Holdren, Harvard
University, Co-Chair, National Commission on Energy Policy;
Lt. Col. William C. Holmberg, USMC (Ret.), Biomass
Coordinating Council; Hon. Jerry Hultin, Former Under
Secretary of the Navy; Rear Adm. Leland S. Kollmorgen, USN
(Ret.).
Gen. Richard L. Lawson, USAF (Ret.), Former President,
National Mining Association; Maj. Gen. Charles Link, USAF
(Ret.), National Defense University Foundation; Gal Luft,
Institute for the Analysis of Global Security; Lt. Gen.
William R. Maloney, USMC (Ret.); Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn,
USN (Ret.); Dennis R. Minano, Former Vice President for
Environment and Energy, General Motors; Hon. William A.
Nitze, Former Assistant Administrator, EPA, The Gemstar
Group; John L. Petersen, The Arlington Institute; Hon. Robert
B. Pirie, Jr., Former Secretary of the Navy (acting).
Hon. Joe R. Reeder, Former Under Secretary of the Army;
Hon. William K. Reilly, Former Administrator, EPA, Co-Chair,
Commission on National Energy Policy; Maj. Gen. J. Milnor
Roberts, USAR (Ret.); Larry J. Schweiger, National Wildlife
Federation; Hon. Philip R. Sharp, Former U.S. Representative,
Congressional Co-Chair, Commission on National Energy Policy;
Hon. Susan F. Tierney, Former Assistant Secretary of Energy,
Commission on National Energy Policy; Vice Adm. Richard H.
Truly, USN (Ret.), Former Director, National Renewable Energy
Laboratory; R.E. Turner, Turner Foundation; Adm. James D.
Watkins, USN (Ret.), Former Secretary of Energy.

Ms. CANTWELL. Specifically, this coalition believes that domestic
biofuel, something that we just debated as part of this energy
strategy, can be used to produce a very significant amount of our
future energy, and they are calling it an extraordinary opportunity for
American leadership for job creation and economic growth.
I think this group of individuals, who are part of a coalition that
is interested in our country's national security, are pointing out that
this very chart, showing the ownership by foreign entities, is of great
concern to our future. I think this letter does adequately call on us
to do our job in making sure we are getting off of our foreign
dependence.
I believe this underlying legislation gives us the tools to do so.
That is especially true if you think about the framework that is in the
bill and the debate we just had on biofuels, the 8 billion gallon
biofuels goal by 2012. What is great about the biofuels amendment that
was adopted and revised from the committee markup is that it includes
both ethanol and biodiesel, and specifically ethanol research and
development of what are called cellulosic ethanols--biomass-based
ethanol materials.
We know we have Midwestern States that are already producing ethanol
and giving us a source of supply. But if you take those five Midwestern
States and try to transport that product to the Northwest, as we do
today--we are selling biofuels and ethanol in a variety of places in
Washington State today, but you are adding a 30-cent to 50-cent
transportation cost. What the amendment we just adopted does is make
sure that various parts of the country can also be in the biofuels
business; that we can start producing products in other parts of the
country, closer to the source and consumers that are going to use them.
So it is a very positive step forward.
The bill also includes clean coal technology, that I know my
colleague who is on the floor, the Senator from Tennessee, has worked
on so diligently. It includes hydrogen fuel cells, and it includes next
generation nuclear power, things I know my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle have worked hard to perfect. It includes new research and
development, to play a vital role in the commercialization of new
technology. It promotes in, a bipartisan way, conservation initiatives.
It is exciting to catch a sense of the new technology that will be in
this bill to give us more efficiency in our homes and businesses. We
will get a lot of savings from these programs and tools.
There are many tools in the underlying bill to achieve the goals we
set out for ourselves. We believe this underlying bill has the right
technology answers; that is, it has all the various means by which we
can get off our foreign oil dependence, but it is simply lacking a
goal. That is what my amendment will provide. This legislation should
reflect the resolve of the American people, who say that getting off
our overdependence on foreign oil is a national priority, and we are
going to stick to it.
I know various Members are going to come down here and offer
amendments

[[Page S6617]]

on other issues, issues related to global warming and greenhouse gas
emissions. We are going to have proposals regarding a renewable
portfolio standard, which would basically mean that our electricity
grid would use more renewable energy to provide supply. I think Senator
Feinstein is still going to come down and offer her amendment to close
the SUV loophole, to try to make SUVs more fuel efficient.
We are going to have a lot of discussion to help improve the bill.
But without setting a national goal, without saying our country has to
get off our dependence on foreign oil, we will have missed an
opportunity. This underlying legislation sets a goal that will actually
make us, in 2015, more dependent on foreign oil than we are today. I
think we need to set a goal as a legislative body, that we want to
reverse that trend. In 2025 we want to actually be importing less
foreign oil, and that is exactly what my amendment does.
Why is this so important? First, we all know it is in the economic
interest of the United States to diversify off foreign oil. We know our
dependence has cost us, since 1970, something like $3.6 trillion. In
2003, imports cost us $10 billion every single month, and our oil
imports count for about 34 percent of our existing trade deficit. Think
about that, 34 percent of our trade deficit, just because of the cost
of oil. In fact, Alan Greenspan has said that the high cost of fuel has
basically caused 8 out of the 10 postwar U.S. recessions; they were
related to high energy prices and spikes in oil.
We know there is a strong relationship between energy costs to our
overall economy. That is what we are trying to change. But a number of
factors remain, and that is what is of great concern. Who actually
controls those energy costs? We know the OPEC cartel, as well as
international events and political events, have an impact. We know the
growing demand in China and India for the same supply of oil has an
impact. We know we need to do something about it.
If you talk to economists about what is going to happen to the price
of oil in the future, the signs are pointing to oil prices could reach
$100 a barrel in the next 20 years. If that is the case, that would
have a devastating impact on our national economy. Yet that is exactly
what we are hearing from them. That is exactly what people are saying.
There is a world economic outlook report that was issued this spring by
the International Monetary Fund, and that report basically said that
oil could spike to $100 a barrel between now and 2030.
The Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs also predicted that the price
of oil could reach $105 in the next few years, and energy markets could
easily be in the early stages of a superspike period. I know the United
States has been through these periods before, where we have seen
extreme spikes in energy costs. It has had a devastating impact on our
economy. That is something we are trying to avoid by setting a national
goal to diversify away from foreign oil.

We have many economic reasons for this amendment. But as I stated
earlier, we also have security reasons. Let me expound on that just a
little bit because I think it is important to understand the demand for
oil and, basically, who holds the reserves. The oil reserves of every
area in the world are in decline except for the Middle East. That means
if we continue to be dependent on foreign oil, we are going to be more
dependent on OPEC and its member countries. Given that those reserves,
let's just say, are constantly under some scrutiny because of the
challenges in that region of the world, some analysts, when looking at
the oil futures market, basically describe what they call a fear
premium. That is, the price of oil futures actually increases because
people are concerned that international incidents may happen, terrorist
threats and other things, that will damage that oil supply. So the cost
of oil futures actually goes up, just on the fear of what might happen.
That is troubling because as we all know, we cannot predict what is
going to happen on an international basis. We do our best to protect
that oil supply, but Saudi Arabia alone has about a quarter of the
world's oil reserves and more than 60 percent of that country's total
oil inputs are processed at a single facility. So if you think about
it, it is the home to almost all of the world's spare production
capacity. Again, we are putting all our eggs in one basket. I am simply
saying lets set a national goal to get off that dependence on foreign
oil because of this security reason, as well as the economic reason and
who owns this supply and how important it is.
I would like to talk for a second about the picture as it relates to
other people interested in that oil supply. I mentioned China and India
and the projections of the price of oil reaching $100 a barrel.
Analysts agree that China, because of its growth and huge demand, is
likely to shift the whole center of gravity for energy markets. That
is, China has already moved past Japan in its global energy
consumption. It is the second largest oil consumer and the third
largest oil importer. In the next decade, China is going to continue to
grow to about half of today's U.S. combined car and truck total, so
they are going to be looking for lots of energy supply. It is expected
that their imports are going to double by 2010 and quadruple, to 8
billion barrels of oil a day, by 2025. Imports will be 60 percent of
China's total oil consumption.
While we are looking at the picture, already knowing we are
overdependent on foreign oil and that the challenges to security are
there and that the American economy is already suffering, we also need
to recognize there are other nations who are going to be bidding for
that same resource.
We need to get off our overdependence on foreign oil. How are we
going to do that? First, we have to have the resolve. There are many
times in American history this country has shown American resolve. We
have put a man on the Moon. We have ushered in the nuclear age. We
stood up in the OPEC crisis and got fuel efficiency standards for cars.
We ought to have the resolve now. We need to bet on the ingenuity of
American brain power to get us off our overdependence on foreign oil.
If we are smart enough to put a man on the Moon, we ought to be smart
enough to get off our overdependence on foreign oil. When John F.
Kennedy made the declaration of wanting to put a man on the Moon in a
10-year period of time, I don't think he had the answer to every single
element of how to do that. He left the details up to both the public
and private sector in getting new technology developed so we could move
forward.
In this case we have an underlying bill that actually can achieve
this goal of reversing the trend by 2025 and reducing 40 percent the
consumption of the United States of foreign oil. How do we do that?
Many people have talked about how we get there. I will show one chart
with examples of the oil savings technology in this legislation.
The biofuels amendment we talked about: Many organizations, including
some of those security initiative organizations such as Energy Future
Coalition and some environmental organizations such as Natural
Resources Defense Council, have said biofuels can play a significant
role. They could help produce 3.9 billion barrels of alternative fuel a
day.
I hope my Midwest colleagues and my colleagues from other parts of
the country who are interested in biodiesel and ethanol are excited by
that opportunity. It means an economic opportunity for all the regions
of our country that can produce those fuels. It also has a higher
national purpose, to help us get off our over-dependence on foreign
oil.
We can also improve efficiencies in various sectors such as aviation,
residential applications, and various modes of transportation. I am
very proud the Northwest has figured this out.
At the Paris Air Show we are seeing a lot of news about future
planes. One plane you will not see there today but is on the drawing
boards and is getting rave reviews from people making purchase orders
is the next generation 787. What is great about that is its whole
design is based on a more fuel-efficient plane. Boeing estimates it can
save between 20 and 30 percent on fuel costs. They figured out the
marketplace is going to be very sensitive to the high expense of
transportation fuel and have developed a plane to answer the call from
the marketplace. What has the marketplace said? The marketplace is
responding with over 200 orders for a plane that is not even finished
yet.

[[Page S6618]]

That is a great example of how we can get efficiencies in aviation and
other sectors.
This chart explains how we can make a big step forward in energy
savings, which are aspects of this legislation. They are very important
aspects to look at.
A few of my colleagues who are anxious about this legislation want to
know if it is a back door to higher fuel efficiency standards; that
somehow this bill mandates CAFE. It does not mandate a higher fuel
efficiency standard, although this Member would certainly support a
piece of legislation in the Senate that suggested that. This amendment
realizes there are hybrid cars in the marketplace that are likely to
come onboard. There are estimates that you can increase the efficiency
of our economy using hybrids and save up to 2 million barrels a day by
2015. That's just from the growth in the hybrid auto market. That is
just American consumers buying hybrid cars and making that investment.
It does not have to be CAFE, although I personally think we are losing
a huge opportunity in the American marketplace by not being more
aggressive about cars that can run on alternative fuels. I say that,
mentioning the Boeing experience in aviation.
The aerospace industry in the Northwest is responding to the demand
of more fuel-efficient transportation. I wish the auto manufacturers
would be more aggressive. Actually, as oil has hit $50 a barrel they
have gotten more aggressive. They have gone over to Japan and said,
okay, we want a technology deal with the Japanese auto manufacturers;
we want to get more of these cars in the United States market. Maybe
that will work.
However, this amendment does not assume we are going to have a new
CAFE standard. It simply says to the United States, if you are serious
about this problem, you will set a national goal to get off our
overdependence on foreign oil by 2025 and start reducing the trend.
Instead of continually importing more, we should be importing less.
This chart shows the trend we are trying to reverse. Today we are
basically importing 13 million barrels a day; if we do nothing, by
2025, we will be importing 19 million barrels. This is the trend we are
trying to reverse. This is the direction we did not want to go in. We
want to make a change.
Some of my colleagues ask, how can you set this goal? If you are not
specific about how you get there, how are we going to achieve it? There
is a lot I am sure that President Kennedy thought about when he wanted
to put a man on the Moon, and maybe his original projections were not
accurate. There is a lot of research and development we are going to do
on a variety of these technologies.
One country that has taken this challenge and embraced it is Brazil.
It is a country which looked at this same dilemma the United States
has, from the economic perspective. They said, we cannot afford to be
dependent on the high cost of imported oil. In fact, in the 1970s,
Brazil had about 80 percent of its supply from imports. That was a big
challenge.
As it exists today, Brazil has, because of its biofuels initiative,
changed that trend. In fact, Brazil has gone from 1975 being 80 percent
dependent on foreign oil to 1990 being only 45 percent dependent on
foreign oil, and in 2006, Brazil actually plans on being an energy
self-sufficient country and maybe even being a net exporter of fuel.
That is very interesting. As it stands today, they are only importing
about 11 percent of their supply.
How do you go from 1975 at 80 percent to 11 percent in 2003? The
country took the initiative and said they were going to produce a
competitive product to fossil fuel. That competitive product happened
to be sugar-based ethanol. They got good at producing sugar-based
ethanol. They got so good at producing sugar-based ethanol they
actually can produce it and ship it here cheaper than we can produce it
today.
I don't like losing the competitive edge to somebody else on the
production of an alternative fuel source. I want the United States to
be a leader in the production of alternative fuel sources. It holds a
lot of promise for the United States.
One might say, well, Brazil is only one-eighth the size of the United
States economy and we have much more demand than Brazil. That is true,
but Brazil has learned about the efficient production of ethanol. Are
we saying somehow the United States does not have the raw material
supply for ethanol, whether it is sugar-based ethanol or biomass-based
ethanol?
We actually are trying to put the American farmer in the fuel
business. If there is anything we ought to be sure we have its
agriculture. We know we only sit on 3 percent of the oil reserves in
the world, so we know we are not going to get it from there. We are
talking about importing liquified natural gas, so we know we are
challenged there. But we sure know that the American farmer can produce
a lot of product as it relates to ethanol, whether it is sugar based or
biomass based, and we can produce a lot as it relates to biodiesel
products as well.
That is exactly what this legislation does. It is very specific about
the research and development that needs to take place to get us into
the alternative fuels business. I am so certain of the well-crafted
nature of that section of the bill that I am willing to say that I
think we really can achieve our goal of decreasing our energy
dependence by 2025. So it is a very positive step for us to look at
what we have seen around the globe as far as other countries trying to
get toward energy independence or becoming less dependent on foreign
oil.
Now, I have another chart that shows examples of what we are trying
to reach. This chart basically demonstrates how we can reduce, by 7
million barrels a day, U.S. consumption. It does not have to be the
exact mix as shown on the chart of how we achieve that. This is just
one of the proposals. You have market growth in hybrid cars; industrial
improvements, efficiency improvements in aviation; efficiency gains in
trucks and heavy-duty equipment. One of our National Laboratories in
the State of Washington, the Pacific Northwest Labs, is doing great
research on lightweight trucks, lightweight materials, transportation
efficiency, for the trucking industry in our country. Other areas to
reduce consumption: how to make the movement of goods and services more
efficient, saving transportation costs; the replacement of tires, you
can get more fuel efficiency just by having better balance of your
tires to get better gas mileage; and there are transportation choices;
and biofuels. Again, biofuels is a big opportunity for us.
So I hope all my colleagues are listening who are very supportive of
the biofuels section of this legislation--which I hope there are many
because I think it is a great opportunity. If you are supportive of
that biofuels section of the bill, you ought to be very supportive of
setting a goal because you really ought to believe the national goal is
achievable. You ought to believe that the economic interest of our
country in getting that new production of biofuels is not only an
economic and security matter, it is also just plain good job creation
for our country. You are putting the American farmer back in business
with a product that now will see huge demand.
Now, I do not know if we have it here on the floor, but I took great
note that the Economist magazine wrote a piece on biofuels a few weeks
ago. In fact, it was a front-page cover story article that week about
biofuels. What was interesting about it is that it discussed the fact
that we are at this point where biofuels make so much sense because of
the price of oil.
Now, several years ago, when we were talking about oil at $20 a
barrel and people were talking about biofuels, maybe it did not make
much sense, the economics did not make much sense. But we have hit, as
Andy Grove would say, an inflection point, and that inflection point is
that now we are seeing prices over $50 a barrel for imported oil.
So the article basically says that it is no longer the ``blue sky''
stuff that people talk about, but it is an idea whose time has come. It
is a very substantive opportunity for anybody who can produce biofuels
because at anywhere around $50 a barrel, instead of $25 a barrel,
biofuels can be competitive.
Now, in Washington State, we are selling biodiesel and alternative
fuels. A few weeks ago, we had the opening of one of our first biofuels
stations. It was

[[Page S6619]]

actually at the same location as a previous traditional petroleum-based
station. So they changed over from serving customers gasoline to now
serving biodiesel.
Right now, the product is something that is shipped from the Midwest,
refined at a production facility in Seattle, and then sent over to what
was this particular station, Laurelhurst Oil. They are producing a
biofuel in Seattle, even though the oil is still imported from another
state. That biofuel, I think at the time, was about 30 cents more than
what you could go around the corner and get to fill your car up with
gasoline--30 cents more. And you ask: Well, how are you expecting to be
competitive if it is 30 cents more? It was 30 cents more because we had
the transportation cost of bringing that agricultural product to the
Northwest, having it processed, and then sold. The production facility
that is actually producing this biodiesel in Seattle believes it can
reduce the cost by 30 cents--they could be selling the biodiesel at the
same cost we are buying gasoline per gallon in Seattle--by simply
producing the product in the State of Washington.
So that is what this bill allows us to do. I think the Economist was
right, that the private sector is starting to respond to this and
starting to come up with solutions. So then you say: Well, if the
private markets are responding, why do we have to set a national goal?
Well, let me address that because as a former businessperson, I
understand that businesses are responsive to their customers and they
are responsive to their shareholders. I do not blame a national oil
company for setting its own agenda on when it wants to get into new
energy technologies. That is their prerogative.
You see lots of commercials on TV all the time about how existing
fossil fuel companies are going to generate biofuels, how they are
going to diversify. They would make you think they are doing that in a
rapid fashion. I am not so sure it is rapid enough for the consumers of
Washington State, who are paying a very high price for gasoline, have
paid a very high price for electricity recently, and are reeling from a
hard-hit economy because of high energy costs.
We would like to see a much more aggressive effort. But those
companies are not going to set a national goal and they are not going
to diversify until it is in their financial interest. So the question
is whether this body is going to set a national goal, which I think
this underlying bill can achieve, and whether we, as a country, are
going to diversify off of that overdependence on foreign oil. It is not
their job; it is our job. And we should get about showing the American
people that we have the will to do it and that we are betting on
American ingenuity to achieve it. I have to believe that putting a man
on the Moon is a lot harder than discovering how to be as efficient as
the Brazilians are in the development of ethanol. I have to believe
that was a tougher challenge.
So I think about the things we have achieved in our country's
history. I think about the fact that, in response to the threat of what
other countries might be doing with the nuclear bomb in World War II,
FDR ushered in the nuclear age in 2 years. He shifted our spending in
the development of energy in 2 years from about $8,000 to 86 million
dollars and ushered in the nuclear age. Why? Because he saw a threat,
and he wanted to set a national goal. We have had these instances where
our country has decided it was in our economic interest and our
security interest to move ahead. That is what we need to do today.
So I am glad to offer this amendment that simply says that we should
take the underlying legislation and change its goal. The underlying
bill already has a goal. It says that our goal should be to get off of
foreign oil by 2015 by reducing it a million barrels a day.
What we need to do is reduce our oil supply in a much more aggressive
fashion. We need to reduce that 40 percent by 2025. That is what my
amendment calls for. I am happy to hear from my other colleagues on
this issue. I hope that my colleagues will take this issue as an
amendment to improve the underlying bill.
The underlying bill has the tools and the framework we need. What we
need to do is have the resolve as a country to set a national goal. The
private sector is not going to do that. We are not going to have
consumers make market choices that don't exist. They want more market
choices. What we have to do is set the wheels in motion. The good news
is, once the Government sets a goal, it is amazing how many people
respond to that.
Our country has set lots of goals. We set goals for more homeland
security. I have seen more security technology companies come through
my office in the last 2 years than imaginable. Why? Because we said we
want more homeland security. So we have every imaginable aspect of
homeland security being addressed by thousands of companies across
America.
If we want to be serious about getting off our overdependence on
foreign oil, we will pass this amendment, and we will be on the track
for setting a goal that both the private sector and public sector will
respond to. I think with that we will be able to say to Americans that
we are on the right track, that we are not going to let consumers
continue to pay high transportation costs, and that we have a plan for
the future. We are not going to continue to be so singularly dependent
on the fossil fuel industry. We are not going to continue to have
transportation-sensitive industries caught in a stranglehold by high
energy costs. We are going to say to them instead that our national
security interests, our economic interests, our environmental interests
are being met by a new national goal that all of us will participate in
making a reality.
Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Ms. CANTWELL. I yield to the Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator for her leadership. The amendment she
is proposing--and we hope will be embraced by both sides of the aisle--
will set a goal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I can't think
of a single person in America who wouldn't agree with that goal. We can
all understand that as we wait every day for a press release from the
OPEC nations to try to determine whether or not the price of gasoline
is going to go up or down. This proud, strong, leading nation in the
world goes hat in hand to the Saudi peninsula looking for oil. We wait
for them to determine what the price will be. It affects every
individual and family and business and airline, right down the line.
Is it not true that the bill before us, S. 10, has a goal of reducing
dependence on foreign oil over the next 10 years by 1 million barrels a
day, which is not as ambitious or as far reaching as the goal of
reducing dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent over 20 years? Is it
not also true that the President sent a letter to Congress yesterday
and said if we include this provision--the weaker provision that is
already in the bill--reducing the barrels of oil by 1 million a day
over 10 years, the President will veto the bill? Is that the message
that we have received from the Bush White House about our goal in
reducing dependence on foreign oil?
Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator is correct. In the underlying bill, we have
language that says we should reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 1
million barrels a day by 2015. The problem with that goal is, when you
are currently importing 58 percent of your oil supply from foreign
sources and you calculate in the growth of demand--obviously, our
economy continues to grow--there is demand for more oil. Even with that
amendment, in 10 years, in 2015, we will be importing 60 to 62 percent
of what our Nation consumes in oil supply from foreign sources. So the
underlying amendment does nothing to stop this trend. In fact, we will
continue to be more dependent on foreign oil.
I know the White House has sent some communication to Senators saying
they oppose even that milestone in the bill which does attempt to try
to reduce oil consumption. But the provision in the bill doesn't take
into effect the fact that the economy grows. I guess it is saying: We
don't want to have any goal to actually try to decrease the amount of
foreign oil coming into this country.
I want to have a goal for decreasing the amount of foreign oil coming
into this country. I want to reverse the trend. I want to go from what
we are expected to have, 68 percent in 2025,

[[Page S6620]]

and say, let's switch that down towards 50. Let's get to 56 percent.
Let's start doing as the Brazilians did, which is an amazing story, if
you think about it. Here is a nation that basically went from 80
percent, now, today to 11 percent, and is on the verge of becoming an
exporter. When you think about the economic opportunities our country
has in actually being an exporter of new energy efficiency technology,
it is a great opportunity.
The Senator is right that the administration opposes any goal setting
in this bill. Why would somebody oppose goal setting? All the tools are
here in this legislation. I am not saying which technology is going to
win. Basically, our amendment is technology agnostic. It doesn't say:
You are going to have CAFE; you are going to have nuclear power.
A lot of my colleagues are betting on nuclear power. There is new
language in here for new nuclear technology. A lot of people think it
will provide us hydrogen sources, and we will have hydrogen fuel cells.
We will move to having a more fuel-efficient economy that way.
I am not being prescriptive because 2025 is a long time from now. But
I know if we look at specifics, we can get there through these various
means, but we won't get there without a goal.

Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield for a further question, we
can't pick up a news magazine or a newspaper in America without reading
about the growth of the Chinese economy. They are expanding at the
expense of many other countries, including the United States.
We have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the
last 4 years to China as their economy is exploding in size. Many of
the companies in China that are growing are American companies. The
fact is, China is expanding its economy dramatically. It is no longer a
backward Communist nation. It is a full-fledged world competitor, and
many believe that China and India will be our competitors in the next
50 years for jobs and economic growth.
Is it not also true that China has one problem it has to face, and
that is the fact that within the borders, as huge as China is, they
don't have a lot of energy resources. So to keep this economy moving
forward, they need to import energy into China, which means in the
years to come, we will see more and more competition for foreign oil,
not just the United States versus the rest of the world, but the United
States versus China and the rest of the world, which means oil for $50
per barrel, which has now raised our price at the pump, may go to $100
per barrel.
I ask the Senator from Washington, setting this goal of reducing our
dependence on foreign oil through conservation techniques, through
alternative fuels, through finding environmentally sensitive resources
that we can use, is that not looking forward to the kind of global
competition we are going to face and accepting the reality that if we
don't do this as a nation, we will find ourselves losing out from a
security viewpoint as well as global competition with nations such as
China?
Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator from Illinois brings up an important
question, which is with China's interest in global oil supply and the
demand, is it going to drive up the price. I don't think an oil company
really cares whether the price of oil is driven up or not. What do they
care?
Somebody is going to pay them, whether it is $50, $55, $60, $80, or
$100. With an increase in demand, that is good news for them. Oil
supply costs just go up. They reap the benefits; they reap the profit.
But what it is not good for is the American economy.
So the Senator is absolutely right, China's entrance into the demand
for foreign oil should be seen by this country as an economic and
security risk. China's consumption and growth rate is staggering. China
is going to be consuming I think I said 8 million barrels of imports.
They have already overtaken Japan, and they are fast on our heels to
catch up to our consumption, and they will get to a point where they
are the 800-pound gorilla in the dynamics of world oil supply.
Even our underlying bill says you can try to ramp up different
sources of U.S. production. But we all know with the United States
being situated on 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, it is not a
likely scenario for us in the United States to be able to drill our way
to energy security. So the Senator is right, China is a unique concern
in this. We ought to take that, along with the other national security
factors, and the fact that the oil supply is located primarily in these
Middle Eastern countries--if we can put the chart back up there. If you
look at where the supply is already, the countries and state ownership,
that is already worrisome enough. Now, when you throw into the equation
that China is going to be demanding more supply from these entities, it
is going to lead to a higher price. I am not sure any of these
countries are worried about the U.S. consumer and what they have to pay
for transportation costs. I don't think they are responsive to the
needs of U.S. consumers. The United States might be responsive to our
own consumers if we were the owner of these companies, but we are not.
So this is about setting a national goal that recognizes the hardship
the American economy is going to encounter, and that we are going to be
under in the future if we continue to pay these prices. We might, in 10
years, be happy we were talking about $50 a barrel prices, if some of
the expectations of Wall Street come to pass--the predictions that we
could see superspikes and get to $100 a barrel. We are already feeling
the pain now. Americans are losing jobs, pensions, like the pensions of
transportation workers, where there are issues because of high fuel
costs; and people are curtailing economic activity because of high
transportation costs. We ought to take the Chinese part of the equation
and realize this goal needs to be set and we need to make it a reality,
just as we did to reach the goal of putting a man on the Moon.
My colleague from Tennessee is also on the floor. I want to give him
an opportunity to add whatever comments he wants to add about this.

Amendment No. 784

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I call up my amendment at the desk and
ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Washington [Ms. Cantwell] proposes an
amendment numbered 784.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To improve the energy security of the United States and
reduce United States dependence on foreign oil imports by 40 percent by
2025)

Beginning on page 120, strike line 23 and all that follows
through page 122, line 14, and insert the following:

SEC. 151. REDUCTION OF DEPENDENCE ON IMPORTED PETROLEUM.

(a) Findings.--Congress finds that--
(1) based on the reports of the Energy Information
Administration entitled ``Annual Energy Outlook 2005'' and
``May 2005 Monthly Energy Review''--
(A) during the period beginning January 1, 2005, and ending
April 30, 2005, the United States imported an estimated
average of 13,056,000 barrels of oil per day; and
(B) the United States is projected to import 19,110,000
barrels of oil per day in 2025;
(2) technology solutions already exist to dramatically
increase the productivity of the United States energy supply;
(3) energy efficiency and conservation measures can improve
the economic competitiveness of the United States and lessen
energy costs for families in the United States;
(4) United States dependence on foreign energy imports
leaves the United States vulnerable to energy supply shocks
and reliant on the willingness of other countries to provide
sufficient supplies of oil;
(5) while only 3 percent of proven oil reserves are located
in territory controlled by the United States, advances in
fossil fuel extraction techniques and technologies could
increase United States energy supplies; and
(6) reducing energy consumption also benefits the United
States by lowering the environmental impacts associated with
fossil fuel use.
(b) Goal.--It is a goal of the United States to reduce by
40 percent the amount of foreign oil projected to be imported
during calendar year 2025 in the reference case contained in
the report of the Energy Information Administration entitled
``Annual Energy Outlook 2005''.
(c) Measures To Reduce Import Dependence.--
(1) In general.--Not later than 1 year after the date of
enactment of this Act, and every two years thereafter, the
President shall--

[[Page S6621]]

(A) develop and implement measures to reduce dependence on
foreign petroleum imports of the United States by reducing
petroleum in end-uses throughout the economy of the United
States sufficient to reduce total demand for petroleum in the
United States by 1,000,000 barrels per day from the amount
projected for calendar year 2015; and
(B)(i) subject to clause (ii), develop and implement
measures to reduce dependence on foreign petroleum imports of
the United States by reducing petroleum in end-uses
throughout the economy of the United States sufficient to
reduce total demand for petroeum in the United States by
7,640,000 barrels per day from the amount projected for
calendar year 2025.
(ii) If the President determines that there are
insufficient legal authorities to achieve the target for
calendar year 2025 in clause (i), the President shall develop
and implement measures that will reduce dependence on foreign
petroleum imports of the United States by reducing petroleum
in end-uses throughout the economy of the United States to
the maximum extent practicable and shall submit to Congress
proposed legislation or other recommendations to achieve the
target.
(2) Requirements.--In developing measures under paragraph
(1), the President shall--
(A) ensure continued reliable and affordable energy for the
United States, consistent with the creation of jobs and
economic growth and maintaining the international
competitiveness of United States businesses, including the
manufacturing sector; and
(B) implement measures under paragraph (1) under existing
authorities of the appropriate Federal agencies, as
determined by the President.
(3) Projections.--The projections for total demand for
petroleum in the United States under paragraph (1) shall be
those contained in the Reference Case in the report of the
Energy Information Administration entitled ``Annual Energy
Outlook 2005''.
(d) Report.--
(1) In general.--Not later than 1 year after the date of
enactment of this Act, and annually thereafter, the President
shall submit to Congress a report, based on the most recent
edition of the Annual Energy Outlook published by the Energy
Information Administration, assessing the progress made by
the United States toward the goal of reducing dependence on
imported petroleum sources by 2025.
(2) Contents.--The report under paragraph (1) shall--
(A) identify the status of efforts to meet the goal
described in subsection (b);
(B) assess the effectiveness of any measure implemented
under subsection (c) during the previous fiscal year in
meeting the goal described in subsection (b); and
(C) describe plans to develop additional measures to meet
the goal.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know there are many Members who want
to speak. I ask unanimous consent that Senators Feinstein and Reid be
added as cosponsors of the legislation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following
the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Kerry be recognized to speak.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington for
her contribution to the debate today and for her contribution to the
debate in our committee process.
While it may seem like ``inside baseball'' to those outside the
Senate, the process here is very important. We don't get anywhere
unless we have some sort of consensus. That is the way this body
operates. So far, over the last several years, we have not had a
consensus on energy. I thought the Senator from Washington, at the
close of our committee markup proceedings a couple of weeks ago, made a
very important comment. She said this was a clean energy bill, but she
said it also was a clean process. She was referring to the fact that
both Senator Domenici, the Republican chairman, and Senator Bingaman,
the Democratic ranking member on the committee, have been working
together to try to identify areas of consensus.
Senator Domenici literally set out on that by going from office to
office on the Democratic side and on the Republican side to see what he
could do. We all had our say. We didn't all get our way in those
proceedings, but we had long hearings on gas, we had long hearings on
coal, and we had much discussion of renewable energy. In the end, we
reported to this body a piece of legislation with a vote of 21 to 1.
There was only one dissenting vote.
The Senator from Washington made an important contribution to that
discussion, as she did today, with her discussion of biodiesel, which
is a promising renewable fuel. It is in its infancy. We don't know how
far it will go. Biodiesel has only contributed about 2 percent of all
of the fuel we use in the United States today. We have to always
remember what a huge economy we have and how long and how much it takes
to turn it around. But she offered an amendment that the committee
adopted and which was included in the bill now before us. It has as
part of the mandate for use of renewable fuels biodiesel.
The Senate, by a large vote a few minutes ago included, I believe, an
8 billion gallon standard for renewable fuels. So she made an important
contribution. And the spirit of our discussion so far has been that we
recognize the urgency of the issue we are talking about, which is blue-
collar workers, homeowners, keeping jobs from moving overseas, and that
this is serious business and we need to get it right.
I will make some observations about the Senator's amendment. There
will be three observations. One is I respectfully suggest she has the
wrong goal for the near term. Two, I suggest the bill we have before us
actually presents an excellent, balanced approach toward what we need
to do. Three, I will reemphasize the importance of not just reducing
our dependence on oil, the growth of our dependence on oil in the
United States--that is the goal, I believe--but lowering the price of
natural gas for the benefit of blue-collar workers, homeowners, and
farmers. That is the point.
The Senator talked about President Kennedy and probably the most
celebrated goal of the last 100 years--certainly one of the most
celebrated in our history, and very much in keeping with the American
spirit and character. We are always setting high goals, such as
``anything is possible'' and ``all men are created equal'' and ``we
will pay any price and bear any burden to defend freedom.'' A lot of
our politics is about the disappointment of not reaching those goals.
In fact, most of American history is the story of setting high goals,
missing them, being disappointed, and recommitting ourselves to the
goals. But the goals we remember and the leaders we remember are the
ones who have challenged us within some reason. We used to have a
wonderful citizen of Tennessee named Chet Atkins, who played the
guitar. He may have been the best guitar player in the world. He always
said: In this life, you have to be mighty careful where you aim,
because you are likely to get there.
I don't think we would have remembered President Kennedy as well if
he had said in 1960 that we need to put a man on Mars by 1970, or a man
on Jupiter by 1970. President Kennedy didn't say that. That would have
been far outside of our reach. Our scientists knew that, but it was
within our reach to go to the Moon. He said that and challenged us, and
we figured out the details of doing it.
I suggest the goal of the Senator from Washington would be like
putting a man on Mars. It is out on another planet, it is somewhere out
there. It might be the right goal one day, but we have to go to the
Moon before we go to Mars. I suggest her goal is the wrong goal. The
Senator suggests that the United States, over the next 20 years, reduce
its dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent. That sounds pretty good,
like going to Mars might have sounded pretty good in 1960, but we would
never have gotten there. Let me try to put her goal in perspective.

She says get rid of 7.6. We use about 20 million barrels of oil a day
in the United States. It supplies about 40 percent of all of our
energy. The Energy Committee, including the Senator from Washington,
considered all of this, and we came to a consensus that we should look
for wherever the Moon might be in this goal. And we said: Let's save 1
million a day. Let's ask the President to save 1 million a day by the
year 2015, 1 million of that 20 million.
That million is a pretty big number. Drilling for oil in ANWR, which
we argued so heavily in this body, would produce about 1 million
barrels of oil a day. If I am not mistaken, if we were to adopt the
CAFE standards legislation that Senator Cantwell herself suggested in
earlier debates, that would have saved about 1 million barrels of oil a
day. But she is saying 7.6 million barrels of oil a day over the next
20 years.
I agree it might be possible to go higher than 1 million barrels of
oil a

[[Page S6622]]

day. Senator Johnson and I introduced the National Gas Price Reduction
Act of 2005 earlier this year. We had in that an oil savings amendment
of 1.75 million barrels of oil a day.
All these amendments direct the President to figure out a plan for
doing this and then to implement it. These are not just idle
suggestions.
I think there is a consensus in this body, certainly on this side and
that side of the aisle, and I might say, as Senator Bingaman mentioned,
we did not really vote Republican and Democrat in our committee
hearings. We had a lot of votes, but they generally split on our
individual views and regions, not whether we are a Republican or a
Democrat. I think there is still a consensus here. Of course, we want
to reduce the growth of our dependence on oil, but to say our goal
should be to reduce by 40 percent in 20 years our reliance on oil is
somewhere out on another planet, not within our reach.
Many of us have been reading very carefully the National Commission
on Energy Policy report called ``Ending the Energy Stalemate, A
Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Energy Challenges,'' that
includes within it a broad variety of people--Mr. Holdren, Bill Reilly,
Mr. Rowe from Exelon Corporation, a representative from the United
Steelworkers. We all read it, and I suppose we all like the parts we
agree with and try to agree with some things that may have changed our
mind. Here is what this commission report, which is an excellent
report, says about oil:

Over the last 30 years, the United States has sought to
improve oil security by promoting a greater diversity of
world oil suppliers, reducing domestic consumption through a
substantial increase in new passenger fuel economy between
1975 and 1987, and creating the largest dedicated strategic
petroleum reserve in the world. Due to these policies and as
a result of structural shifts, the U.S. economy today is less
oil-intensive and therefore less vulnerable to oil price
shocks than it was in 1970. The fact that oil imports have
nonetheless steadily increased since that time suggests that
calls for energy independence--while rhetorically seductive--
represent the wrong focus for the U.S. energy policy.

To try to get another example of the practical effect of the
amendment of the Senator from Washington, we asked the Energy
Department to take a look at it. Here is what they said. Remember, the
Cantwell energy security amendment calls for a 7.64-million-barrel-per-
day reduction in oil consumption over the next 20 years. EIA, the
Energy Information Administration, which looks at all these things,
estimated that by a combination of policies outside the transportation
sector, the upper limit of what we could do in this country would be 2
to 3 million barrels of oil per day.
So we take out 2 or 3 million barrels of oil a day and let's say that
leaves 4.5 million barrels oil per day. The Cantwell amendment would
require the President to, therefore, impose on the transportation
sector of our economy this achievement, and here is what it would
translate to in terms of a CAFE standard miles per gallon. It would
require a 78.6-mile-per-gallon CAFE standard. That is a 185-percent
increase over today's standard. And it would require 60.8 miles per
gallon for light trucks. That is a 174-percent increase.
I submit that is putting a man on Mars instead of a man on the Moon.
That is somewhere off on another planet and not anything that we could
reasonably do. The effect of enforcing that on the American economy
would be to destroy jobs and raise fuel prices and raise expectations
and disappoint the people who sent us here.
I much prefer the approach the committee bill takes that came out of
the committee 21 to 1, with a very broad consensus. I will admit, we
all recognized, when that came out, that we would reserve for debate on
the floor some of the more contentious issues, such as MTBE, global
warming, CAFE standards, and the size of the oil savings
amendment, about which we are talking today.

We said 1 million a day. That is what the committee could agree on. I
and Senator Johnson thought 1.75. Senator Cantwell is at 7.6, and that
is the wrong goal.
What would the right goal be? The right goal is to say, of course, we
want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It makes no sense
whatsoever for us to rely for so much of our oil on an area of the
world where men and women are getting blown up every day, including a
great many Americans. It makes no sense whatsoever.
So our goal should be this: Putting us on the path to a steady supply
of low-cost, adequate, American-produced clean energy--low-cost,
adequate supply of American-produced clean energy. As we do that, we
reduce our reliance on all oil. We reduce our reliance on oil not just
from around the world but from this country.
Here would be some of the things that are already underway in this
bill. As I mentioned, we just adopted an 8-billion-gallon requirement
for renewable fuels. Personally, I think that is a little high. That is
stretching the limit. I believe the House of Representatives is at 5.
Remember, only at 2 percent of all of our energy is renewable fuels. So
we have done that.
We have in our bill which is before the Senate research for biofuels,
about which the Senator from Washington talks. They are very important,
but they are minuscule at this time. We have a way to go. There are
some associated waste problems that occur with them, and there are
production problems about which we have to think. To produce large-
scale biodiesel fuel requires large areas of land. We have to think
about that as well. Clearly, we should do it in this bill, which
supports research for that.
If we are really serious about reducing our demand for overseas oil,
then we should start with efficiency and conservation in the United
States, both of oil and natural gas because they often come together.
And so the provisions in this legislation, twice as strong as last
year's Energy bill, provide for efficiency and conservation standards
for such items as appliance efficiency standards. It would avoid
building 45 natural gas powerplants of 500 megawatts each and save
billions of dollars.
This legislation also includes a 4-year national consumer education
program which, when used in California, helped produce a 10-percent cut
in peak demand. This is natural gas we are talking about. But we are
talking about conserving energy, and oil and gas often are found
together.
If we were to add a provision, as I tried to do in the committee, and
as I would welcome the Senator from Washington helping me do on the
floor as we debate this bill, to encourage utilities to use first the
electricity most efficiently produced from natural gas, we could save
and conserve even more. Add that to the oil savings amendment of 1
million barrels of oil per day, which is in our legislation, which is
about the same as the amount of oil produced onshore in the State of
Texas, and then add on top of the provisions that are in the Finance
Committee's mark that would continue the deduction for American
consumers to purchase hybrid, and I would hope advanced diesel vehicles
as well, that saves oil, that gives an incentive, that helps to change
the market in a very promising way without a mandate. If we include the
provision that is also in this legislation that supports discouraging
large trucks from running their motors all night long so they can have
their air-conditioning on and their TV on and their appliances on, one
may think that is a small potatoes item, but it is actually a big
potatoes item. Big trucks are a big part of our energy use in the
United States. They are a big part of our air pollution in the United
States. When we encourage them to plug into a battery instead of
leaving their trucks on, we are using less oil. All of this is a well-
balanced approach.
So it is my respectful suggestion that we remember President Kennedy
for saying, Let us go to the Moon. We would not remember him as well if
he had said, Let us put a man on Mars in 1970. I believe the committee
approach is the right goal and is the right balance and much more
realistic than the goal of the Senator from Washington State which,
according to the Energy Department, would produce a CAFE standard of 78
miles per gallon for cars and 60.8 miles per gallon for light trucks.
I conclude by making a general remark about natural gas and other
aspects of how we ought to be producing energy in this country. One
important part of it is American-produced. That is what the Senator
from Washington

[[Page S6623]]

is emphasizing with her amendment. Another important part is low cost.
Another important part is reliable and adequate supply.
We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world in the United States
of America. We spend $2,500 per person on it. Another important part is
clean air. This is not the clean air debate, but it is the debate that
will solve the clean air problem, in my opinion, because clean air and
clean energy are so intricately related.
The legislation that is before this Senate begins with conservation
and efficiency. That reduces our demand for oil, as well as natural
gas, and helps to lower prices at least of natural gas. It goes next to
increasing supply of natural gas, and I would say oil.
Listening to the Senator from Washington, she is saying we need to
reduce our demand for oil from overseas, and since it is unrealistic to
think we could save this much oil in that 20-year period of time, that
would suggest to me that she would be advocating a big increase in
supply of oil as well as natural gas from domestic sources in the
United States.
In the legislation that Senator Johnson and I offered, we recommended
that. It recommended that we look onshore and offshore for new supplies
of natural gas as well as oil in the Rocky Mountain area and offshore.
Well, that has been greeted with a very cold gaze by many Members of
this body, including some who have created objections to unanimous
consent agreements just to stop us from even considering increasing our
exploration for drilling the large amount of oil and gas that we have
just offshore, even though we could put the rigs far out to sea where
no one could see them.
It would seem to me as we are talking about oil savings, if we want
to keep prices down in the United States and keep jobs here, we need to
talk about oil and gas supply at the same time coming from the United
States. I did not hear very much about that.
We also need to hear more about LNG. I am speaking now of natural
gas, which is an essential part of this debate. Many in the Senate
often talk about gasoline prices. The truth is, as the Senator from
Washington accurately observed, there is a huge demand for oil. Prices
are going to stay up for the foreseeable future, that is the truth
about it in terms of gasoline, and we need to learn to reduce our use
of the oil. The one thing we can do is lower the cost of natural gas,
which is a big part of this bill. That affects millions of blue-collar
workers, millions of farmers, and tens of millions of homeowners.
We have gone from having the lowest priced natural gas to the highest
price natural gas, and this is outsourcing jobs, putting farmers out of
business, and making home heating and cooling prices too high.
If we are going to reduce the price and conservation does not do it,
the next best step is to import some from overseas. That goes directly
in the face of what the Senator is talking about to reduce our supply
of natural gas. If we do not import liquefied natural gas from
overseas, we are going to be exporting jobs from America to overseas.
So we can either import natural gas or export American jobs. We have to
be realistic in the near term in what we have to do.

