Floor Statements

I want to thank the gentleman from Utah and thank him for his leadership in the Western Caucus. Even though I'm from Western Pennsylvania and Central Pennsylvania, I've been a proud member of the Western Caucus my tenure in Congress, and have enjoyed working on the many issues that the West is interested in.

$129 oil today. I remember a short time ago when it hit 80 and then it hit 90. I came down on the floor, thinking this Congress would start to react as if it was a crisis. Here we are today with $129. We've been over 120 for a week or so.

Do we have a bipartisan Senate/House task force formed to deal with energy? No. Not an issue.

Do we have a special committee in the Congress here in the House to deal with energy, maybe bipartisan or partisan? No.

Is anybody calling for a special session that we deal with energy?

No matter where I go, where I fly, what coffee shop I sit in, everybody's talking about energy prices. Why? Because a young lady said to me recently, Mr. Peterson, I make $320 a week. I'm raising two children as a single mom. I'm now paying $130 a month, no, $130 a week to drive to work.

In rural America people drive distances to work. They drive distances to school. They drive distances to shop. They drive distances to go to the doctor. There's no transits, there's no cheap way to travel.

She said, I'm spending $130 a week. I said, what are you spending to heat your home? She said, I'm spending $175 a month, year round, to heat my home with natural gas.

What this young lady doesn't know that, since she told me that, energy prices have risen considerably. That was a few weeks ago. And what she doesn't know, and most Americans don't know that natural gas prices to heat our homes are going up measurably this fall.

Last year, at this time, in the summertime, we put our natural gas in reserve, underground caverns because we can't produce enough during the winter heating season. Last year, at this time we were putting gas in the ground at $6.50 to 7, and that was a little bit higher than usual. Not a lot but a little bit.

Today we're putting $11 gas in the ground. And I talked to one of the experts at the Energy Department today, and he expects that figure to rise. If we would have a major storm in the gulf, which we have not had for 2 years, and we always lose some production in the gulf when that happens, we could have 14, $15 gas go in the ground. If that's true, home heating costs next winter, with natural gas, and that's 62 percent of Americans, will double.

Those who are heating with propane and home heating oil this year paid huge prices, and are going to pay much higher prices next year. Natural gas only went up about 10 percent. But that's going to change.

Folks, America has chosen, the leadership in America has chosen to not produce our own energy, to lock ours up. Now, we did pass a bill today called, interesting name, the Gas Price Relief Act for Consumers of 2008. Now, wouldn't you think that's going to do something with prices?

Well, here's what it does. It's trying to figure out a legal way for us to sue OPEC and other countries who we don't think's producing enough oil. If, you know, I think Saudi Arabia, I looked today, is 12 million barrel a day. And the President was just there, and the Speaker asked him to ask for more oil, and I think he asked for more oil.

A month or so ago, Vice President Cheney was over there, and the Speaker and others asked him to ask for more oil, and he asked for more oil.

But now we're going to pass a bill saying that if they don't produce enough oil, and if we think they're kind of conspiring and not producing as much as they could, we want some court to sue them in.

Well, it seems to me, we're a little bit vulnerable, because I want you to look at my chart here. Congress, for 27 years, has locked up the Outer Continental Shelf. That's offshore production of energy. Every country in the world produces out there, a major part of their energy, both oil and natural gas.

We've also locked up major parts of the Midwest. Up here in Alaska, we locked up the portion of ANWR that was set aside for energy production. That's why it was set aside. I think we heard in earlier testimony here that 2,000 acres out of millions would have been actually the footprint. And yet, this Congress said no.

Now, we've said no to Alaska. We've said no to the Midwest. The oil shale rock was recently locked up, not signed into law yet, but we passed a bill here with six plus votes, I think, to lock up the shale oil in three States in the West.

We heard earlier about the huge coal lock up with one Presidential order. Congress, and three Presidents, have locked up offshore production.

Now, we have the nerve to say that we're going to sue other countries because they're only producing 12 million barrels a day for us?

I think maybe we ought to pass the bill that Americans could sue Congress and the administration for not producing adequate energy. We have been negligent.

This Congress has the mind set that we're going to run this country with renewables. Now, I wish that was true. But let's look at the chart. The left of this chart is history. The right of this chart is the Energy Department's prediction. There's not much change.

Hydro, non-hydro renewables. This is wind, solar and geothermal and woody biomass. And the one that's increased the most is woody biomass because a million Americans are now heating their home with pellet stoves. That's sawdust made into pellets.

All the wood companies are drying their wood. If they dry their wood they're using wood waste now instead of fuel oil or diesel or natural gas because they can't afford that.

And many power plants are topping off their loads. To keep under air emission standards they may use 80 percent coal and 20 percent wood waste. And we now have some plants coming on-line generating with wood waste. So woody biomass, and now we're talking about cellulosic ethanol, which will also be another use for woody biomass. So that's been the only one that's growing.

