Madam Speaker, I am an oil man. I always have been and always will be. When I was 9 years old, we moved from Caddo County, Oklahoma, to Hobbs, New Mexico, so my daddy could get a job in the oil patch. A few years later, at age 17, with my…
Madam Speaker, I am an oil man. I always have been and always will be. When I was 9 years old, we moved from Caddo County, Oklahoma, to Hobbs, New Mexico, so my daddy could get a job in the oil patch. A few years later, at age 17, with my parents sick and the bills still needing to get paid, I went to work in the oil fields to earn a paycheck and support the family. Eventually, I built a small business from the ground up; and we employed 250 people, drilling oil and gas wells for other people and fixing them when they were broke.
Most every hamburger that I have ever had has come somehow from American oil and gas. The industry employs almost 20,000 people in New Mexico. It's a critical source of wealth, jobs, energy, and education funding in my State; and I've been proud to fight for New Mexico oil and gas in Congress.
While New Mexico has been successful developing its oil and gas resources, we have failed to develop the diverse alternative energy resources that my State also possesses in great abundance. And, unfortunately for thousands of New Mexicans looking for work today, we have failed to create those alternative energy jobs.
Madam Speaker, if we want to create our energy jobs here in America and stop sending a billion dollars to countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela every day, we need a ``Do it all, do it in America'' energy policy. We need to drill for more oil and natural gas. We need to build new nuclear facilities. We need to capture the wind, the sun, and the Earth's geothermal heat for electricity. We need to produce billions of gallons of liquid biofuels to burn in cars, trucks, and airplane engines, and we need to do it right here in America.
Madam Speaker, a pillar of a ``Do it all, do it in America'' approach to energy is producing biofuels from algae. Algal biofuels have high energy density and the near-term potential to produce more energy in a small footprint than earlier generation biofuels. They can be grown using brackish water not suitable for human consumption and on land not suitable for agriculture. And all the algae needs is ample sunlight and a source of nutrition, like cow manure, to grow and get fat with oil.
Although the companies and researchers that are now producing algal biofuels have intensively experimented with various techniques and algae breeds over many years, when it comes down to it, getting oil out of algae is pretty simple: You dig a pond, line it, and fill it with water. You fill the pond with algae, keep them fed. When the algae are good and fat, you squeeze the oil out of the organisms. And depending on your technology, you put it right to use or refine it into gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. Additionally, many algal biofuels are designed to function on a drop-in basis, so you can pour green crude right into the pipeline or tanker truck coming out of the oil patch. This means we can replace imported oil with homegrown fuel without costly investments in new refining and transportation infrastructure.
My district of southern New Mexico is among the many areas across the country primed to become a center for algal biofuel production and job creation. Our wide open spaces, ample sunlight, and brackish water make us the perfect place to produce our Nation's next generation of biofuels. We already have algal biofuel facilities in Dona Ana County and Eddy County. Luna County will soon be home to another facility which will create 700 jobs when it breaks ground this fall. The potential, though, is so much greater. Algal biofuels are poised to power America with homegrown energy on a large scale.
However, algal biofuels face an uneven playing field within our Nation's energy policy framework, most notably in our tax code. Under current law, algal biofuels do not qualify for tax incentives that currently benefit other biofuels, like cellulosic biofuels.
When these tax laws were written, cellulosic biofuels and biodiesel were the only renewable fuels on the lawmakers' radars and considered capable of actually reducing America's dependence on foreign oil. Since these laws were written, however, significant advances in the algae- based fuel industry have readied algae for prime time. Now, because algae has many advantages over cellulosic feedstocks and is operating on a near-term commercialization timeline similar to cellulosic fuels, algae-based fuel producers should receive tax incentives on par with those currently received by cellulosic biofuel producers.
H.R. 4168, the Algae-based Renewable Fuel Promotion Act, simply gives algal biofuels tax parity with cellulosic
biofuels. The legislation contains a limitation on the products that will qualify for the tax incentives. They must be derived solely from qualifying feedstocks. Qualifying feedstocks include, in addition to cellulosic materials, cultivated algae, cyanobacteria, and lemna. Beyond that, the bill does not distinguish among these feedstocks with regard to the manner of cultivation, including nutrients or other inputs used to develop the feedstock and the biofuel. It is the intent of this provision to encompass all technologies using qualified feedstocks such as algae.
Bottom line, tax parity will help algal biofuel producers attract needed capital to produce energy right here at home and create hundreds of thousands of jobs for new energy in New Mexico and across this great country.
Madam Speaker, when Americans go to the pump to fill up their tanks today, they are sending 70 cents of every dollar to other countries, many of which don't like us very much, and are creating jobs in places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. I don't want Americans to be creating jobs for the supporters of Hugo Chavez when they use energy. We should be creating energy jobs right here at home, employing American workers to produce the energy our economy and military needs.
Passing this bill today is a step toward a ``Do it all, do it in America'' energy policy. We can create American jobs and make our country more secure by producing our energy right here at home. This is a commonsense bipartisan bill that will create jobs and move America toward energy independence.
I would like to thank Chairman Levin, Ranking Member Camp, and members of the Ways and Means Committee for their support.