I would hope that we could drill offshore and drill in the United
States and use the extensive amounts of natural gas we have and bring
down the price that way. But if we are not going to do it that way we
are going to have to bring it in from overseas at least for a while
until we have an alternative form of energy.
When we talk about alternative forms of energy, we often go to the
renewable fuels, and I will talk about those more in a moment. I am
just as excited about those as anybody. We have in Memphis a Sharp
plan, for example, that produces solar energy. They have exciting new
technologies. In the Oakridge National Laboratory we have a whole
division on renewable energy and renewable fuels. They have exciting
new technologies in solar. That is only 2 percent of our energy and 2
percent of our fuels. We have to be realistic about where we are going
from there.
Where are we going to get the energy we need that will create this
adequate supply of American-produced clean energy? After conservation,
after new supply, we have to come to nuclear power. I suggest if we
want to talk about American independence, we talk about nuclear power,
that we do what France is doing. They are 80 percent nuclear power. We
should do what Japan is doing. They are adding a nuclear powerplant
every year. We invented the technology. We have used it without
incident for more than half a century in our Navy. We produce 20
percent of our electricity today from nuclear power and 70 percent of
our carbon-free electricity comes from nuclear power.
So if we really want American-produced energy, we need to build
advanced nuclear powerplants so that we can have them at a cost that
makes us less reliant on oil and gas from overseas.
Waiting in the wings and right behind nuclear power is coal
gasification and carbon sequestration. I see the Senator from North
Dakota on the Senate floor. He has been a leader in that area for a
long time. He talks about it a lot and talks about it clearly. That
technology is not completely with us yet. We know how to do coal
gasification; that is, turn coal into gas and then gas into
electricity. That gets rid of mercury, nitrogen, and hydrogen by and
large. It still leaves carbon in the air, but there is a technology
called carbon sequestration. We are a few years away from that, but if
we accelerate research on carbon sequestration that would be a good
goal.
Then we can burn the coal we have in the United States, and we have a
400- or 500-year supply of it. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal.
Conservation plus our own supply of natural gas, plus nuclear power,
plus coal gasification and carbon sequestration would fuel this great
big economy.
One might ask, what does that have to do with automobiles? Well,
hopefully, by that time we will also have invested a lot of money in
research and development--not just for nuclear power, not just for
carbon sequestration, but also for hydrogen, which the Senator from
North Dakota is a leading spokesman for, and for fusion. When we get to
hydrogen and these hybrid cars that we see being driven around America
today--a gasoline engine with an electric engine, that is called a
hybrid--when that hybrid becomes an electric engine and a hydrogen
engine, then we have to have some way to make that hydrogen. We are
either going to import oil and gas from overseas as we are doing it
now, we are going to supply it from our own reserves, we are going to
conserve enough, we are going to make it from nuclear, or we are going
to make it from coal gasification.
I am glad we are having a debate about American energy independence.
Just as President Kennedy is remembered for having the right goal by
saying, Let us put a man on the Moon, and not for picking an
unrealistic goal in 1960 and saying, Let us put a man on Mars in 1970,
let's be realistic. Our bill stretches our country, causes us to aim
differently, and if adopted will transform the way we produce
electricity and will increase our independence on foreign sources of
gas and oil.
One last thought about renewable fuels, before I finish. We need to
keep that in perspective. If we were a small country, we might be able
to rely on renewable fuels or renewable energy, but we are not. We are
a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world. Stretch
as we might, for the foreseeable future we are going to have to rely on
conservation, on our own supplies of oil and gas, and, yes, on some oil
and gas from around the world. Then we are going to have to invest in
an incredibly aggressive way in advanced nuclear technology and
advanced coal gasification and carbon sequestration technology if we
are going to have a reliable, low-cost power of American-produced clean
energy.
I hope the Senate will prefer the committee report which was adopted
by 21 to 1, that includes a balanced approach to the right goal. I
would say it is more in keeping with President Kennedy's ``man on the
Moon'' goal. This is a ``man or woman on Mars'' goal, and maybe we will
get there one day, but it is unrealistic today. It would be disruptive
of jobs if you set a 78 mile per gallon CAFE standard for cars, a 185-
percent increase; a 60 mile per gallon standard for trucks, light
trucks, a 174-percent increase. I hope we will stick

[[Page S6624]]

with the consensus that passed 21 to 1, and one day we might also reach
this goal.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coburn). The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for
his comments and for his diligence in following energy policy both on
the committee and on the floor. I know he cares greatly about this
issue and has spent many hours on the details in various sections of
this legislation. I appreciate his interest and unique focus on clean
coal technology. He has great interest and knowledge about clean coal
technology, and has articulated his views about that numerous times.
I know my colleague from North Dakota is here so I want to give him
an opportunity to talk, but I want to respond. The 7 million barrels
reduction is an achievable goal. If you believe in the underlying
technology the Senator from Tennessee just discussed, which is the
various ways we can get to that goal, he and I are in agreement. Where
we seem to be in a disagreement is whether we want to set this goal. I
believe the American people deserve to have a goal set that is
achievable.
The underlying bill that says in 2015 we will be more dependent on
foreign oil than we are today doesn't seem the goal we should be
putting forth. While the committee passed that out of committee, we
knew we were going to come out here and discuss a variety of issues.
Now that we have the perspective of the entire bill with a lot of
different technology solutions, I would say it is time for the Senate
to be more bold about this.
I commend to my colleagues this report, ``Securing America; Solving
Our Oil Dependence Through Innovation.'' There are two different
organizations, the NRDC and the IAGCS, that basically outline in their
report how we can save close to 7 billion barrels of oil per day.
We have a submittal to the Record from the Committee on the Present
Danger, on our oil security. It, too, talks about how we can achieve
this goal and what some of the sources are.
I ask unanimous consent to have that printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

A Committee on the Present Danger Policy Paper: Oil and Security

(By George P. Shultz and R. James Woolsey)

SUMMARY

This paper could well be called, ``It's the Batteries,
Stupid.'' Four years ago, on the eve of 9/11, the need to
reduce radically our reliance on oil was not clear to many
and in any case the path of doing so seemed a long and
difficult one. Today both assumptions are being undermined by
the risks of the post-9/11 world and by technological
progress in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels.
We spell out below the risks of petroleum dependency,
particularly the vulnerability of the petroleum
infrastructure in the Middle East to terrorist attack--a
single well-designed attack could send oil to well over $100/
barrel and devastate the world's economy. That reality, among
other risks, and the fact that our current transportation
infrastructure is locked in to oil, should be sufficient to
convince any objective observer that oil dependence, today
creates serious and pressing dangers for the US and other
oil-importing nations.
We propose in this paper that the government vigorously
encourage and support at least six technologies: two types of
alternative fuels that are beginning to come into the market
(cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel derived from a wide range
of waste streams), two types of fuel efficient vehicles that
are now being sold to the public in some volume (hybrid
gasoline-electric and modern clean diesels), and one vehicle
construction technique, the use of manufactured carbon-carbon
composites, that is now being used for aircraft and racing
cars and is quite promising as a way of reducing vehicle
weight and fuel requirements while improving safety.
The sixth technology, battery improvement to permit ``plug-
in'' hybrid vehicles, will require some development--although
nothing like the years that will be required for hydrogen
fuel cells. It holds, however, remarkable promise. Improving
batteries to permit them, to be given an added charge when a
hybrid is garaged, ordinarily at night, can substantially
improve mileage, because it can permit hybrids to use battery
power alone for the first 10-30 miles. Since a great many
trips fall within this range this can improve the mileage of
a hybrid vehicle from, say, 50 mpg to over 100 mpg (of oil
products). Also, since the average residential electricity
cost is 8.5 cents/kwh (and in many areas, off-peak nighttime
cost is 2-4 cents/kwh) this means that much of a plug-in
hybrid's travel would be on the equivalent of 50 cent/gallon
gasoline (or, off-peak, on the equivalent of 12-25 cent/
gallon gasoline).
A plug-in hybrid averaging 125 mpg, if its fuel tank
contains 85 per cent cellulosic ethanol, would be obtaining
about 500 mpg. If it were constructed from carbon composites
the mileage could double, and, if it were a diesel and
powered by biodiesel derived from waste, it would be using no
oil products at all.
What are we waiting for?
There are at least seven major reasons why dependence on
petroleum and its products for the lion's share of the
world's transportation fuel creates special dangers in our
time. These dangers are all driven by rigidities and
potential vulnerabilities that have become serious problems
because of the geopolitical realities of the early 21st
century. Those who reason about these issues solely on the
basis of abstract economic models that are designed to ignore
such geopolitical realities will find much to disagree with
in what follows. Although such models have utility in
assessing the importance of more or less purely economic
factors in the long run, as Lord Keynes famously remarked:
``In the long run, we are all dead.''
These dangers in turn give rise to two proposed directions
for government policy in order to reduce our vulnerability
rapidly. In both cases we believe that existing technology
should be used, i.e. technology that is already in the market
or can be so in the very near future and that is compatible
with the existing transportation infrastructure. To this end
government policies in the United States and other oil-
importing countries should: (1) encourage a shift to
substantially more fuel-efficient vehicles, including
fostering battery development for plug-in hybrid vehicles;
and (2) encourage biofuels and other alternative fuels
that wherever possible can be derived from waste products.

PETROLEUM DEPENDENCE: THE DANGERS

This fact substantially increases the difficulty of
responding to oil price increases or disruptions in supply by
substituting other fuels.
There is a range of fuels that can be used to produce
electricity and heat and that can be used for other
industrial uses, but petroleum had its products dominate the
fuel market for vehicular transportation. With the important
exception, described below, of a plug-in version of the
hybrid gasoline/electric vehicle, which will allow recharging
hybrids from the electricity grid, substituting other fuels
for petroleum in the vehicle fleet as a whole has generally
required major, time-consuming, and expensive infrastructure
changes. One exception has been some use of liquifed natural
gas (LNG) and other fuels for fleets of buses or delivery
vehicles, although not substantially for privately-owned
ones, and the use of corn-derived ethanol mixed with gasoline
in proportions up to 10 per cent ethanol (``gasohol'') in
some states. Neither has appreciably affected petroleum's
dominance of the transportation fuel market.
Although there are imaginative proposals for transitioning
to other fuels, such as hydrogen to power automotive fuel
cells, this would require major infrastructure investment and
restructuring. If privately-owned fuel cell vehicles were to
be capable of being readily refueled, this would require
reformers (equipment capable of reforming, say, natural gas
into hydrogen) to be located at filling stations, and for
natural gas to be available there as a hydrogen feed-stock.
So, not only would fuel cell development and technology for
storing hydrogen on vehicles need to be further developed,
but the automobile industry's development and production of
fuel cells also would need to be coordinated with the energy
industry's deployment of reformers and the fuel for them.
Moving toward automotive fuel cells thus requires us to
face a huge question of pace and coordination of large-scale
changes by both the automotive and energy industries. This
poses a sort of industrial Alphonse and Gaston dilemma: who
goes through the door first? (If, instead, it were decided
that existing fuels such as gasoline were to be reformed into
hydrogen on board vehicles instead of at filling stations,
this would require on-board reformers to be developed and
added to the fuel cell vehicles themselves--a very
substantial undertaking.)
It is because of such complications at the National
Commission on Energy Policy concluded in its December, 2004,
report ``Ending The Energy Stalemate'' (``ETES'') that
``hydrogen offers little to no potential to improve oil
security and reduce climate change risks in the next twenty
years.'' (p. 72)
To have an impact on our vulnerabilities within the next
decade or two, any competitor of oil-derived fuels will need
to be compatible with the existing energy infrastructure and
require only modest additions or amendments to it.
2. The Greater Middle East will continue to be the low-cost
and dominant petroleum producer for the foreseeable future.
Home of around two-thirds of the world's proven reserves of
conventional oil--45% of it in just Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and
Iran--the Greater Middle East will inevitably have to meet a
growing percentage of world oil demand. This demand is
expected to increase by more than 50 per cent in the next two
decades, from 78 million barrels per day (``MBD'') in 2002 to
118 MBD in 2025, according to the federal Energy Information
Administration. Much of this will come from expected demand
growth in China and India. One need not argue that world oil
production

[[Page S6625]]

has peaked to see that this puts substantial strain on the
global oil system. It will mean higher prices and potential
supply disruptions and will put considerable leverage in the
hands of governments in the Greater Middle East as well as in
those of other oil-exporting states which have not been
marked recently by stability and certainty: Russia,
Venezuela, and Nigeria, for example (ETES pp. 1-2). Deep-
water drilling and other opportunities for increases in
supply of conventional oil may provide important increases in
supply but are unlikely to change this basic picture.
Even if other production comes on line, e.g. from
unconventional sources such as tar sands in Alberta or shale
in the American West, their relatively high cost of
production could permit low-cost producers, particularly
Saudi Arabia, to increase production, drop prices for a time,
and undermine the economic viability of the higher-cost
competitors, as occurred in the mid-1980's. For the
foreseeable future, as long as vehicular transportation is
dominated by oil as it is today, the Greater Middle East, and
especially Saudi Arabia, will remain in the driver's seat.
3. The petroleum infrastructure is highly vulnerable to
terrorist and other attacks.
The radical Islamist movement, including but not
exclusively al Qaeda, has on a number of occasions explicitly
called for worldwide attacks on the petroleum infrastructre
and has carried some out in the Greater Middle East. A more
well-planned attack than what has occurred to date--such as
that set out in the opening pages of Robert Baer's recent
book, Sleeping With the Devil, (terrorists flying an aircraft
into the unique sulfur-cleaning towers in northeastern Saudi
Arabia)--could take some six million barrels per day off the
market for a year or more, sending petroleum prices sharply
upward to well over $100/barrel and severely damaging much of
the world's economy. Domestic infrastructure in the West is
not immune from such disruption. U.S. refineries, for
example, are concentrated in a few places, principally the
Gulf Coast. The recent accident in the Texas City refinery--
producing multiple fatalities--points out potential
infrastuture vulnerabilities. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline has
been subject to several amateurish attacks that have taken it
briefly out of commission; a seriously planned attack on it
could be far more devastating.
In view of these overall infrastructure vulnerabilities we
do not suggest that policy should focus exclusively on
petroleum imports, although such infrastructure
vulnerabilities are likely to be the most severe in the
Greater Middle East. It is there that terrorists have the
easiest access and the largest proportion of proven oil
reserves, and low-cost production are also located there. Nor
do we hold the view that by changing trade patterns anything
particularly is accomplished. To a first approximation there
is one worldwide oil market and it is not generally useful
for the U.S., for example, to import less from the Greater
Middle East and for others then to import more from there. In
effect, all of us oil-importing countries are in this
together.
4. The possibility exists particularly under regimes that
could come to power in the Greater Middle East, of embargoes
or other disruptions of supply.
It is often said that whoever governs the oil-rich nations
of the Greater Middle East will need to sell their oil. This
is not true, however, if the rulers choose to try to live,
for most purposes, in the Seventh century. Bin Laden has
advocated, for example, major reductions in oil production.
In 1979 there was a serious attempted coup in Saudi Arabia.
Much of what the outside world saw was the seizure by
Islamist fanatics of the Great Mosque in Mecca, but the
effort was more widespread. Even if one is optimistic that
democracy and the rule of law will spread in the Greater
Middle East and that this will lead after a time to more
peaceful and stable societies there, it is undeniable that
there is substantial risk that for some time the region will
be characterized by chaotic change and unpredictable
governmental behavior. Reform, particularly if it is
hesitant, has in a number of cases been trumped by radical
takeovers (Jacobins, Bolsheviks). There is no reason to
believe that the Greater Middle East is immune from these
sorts of historic risks.
5. Wealth transfers from oil have been used, and continue
to be used, to fund terrorism and its ideological support.
Estimates of the amount spent by the Saudis in the last 30
years spreading Wahhabi beliefs throughout the world vary
from $70 billion to $100 billion. Furthermore, some oil-rich
families of the Greater Middle East fund terrorist groups
directly. The spread of Wahhabi doctrine--fanatically hostile
to Shi'ite and Suffi Muslims, Jews, Christians, women,
modernity, and much else--plays a major role with respect to
Islamist terrorist groups: a role similar to that played by
angry German nationalism with respect to Nazism in the
decades after World War I. Not all angry German nationalists
became Nazis and not all those schooled in Wahhabi beliefs
become terrorists, but in each case the broader doctrine of
hatred has provided the soil in which the particular
totalitarian movement has grown. Whether in lectures in the
madrassas of Pakistan, in textbooks printed by Wahhabis for
Indonesian schoolchildren, or on bookshelves of mosques in
the U.S., the hatred spread by Wahhabis and funded by oil is
evident and influential.
It is sometimes contended that we should not seek
substitutes for oil because disruption of the flow of funds
to the Greater Middle East could further radicalize the
population of some states there. The solution, however,
surely lies in helping these states diversify their economies
over time, not in perpetually acquiescing to the economic
rent they collect from oil exports and to the uses to which
these revenues are put.
6. The Current Account deficits for a number of countries
create risks ranging from major world economic disruption to
deepening poverty, and could be substantially reduced by
reducing oil imports.
The U.S., in essence, borrows about $13 billion per week,
principally now from major Asian states, to finance its
consumption. The single largest category of imports is the
$2-3 billion per week borrowed to import oil. The
accumulating debt increases the risk of a flight from the
dollar or major increases in interest rates. Any such
development could have major negative economic consequences
for both the U.S. and its trading partners.
For developing nations, the service of debt is a major
factor in their continued poverty. For many, debt is heavily
driven by the need to import oil that at today's oil prices
cannot be paid for by sales of agricultural products,
textiles, and other typical developing nation exports.
If such deficits are to be reduced, however, say by
domestic production of substitutes for petroleum, this should
be based on recognition of real economic value such as waste
cleanup, soil replenishment, or other tangible benefits.
7. Global warming gas emissions from manmade sources create
at least the risk of climate change.
Although the point is not universally accepted, the weight
of scientific opinion suggests that global warming gases
(GWG) produced by human activity form one important component
of potential climate change. Oil products used in
transportation provide a major share of U.S. manmade global
warming gas emissions.