Nuclear, we need, we have 45 to 50 plants that are now applying for new permits, and we need all of them to be completed by 2030 to stay equal.

Coal, it shows coal growing. I don't believe that's going to happen. We've had about 60 coal plants in the country that have been turned down by States because of the threat of climate change legislation, which will put a tax on energy.

When you hear people talking about carbon taxes and carbon trading, you need to realize that in every country that's went down that road, that will increase energy prices another 20 to 30 percent. Now, let's say it's 25. Well, at $4 gasoline, that means, with a carbon tax, gasoline would be $5 pretty quickly, without oil prices going up.

Now, they show natural gas flat here. I disagree with the Energy Department, because every one of those 60 coal plants that have been turned down will be a natural gas fired generation plant. Just 10, 12 years ago we produced 7 percent of our electricity with natural gas. We're now at 23 percent and growing. And whenever you deal with carbon in any country, the only field you can shift to is natural gas. It's cleaner. No knocks, no socks, and a third of the CO2. So it's the clean green gas.

Now, we should be using more of it. But if we're going to use more of it, we need to produce more of it and we need to be out on the Outer Continental Shelf. As we showed before, we need to get into the Midwest, we need to do the coal to liquids, coal to gas, as we heard others talking about earlier. We need to do all of those things, and those are all doable.

Folks, we need all the wind and solar we can get. And I'm for it. But if we double it in the next 5 years, we will be less than 1 percent of our energy use in this country. So it's not big numbers. We can't run the country on renewables.

We're not increasing hydro. Folks, we're really not increasing anything. We're sitting on our hands. We're a policy-less country, as far as energy is concerned.

The 2005 Energy Bill did a lot of good things. The reason we have 45 to 50 permits on nuclear is because it streamlined the process and we now have all those in the pipeline.

The unfortunate part, when we build these nuclear plants, the basins are going to come from Japan, that's the base because we don't have the ability to make them here anymore. And many of the components are going to come from Germany, which has a lot of capacity. And we've kind of lost our capacity.

Surely.

And that comes from Third World countries, dictatorships, the same type of countries that we're purchasing oil from.

But let me tell you, it's not that simple. LNG, and I'm not opposed to it, but when a tanker is loaded with LNG it becomes a commodity, and countries like Japan and Spain and other countries that have no natural gas, live by it. They will currently, are paying 14 to $15 per thousand for a tanker load, and we can't afford to pay that. We're paying 11 to put in the ground. We can't put 14 and $15 dollar gas in the ground, or we are automatically doubling natural gas heating prices for next year.

Now, natural gas is not just a heating fuel. We run our country with it. You know, we use--70 to 90 percent of the cost of fertilizer to grow corn to make ethanol is natural gas cost. That's what we use.

Petrochemical business, 55 percent of their cost is natural gas because they use it as an ingredient and as a fuel.

Polymers and plastics, 45 percent of the cost of that industry is natural gas because they use it as an ingredient, as a fuel. Almost everything we manufacture in America has natural gas in it as an ingredient, as a fuel.

Really, I've had people tell me it's such a wonderful substance, we never should burn it, we should use it as the chemical that it is to make products. But we know that's not going be the case.

We have lots of natural gas in America. Unfortunately, all the rich fields are locked up. Offshore is loaded. The Roan Plateau in the West is loaded. They've just found the new Marcella Shale in the Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia area. It's going to take a while to develop it. But we have lots, but we are not producing enough of it to keep it affordable. And we are looking at a huge spike that's coming at us right now.

But LNG, we can only buy it in the off season. In the heating season, when we need it, we never can afford to pay for it because the other countries bid it up. And they have to pay the price because they don't have any other oil.

I was in a hardware store last month, and they had their coats on. And I said, what's going on? He said, in the spring and the fall season now we don't heat our store because people, working people are coming in to buy hardware and lumber, it's a lumber yard. And they said because it costs us 800 in the month in the spring and the fall season, now it's going to cost us a lot more than that in the winter, but we have to keep it warm in the winter. But in the spring months, when nothing will freeze, we shut our heat off. That saves us 800 a month. Those are two fall months and two spring months. That saves me $3,200 profits. So he said, we work with our coats on. Our customers come in with their coats on, they just leave them on and they don't complain. He said, that's how we do it now. We can't afford to heat our store.

These costs of natural gas, costs to heat schools this year are going to double. Costs to heat our hospitals are going to double. Almost everything that we use gas for will probably come close to doubling this year. It's going to be terribly inflationary, and it's going to make some businesses just noncompetitive.