THREE PROPOSED DIRECTIONS FOR POLICY

The above considerations suggest that government policies
with respect to the vehicular transportation market should
point in the following directions:
1. Encourage improved vehicle mileage, using technology now
in production.
Three currently available technologies stand out to improve
vehicle mileage.
Diesels
First, modern diesel vehicles are coming to be capable of
meeting rigorous emission standards (such as Tier 2 standards
being introduced into the U.S., 2004-08). In this context it
is possible without compromising environmental standards to
take advantage of diesels' substantial mileage advantage over
gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines.
Substantial penetration of diesels into the private vehicle
market in Europe is one major reason why the average fleet
mileage of such new vehicles is 42 miles per gallon in Europe
and only 24 mpg in the U.S. Although the U.S. has, since
1981, increased vehicle weight by 24 percent and horsepower
by 93 percent, it has essentially improved mileage not at all
in that near-quarter century (even though in the 12 years
from 1975 to 1987 the U.S. improved the mileage of new
vehicles from 15 to 26 mpg).
Hybrid Gasoline-Electric
Second, hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles now on the market
show substantial fuel savings over their conventional
counterparts. The National Commission on Energy Policy found
that for the four hybrids on the market in December 2004 that
had exact counterpart models with conventional gasoline
engines, not only were mileage advantages quite significant
(10-15 mpg) for the hybrids, but in each case the horsepower
of the hybrid was higher than the horsepower of the
conventional vehicle. (ETES p. 11) If automobile companies
wish to market hybrids by emphasizing hotter performance
rather than fuel conservation they can do so, consistent with
the facts.
Light-Weight Carbon Composite Construction
Third, constructing vehicles with inexpensive versions of
the carbon fiber composites that have been used for years for
aircraft construction can substantially reduce vehicle weight
and increase fuel efficiency while at the same time making
the vehicle considerably safer than with current construction
materials. This is set forth thoroughly in the 2004 report of
the Rocky Mountain Institute's Winning the Oil Endgame
(``WTOE''). Aerodynamic design can have major importance as
well. This breaks the traditional tie between size and
safety. Much lighter vehicles, large or small, can be
substantially more fuel-efficient and also safer. Such
composite use has already been used for automotive
construction in Formula 1 race cars and is now being adopted
by BMW and other automobile companies. The goal is mass-
produced vehicles with 80% of the performance of hand-layup
aerospace composites at 20% of the cost. Such construction is
expected to approximately double the efficiency of a normal
hybrid vehicle without materially affecting manufacturing
cost. (WTOE 64-66).
2. Encourage the commercialization of alternative
transportation fuels that can be available soon, are
compatible with existing infrastructure, and can be derived
from waste or otherwise produced cheaply.
Biomass Ethanol
The use of ethanol produced from corn in the U.S. and sugar
cane in Brazil has given

[[Page S6626]]

birth to the commercialization of an alternative fuel that is
coming to show substantial promise, particularly as new
feedstocks are developed. Some six million vehicles in the
U.S. and all vehicles in Brazil other than those that use
solely ethanol are capable of using ethanol in mixtures of up
to 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (E-85); these
re called Flexible Fuel Vehicles (``FFV'') and require,
compared to conventional vehicles, only a somewhat different
kind of material for the fuel line and a differently
programmed computer chip. The cost of incorporating this
feature in new vehicles is trivial. Also, there are no large-
scale changes in infrastructure required for ethanol use. It
may be shipped in tank cars, and mixing it with gasoline is a
simple matter.
Although human beings have been producing ethanol, grain
alcohol, from sugar and starch for millennia, it is only in
recent years that the genetic engineering of biocatalysts has
made possible such production from the hemicellulose and
cellulose that constitute the substantial majority of the
material in most plants. The genetically engineered material
is in the biocatalyst only; there is no need for genetically
modified plants. Typically the organism that is engineered to
digest the C5 sugars freed by the hydrolization of the
hemicellulose also produces the enzymes that hydrolyze the
cellulose.
These developments may be compared in importance to the
invention of thermal and catalytic cracking of petroleum in
the first decades of the 20th century--processes which made
it possible to use a very large share of petroleum to make
gasoline rather than the tiny share that was available at the
beginning of the century. For example, with such genetically-
engineered biocatalysts, it is not only grains of corn but
corn cobs and most of the rest of the corn plant that may be
used to make ethanol.
Such biomass, or cellulosic, ethanol is now likely to see
commercial production begin first in a facility of the
Canadian company, Iogen, with backing from Shell Oil, at a
cost of around $1.30/gallon. The National Renewable Energy
Laboratory estimates costs will drop to around $1.07/gallon
over the next five years, and the Energy Commission estimates
a drop in costs to 67-77 cents/gallon when the process is
fully mature (ETES p. 75). The most common feedstocks will
likely be agricultural wastes, such as rice straw, or natural
grasses such as switchgrass, a variety of prairie grass that
is often planted on soil bank land to replenish the soil's
fertility. There will be decided financial advantages in
using as feedstocks any wastes which carry a tipping fee (a
negative cost) to finance disposal: e.g. waste paper, or rice
straw, which cannot be left in the fields after harvest
because of its silicon content.
Old or misstated data are sometimes cited for the
proposition that huge amounts of land would have to be
introduced into cultivation or taken away from food
production in order to have such biomass available for
cellulosic ethanol production. This is incorrect. The
National Commission on Energy Policy reported in December
that, if fleet mileage in the U.S. rises to 40 mpg--somewhat
below the current European Union fleet average for new
vehicles of 42 mpg and well below the current Japanese
average of 47 mpg--then as switchgrass yields improve
modestly to around 10 tons/acre it would take only 30 million
acres of land to produce sufficient cellulosic ethanol to
fuel half the U.S. passenger fleet. (ETES pp. 76-77). By way
of calibration, this would essentially eliminate the need for
oil import for passenger vehicle fuel and would require only
the amount of land now in the soil bank (the Conservation
Reserve Program (``CRP'') on which such soil-restoring
crops as switchgrass are already being grown. Practically
speaking, one would probably use for ethanol production
only a little over half of the soil bank lands and add to
this some portion of the plants now grown as animal feed
crops (for example, on the 70 million acres that now grow
soybeans for animal feed). In short, the U.S. and many
other countries should easily find sufficient land
available for enough energy crop cultivation to make a
substantial dent in oil use. (Id.)
There is also a common and erroneous impression that
ethanol generally requires as much energy to produce as one
obtains from using it and that its use does not substantially
reduce global warming gas emissions. The production and use
of ethanol merely recycles in a different way the
CO<inf>2</inf> that has been fixed by plants in the
photosynthesis process. It does not release carbon that would
otherwise stay stored underground, as occurs with fossil fuel
use, but when starch, such as corn, is used for ethanol
production much energy, including fossil-fuel energy, is
consumed in the process of fertilizing, plowing, and
harvesting. Even starch-based ethanol, however, does reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by around 30 percent. Because so
little energy is required to cultivate crops such as
switchgrass for cellulosic ethanol production, and because
electricity can be co-produced using the residues of such
cellulosic fuel production, reductions in green-house gas
emissions for cellulosic ethanol when compared to gasoline
are greater than 100 percent. The production and use of
cellulosic ethanol is, in other words, a carbon sink. (ETES
p. 73)
Biodiesel
The National Commission on Energy Policy pointed out some
of the problems with most current biodiesel ``produced from
rapeseed, soybean, and other vegetable oils--as well as . . .
used cooking oils.'' It said that these are ``unlikely to
become economic on a large scale'' and that they could
``cause problems when used in blends higher than 20 percent
in older diesel engines''. It added that ``waste oil is
likely to contain impurities that give rise of undesirable
emissions.'' (ETES p. 75)
The Commission notes, however, that biodiesel is generally
``compatible with existing distribution infrastructure'' and
outlines the potential of a newer process (``thermal
depolymerization'') that produces biodiesel without the above
disadvantages from ``animal offal, agricultural residues,
municipal solid waste, sewage, and old tires''. It points to
the current use of this process at a Conagra turkey
processing facility in Carthage, Missouri, where a ``20
million commercial-scale facility'' is beginning to convert
turkey offal into ``a variety of useful products, from
fertilizer to low-sulfur diesel fuel'' at a potential average
cost of ``about 72 cents per gallon.'' (ETES p. 77)
Other Alternative Fuels
Progress has been made in recent years on utilizing not
only coal but slag from strip mines, via gasification, for
conversion into diesel fuel using a modern version of the
gasified-coal-to-diesel process used in Germany during World
War II.
Qatar has begun a large-scale process of converting natural
gas to diesel fuel.
Outside the realm of conventional oil, the tar sands of
Alberta and the oil shale of the Western U.S. exist in huge
deposits, the exploitation of which is currently costly and
accompanied by major environmental difficulties, but both
definitely hold promise for a substantial increases in oil
supply.
Plug-In Hybrids and Battery Improvements
A modification to hybrids could permit them to become
``plug-in-hybrids,'' drawing power from the electricity grid
at night and using all electricity for short trips. The
``vast majority of the most fuel-hungry trips are under six
miles'' and ``well within the range'' of current (nickel-
metal hydride) batteries' capacity, according to Huber and
Mills (The Bottomless Well, 2005, p. 84). Other experts,
however, emphasize that whether with existing battery types
(2-5 kwh capacity) or with the emerging (and more capable)
lithium batteries, it is important that any battery used in a
plug-in hybrid be capable of taking daily charging without
being damaged and be capable of powering the vehicle at an
adequate speed. By most assessments some battery development
will be necessary in order for this to be the case. Such
development should have the highest research and development
priority because it promises to revolutionize transportation
economics and to have a dramatic effect on the problems
caused by oil dependence.
With a plug-in hybrid vehicle one has the advantage of an
electric car, but not the disadvantage. Electric cars cannot
be recharged if their batteries run down at some spot away
from electric power. But since hybrids have tanks containing
liquid fuel (gasoline and/or ethanol, diesel and/or
biodiesel) plug-in hybrids have no such disadvantage.
Moreover the attractiveness to the consumer of being able to
use electricity from overnight charging for a substantial
share of the day's driving is stunning. The average
residential price of electricity in the U.S. is about 8.5
cents/kwh, one-quarter the cost of $2/gallon gasoline. So
powering one's vehicle with electricity purchased at such
rates is roughly the equivalent of being able to buy gasoline
at 50 cents/gallon instead of the more than $2/gallon that it
presently costs in the U.S. Moreover, many utilities sell
off-peak power for 2-4 cents/kwh--the equivalent of 12-to-25
cents/gallon gasoline. (Id. p. 83) Given the burdensome cost
imposed by current fuel prices on commuters and others who
need to drive substantial distances, the possibility of
powering one's family vehicle with fuel that can cost as
little as one-twentieth of today's gasoline (in the U.S.
market) should solve rapidly the question whether there would
be public interest in and acceptability of plug-in hybrids.
Although the use of off-peak power for plug-in hybrids
should not initially require substantial new investments in
electricity generation, greater reliance on electricity for
transportation should lead us to look particularly to the
security of the electricity grid. In the U.S. the 2002 report
of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and
Medicine (``Making the Nation Safer'') emphasized
particularly the need to improve the security of transformers
and of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
systems in the face of terrorist threats. The National
Commission on Energy Policy has seconded those concerns. With
or without the advent of plug-in hybrids, these electricity
grid vulnerabilities require urgent attention.

Conclusion

The dangers from oil dependence in today's world require us
both to look to ways to reduce demand for oil and to increase
supply of transportation fuel by methods beyond the increase
of oil production.
The realistic opportunities for reducing demand soon
suggest that government policies should encourage hybrid
gasoline-electric vehicles, particularly the battery
developments needed to bring plug-in versions thereof to the
market, and modern diesel technology. The realistic
opportunities for increasing supply of transportation fuel
soon suggest that government policies should encourage the
commercialization of alternative fuels that can be used in
the existing

[[Page S6627]]

infrastructure: cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel. Both of
these fuels could be introduced more quickly and efficiently
if they achieve cost advantages from the utilization of waste
products as feedstocks.
The effects of these policies are multiplicative. All
should be pursued since it is impossible to predict which
will be fully successful or at what pace, even though all are
today either beginning commercial production or are nearly to
that point. The battery development for plug-in hybrids is of
substantial importance and should for the time being replace
the current r&d emphasis on automotive hydrogen fuel cells.
If even one of these technologies is moved promptly into
the market, the reduction in oil dependence could be
substantial. If several begin to be successfully introduced
into large-scale use, the reduction could be stunning. For
example, a 50-mpg hybrid gasoline/electric vehicle, on the
road today, if constructed from carbon composites would
achieve around 100 mpg. If it were to operate on 85 percent
cellulosic ethanol or a similar proportion of biodiesel fuel,
it would be achieving hundreds of miles per gallon of
petroleum-derived fuel. If it were a plug-in version
operating on upgraded lithium batteries so that 20-30 mile
trips could be undertaken on its overnight charge before it
began utilizing liquid fuel at all, it could be obtaining in
the range of 1000 mpg (of petroleum).
A range of important objectives--economic, geopolitical,
environmental--would be served by our embarking on such a
path. Of greatest importance, we would be substantially more
secure.

Ms. CANTWELL. There are lots of third parties saying we can achieve
this goal. I want to bet on the American ingenuity that is outlined in
this bill, and other American ingenuity, that we can achieve what it
takes to get there. So I am not afraid of setting this goal. I am glad
third parties are validating that we can achieve it.
My colleague wants to say this is about putting a man on Mars or
something of that nature. I can tell you, the American people are right
here on planet Earth and paying $2.36 or close to it for gasoline in
Seattle, and that is too high. What Americans want is relief. What they
know they will not get is relief from language that says we are going
to be more dependent in 2015 than we are today. They want us to set a
goal to get off that overdependence because, frankly, there is not true
competition on oil prices. That is to say when Americans have no
alternative fuel at the pump and they have to pay that price, there is
no true competition. So Americans want to get off that overdependence.
That is what the amendment says and that is what we want to achieve by
2025, 20 years from now.
With all the myriad technology in the legislation and all the
technology we can create between now and then, let's reverse the trend
and be less dependent on foreign oil in 2025 than we are today. That
seems to be a national goal on which everyone in this body ought to be
able to agree. We should not be afraid of the underlying bill and the
great work that has been done by my colleagues. I cannot say who the
ultimate winners and losers will be. My colleague has spoken about new
nuclear technology, he has talked about natural gas--there will be many
ways. But I know if we set this goal and tell the American people they
are not going to be strangled by high energy costs moving forward maybe
up to $100 a barrel, then we will actually achieve that goal. But our
underlying language right now does not get us there. So I hope we will
embrace the bipartisan effort that the Senate committee had and work
together on this to set a goal we will be proud of, in the sense of
reversing the trend so we are not in 2015 being more dependent on
foreign oil, but in 2025 being less dependent on foreign oil.
I yield the floor to the Senator from North Dakota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Let me thank my colleague from the State of Washington. I
think she has offered an amendment that is worthy of the kind of
significant debate we should be having about energy. I recognize that
tomorrow's newspapers will not likely include this discussion on the
front page. I was watching the television programs last Sunday,
including one with perhaps one of the most esteemed columnists in this
country, one of the best, in my judgment, David Broder. They were
talking about the majority party and Democrats and the political
differences. David Broder observed that the Democrats need to come
forward with a positive agenda--with an agenda. What is their agenda?
The fact is, people don't cover positive news. You can be on the
floor all day with an agenda and they will not cover it. This will not
be on the front page of the paper tomorrow.
On the front page today is Michael Jackson. His attorney says he has
agreed to end the behavior that got him into such trouble.
A new ``Batman'' movie, I noticed on the front page.
The Lakers have hired a new coach. That is on the front page of the
newspaper.
I don't think this debate will make the front page and that is
regrettable, because this is a big issue. This is an important issue.
The question is, are we going to set goals as a country and aspire to
achieve those goals? There is an old saying that if you do not care
where you are going, you are never going to be lost. Where are we going
with respect to energy? We know that 60 percent of our oil comes from
off our shores--60 percent from off our shores.
I asked the Energy Department officials one day when they came before
the Energy Committee: We talk a lot about 50 years from now, like what
will be the consequences of the Social Security financing system 50
years and 75 years from now. Then I asked these officials to tell me
what their plan is 50 years from now with respect to energy usage and
energy supply. You would have thought I hit him with a baseball bat.
They did not have the foggiest idea. They don't have a 50-year plan for
energy. We know that 60 percent of our oil now comes from off our
shores, much of it from troubled parts of the world. Yet here we are,
blissfully moving along, buying one big vehicle after another.

In fact, pull up to the next stoplight and pull beside a humvee; that
is about 6,500 pounds--I will get a letter from the humvee folks, I
suppose--6,000 pounds or so. I am sure it gets single-digit gas
mileage. I never took Latin, but I think of the Latin term ``totus
porcus'' whenever I pull up next to a humvee. Someone told me it means
whole hog. Here we are, blissfully moving along, driving our humvees,
driving our SUVs, understanding that the question of whether we
continue to have an oil and gas supply in this country is not up to us,
it is up to the generosity of others, their willingness to pump it,
their willingness to sell it, and the question of, at what price do
they sell it to this country.
I want to tell a story. Late one evening, I was in the old Air Force
One, the old 707 used by President George Bush, the first. That plane
was retired and is now in a museum. But that old Air Force One is the
airplane that carried John F. Kennedy's body from Dallas, TX, to
Andrews Air Force Base the night that he was shot. It is a great old
airplane. One of the last trips made in that old Air Force One was to
Asia. I was on that trip. Senator John Glenn was on the trip and about
two or three other Senators. We were going to China and Vietnam and a
couple of other places to talk to foreign leaders.
Late that night, in the dark, in the front cabin which the President
would have used when it was Air Force One, we began talking as we were
sitting around, as colleagues do. I asked John Glenn about his space
flight because I was a young boy listening to the radio with rapt
attention when I heard that John Glenn circled the Earth. I asked him
questions about it. What was it like going up in that space capsule and
being the first American to orbit the Earth? He leaned forward, and for
the first time he began talking about that flight to us.
One of the things he told us I never have forgotten. As he crossed
from the light side of the Earth to the dark side of the Earth--some of
you might remember that all of the citizens of Perth, Australia,
decided to turn on all of their lights so that when this human being in
some small little capsule called Friendship 7 orbited over the dark
side, Perth, Australia, wanted to shine all their lights up so that
John Glenn could see them. And John Glenn told us that night, sitting
in that old Air Force One cabin, flying across the Pacific, he told us
that he looked down on the dark side, and the only thing he could see
on that path around were the lights of Perth, Australia.
Think of that. This big old planet of ours, with 6 billion people,
that spins around the Sun, we have a human

[[Page S6628]]

being for the first time orbit the Earth. He looked down on the dark
side and saw the product of the light switches turned on by all those
citizens in that community in Australia. The only evidence on the dark
side of the Earth that John Glenn could see as he orbited the Earth was
the product of energy--light.
We take energy for granted every single morning. We wake up, we flip
the switch on, and it is energy at our fingertips. We put our key in
the ignition, we turn the ignition on, and it is energy at our
fingertips. We turn on the air conditioner or the heater, it is energy
at our fingertips. We take it for granted. The story John Glenn told
describes that the human condition in this country depends a lot on the
availability of energy.
What has the Senator from Washington said today? She said: Let's have
a big idea. I am pleased to support this amendment and to come over and
speak about this amendment because this is a big idea. It says: Let's
set a goal. Let's set a target, a timetable. I know there will be some,
and there are some, who say it shouldn't be done, won't be done, can't
be done, can't be done, can't be done. I understand these comments.
That is always the case.

In my little old hometown, we had a guy named Grampy. His reaction to
everything was, it can't be done. He always supported it after it was
done, but he always said, it can't be done. While he was saying it
can't be done, the other folks in my little hometown were doing it, out
making it happen.
This country has a responsibility at this intersection, at this time,
at this moment, to decide on a different energy future. We cannot hold
this country hostage by being dependent on 60 percent of our oil from
troubled parts of the world.
I talk a lot about trade. In part, this is a trade issue. We use
nearly 21 million barrels of oil a day. The Saudis suck that oil out of
the sands. They are blessed with a lot of oil under their sands. Then
the oil comes over here, and we say, well, go ahead and fill her up
over here and we will just give you a credit card. By the way, our
folks will pay for it later. That is exactly what happens because that
is how we get a $640 billion trade deficit--which, by the way, next
year we are on the path--for the first 4 months of this year--we are on
the path to exceed $750 billion in trade deficit next year. This is
just one construct of that transaction, saying: Suck the oil out of the
sand, send it over here, and we will pay later. It is like going to the
gas station saying: Fill it up, here is a plastic card. We will not pay
now, we will pay later.
This cannot continue. What if, God forbid, we woke up and discovered
our oil supplies from Iraq, from Saudi Arabia, from Kuwait, from
Venezuela, from any other country around the world, were gone. If that
happened, I guarantee this economy will be belly up immediately. We
cannot exist as a world class economy, we cannot exist, without this
supply of energy.
What about this energy? We are hopelessly addicted to oil. When you
have an addiction, the best way to deal with an addiction is to have an
intervention. My colleague from Washington is saying let's have an
intervention. Let's decide the future has to be different from the
past. She says let's propose a big idea. I support that, as do many of
my colleagues. Let's really have a big idea. Let's decide to reduce our
dependence on foreign oil in the next 20 years by 40 percent.
Some say it can't be done. Well, we decided to go to the Moon. We did
it in 10 years. We cannot do this in 20? Don't underestimate the
American people. Of course, we can do this in 20 years.
I will go through a list of technologies, and my colleague from
Tennessee listed some, but there are a lot of hopeful things on the
horizon. Those things alone will not solve this issue. We have to be
more aggressive, much more aggressive, by setting timetables.
Those who are pilots, they understand what I mean when I say you set
waypoints when you are in the airplane. You get in the cockpit and
decide where you are going to fly and you set waypoints and fly to a
waypoint. We need to set targets, waypoints. Where do we want to be?
How do you measure where you are if you do not have a discussion about
where you want to be?
That is what this amendment is about. It is not about 80-mile-per-
gallon CAFE standards or 50-mile-per-gallon CAFE standards. It is not
about that at all. It is about whether this country collectively will
decide that when it is dependent on something, dangerously dependent on
something that it must shed its dependency on, whether we will make the
decision to stop that dependency. Will it make a bold decision to stop
the direction we are heading, turn it around, and back off?
I don't know the answer to that. We will find out at some point. If
anyone happens to be listening with respect to reporting on positive
agendas, I would say here is an example of a positive agenda, a
positive idea, a big idea. Big and bold. Risky? I don't know. I know
the riskiest proposition for this country. By far, the riskiest
proposition for this country is to keep doing what we are doing and be
dependent and held hostage to 60 percent of our oil coming from outside
of our country.
Those who have studied economics, and I have studied and taught
economics--probably not very well--but you will recognize the doctrine
of comparative advantage. It was a simple doctrine. The doctrine of
comparative advantage is, and the example traditionally used is, it is
easier to produce wool through sheep in England and to grow grapes and
wine in Portugal. It makes more sense, is more efficient to do both in
England and Portugal, and then the English can ship their wool to
Portugal, and Portugal can ship their wine to England, and they have
traded. They have each produced what is to their advantage. The English
raise sheep, get the wool; the Portuguese raise grapes, make the wine;
and you simply trade wool for wine. It is a very simple construct, the
doctrine of comparative advantage.

That is not what this issue is about. The issue of energy has nothing
to do with the doctrine of comparative advantage. The advantage here is
not comparative. The advantage here is that in the Middle East you have
a massive amount of oil under the sands. It is pulled up less
expensively there than any place else in the world. A few people sit on
massive reserves of oil. And we have become addicted to its supply. As
a result of that, instead of getting ourselves out of a hole, we are
still busy with shovels continuing to dig.
We need to find a way and develop a goal that says at a certain point
this country's future is no longer dependent on someone else providing
for us the oil we need. We need to do that. Is it hard? Sure, it is
hard, absolutely. This is not an easy thing to do. But do we have a
choice? I do not think so. I do not believe we have a choice.
My colleague described a number of technologies that are being
discussed these days. Let me describe a few of them.
Wind. Does anybody here understand how much more efficient the new
wind turbines are? The new turbines are much more efficient. We are in
a situation where we have the capability of taking energy from the
wind. You take energy from the wind, a renewable resource, use it to
produce electricity, use the electricity in a process called
electrolysis, and separate hydrogen from water, and have an
inexhaustible supply of hydrogen coming from water. Where does that
come from? It comes from renewable energy, an inexhaustible supply of
energy.
We just finished the ethanol title on this piece of legislation
today. What a wonderful thing that is, to grow energy in your farm
fields. Take a kernel of corn, and from that kernel of corn comes a
drop of alcohol and, in addition to the drop of alcohol, you still have
the protein feedstock left to give to the cows. It makes a lot of
sense, doesn't it?
I know some oil companies do not like it. When I learned they did not
like it, I figured this has to make a lot of sense for our country. So
we passed an ethanol title. The renewable part of this legislation
dealing with wind energy and biodiesel and a range of other strategies
makes great sense.
I particularly have been interested in helping write the title that
deals with hydrogen and fuel cells. Some say: Well, we are not ready
for that. You are right, at this point we do not have all the solutions
of production, storage, transportation, and infrastructure. I
understand that. But we can, and we

[[Page S6629]]

will, and other countries, particularly in Europe, are moving rapidly
in this direction. And even as an interim step we are seeing these
hybrid cars. But we are going to move rapidly toward a different
construct: hydrogen fuel cells--twice the efficiency of power to the
wheel and water vapor out the tailpipe.
What a wonderful thing. Hydrogen is ubiquitous. It is everywhere.
There are many strategies to employ to take hydrogen from water, using
renewable resources, to extend our country's energy supply in a
dramatic way and move us toward less dependence and greater
independence.
The one thing that characterizes this country is how famously wrong
people have been in trying to prognosticate the future. There is a
whole list of these famous projections. Thomas Watson, in 1943, who was
the chairman of IBM, said he thought maybe there was a world market for
up to five computers. He was the head of IBM in 1943: I think maybe
there is a world market for five computers. Sarnoff once said, with
respect to the proposal to develop the radio: Well, who on Earth would
pay for a message sent to no one in particular?

I guess they missed the mark. I could go through a long list. We are
famous for not understanding what promise the future holds. This is not
going to the Moon. That is not what this is. But this country does best
when setting goals, such as when John F. Kennedy said, in response to
Sputnik and in response to the race with the Soviets: We are going to
go to the Moon by the end of the decade.
I have talked to folks at NASA who were around back then, the old
codgers, the old-timers. They scratched their heads: How on Earth are
we going to get to the Moon? We don't have the technology to get to the
Moon.
Did you know the lunar lander that landed on the Moon with Armstrong
and Aldrin had less computer power than a current new car has? Let me
say that again. The lunar lander, on which Buzz Aldrin and Neil
Armstrong settled on the surface of the Moon, had less computer power
than a new car that you purchase today at the dealership anyplace
around this country.
That is remarkable. But those scientists, those engineers, that
American ingenuity, that know-how, that spirit said: We are going to do
this. We are going to put someone on the Moon in a decade. And guess
what. By the end of the decade, there they were. ``One small step,''
you will recall, when Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the Moon.
This country needs to establish goals. This country needs to have
aspirations. All of us need to be a part of something that is bigger
than ourselves. We debate so many issues on the floor of the Senate
that have so little importance. This issue will determine whether our
kids and our grandkids and their kids have jobs and opportunities and
live in a country that has an economy that expands, that improves the
standard and scale of living in the United States. That is what this
amendment is about.
Read the history books. Just because we are here on this designated
spot in America, we think we have some blessing, some right to believe
that America will always grow, always expand, always lead the world.
Not so. It will be the case only if we make good decisions, only if we
make the right decisions.
This country has a wonderful economy. You can circle the globe in any
kind of plane you want and you can look down on any spot in the world,
and you will not find the equivalent of the United States of America--
nowhere. But we are headed toward some whitewater rapids here in a
range of areas. We are spending money we do not have. We have the
highest budget deficits in history. We have a trade deficit that is
going to choke this country unless we get it under control. And, I
think most importantly, we have an economy that is running on foreign
oil.
Sixty percent of that which we use comes from elsewhere. An economy
that is hostage to decisions made by OPEC, hostage to decisions that
might be made by terrorists, hostage to 60 percent--and going, we
estimate by the Department of Energy, to 69 percent in a relatively
short period of time--of its oil coming from off its shores, is a
country, in my judgment, that is not in control of its own destiny.
It falls to us to make the decisions to put this country on track. It
falls to us to chart the future with respect to this country's energy.
We have an energy bill on the floor. I have complimented Senator
Domenici and Senator Bingaman. I am pleased this bill was brought to
the floor in a bipartisan way. I voted for it out of the committee. I
had a hand in a good many of the titles that were written for this
bill. I could not be more pleased than to be here saying this is a step
that is a positive step in the right direction: a bipartisan energy
bill.
My hope is the amendment that has been offered by Senator Cantwell
will be embraced on a bipartisan basis as well because there is not a
Republican or a Democratic way for this country to go off course. There
is not a Republican or Democratic way for this country to need energy
and not have it and, therefore, shrink its economy and shrink
opportunity for the future.
We need to do this together. Together we need to describe a big, new,
bold idea that charts a new course for this country, a new energy
course that gives us some feeling that we are moving toward
independence.
There is all this discussion these days about freedom. I am not
talking about ``freedom fries'' now, I am talking about freedom and
independence. All of that was undergirding the State of the Union
Address given to us by President George Bush.
Well, in my judgment, the issue of independence related to the word
``freedom'' these days applies to a lot of things. And it must--it
must--apply to the circumstances that this country finds itself in with
respect to its dangerous, its hopeless addiction to oil coming from off
our shores. As I have said previously, we simply cannot hope that in
the months and years ahead the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Iraqis, the
Venezuelans, and others, will decide there is enough oil to share with
us.
My colleague from New Mexico, the other day on television, I think,
actually said--I did not hear him exactly--but there may not be a
completely inexhaustible supply of oil in this world. We act as though
it is inexhaustible. Every day we wake up in this country and use over
20 million barrels of oil.
We pretend it is inexhaustible. Maybe it is not. If it is not, what
then: That is why I believe we ought to set some goals. This has
nothing to do with politics. The Senator from New Mexico just came on
the floor. He missed the credit I have given him and Senator Bingaman.
I like what we have done. I am going to vote for another energy
independence amendment called the renewable portfolio standard,
requiring 10 percent of our electricity be made with renewables. We
didn't have that in committee because we decided to do it on the floor.
Some utility companies don't want it. I understand that. There is lots
of room for debate. Maybe my view isn't the right view. I don't know.
I know my view is one I hold passionately. I believe strongly that we
need to do what is in this bill because it moves this country forward
and advances our energy interests. I also believe we ought to do more.
I believe we should set big, bold goals for America's energy future,
see if we can't free ourselves from a hopeless dependence on foreign
oil that is set now to grow and grow. Let's decide to make a U-turn and
see if we can't begin to move in a more constructive direction.
The Cantwell amendment will improve the legislation. I am going to
vote for the Energy bill. I voted for it in committee. I am proud to
vote for it. I am also going to vote for some things that will improve
it. This positive idea is going to improve the legislation. I am happy
to be a cosponsor and happy to support it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota
for his comments. I wish I could take credit for the bold idea in the
sense that I am happy to be the sponsor of this amendment, but there
are many people in America who have been talking about this as an idea.
I submit for the record another organization that has supported a
blueprint for U.S. energy security, the Set America Free Organization,
which is a collective organization of individuals, and they actually
submit information that would be much bolder than a proposal to set a
goal in number of barrels that could be saved by 2025.

[[Page S6630]]

There are a lot of people out there who have their sights set even
more dramatically than what we are talking about.
Clearly, my colleague outlined that we are talking about something
that is technologically agnostic. We are not declaring what technology
is going to win. There are lots of great solutions that are provided in
this bill. But I would like to remind my colleagues that today at 2
p.m., the price of oil per barrel was up to $56.50. So that is what we
are dealing with, $56.50.
I know my colleagues in the Chamber were involved in getting the
original language of 1 million reduction by 2025. I think that language
first emerged when the Senate was considering previous Energy bills 2
years ago. At the time we originally started thinking about this goal
of how to get off our foreign oil dependence or to reduce it, we were
talking about oil prices that were much lower, maybe as low as $23 a
barrel. Now we are looking at $56 a barrel. It is imperative that we be
more aggressive by setting this goal and by working together to achieve
it.
The underlying bill is a testament to bipartisan work in saying that
there are a variety of ways to reach the goal. Some may ask: Senator
Cantwell, why do you want to set this goal? You might actually find the
United States pursuing more domestic oil supply as a result of this
goal.
I can't say what is going to happen. I just know I want to get off
the foreign dependence that we are at today because our economy cannot
continue to take that risk. With the concentration of oil supply in the
Middle East, we are one mishap away from having our economy face a
$100-a-barrel oil cost in the future. We cannot afford $56 a barrel.
Some people say: Well, economies adjust to the high cost. I guarantee,
in the meantime, a lot of people are going to suffer. There is not a
week that goes by that I am not on a plane flying back to the west
coast, to my home State of Washington, and a transportation worker
doesn't come up to talk to me about their pension, the fact that they
are laid off, the fact that they are losing their job because
transportation fuel costs in aviation have not been passed on to the
consumer. Consequently, it is being taken out on pensions. So there
isn't a week that goes by where I don't see somebody who hasn't
suffered from the high cost already, at $56 a barrel.
We cannot continue this dependency or the race we are going to be in
with China on competing for a limited supply.
I am confident enough in American ingenuity that I am not even going
to be prescriptive about how we get there as it relates to whether it
is nuclear, another supply of oil, biofuels, what is going to win the
day. I showed a chart because I am a big advocate of biofuels. If you
can buy biofuels in Seattle now in the $2.60 range, $2.70 range, I know
that we can create more incentive, as we are in this bill, more
research and development to get that cost down. So I know I can get it
competitive to what I think gasoline prices are going to be. I want to
do that. I am gung-ho about that.
I am gung-ho about what the Brazilians have done because they have
turned their economy around by becoming almost net exporters of energy
instead of net importers. That is an incredible story the United States
should learn from.
As my colleague from North Dakota said, there are many different
technologies in the bill, but other countries are starting to gain the
advantage. If we think about it, we are not the experts on fuel
efficiency that the Japanese are. We are not the experts on wind energy
that some of the Scandinavian countries are. We are not the experts on
the production of sugar-based ethanol that the Brazilians are. It
bothers me that we are losing the technology edge to other countries.
I certainly am willing to take the risk of setting a goal of 2025 in
reducing our foreign oil consumption by 40 percent and saying all the
options are on the table. I believe that Senator Domenici and Senator
Bingaman did a good job of putting all those options on the table. I
believe in the underlying bill. What I think we should reflect on is
that the underlying bill includes language from a couple of years ago
that may not be bold enough in the sense that if it doesn't reduce our
dependence on foreign oil in 2015, we will be more dependent.
We should reflect on that and see if we can get to a point where we
are endorsing the underlying solutions in this bill and setting a
higher goal so that we can say to the American people, we are reversing
this trend.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington. I thank
my kind colleague from Louisiana. I attended a meeting at the White
House and just returned so I only had this time to do it. I appreciate
the opportunity to discuss the Cantwell oil savings amendment.
Obviously, it sounds good. Anybody who says we are going to save more
oil, it is a good thing. But I urge my colleagues to look at it for
what it really is. This appears to me to be a back-door attempt,
arbitrarily, to increase the corporate average fuel economy or what we
call the CAFE standards. Along with my colleague from Michigan, Senator
Levin, we have been through the CAFE debate in both the 107th and 108th
Congress. It appears, from all I can tell, that if this amendment
really has any teeth, it means we are going to go through it again in
this Congress. I am sure there will be other efforts to increase CAFE
standards later in the debate.
Let me remind my colleagues, we went through extensive debate, and we
got signed into law measures saying that we must push the technology to
increase fuel economy as fast as we can. We directed the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration to examine the technology and
increase the required CAFE standards as quickly as can be done with the
technology available.
Now, I believe that after all of our debates on CAFE, the Members of
this body understand that corporate average fuel economy is a complex
issue that requires a lot of thought and scientific analysis. That is
why previous CAFE measures in the last Congress were defeated. Members
have come to realize that the massive arbitrary increases in CAFE
standards cost lives, jobs, and stifle the ability of consumers to
choose the vehicle best for their families.
It is wonderful to say we want to make a statement--we are not saying
how we want to get there, but we really ought to have a major decrease.
Well, Mr. President, the effort by Congress initially to establish CAFE
standards, without knowing how you are going to get there, wound up
with the auto manufacturers being forced to lower the average weight of
their automobiles by about a thousand pounds.
As I will be discussing later, we have lost thousands and thousands
of lives because of unsafe automobiles. Unless you mandate that only
certain cars can be sold or you tell people what they have to buy,
people may not buy the cars that are made small to conform to the CAFE
standards.
While I laud my colleagues' desire to conserve oil, the fact is that
under this amendment, as best we can determine, the only place oil
savings can come from would be a massive increase in CAFE standards.
The amendment requires the use of existing authorities to obtain these
savings, but they appear to be inadequate to the task required.
Authorities to implement the requirement or mandate are very limited.
According to a recent Energy Information Association report, by 2025,
oil consumption reductions on the order of 1.3 million barrels per day
might be expected using a broad array of incentives and policies, such
as new appliance efficiency standards, credits for home efficiency
upgrades, additional tax credits for advanced technologies, energy
performance standards for customers of selected utilities, and, of
course, the promotion and use of renewable fuels. Many of these
policies are already outside of the scope of existing authorities and
still fall short of the goal of this amendment of 7.64 million barrels
per day.
Furthermore, assuming the renewable fuels standard included in the
bill can be doubled by 2025 to 16 billion gallons per year, which is
ambitious and also beyond existing authorities, it would contribute
only 1 million barrels a day of petroleum reduction toward the Cantwell
goal. As a result, some 4

[[Page S6631]]

to 5 billion barrels per day would be required, and there is no readily
apparent source to get it from.
The Cantwell amendment fails to protect these policies subject to
existing authorities from excessive implementation. Existing programs,
such as CAFE, may be called upon to provide contributions toward the
goal that are far in excess of the normal implementation of these
programs if there are inadequate overall authorities or demand
reductions to accomplish these goals and other measures. For example,
the Energy Information Association analysis referenced above estimates
that with a 20-percent increase in CAFE standards by 2012, in
conjunction with the other policy options analyzed, only a 1.1-percent
decrease in the net import share of oil consumption occurs by 2025. The
40-percent reduction required in the Cantwell amendment is far beyond
what can reasonably be expected, using existing authorities.
The proposed amendment assumes that huge, new opportunities exist to
reduce oil demand, but existing programs will ultimately be held
accountable. The development of fuel cells and extensive implementation
of other advanced technologies may contribute significantly to the
accomplishment of the goal, but the contributions they might make are
highly uncertain. If we don't know where they are coming from, the
consequences could be something very different than what we bargained
for and having the adverse consequences we have seen from other broad
mandates where Congress assumed that great, good things could be
accomplished. Those are some of the reasons, frankly, we got into this
energy problem, because of some of the ``great'' ideas. I will only
mention the forcing of electric utilities to burn natural gas, which
has caused a great part of the energy problem we have today.

In addition, since the measures must be defined and implemented
starting within a year, existing programs and authorities would have to
be relied upon extensively to develop the plan and to make up any
shortfalls.
The Cantwell amendment would push the administration to rely on
contributions from programs and activities that are high risk, high
cost, and the benefits are unknowable at this point. The President is
allowed 1 whole year under the amendment to develop and implement
measures that will save an amount of oil equivalent to 90 percent of
the annual consumption of the current light-duty vehicle fleet.
However, the timing and the level of contributions of programs such as
fuel cell and hydrogen development can only be guessed at this point,
and authorities to fully implement them are still being developed. In
light of this, my question would be, How can the President obtain the
oil savings required under this amendment?
According to the Department of Energy's EIA, the vast majority of
petroleum consumption in the United States--68 percent in 2002--is in
the transportation sector. Any reduction in petroleum consumption will
imply a substantial contribution from this sector.
Under the Cantwell amendment, CAFE standards for cars, light trucks,
and SUVs will skyrocket. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, in
its examination of the EIA's assessments on oil savings, projects that
the Cantwell amendment will require CAFE standards for passenger cars
nearly to triple from its current level of 27.5 miles per gallon to
78.6 miles per gallon by 2025. Anybody for riding a golf cart?
Furthermore, the CAFE standard for light trucks and SUVs would nearly
triple from its current level of 21 miles per gallon to 60.8 miles per
gallon by 2025.
Under the 20-year duration of the proposed amendment, the yearly
percentage increase for passenger cars and light trucks would be equal
to a 10-percent rate of increase. According to NHTSA, the ``maximum
feasible'' standard for cars and light trucks for the years 2005 to
2007 is a 2.8-percent rate of increase. To go above that, to have the
10-percent increase, would not only be technically infeasible, but it
would have a devastating effect on employment in the auto industry. If
the requirements of the Cantwell amendment are enacted, then we could
kiss tens of thousands of good, high-paying, American union jobs
goodbye. I don't want to do that to the roughly 36,000 hard-working men
and women who work directly for the automotive industry in Missouri,
nor am I willing to do that to the over 200,000 men and women who work
in auto-dependent jobs in my State or those employed directly and
indirectly throughout this Nation.

Furthermore, what does the Cantwell amendment mean for the size and
safety of our Nation's vehicle fleet? If we force consumers to drive
smaller vehicles, which is what will happen under arbitrary CAFE
increases, then we can expect a lot more highway fatalities.
Yesterday, I received some frightening statistics from NHTSA and the
National Center for Statistics and Analysis regarding the small vehicle
fatality rates. In 2003, over 3,200 fatalities resulted from crashes
involving smaller vehicles. This is anywhere from 2 to 7 times more
than the fatality rates for larger, heavier vehicles, depending on
their weight class.
As we talked about the last time we debated CAFE, when we take a look
at it over the years, NHTSA has found that solely as a result of the
lighter cars made necessary by CAFE standards, between 1,000 and 2,000
more people were killed on the highways than would have been killed if
they had larger vehicles. This isn't just on head-to-head, running into
another larger car or a larger vehicle; over 40 percent of those were
single-car accidents.
The latest figures I have heard is that NHTSA estimates that 1,300
deaths a year occur because of the mandated smaller size cars made
necessary by the CAFE standards. Make no mistake, you may call this an
oil savings, but this is CAFE all over again. As I have stated time and
again, far-reaching increases to fuel efficiency standards that are not
based on sound science are too costly and impractical for us to adopt.
The lives and safety of drivers and their passengers, along with the
livelihood of men and women in the automotive workforce who manufacture
these vehicles, is too much of a price to pay for unthought-out,
unscientific fuel efficiency standards.
And, finally, make no mistake about it, this goes to consumer choice.
Consumers are making the decision on what kind of vehicles they want to
drive. Right now, more and more of them are opting for light trucks.
Are we going to tell them that we are going to tell them what kind of
vehicle they can purchase? Are we going to have some Soviet-style czar
who says because they have two parents and two children in the family,
we will allow them one minicar and one small van? Who is going to
decide if we take away from the consumers their right to choose these
vehicles?
If we have fuel standards of 78 miles per gallon, we are not going to
be able to buy any of the cars we want. Consumers are not going to have
choices. We are going to see people out of work in the auto industry,
major disruptions in the transportation sector, a great inconvenience,
and increased highway dangers.
I urge my colleagues to continue to work for sound, science-based
ways to conserve and produce more energy and to reject a measure that
does not have a good, sound scientific foundation.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I will take 1 minute. Before Senator
Bond leaves, I thank him for his statement. I have heard the Senator
eloquently describe this whole situation regarding automobiles in the
United States and CAFE standards, but it seems to me this amendment is
even way beyond anything we debated before. We are talking about
changing by a couple miles, 2 or 3 miles. What we are talking about
here would never become law. Let's be serious about it. But if it
would, we are talking 3 or 4 times the CAFE standards we have today.
What kind of cars could we build?
Mr. BOND. We would have golf carts.
Mr. DOMENICI. It seems to me the answer is impossible. That is the
answer. This is an impossible amendment. People want to dream, but you
do not build a country on dreams. Maybe you can dream, wake up and
think of something that is quite appropriate for goal achievement. This
seems like somebody dreamt up something to tell us we ought to save 40
percent of crude oil we use in the United States by 2025; is that what
it sounds like to the Senator?

[[Page S6632]]

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I am happy to answer. Obviously, it is well-
intentioned, but I agree with the distinguished chairman of the
committee who has done an excellent job on this entire bill. I commend
him. The chairman and ranking member, our two friends from New Mexico,
have done great things in this bill, but I think this kind of amendment
would cripple its chance of passage. It does not meet the test of
scientific reasonableness, sound science that I think we have to follow
if we are to make some major improvements in the energy situation in
our country.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor to make a
few brief remarks about the overall Energy bill that is before us,
about some of the strong points in this bill and how we might be able
to improve upon it.
I would like to briefly mention, along the lines of the discussion
that just ensued, importing oil and the challenges that brings to our
Nation. I will submit a few documents for the Record and discuss
generally the situation that we have in Louisiana. Of course, I will
not be offering any amendment at this time but just discussing
something I know we will be talking more about as this debate ensues.
While I understand the amendment before us is quite an aggressive
amendment--and at this time, I have not made a final decision about
it--I would like to say something positive about the amendment.
One of the points I like about this approach, while it is very
aggressive because it is similar to an approach that Senator Alexander
and I took 2 years ago on the Energy bill, is the flexibility that it
provides to the country to try to make smart strategic choices about
how savings can occur and smart strategic choices about lessening our
dependence on foreign oil.
Coming from an oil-producing State, I can say that the people in
Louisiana who produce oil and gas right here at home would like to
reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil.
The question is--and I think the chairman raises a very excellent
point, and it is a real question--can we do that this fast, this
aggressively, and maintain our economic position? We may or may not.
But I want to say that anything we can do to reduce our dependency on
foreign oil, while we recognize that we are just about to open to the
imports of natural gas because we virtually have no choice--we have to
because we cannot step up domestic production fast enough to meet the
demands because China, because India, because our industries--chemical,
petrochemical, agriculture, and others--are demanding more natural gas.
We are about ready to bring in natural gas, where in some ways, while I
support that, it will compound the problem of dependency.

It really is a dilemma. I say to the Senator from Washington that I
think the flexibility of her proposal is very important, and the fact
that this amendment does not say we have to conserve, we could, in
fact, produce more domestic oil and gas which I happen to think would
be a great idea. I know the chairman and the ranking member support
more domestic drilling of oil and gas.
I want to say a word about that for a moment. We do not do anything
the same way today that we did in the 1930s. Our telephones do not work
the same way. We did not even have computers in the 1930s. Everything
has changed. Technology for the large part has made everything better.
Some people might argue with that statement, but the efficiency, the
convenience, the ability to clean up our environment--everything has
been made better in large measure by technology.
The oil and gas industry is not what it once was when the men and
women who started it were paddling in a pirogue, a canoe--that is what
we call a pirogue in Louisiana. A pirogue is a canoe--in the marsh
pumping the oil out of the ground by hand and digging with shovels and
crude instruments. This industry resembles more of the space industry
today. It is run by computer. It is highly technical.
The environmental advances are absolutely astonishing. I have taken
the chairman down to Louisiana. He has seen this with his own eyes. The
wells, where they are situated, the offshore platforms, I believe,
would make any American proud, even Americans who belong to the
California Sierra Club. I absolutely believe they would be proud if
they could see the development of this oil and gas industry. In fact,
one of the majors told me--and I do not have any reason to doubt them
because I think independent studies have shown this--that in the Gulf
of Mexico last year, in the entire Gulf of Mexico, that oil company
collected three barrels--three barrels--of spilled oil from its
operations, and it has billions of dollars invested.
That is how good we have gotten. Guess what. We are the best in the
world. Instead of bellyaching, we should be proud of that. We should
say thank goodness for that old American ingenuity. We did not do it
very well in the 1930s, and we did not do it well in the 1940s, but one
good thing about America is we never stop trying to be better. It
separates us from so many places in the world.
Coming from an oil and gas State, I would be the happiest person in
the world if we could stop importing oil, drill it at home and explore
new places that are appropriate. Some places may need to be off-limits
but not everyplace.
There is a place that is not off-limits and we are proud of, and that
is south Louisiana and the work that we have contributed to this
country. I am going to show my colleagues this chart because this is
where all of the drilling off the coast of our country occurs: Texas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We have been producing oil and gas
and sending $5 billion annually to the Treasury in taxes every year.
Yes, there have been some environmental impacts which I am going to
talk about in a moment, but they have been minor compared to the wealth
that this industry has created not just for this region but for the
entire Nation.
Does anybody remember we have gone through an industrial revolution?
Does anybody remember that everybody moved off the farms and went to
the cities? How do people think the cities got lit? It did not wave a
magic wand and the lights came on. We have been producing and digging
from coal, oil, and gas. So if anybody wants to say that, oh, well, we
just do not have to do that any more, heck, the whole country was built
on this contribution. People from Louisiana are darn proud of it.
Instead of everybody coming to the floor and saying how we do not
care about our land and we do not care about our trees and we do not
care about our coast and we do not have anything beautiful to preserve,
not only do the people of Louisiana love our land and love our water,
we survive on it and in it more than anybody in America. We swim more.
We eat more fish. We spend more time in boats. We recreate more on the
water than probably anyplace maybe except for a very few. Not only
wealthy people get to the water, everybody lives by the water. In some
places, one has to have a $5-million house before they can touch the
water. In Louisiana, there are people who live in a house not worth
$25,000, but they have a gorgeous marsh land behind their house, and
those kids go fishing.
So I do not like to hear anybody come to this floor and say that we
do not treasure our land in Louisiana. We are going to continue to
produce oil and gas. We are going to continue to be proud of it, and we
are going to continue to tell the story, whether anybody wants to
believe us or not, that this can be done in a very safe environmental
way. Why? Because we have good regulation; two, we have courts that
enforce the regulation; three, we have all kinds of agencies--some
would argue too many--that make sure that all of these companies are
doing what they are supposed to do.
We have a free press, which means a lot because if somebody is doing
something wrong, there is nothing I can do or the Senator from New
Mexico can do to try to stop them from reporting it. So they can report
anything they want. There is open information. I wish they would really
tell people what is actually happening.
The point I want to make in just a moment is that we are going to
continue to do drilling. I appreciate all the good work of my
colleagues to try to

[[Page S6633]]

give more revenues to the State. We get a little bit, but because we
are generating so much and helping everybody so much--let me just use
this. I wanted to thank my colleagues for their interest in helping us,
but this makes my point even better. When the Senator from Washington
said she wants us to be more like Brazil, I am going to learn a little
bit more about what Brazil has done because I am not quite sure of the
details, but I will tell my colleagues about 11 States in the United
States and what they have done. Those States are Utah, Colorado, North
Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia,
Louisiana, and Wyoming. Eleven States out of fifty are the only States
in the United States that produce more energy than they consume.
Let me say that again. There are only 11 States in the United States
of America that produce more energy than they consume. So if anybody
wants to give Brazil an award, please give these 11 States an award
first because we have already done that. We produce oil and gas. We are
net exporters of energy--well, we produce oil, gas, coal, nuclear. We
can produce energy from a lot of different ways. This is not just oil
and gas production. This includes nuclear. This is from the Energy
Information Agency, our own agency, not from Louisiana or Senator
Landrieu. This is the U.S. Department of Energy Energy Information
Agency. This includes nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wood, wind, waste,
solar, oil, natural gas, and coal.

As the chairman from New Mexico will say, his goal is to increase the
choices of all of these so that more States can begin producing
something. If my colleagues do not want to drill for oil, then drill
for gas. If they do not want to do that, put in a nuclear powerplant.
If they do not want to do that, put in some wind turbines. If they do
not want to do that, dam up some of their rivers and use hydro. Some
people will do that; some people will not. But for heaven's sakes, do
something. Do something. If they want to mine for coal, we have given
them a lot of money in this bill and they can clean the coal. It can be
burned and used efficiently. Put in solar panels. Go get waste from the
agricultural areas of their State. That is the whole point of this
bill.
We have 39 States that need to make some decisions about what they
are going to produce to be free because 11 of us have already figured
it out.
I do not know these other States as well as I know my State, but in
addition to being a net exporter of energy, I will also tell the
country that Louisiana probably has the most petrochemical plants per
capita than any State in the Union. Those products that are produced in
my State are not consumed by my State alone.
We make these products and send them all over the country and the
world. So not only are we producing enough energy for every single
person in Louisiana--the 4.5 million of us--and what we need, but we
are also fueling every plant, every LNG facility, every petrochemical
facility, supplying so much for the Nation and still exporting because
people in Louisiana kind of believe in good old-fashioned ``do your
part'' kind of work.
We also conserve. I am so tired of people saying, oh, the Senator
from Louisiana and the people from Louisiana, all they do is waste
fuel. I do not have the document, but I am going to submit for the
record--I am going to take the last 10 years--the efficiencies that
Louisiana, through our industry, has achieved. Yes, some of them have
been mandated by this body and they had no choice and they had to do
it, but some of it is voluntary. We have tried to be more efficient as
well and, of course, we have produced this energy.
Let me just point out three or four States that are at the top of
this list. Actually, I am probably going to do five States.
The States that consume more energy than they produce are California
at the top of the list, New York second, Ohio third, Florida fourth,
and Michigan fifth.
Let me point out one other thing, because you will say, Why isn't
Texas on the green list. I want to find where Texas is--here it is, 25.
Texas is not a net exporter, but it is close. The reason it is not is
because, of course, it is a big State, a huge State--20-plus million
people, and they also have so much industry that they supply energy
for, that helps us all, they don't quite make it. But I have to say
Texas is doing a great deal. Perhaps they could do more.
But the rest of these you can understand. Maybe Hawaii is too small.
Hawaii is not very big, but they are doing a whole heck of a lot better
than California.
I want to be clear about who is doing what, who is not, and where we
need to go and try to help everybody make the choices that work for
their State but that also work for the country. It has to happen.
I will stop for a moment on that issue and move to something else.
Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
Ms. LANDRIEU. I am happy to.
Mr. DOMENICI. Just for a few minutes, without losing your right to
the floor.
I want to say to the Senator, thank you for your discussion, as you
zero in on what States do and do not do. I will not repeat that. People
heard it and they ought to heed it. Some of the States you have alluded
to ought to heed it, too. Some of them are the very ones who do not
want to produce anything and have production somewhere else, not there.

But in passing, the Senator discussed offshore production in her
State, which she described in terms of new technology that is very
safe. There is nothing happening that hurts anybody. There is no
degradation of the water, no degradation of the air. I have seen one of
the new facilities. I wish everybody who is worried about offshore
drilling would take a helicopter and go out there. They are not next
door to your house, they are miles and miles out in the ocean, and they
are very large. They look like a big battleship out there all lighted
up, full of technology, with 10 or 12 oil wells you cannot even see,
producing natural gas for America, and you don't know where it goes, no
pipes, nothing. Nothing spills, and it is our resource.
The Senator knows in this bill one big thing is missing and that is
we are not going to do anything significant about letting the United
States of America or States make a decision that off their shores they
could produce more natural gas or crude oil for this great country.
That is because Senators will not vote for it because the Senators with
coastlines stand up and talk about what you have been talking about
here.
``We need the energy, we need to grow, we are great Americans, we
have a lot of plants, we want jobs--but you bring the energy here.''
Right?
Off our shores, remember--and Americans should remember it well--sits
the largest reserve of natural gas that America has today, but for some
parts of Alaska which are very difficult right now, but we are going to
bring some down. It is the largest mainland reserve of natural gas we
are going to have for generations to come.
What does it mean that we do nothing about it? Listen well, we are
not going to stop using it. Remember how much crude oil we import. It
will be 5, 6, 10 years and what will we be importing? The Senator knows
the answer: Natural gas. Where from? Not from our seashores 100 miles
away out there in the ocean where our natural gas is. From thousands of
miles away in big, gigantic boats. They are going to come across the
ocean and come over to America. And do what? Pump it into these States
you are talking about. Because right here on this floor, if the Senator
from New Mexico and two Senators from Louisiana were to say, just
simple: Those States that have moratoriums off their shores where we
can't drill, if they would like to let us drill, let's let them say yes
and then let's pay them a little more royalties than we have been
paying. Because right now we get no royalties. Give them more than we
are paying now and let them decide whether they would like to or not.
Guess what would happen. I have already been told. The bill, if it
passed, will die. First of all, it will not pass. Because for all this
language around here--flexibility, let's do what we can, let's use
every avenue for exploration--that is not true. That is not true.
Because don't touch this one I have just talked about. Right?

[[Page S6634]]

Ms. LANDRIEU. Right.
Mr. DOMENICI. Your State has. They have done it, along with Texas and
a couple of other States. Frankly, before we start giving other States
resources, I wish they would start making decisions and we would start
making them so other States would join. We have to help your State. We
have to help you because you are taking the burden, and we are going to
try to do something about that.
I don't know what we can do because we are stymied by a few things
that are intangible, that we don't control--fiscal policy and budget
policy and the like. But I want to say it doesn't do very much good to
adopt resolutions on this floor and proposals such as are pending here
from Senator Cantwell--it doesn't do a bit of good to say these are our
goals, let's do them. Flexibility.
We don't need that kind of bill if we do what we know we should do.
We have not built a nuclear powerplant in two decades plus, while the
rest of the world built them. We can talk all we want about why did we
use so much natural gas in the powerplants of America. We know why. We
didn't want to use anything else. Right? So we used natural gas, even
some from offshore, some from your State. We piped it all the way over
and burned it in powerplants as though it were coming out and would be
here forever. It starts running out, right? So we are going to import
it pretty soon.
That is the problem. We have been doing that. It is the problem in
this bill. We are 90 percent where we ought to go, but the big thing is
no action with reference to the largest asset we have toward
independence, which is natural gas and crude oil hundreds of miles--not
a mile--offshore.
There is one thing we are asking in this bill: Let's inventory it.
Right? We voted in our committee. It was a hard vote. Hard? Just ask
somebody to go out and tell America what we own. That natural gas you
have been talking about, how much is there? You don't have to disturb
anything anymore.

We have been talking about high tech. You don't drill holes to find
out what is there. We do it by technology, by looking, by checking, by
a new kind of geophysical equipment. Should not we tell America how
much is there?
You watch, there will be a motion to strike that here on the floor.
You and I will be here saying, What is the matter with that. But we are
apt to lose that. Yet we are talking about some ``pie in the sky,''
let's set a goal 30 years from now to be 40 percent less dependent upon
crude oil and we will have all the flexibility in the world. We don't
need flexibility of any statute. We need the flexibility of Americans
deciding that we have to do what you said.
If we have a source of energy, we have to produce it. Do not think we
are producing ourselves out of existence. This bill conserves more than
any piece of legislation will ever ask Americans to conserve. But we
can't conserve our way out of this dilemma either, right?
Ms. LANDRIEU. Right.
Mr. DOMENICI. We could close up the wells offshore in Louisiana and
say, ``Thank you.'' Of course not. We need more--and conservation. But
I thought, since you raised the subject of offshore, we ought to tell
the Senate, tell the few people listening, where the real value in
America is, that we refuse. We are like ostriches when it comes to
offshore.
People say, it is so pretty here, we don't want to touch it. What
about 100 miles out from that shore? You cannot even see it. And people
around here are crying that you will hurt their States. You could put
any limitation you would like that is credible and let's go beyond that
and try to do something with this very important asset--this asset
field that is ours.
I thank the Senator for her comments and thank her for yielding.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the chairman, the distinguished Senator from
New Mexico, because he is absolutely correct. I share his frustration.
All I can say is as we proceed, we will continue to talk about these
issues and educate the American people. People are afraid. They tend to
be afraid if they are not sure of the facts. Sometimes people get the
facts all confused.
But as I hope people understand, as I keep speaking the truth on this
and people understand there are ways you can do this drilling,
particularly for natural gas, that are safe for the environment, that
meet every environmental standard we have today, and actually meet the
clean air standards set out in our own act, we can most certainly
explore these opportunities and continue to work on this bill. I thank
the Senator for his comments, for his interest and his knowledge of the
subject. I can only say I will continue to try to tell the story, and
as the American people learn more about it, perhaps some of the fear
will dissipate, reason will prevail, and we can begin to understand
that here at home we have places on our shores and off our shores that
we can tap into and minimize our dependency on foreign oil and foreign
gas.

For the short term, this bill, and with the support of most of these
Senators, will begin importing natural gas. We have policies in this
bill to allow that to happen. It is quite ironic we are setting out in
a bill to import more natural gas, and we will not take opportunities
to drill for more on our shores. Again, this is a work in progress.
Let me share another part of the story that is not just about energy
production. It is the great contribution our coast makes to Louisiana.
There is the gold coast, the rocky coast, the cliff coast. We are the
working coast. We are proud of it. We are the largest and most
productive expanse of coastal wetlands in North America. It is the
seventh largest delta on Earth. The Mississippi River drains two-thirds
of the United States. As I said, it is one of the most productive
environments in America.
In addition to the energy production I talked about which is right
off this shore--and we have 20,000 miles of pipeline that can wrap
around the country 10 times, 2,000 miles each way, miles of pipeline
that send oil and gas to Chicago, California and to Washington and New
York--in addition to the energy we produce for the Nation, through this
Mississippi River, we drain the mountains in the West and all
throughout the Nation; we also have a great nursery for one of the
greatest flyways in the world for millions of waterfowl and migratory
songbirds.
It also is a nursery for the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the seafood in
the Gulf of Mexico is produced because this marsh does not exist
anywhere else in the coastal United States. Again, it is an unusually
large delta created by the Mississippi River. It is unique.
In addition to the energy contributions this delta makes, in addition
to the drainage we contribute by our location for the Nation, in
addition to the great flyways for migratory birds that this provides,
and the nursery for all the gulf coast fish and species, it also serves
as a protection for the two million people that live below I-10. This
is the main interstate that runs in the southern part of the United
States. It goes all the way through Mississippi, to Florida, and all
the way through Texas and west. This I-12/I-10 corridor is one of the
busiest in the Nation for many reasons. It is a great north-south trade
Route.
Below this interstate, basically two million people live in
Louisiana. As the map shows, this land is all marsh and low-lying
wetlands. The people that live here are in some jeopardy. They are in
some danger if this marsh would erode and go away as storms--whether
they are hurricanes, floods, or rising tides--continue to pound our
shore. That, unfortunately, is exactly what is happening today.
Yet this wetland that supplies all of this energy, seafood and other
environmental benefits to the Nation, we are losing a football field
every 30 minutes. We are losing 25,000 square miles every year. In the
last 50 years, we have lost the size of the State of Rhode Island.
The red on this map indicates a loss of wetland. This is not caused
by oil and gas and by fisheries. It is exacerbated by pipeline
construction and some exploration, but it is caused primarily by the
channelization of the Mississippi River. This river, for all the things
I have said it is used for, you could argue the most important thing it
is used for, for the Nation, is the commerce--500 tons of cargo, the
largest port system in the world. When my friends from the Midwest--
whether it is Senator Harkin, Senator Conrad, or

[[Page S6635]]

Senator Dorgan and others--want to get grain and corn out of the States
they represent, there is not a whole lot of ways to get it out except
by barge. It comes down the Mississippi River.
We are happy for the trade and the traffic. But this river was levied
to keep the water in, to create this major port system for the Nation,
and as a result, over decades, the river cannot overflow itself, and it
then cannot replenish the marsh. That is what is causing the staggering
loss of these wetlands. Then, on top of that--which is probably 85
percent of the loss of wetlands, say our scientists who have been
studying this for many years, the last two decades in particular--when
the oil and gas industry came in and some canals had to be put in for
the drilling, it exacerbated it by allowing the saltwater from the Gulf
of Mexico to come into this water. We call it brackish. It is part salt
and part fresh. It comes into the marsh and kills the marsh grass. The
salt is toxic to that particular marsh grass. The marsh grass fades
away, and before you know it, you are in open water.
I have friends that have fished down here for years and old timers I
talk to. It is getting scary because it is not even people that are
that old any more who are saying: When I was a kid, you could stand
right here in Terrebonne Bay and look out for miles and see land. I
took my little boy down there last week, the same place I used to fish
when I was a kid, and there is no land left.
Senator, what is happening? Where is it going? It is eroding. I have
been here for 8 years trying to get this Congress--Senator Breaux
joined me, Senator Vitter now joins this effort--to try to get this
Senate and this Congress to understand that this delta is not only
precious to Louisiana--it is not even Louisiana's wetlands, it is
America's wetlands--it deserves our attention.
Since we contribute so much toward waterborne commerce, so much to
the energy infrastructure and independence of this Nation, we serve as
a nursery for the fisheries industry, for the whole gulf coast of
Mexico, we serve as a flyway for migratory birds which support a whole
emerging and growing ecotourism industry that affects everyone in a
positive way, surely we can get a few little dollars to help us save
our coast.
We are only one hurricane away. We had a terrible season last season.
We had five or six major storms. Luckily, they did not hit directly.
Unfortunately, our friends in Mississippi and Mobile were hit. None of
us along the gulf coast like to get hit. We are in great sympathy and
empathy with each other because we know what a major hurricane will do.
My people are sitting ducks. It is getting worse and worse. We can save
our coast. But we need to use some of the moneys we can get to invest
and to do this and we can make progress.
The Senator from Washington would like to wrap up on her amendment,
and so let me conclude in a few moments. I thank the Senator for her
courtesy and time.
This is a very precious wetland to Louisiana and to America. It is
something that can be saved, must be saved and, if saved, cannot only
contribute so much to Louisiana but to the Nation.
This issue is not as clearcut as some would like to believe. As I
said, I like some parts of the amendment of the Senator from
Washington. She has been a tremendous contributor on the Energy bill
and a tremendous voice for conservation. What I do like about her
amendment is its flexibility. What I do like about her amendment is the
opportunity to produce more domestically so we do not have to get it
from somebody else, particularly a somebody who does not share our
values, who does not have America's best interests at heart. So I agree
with that approach. Again, it may be too aggressive for us. But the
Senate will decide if that is the case.
But I want to say from a State that is producing--and we are going to
continue to produce; we are happy to produce--there are some coastal
impacts associated with it. But even if we were not doing any
production off the coast of Louisiana, this loss of wetlands would
still be occurring because of the channelization of the Mississippi
River done by the Corps of Engineers, at our request, on behalf of the
Nation. It is time we get some help and some support for fixing this
wetland.
I thank the Senator for her patience and her courtesies, and I wish
her the best of luck as we continue to work on our bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
The Chair would advise the Senator from Washington that her last
unanimous consent request for a submission was not made formally. If
she would like to resubmit that request at this time, the Chair would
take it. It was the last piece of information you submitted.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter
from Set America Free be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Set America Free

For decades, the goal of reducing the Nation's dependence
upon foreign energy sources has been a matter on which
virtually all Americans could agree. Unfortunately,
differences about how best to accomplish that goal, with what
means, how rapidly and at what cost to taxpayers and
consumers have, to date, precluded the sort of progress that
might have been expected before now.
Today, we can no longer afford to allow such differences to
postpone urgent action on national energy independence. After
all, we now confront what might be called a ``perfect storm''
of strategic, economic and environmental conditions that,
properly understood, demand that we affect over the next four
years a dramatic reduction in the quantities of oil imported
from unstable and hostile regions of the world.
America consumes a quarter of the world's oil supply while
holding a mere 3% of global oil reserves. It is therefore
forced to import over 60% of its oil, and this dependency is
growing. Since most of the world's oil is controlled by
countries that are unstable or at odds with the United States
this dependency is a matter of national security.
At the strategic level, it is dangerous to be buying
billions of dollars worth of oil from nations that are
sponsors of or allied with radical Islamists who foment
hatred against the United States. The petrodollars we provide
such nations contribute materially to the terrorist threats
we face. In time of war, it is imperative that our national
expenditures on energy be redirected away from those who use
them against us.
Even if the underwriting of terror were not such a concern,
our present dependency creates unacceptable vulnerabilities.
In Iraq and Saudi Arabia, America's enemies have demonstrated
that they can advance their strategic objective of inflicting
damage on the United States, its interests and economy simply
by attacking critical overseas oil infrastructures and
personnel. These targets are readily found not only in the
Mideast but in other regions to which Islamists have ready
access (e.g., the Caspian Basin and Africa). To date, such
attacks have been relatively minor and their damage easily
repaired. Over time, they are sure to become more
sophisticated and their destructive effects will be far more
difficult, costly and time-consuming to undo.
Another strategic factor is China's burgeoning demand for
oil. Last year, China's oil imports were up 30% from the
previous year, making it the world's No. 2 petroleum user
after the United States. The bipartisan, congressionally
mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
reported that: ``China's large and rapidly growing demand for
oil is putting pressure on global oil supplies. This pressure
is likely to increase in the future, with serious
implications for U.S. oil prices and supplies.''
Oil dependence has considerable economic implications.
Shrinking supply and rising demand translate into higher
costs. Both American consumers and the U.S. economy are
already suffering from the cumulative effect of recent
increases in gas prices. Even now, fully one-quarter of the
U.S. trade deficit is associated with oil imports. By some
estimates, we lose 27,000 jobs for every billion dollars of
additional oil imports. Serious domestic and global economic
dislocation would almost certainly attend still-higher costs
for imported petroleum and/or disruption of supply.
Finally, environmental considerations argue for action to
reduce imports of foreign oil. While experts and policy-
makers disagree about the contribution the burning of fossil
fuels is making to the planet's temperatures, it is certainly
desirable to find ways to obtain energy while minimizing the
production of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
The combined effects or this ``perfect storm'' require
concerted action, at last, aimed at reducing the Nation's
reliance on imported oil from hostile or unstable sources and
the world's dependence on oil at large. Fortunately, with
appropriate vision and leadership, we can make major strides
in this direction by exploiting currently available
technologies and infrastructures to greatly diminish oil
consumption in the transportation sector, which accounts for
two thirds of our oil consumption.
The attached Blueprint for Energy Security: ``Set America
Free'' spells out practical ways in which real progress on
``fuel choice'' can be made over the next four years and
beyond. To be sure, full market transformation

[[Page S6636]]

will take a longer time. In the case of the transportation
sector, it may require 15-20 years. That is why it is
imperative to begin the process without delay.
We call upon America's leaders to pledge to adopt this
Blueprint, and embark, along with our democratic allies, on a
multilateral initiative to encourage reduced dependence on
petroleum. In so doing, they can reasonably promise to: deny
adversaries the wherewithal they use to harm us; protect our
quality of life and economy against the effects of cuts in
foreign energy supplies and rising costs; and reduce by as
much as 50% emissions of undesirable pollutants. In light of
the ``perfect storm'' now at hand, we simply can afford to do
no less.

Signatories

Gary L. Bauer, President, American Values; Milton Copulos,
President, National Defense Council Foundation; Congressman
Eliot Engel; Frank Gaffney, President, Center for Security
Policy; Bracken Hendricks, Executive director, Apollo
Alliance; Bill Holmberg, American Council on Renewable
Energy; Anne Korin, Co-Director, Institute for the Analysis
of Global Security (IAGS); Deron Lovaas, Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC); Gal Luft, Co-Director, Institute for
the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS); Cliff May, President,
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Robert C.
McFarlane, Former National Security Advisor; Daniel Pipes,
Director, Middle East Forum; Professor Richard Smalley, Nobel
Laureate Chemistry; Admiral James D. Watkins, former
Secretary of Energy; R. James Woolsey, Co-Chairman, Committee
on the Present Danger; and Meyrav Wurmser, Hudson Institute.

a blueprint for u.s. energy security

Introduction
Historically, the United States has pursued a three-pronged
strategy for minimizing the vulnerabilities associated with
its dependency on oil from unstable and/or hostile nations:
diversifying sources of oil, managing inventory in a
strategic petroleum reserve and increasing the efficiency of
the transportation sector's energy consumption. In recent
years, the focus has been principally on finding new and
larger sources of petroleum globally.
Rapidly growing worldwide demand for oil, however, has had
the effect of largely neutralizing this initiative, depleting
existing reserves faster than new, economically exploitable
deposits are being brought on line. Under these
circumstances, diversification among such sources is but a
stop-gap solution that can, at best, have a temporary effect
on oil supply and, hence, on national security. Conservation
can help, but with oil consumption expected to grow by 60%
over the next 25 years, conservation alone will not be a
sufficient solution.
The `Set America Free' Project
Long-term security and economic prosperity requires the
creation of a fourth pillar--technological transformation of
the transportation sector through what might be called ``fuel
choice.'' By leading a multinational effort rooted in the
following principles, the United States can immediately begin
to introduce a global economy based on next-generation fuels
and vehicles that can utilize them:
Fuel diversification: Today, consumers can choose among
various octanes of gasoline, which accounts for 45% of U.S.
oil consumption, or diesel, which accounts for almost another
fifth. To these choices can and should promptly be added
other fuels that are domestically produced, where possible
from waste products, and that are clean and affordable.
Real world solutions: We have no time to wait for
commercialization of immature technologies. The United States
should implement technologies that exist today and are ready
for widespread use.
Using existing infrastructure: The focus should be on
utilizing competitive technologies that do not require
prohibitive or, if possible, even significant investment in
changing our transportation sector's infrastructure. Instead,
``fuel choice'' should permit the maximum possible use of the
existing refueling and automotive infrastructure.
Domestic resource utilization: The United States is no
longer rich in oil or natural gas. It has, however, a wealth
of other energy sources from which transportation fuel can be
safely, affordably and cleanly generated. Among them:
hundreds of years worth of coal reserves, 25% of the world's
total (especially promising with Integrated Gasification and
Combined Cycle technologies); billions of tons a year of
biomass, and further billions of tons of agricultural and
municipal waste. Vehicles that meet consumer needs (e.g.,
``plug-in'' hybrids), can also tap America's electrical grid
to supply energy for transportation, making more efficient
use of such clean sources of electricity as solar, wind,
geothermal, hydroelectric and nuclear power.
Environmentally sensible choices: The technologies adopted
should improve public safety and respond to the public's
environmental and health concerns.

Key Elements of the `Set America Free' Project

Vehicles
Hybrid electric vehicles: There are already thousands of
vehicles on America's roads that combine hybrid engines
powered in an integrated fashion by liquid fuel-powered
motors and battery-powered ones. Such vehicles increase gas-
consumption efficiency by 30-40%.
Ultralight materials: At least two-thirds of fuel use by a
typical consumer vehicle is caused by its weight. Thanks to
advances in both metals and plastics, ultralight vehicles can
be affordably manufactured with today's technologies and can
roughly halve fuel consumption without compromising safety,
performance or cost effectiveness.
``Plug-in'' hybrid electric vehicles: Plug-in hybrid
electric vehicles are also powered by a combination of
electricity and liquid fuel. Unlike standard hybrids,
however, plug-ins draw charge not only from the engine and
captured braking energy, but also directly from the
electrical grid by being plugged into standard electric
outlets when not in use. Plug-in hybrids have liquid fuel
tanks and internal combustion engines, so they do not face
the range limitation posed by electric-only cars. Since
fifty-percent of cars on the road in the United States are
driven 20 miles a day or less, a plug-in with a 20-mile range
battery would reduce fuel consumption by, on average, 85%.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can reach fuel economy
levels of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline consumed.
Flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs): FFVs are designed to bum on
alcohol, gasoline, or any mixture of the two. About four
million FFV's have been manufactured since 1996. The only
difference between a conventional car and a flexible fuel
vehicle is that the latter is equipped with a different
control chip and some different fittings in the fuel line to
accommodate the characteristics of alcohol. The marginal
additional cost associated with such FFV-associated changes
is currently under $100 per vehicle. That cost would be
reduced further as volume of FFVs increases, particularly if
flexible fuel designs were to become the industry standard.
Flexible fuel/plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: If the two
technologies are combined, such vehicles can be powered by
blends of alcohol fuels, gasoline, and electricity. If a
plug-in vehicle is also a FFV fueled with 80% alcohol and 20%
gasoline, fuel economy could reach 500 miles per gallon of
gasoline.
If by 2025, all cars on the road are hybrids and half are
plug-in hybrid vehicles, U.S. oil imports would drop by 8
million barrels per day (mbd). Today, the United States
imports 10 mbd and it is projected to import almost 20 mbd by
2025. If all of these cars were also flexible fuel vehicles,
U.S. oil imports would drop by as much as 12 mbd.
Fuels
Fuel additives: Fuel additives can enhance combustion
efficiency by up to 25%. They can be blended into gasoline,
diesel and bunker fuel.
Electricity as a fuel: Less than 2% of U.S. electricity is
generated from oil, so using electricity as a transportation
fuel would greatly reduce dependence on imported petroleum.
Plug-in hybrid vehicles would be charged at night in home
garages--a time-interval during which electric utilities have
significant excess capacity. The Electric Power Research
Institute estimates that up to 30% of market penetration for
plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with 20-mile electric range
can be achieved without a need to install additional
electricity-generating capacity.
Alcohol fuels: ethanol, methanol and other blends:
Ethanol (also known as grain alcohol) is currently produced
in the U.S. from corn. The industry currently has a capacity
of 3.3 billion gallons a year and has increased on the
average of 25% per year over the past three years. Upping
production would be achieved by continuing to advance the
corn-based ethanol industry and by commercializing the
production of ethanol from biomass waste and dedicated energy
crops. P-Series fuel (approved by the Department of Energy in
1999) is a more energy-efficient blend of ethanol, natural
gas liquids and ether made from biomass waste.
Methanol (also known as wood alcohol) is today for the most
part produced from natural gas. Expanding domestic production
can be achieved by producing methanol from coal, a resource
with which the U.S. is abundantly endowed. The commercial
feasibility of coal-to-methanol technology was demonstrated
as part of the DOE's ``clean coal'' technology effort.
Currently, methanol is being cleanly produced from coal for
under 50 cents a gallon.
It only costs about $60,000 to add a fuel pump that serves
one of the above fuels to an existing refueling station.
Non-oil based diesel: Biodiesel is commercially produced
from soybean and other vegetable oils. Diesel can also be
made from waste products such as tires and animal byproducts,
and is currently commercially produced from turkey offal.
Diesel is also commercially produced from coal.
Policy Recommendations
Provide incentives to auto manufacturers to produce and
consumers to purchase, hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid
electric vehicles and FFVs across all vehicle models.
Provide incentives for auto manufacturers to increase fuel
efficiency of existing, non-FFV auto models.
Conduct extensive testing of next-generation fuels across
the vehicle spectrum to meet auto warranty and EPA emission
standards.
Mandate substantial incorporation of plug-ins and FFVs into
federal, state, municipal and covered fleets.
Provide investment tax incentives for corporate fleets and
taxi fleets to switch to plug-ins, hybrids and FFVs.

[[Page S6637]]

Encourage gasoline distributors to blend combustion
enhancers into the fuel.
Provide incentives for existing fueling stations to install
pumps that serve all liquid fuels that can be used in the
existing transportation infrastructure, and mandate that all
new gas stations be so equipped.
Provide incentives to enable new players, such as
utilities, to enter the transportation fuel market, and for
the development of environmentally sound exploitation of non-
traditional petroleum deposits from stable areas (such as
Canadian tar sands).
Provide incentives for the construction of plants that
generate liquid transportation fuels from domestic energy
resources, particularly from waste, that can be used in the
existing infrastructure.
Allocate funds for commercial scale demonstration plants
that produce next-generation transportation fuels,
particularly from waste products.
Implement federal, state, and local policies to encourage
mass transit and reduce vehicle-miles traveled.
Work with other oil-consuming countries towards
distribution of the above-mentioned technologies and overall
reduction of reliance on petroleum, particularly from hostile
and potentially unstable regions of the world.

A New National Project

In 1942, President Roosevelt launched the Manhattan Project
to build an atomic weapon to be ready by 1945 because of
threats to America and to explore the future of nuclear
fission. The cost in today's prices was $20 billion. The
outcome was an end to the war with Japan, and the beginning
of a wide new array of nuclear-based technologies in energy,
medical treatment, and other fields.
In 1962, President Kennedy launched the Man to the Moon
Project to be achieved by 1969 because of mounting threats to
U.S. and international security posed by Soviet space-
dominance and to explore outer space. The cost of the Apollo
program in today's prices would be well over $100 billion.
The outcome was an extraordinary strategic and technological
success for the United States. It engendered a wide array of
spin-offs that improved virtually every aspect of modern
life, including but not limited to transportation,
communications, health care, medical treatment, food
production and other fields.
The security of the United States, and the world, is no
less threatened by oil supply disruptions, price
instabilities and shortages. It is imperative that America
provide needed leadership by immediately beginning to
dramatically reduce its dependence on imported oil. This can
be done by embracing the concepts outlined above with a focus
on fuel choice, combined with concerted efforts at improving
energy efficiency and the increased availability of energy
from renewable sources.
The estimated cost of the `Set America Free' plan over the
next 4 years is $12 billion. This would be applied in the
following way: $2 billion for automotive manufacturers to
cover one-half the costs of building FFV-capability into
their new production cars (i.e., roughly 40 million cars at
$50 per unit); $1 billion to pay for at least one out of
every four existing gas stations to add at least one pump to
supply alcohol fuels (an estimated incentive of $20,000 per
pump, new pumps costing approximately $60,000 per unit); $2
billion in consumer tax incentives to procure hybrid cars; $2
billion for automotive manufacturers to commercialize plug-in
hybrid electric vehicles; $3 billion to construct commercial-
scale demonstration plants to produce non-petroleum based
liquid fuels (utilizing public-private cost-sharing
partnerships to build roughly 25 plants in order to
demonstrate the feasibility of various approaches to perform
efficiently at full-scale production); and $2 billion to
continue work on commercializing fuel cell technology.
Since no major, new scientific advances are necessary to
launch this program, such funds can be applied towards
increasing the efficiencies of the involved processes. The
resulting return-on-investment--in terms of enhanced energy
and national security, economic growth, quality of life and
environmental protection--should more than pay for the seed
money required.
Ms. CANTWELL. Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her comments
and for her focus on the fact that the amendment is basically agnostic
about where we get future supply. You can get it from more domestic
production of oil or natural gas. I have been a big supporter of more
natural gas production, particularly from Alaska, because I think it is
so important to our country moving ahead.
I appreciate her chart showing what States are involved in energy
production because we in Washington State are getting 70 percent of our
electricity from a hydro system. She mentioned, yes, you can get energy
from damming rivers. Well, that is exactly what we have done in the
State of Washington and many parts of the Northwest. It has cost our
environment, but yet we get 70 percent of our power from that.
We have one nuclear powerplant in our State. We have one coal plant
in our State. We have a few natural gas-fired plants in our State. We
have four major refineries that take crude oil and convert it to
petroleum products, such as gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, and asphalt. So
we in Washington State are involved in all those activities.
The fact is, we do not have significant oil and natural gas off the
coast of Washington. I know that is something that is being discussed.
But the Minerals Management Service Report that was conducted basically
says there is not a lot of natural gas off the coast of Washington. So
I am not in the same position as the Senator from Louisiana.
I think you have to take into consideration in this debate what some
of my staff call the ``accidents of geology;'' that is, that Saudi
Arabia happens to sit on 25 percent of the world's oil reserves, and we
in the United States only sit on 3 percent. That is a fact of geology.
So the fact that Louisiana has oil and gas and Washington does not is
another fact of geology. But I tell you that we do play our role in
Washington State. We help keep the lights on in California. We were
forced to do so by emergency order by the U.S. Government during a
drought, at a cost to ratepayers in Washington State. So we do play our
part in providing energy supplies around the region.
But this is an issue about regional diversity and about getting off
our overdependence on foreign oil. I think the Senator correctly
articulated what this amendment does; and that is, it basically sets a
goal and says it is most important to get off the foreign dependence,
to start reducing it. I appreciate that because she came up with the
original language and I think is concerned that we do set goals. So I
appreciate her comments.
I would like to add to the record, if I could--I know my colleagues
from Colorado and Illinois are on the floor and want to speak. But we
have had questions about whether we can get a supply of biofuels. I
know a lot of my Midwestern colleagues believe in the biofuel section
of this bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the Executive Summary of the USDA and Department of Energy report
entitled ``Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts
Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The
Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply

executive summary

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA) are both strongly committed to
expanding the role of biomass as an energy source. In
particular, they support biomass fuels and products as a way
to reduce the need for oil and gas imports; to support the
growth of agriculture, forestry, and rural economies; and to
foster major new domestic industries--biorefineries--making a
variety of fuels, chemicals, and other products. As part of
this effort, the Biomass R&D Technical Advisory Committee, a
panel established by the Congress to guide the future
direction of federally funded biomass R&D, envisioned a 30
percent replacement of the current U.S. petroleum consumption
with biofuels by 2030.
Biomass--all plant and plant-derived materials including
animal manure, not just starch, sugar, oil crops already used
for food and energy--has great potential to provide renewable
energy for America's future. Biomass recently surpassed
hydropower as the largest domestic source of renewable energy
and currently provides over 3 percent of the total energy
consumption in the United States. In addition to the many
benefits common to renewable energy, biomass is particularly
attractive because it is the only current renewable source of
liquid transportation fuel. This, of course, makes it
invaluable in reducing oil imports--one of our most pressing
energy needs. A key question, however, is how large a role
could biomass play in responding to the nation's energy
demands. Assuming that economic and financial policies and
advances in conversion technologies make biomass fuels and
products more economically viable, could the biorefinery
industry be large enough to have a significant impact on
energy supply and oil imports? Any and all contributions are
certainly needed, but would the biomass potential be
sufficiently large to justify the necessary capital
replacements in the fuels and automobile sectors?
The purpose of this report is to determine whether the land
resources of the United States are capable of producing a
sustainable supply of biomass sufficient to displace 30
percent or more of the country's present petroleum
consumption--the goal set by the

[[Page S6638]]

Advisory Committee in their vision for biomass technologies.
Accomplishing this goal would require approximately 1 billion
dry tons of biomass feedstock per year.
The short answer to the question of whether that much
biomass feedstock can be produced is yes. Looking at just
forestland and agricultural land, the two largest potential
biomass sources, this study found over 1.3 billion dry tons
per year of biomass potential (Figure 1)--enough to produce
biofuels to meet more than one-third of the current demand
for transportation fuels. The full resource potential could
be available roughly around mid-21st century when large-scale
bioenergy and biorefinery industries are likely to exist.
This annual potential is based on a more than seven-fold
increase in production from the amount of biomass currently
consumed for bioenergy and biobased products. About 368
million dry tons of sustainably removable biomass could be
produced on forestlands, and about 998 million dry tons could
come from agricultural lands.
Forestlands in the contiguous United States can produce 368
million dry tons annually. This projection includes 52
million dry tons of fuelwood harvested from forests, 145
million dry tons of residues from wood processing mills and
pulp and paper mills, 47 million dry tons of urban wood
residues including construction and demolition debris, 64
million dry tons of residues from logging and site clearing
operations, and 60 million dry tons of biomass from fuel
treatment operations to reduce fire hazards. All of these
forest resources are sustainably available on an annual
basis. For estimating the residue tonnage from logging and
site clearing operations and fuel treatment thinnings, a
number of important assumptions were made: all forestland
areas not currently accessible by roads were excluded; all
environmentally sensitive areas were excluded; equipment
recovery limitations were considered; and recoverable biomass
was allocated into two utilization groups--conventional
forest products and biomass for bioenergy and biobased
products.
From agricultural lands, the United States can produce
nearly 1 billion dry tons of biomass annually and still
continue to meet food, feed, and export demands. This
projection includes 428 million dry tons of annual crop
residues, 377 million dry tons of perennial crops, 87 million
dry tons of grains used for biofuels, and 106 million dry
tons of animal manures, process residues, and other
miscellaneous feedstocks. Important assumptions that were
made include the following: yields of corn, wheat, and other
small grains were increased by 50 percent; the residue-to-
grain ratio for soybeans was increased to 2:1; harvest
technology was capable of recovering 75 percent of annual
crop residues (when removal is sustainable); all cropland was
managed with no-till methods; 55 million acres of cropland,
idle cropland, and cropland pasture were dedicated to the
production of perennial bioenergy crops; all manure in excess
of that which can be applied on-farm for soil improvement
under anticipated EPA restrictions was used for biofuel; and
all other available residues were utilized.
The biomass resource potential identified in this report
can be produced with relatively modest changes in land use,
and agricultural and forestry practices. This potential,
however, should not be thought of as an upper limit. It is
just one scenario based on a set of reasonable assumptions.
Scientists in the Departments of Energy and Agriculture will
explore more advanced scenarios that could further increase
the amount of biomass available for bioenergy and biobased
products.
Ms. CANTWELL. The reason I am asking to do that is because this
report, which was done by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the
Tennessee research facility that is part of our national lab system,
has said we currently have enough forestland and agriculture land in
our country to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of our
current transportation demand. We are already doing research at these
labs. They are already calculating the numbers. They are already saying
we have enough forestland and timberland in our country to produce one-
third of our current demand for transportation fuels. So I think this
report is very telling that we can and are on our way. It is a matter
of us setting the goal.
I know my colleagues talked earlier a lot about CAFE standards. One
of the charts that was presented was supposedly information from the
Energy Information Administration about CAFE standards. The Energy
Information Administration does not have any idea where those numbers
came from, and they understand this amendment does not say anything
about CAFE standards. It says basically we ought to set a national
goal.
It is important to set the national goal to get off our
overdependence of foreign oil because this is who owns the foreign oil.
These are the state-owned facilities. These are the countries: Saudi
Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela, Libya. These are the places that
have the majority of the world's oil reserves. So our policies for the
future are going to be subject to factors involving these countries, so
long as we are so dependent on foreign oil.
Now, it is in our economic and security interests to diversify. I
think the underlying bill gives us lots of tools to do that, but it
does not set a goal to reduce the amount we are dependent on foreign
oil.
My amendment would say, let's reduce the amount so that in future
years we actually have a reduction--not the 58 percent we are importing
today, and not the 68 percent of foreign fuel we are going to import in
25 years, but actually reduce that down to 56 percent so that the trend
line is going in the other direction. Let's become less dependent on
foreign oil than we are today. That is the goal of my amendment.
I appreciate that my colleagues from Colorado and Illinois are also
here to speak on that, so I yield to the Senator from Colorado.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, at the outset of my statement on this
energy legislation, I want to provide my laudatory comments to the
chairman of the committee, Senator Domenici, and the ranking member,
Jeff Bingaman, for their great work in pulling together what is a great
piece of legislation. I also want to say thank you to Alex Flint, Lisa
Epifani, Sam Fowler, and Bob Simon for their good work as staff members
on the committee.
I believe the Energy legislation is a very good first step, and I
think the bipartisan nature in which that committee considered the
legislation is a good template for other work this Senate Chamber
engages in. I believe the keystones of energy conservation, renewable
energy, new technologies, and balanced development are all very
important parts of this legislation. It is my hope this Senate and the
House of Representatives are able to deliver energy legislation to the
President for his signature in the near future.
I will speak more broadly about the Energy bill and its importance to
America because I do think it is one of the two most important things
we are working on on behalf of our Nation today.
I believe the energy challenge we face in America and the health care
challenge that is bankrupting America's families and businesses are the
two most important things we could be working on as a Senate. But
today, and for at least the week, perhaps several weeks ahead, Senators
Domenici and Bingaman will lead us through the discussion on what we
are going to do with respect to the energy imperative.
I rise this evening to specifically address the amendment that has
been offered by the Senator from Washington to establish a goal to
reduce by 40 percent the amount of oil the United States is projected
to import in 2025. This amendment requests an annual report be
completed that provides information about the progress the United
States has made in achieving the goal.
When this goal is met, the United States would be positioned to
reduce imports by 1.5 million barrels per day compared to 2005 import
numbers. Those savings would be equivalent to the amount of oil the
United States is currently importing from Saudi Arabia. Section 151 of
the Senate Energy bill as written contains an oil savings provision.
That provision would direct the President to implement measures
sufficient to reduce by 2015 the country's projected demand for oil by
1 million barrels a day.
Assuming that all those savings came from import reductions, the
United States would still be importing 14.4 million barrels a day. That
is over a million barrels a day more than we import today. It strikes
me as odd to be importing more oil and calling it oil savings. It
sounds a bit like Washington doublespeak.
We need to work toward real energy independence, not away from it. We
need to import less oil, not more. We have to stop putting so much
money in the hands of regimes hostile to the United States in the most
unstable regions of the world. We have to do everything we can to set
America free from our overdependence on foreign oil.
I rise in support of this amendment because it truly represents oil
savings. The amendment would reduce our oil imports by 1.5 million
barrels per day less than we are importing right now. This is progress.
This is the right kind

[[Page S6639]]

of vision for America's future, a vision of energy independence, a
vision of an America free of foreign oil. These oil savings can be
easily achieved if we have the vision and the courage to do it. More
use of renewable fuels, more efficient vehicles, and the intent to
actually do something are substantial keys to setting America free
through this energy legislation.
I urge my colleagues in the Senate to adopt the Cantwell amendment to
the energy legislation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Cantwell
amendment and ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Cantwell for her
leadership on this amendment. It is going to precipitate a debate which
shows the difference in outlook between the two political parties. The
goal that Senator Cantwell has spelled out is to reduce America's
dependence on foreign oil. She believes that we are capable as a
nation, through our innovation, through hard work and bipartisanship,
to come up with ways to conserve energy, to find alternative fuels, to
find environmentally responsible places to seek new oil sources in the
United States; that it is possible for us to lessen dramatically our
dependence on foreign oil, 40 percent in the next 20 years. That is her
vision.
Does it mean changing the way we live? Slightly. Of course, it does.
But it is not too great a sacrifice. Senator Cantwell's vision looks to
an America that is no longer going hat-in-hand to OPEC saying: Please
give us your oil. We cannot survive without it. Understanding that at
any given moment they can cut off oil supplies and we could watch
prices skyrocket as they recently have. That is her vision. It is one I
share. It is a vision that challenges America to look forward in a
positive way, look forward to change which lessens our dependence on
oil-producing countries around the world.
In 1973, we imported 28 percent of the oil we used. Today, we are up
to 58 percent. If we don't change our ways in the next 20 years, we
will be up to 68 percent. When we are so dependent on foreign oil, we
give up our freedom. We allow other governments that provide the oil to
tax our economy, tax our businesses, tax our lives. We give up our
freedom to those who turn on and off this energy spigot and make a
difference.
When I was a little boy, years and years ago, growing up in East St.
Louis, IL, I had a great aunt. She was a wonderful lady who, when I
knew her, was very old. She used to tell us stories about growing up in
her lifetime. It was Aunt Mame. I always thought it was curious, as a
little boy, that she never referred to the vehicles in the driveway as
cars or automobiles. She always called them machines. I thought, who in
the world would call that a machine? She explained to me that in her
lifetime, these machines had appeared out of nowhere, taking the place
of horses and buggies. Getting into a car, which she called a machine,
was a big deal for Aunt Mame. I used to laugh, after I left her, with
my cousins and say: Can you believe she calls those machines? It
reflected her mindset. To her, the concept of a car would always be
something new and foreign.
I listened today while Republican Senators, such as the Senator from
Missouri, came to the floor and said they cannot visualize or imagine a
different kind of car in the future that would be more fuel efficient.
They just can't see it. In fact, the Senator from Missouri, when asked
what that car would look like, said it would look like a golf cart.
That doesn't demonstrate the same kind of vision of our future.
We hear from the other side that the idea of reducing our dependence
on foreign oil is a bad idea. They are wedded to the concept that we
will continue to be dependent on foreign oil. The idea of challenging
America to come up with more fuel-efficient cars and with other ways to
save oil is something they don't believe in. They just don't have
confidence that American creativity and ingenuity can rise to that
challenge. It is a negative and dismal outlook, and they also believe
that American drivers and consumers are so selfish they would never
consider giving up their Hummers, or their huge cars, if it meant less
dependence on foreign oil.

I see the world a lot differently. This Nation comes together time
and again, sending our best and brightest and bravest over to fight in
wars, rallying around the war on terrorism after 9/11. We do rise to
the challenge. That is what we are all about. The Cantwell amendment
lays down that challenge.
In the underlying bill, almost 800 pages long, section 151 states:

The President shall develop and implement measures to
conserve petroleum and end uses throughout the economy of the
United States sufficient to reduce total demand for petroleum
in the United States by 1 million barrels per day in the
amount projected for calendar 2015.

This is not a new provision. It is a good one, but it is not a new
one. It was offered by Senator Landrieu of Louisiana the last time we
had an energy bill. It passed 99 to 1. Only one Senator thought this
was a bad idea. Ninety-nine Senators believed reducing our dependence
on foreign oil was a good idea. This amendment was an important first
step.
But if the United States reached the savings included in this
provision of the bill, we would still be importing 14.4 million barrels
per day to sustain the economy. That is over 1 million barrels a day
more than we import today, allowing America's foreign oil dependence to
continue to grow. We can do better. We can slow our growth in demands
on foreign oil. We can reduce America's use of foreign oil.
First, we have to agree on a national goal. That is what the Cantwell
amendment is all about, a goal that recognizes our national security,
our economic prosperity, our environmental integrity, and makes sure
that Americans have good jobs. Those are our high priorities. We must
agree that sending billions of dollars annually to foreign governments
to feed our thirst for energy instead of reinvesting that money in the
United States shortchanges our own economy and our future. We must
agree that sending our daughters and sons, sisters and brothers,
fathers, uncles, mothers, and aunts into regions of the world, whether
to establish a national presence or to advance freedom or for the sake
of securing our future energy supply can be shortsighted and wrong.
To be drawn into a war to protect a foreign source of oil is to say
it is too much to ask someone to change the car they drive, but not too
much to ask them to send their son into combat. I, frankly, think that
is an easy choice. I believe it is wrong for us to see the world in
those terms, that we accept this dependence on foreign oil. That is why
I strongly support this amendment.
This amendment seeks to establish a goal to reduce our projected
foreign imports by 40 percent over the next 20 years, and 7.6 million
barrels a day would be saved. Do you know where that gets us? If we
meet that goal in 2025 and reduce foreign imports, we will just begin
to reduce our foreign imports overall. Today, the United States imports
over 13 million barrels per day of foreign petroleum. That is the 4-
month average for this year.
In 2025, after reaching this goal, we will import 11.8 million
barrels per day, a decrease of only 1.5 million barrels per day of our
current imports.
Energy independence is about reducing imports of foreign oil, not
slowing the growth of our dependence or toeing the line. As long as oil
remains the sole major fuel source for the American economy, dependence
on foreign imports will remain a geologic and economic fact of life.
Last year, I participated in a discussion entitled ``New Energy for
America, Jobs, Security and Prosperity for the 21st Century.'' The
discussion focused on the need to move America in a direction toward
more jobs, security, and prosperity. The speakers included labor
leaders, business leaders, lawmakers--all with a different message, but
basically saying the same thing: We need to move America in a new
direction.
I have been encouraged by new coalitions, such as Set America Free,
the Energy Futures Coalition, and the Apollo Alliance, which
incorporate unique bedfellows into the same common goals. In a
bipartisan nature, these groups have shared resources and

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ideas because they share the same values: Put America first. Make
America secure and less dependent upon foreign oil.
I appreciate the bipartisan fashion in which Senator Domenici and
Senator Bingaman and the members of the committee crafted this bill,
and I hope this amendment becomes a bipartisan amendment.
I want to note there are a couple provisions in the bill that take
small steps in the right direction, such as the renewable fuels title
and the provision to increase the efficiency of heavy-duty trucks by
reducing the use of diesel power during idling. These are all good
things. But we can do more.
I will offer an amendment on CAFE standards at a later point. That is
not what the Cantwell amendment is about. I have heard the argument
that the amendment is a backdoor way to increase CAFE, that that is
where the Cantwell amendment is headed. But it is not. It is about
setting a goal, without a prescribed recipe, understanding that we all
may believe there are different means by which America can best meet
this goal. We all understand it must be our goal.
How can we be stronger as a Nation while being dependent upon foreign
oil? How can we talk about growing our economy if we have to beg the
OPEC cartel for the oil we need? It is a fact of life. If you look at
the oil resources that are available around the world, it is pretty
obvious. Look at this chart. North America. When you look at 2002, we
have about 4 percent of the global reserves when it comes to oil. By
2020, it is going to be 1 percent. The lion's share of the global
resources is not in America, it is in the Middle East and North Africa.
So even if we use all of the current available resources and can bring
them forward in an environmentally sensible way, we could not get close
to our energy demands. We are always going to be dependent on some
other source from some other part of the world. That is why I think we
have to move toward those developments in the use of energy which
reduce our dependence.
Also, let me say this about China. You cannot talk about the world
economy and ignore China. You don't see China on this list of
producers. It happens to have a growing economy that also is dependent
on foreign oil. But China gets it and the United States does not. Let's
take one example. Fuel efficiency in cars. Today, China has higher fuel
efficiency in cars and trucks than the United States. They get it. They
understand it. If they are dependent on foreign oil, they are going to
put vehicles on the road that are more fuel efficient. The United
States does not. Why? It is worth a moment's discussion.
I listened to the Senator from Missouri speak earlier about the
automobile industry opposing fuel efficiency, opposing this idea of
lessening our dependence on foreign oil. There was a time in my
lifetime when American automobile manufacturers led the world--not only
in inventing the earliest vehicles, but in developing them, setting the
standard for the world. Sadly, that is not the case today. Just a week
or so ago, General Motors announced 25,000 employees were being laid
off. Last quarter, General Motors lost a billion dollars. When you look
at the legacy cost to General Motors, there is a serious concern about
whether this former automobile giant can survive. When you also
consider the fact that Toyota announced last week that it would raise
the prices of cars in the United States so as to allow General Motors
to raise its prices and stay in business--think of it, the Japanese
automobile manufacturer is going to come to the rescue of General
Motors for fear they would go out of business. You wonder why.

How can a country that is so good, with an industry that once led the
world, be in such bad shape? I think the answer is fairly clear.
Detroit and the automobile manufacturers of our country focus on making
more cars this year of the same kind they made last year. They lack the
vision to look to the future of what we could do, in terms of making a
new generation of automobiles and trucks to serve America's economic
and family needs, without sacrificing safety. They think it is an
impossible dream. While they sit and puzzle over the future, lamenting
the possibility of change, sadly, other automobile manufacturers are
doing much more.
My wife and I decided to buy a new car a few months ago. I wanted to
buy an American car. We decided we didn't need a big SUV. We joke in
our house that if you want to drive a Hummer, you ought to join the
Army. We decided to get a modest size car to fit our family needs. We
wanted it to be fuel efficient. Do you know what? The choices are
pretty limited. There are not many American-made cars that fit the
standard. We heard about the Ford Escape hybrid and bought one. It is
good, but it is not great. I am glad we are doing a little bit to try
to reduce our dependence on gasoline in our family and on oil imports
as a Nation. That hybrid was introduced in the market 2 years after the
Japanese came out with their car.
At a time when there is overwhelming demand for Japanese hybrid
automobiles, Detroit still doesn't get it. They are not building that
same type of vehicle to compete. I don't understand it. They seem to
always miss the new trend and try to convince us to stick with the old
model cars that used to be sold.
One of the aspects about this whole debate is security. In a paper
that former CIA Director James Woolsey gave to me at a press conference
a day or two ago, he identified six technologies that, with vigorous
Government support, could dramatically change the nature of our fuel
use in America over the next 20 years. I will not go through the list,
but they are things that are already available. So when some Senators
come to the floor and say we cannot imagine how we lessen dependence on
foreign oil without dramatically tripling the fuel efficiency of cars,
they haven't taken the time to do the research. If they did, they would
understand there are plenty of technologies available today to reach
those goals. ``I am not sure every one of these is going to be
implemented,'' Mr. Woolsey advised, but at least it gives a starting
point to make the changes.
The right mix and standards and incentives are out there. I believe
we can find the right set of financial incentives and standards that
meet our goal. There are a lot of cynics. They probably had a lot
around when Henry Ford said you don't need a horse to get around. But
the fact is we know we can rise to this challenge as a nation.
I fully appreciate that in 10 years we may make technological
advances we cannot fathom today. I didn't think I would be driving a
hybrid vehicle a few years ago or carrying around 2,300 songs on an
IPOD in my pocket. You cannot think small in America. You have to think
big. Sadly, the naysayers and negative voices on the other side of the
aisle cannot envision America growing with this technology and becoming
more fuel efficient. I think there are creative and visionary people on
both sides of the aisle. I hope they will support this amendment.
We can test the innovation of America, and I know we can rise to that
challenge. We burn 10,000 gallons of oil per second today in the United
States--10,000 gallons per second. We use four times more oil than any
other Nation, even though we know that the United States contains just
3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves.
Two-thirds of the world reserves are located in the Persian Gulf
region. In fact, the Saudi state-run oil company alone has 30 times the
reserves of ExxonMobil, the largest American company. Today, nine out
of ten reserve-richest companies in the world are owned by foreign
governments.
Do you understand how that makes the United States subservient to
these governments when it comes to our economic future? They own the
oil we need to exist, and unless we start weaning ourselves from this
dependence on foreign oil, it will just get worse.
A study published by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that in 2000,
oil imports cost $109 billion and comprised 24 percent of that year's
goods and services trade deficit. In 2003, that figure rose to $10
billion a month, $120 billion. What could we do with $10 billion fed
into the U.S. economy instead of into these oil-rich nations around the
world?
On the Web site for the Set America Free Coalition, there is a link
called, ``The True Cost of Oil.'' This is often a

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sensitive subject. Whenever externalities are calculated into the
overall cost, there is often wiggle room for debate. However, on this
Web site, Set America Free has a link to the National Defense Council
Foundation's summary of the hidden cost of imported oil.
The report finds that the economic impact of U.S. dependence on
imported oil includes almost $49 billion in annual defense outlays to
maintain the capability to defend the flow of Persian Gulf oil, the
equivalent of $1.17 to the price of every gallon of gasoline; the loss
of 828,000 jobs in the U.S. economy because we are depending on foreign
oil; and the loss of $159 billion in GNP, not to mention $13.4 billion
in Federal and State revenues. Total economic penalties from our
importation of oil, $297 billion to $304 billion every year. And the
voices on the other side objecting to this Cantwell amendment are
content to let those figures grow. I think that is just plain wrong.
One final striking figure is the cost of periodic oil shocks the U.S.
economy has experienced over the last three decades. They estimate they
have cost us $2.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion.
Today, vulnerabilities in oil infrastructure could easily send oil
prices skyrocketing.
We all know about terrorism and terrorism in the Middle East.
Unstable governments in Iraq and Saudi Arabia can certainly threaten
the U.S. supply, not to mention Iran.
Finally, I would like to note that the money we spend annually in the
Middle East to feed our oil thirst goes directly to the production of
hate literature throughout the region. So today, while American men and
women are fighting in Iraq, the U.S. consumers continue to send
billions of dollars overseas funneled off to support operations that
completely undermine our service men and women overseas.
Can we not see the connection here, that in this same Middle East,
where we are sacrificing and have lost 1,700 American lives in combat,
our enemies are being fed by our dependence on foreign oil?
We have seen the dramatic surge in Chinese economic growth at a rate
of 7 percent a year. This week's U.S. News & World Report cover story
is, ``The China Challenge: What the Awakening Giant will Mean for
America.'' China is the world's most populated country, with 1.2
billion. In 2003, China overtook Japan as the second largest oil-
consuming nation in the world, and projections are that the Chinese
demand for oil will double by 2025.
Mr. President, I see that the majority leader is on the floor. He has
asked to be recognized. I yield the floor to the majority leader for
whatever purpose and then reclaim my time after he is finished.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I apologize for the interruption. A number
of people have called asking for the schedule for tonight in terms of
voting. We will be voting on the Cantwell amendment sometime tomorrow
morning, and we will not have rollcall votes tonight.
I have one unanimous consent request.

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