Someone was talking the other day

here on the floor that we're drilling twice as many wells and we don't need to drill more. Well, we're drilling in old, tired fields. We're drilling the cracks and crevices that we haven't drilled before. You get out into some fertile territories, there's huge gas fields. Just huge. In fact, off the coast of Florida, there was a huge gas field that I think the lady from MS said it was called very sweet gas and it was tremendous volumes, and we actually bought the leases back so we wouldn't produce it. Yet 50 miles offshore, we have Cuba cutting deals with China, Norway, and Canada. They're going to produce gas 50 miles off the Florida coast, and we can't produce 100 miles off the coast. Does that make sense? I don't think so.

Well, the good news is within the next 3 to 4 weeks, we will be offering an amendment to the Interior bill that will open up on the offshore--let me put my sign back up, my chart back up here--in part of the gulf, east Atlantic, Pacific. Both oceans will all be open from 50 miles out for gas and oil.

Now the site distance is level. So if you're at your condo at the beach, when it gets past 11 miles, you won't know it's there. We're going to be 50 miles out. Now, I'd like to come in to 25 or 30 because there's a lot of energy in that section. But we're going to go 50 in hopes that a majority of Congress, House and Senate, will feel the heat from back home and we will open up production.

Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, all of these very sensitive environmental countries, they all produce. Canada laughs at us. They actually produce in the Great Lakes. They produce in Lake Erie where I live and they sell us the gas. And I asked them the last time they were in, Do you slant drill to our part of the lake? And he smiled and he said, You bet.

Now, we don't allow drilling there either.

We could actually drill the Great Lakes from offshore. We wouldn't even have to get in the lakes. But since 1913, Canada has produced in the Great Lakes, and now they're selling us, because we get 15 percent of our natural gas from Canada. Our largest producer of oil outside of our own is Canada, and it's also the only major source we have of natural gas other than our own, and I think 2 percent LNG. I think 15 percent of our natural gas. Thank God Canada produces. They also produce right off of the Washington coast, right off the main coast. Right off within sight of us, they're producing energy with no negative results.

I hope in the next 3 or 4 weeks that Congress will feel the heat, understand this issue a little better. A lot of people in the country, a lot of people in Congress don't realize that natural gas is not a world price, and when we're putting $11 gas in the ground, that's the highest price for natural gas coming out of the ground anywhere in the world. In South America, it's a buck-something. In Russia, it's a buck something.

So our fertilizer, 50 percent of our fertilizer industry has went offshore now. Polymers and plastics are going offshore. Petrochemicals are going offshore. Those are the best blue-collar jobs left in America, and they need natural gas to produce.

And if carbon capture and CO2, if you have those who believe that's such an evil force, that the CO2 we breathe out is a poisonous gas, if we put carbon capture and CO2 payments ahead of affordable available energy, America will be a Section 8 Nation. We won't compete with anybody in the industrialized world because our energy costs will prohibit it.

Well, maybe 30 years ago when oil was $10 a barrel and natural was $2 a thousand, it was smart to use theirs. But when it's $129 a barrel and $11 for natural gas, I think it's time to produce our own. Americans do not need to be sending all of our resources to these other countries.

If your foreign competitor is melting steel or making a product with $1.25 natural gas, you have a huge disadvantage, and that's what's actually happening.

Thanks for the time. In a couple, 3 weeks we will have the opportunity to fight to open up offshore production of oil and gas, and that alone I think will take some, if we could pass that, House and Senate, have the President sign it, I think that would take some of the excitement out of the oil market and oil and gas would settle down because everybody feels there's a lot of hype in there because the traders see it keep going up and they keep bidding it up to make money.

And so we have Wall Street, you know, 15 to 20 percent of our energy prices might be Wall Street making money. But if you take the risk out, you make sure that we have adequate supply opened up, that takes that away; and I think we could see a settling down of the markets, and we might see some measurable price decreases because if we don't, it's going to be a hot summer and it's going to be a long, cold winter for America.

In fairness to those countries, they're producing more and more energy, and we have chosen not to produce very much of our own only in the whole entire fields. And yet we pass a bill so we think we can sue them because they're not producing enough? I find that interesting. The bill ought to be that the American public can sue us because we've locked up our resources and forced them to buy foreign expensive energy.

Well, that is something they all have. And I think, in my view, we need to be watching very closely as we elect a President, do they have a bona fide energy policy for America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about the energy issue also. There are some good things in this bill for our farmers. I especially think the dairy provision was well done. Dairy is very important to Pennsylvania.

I was in the food business 26 years of my life. I know how people struggle with their family budgets. But let me tell you, the farmers are reeling with fertilizer costs. Why are fertilizer costs doubling and tripling year after year? And why is 50 percent of our fertilizer now being imported? Because of natural gas costs. Ninety percent of the cost of ammonia fertilizer is natural gas, clean, green natural gas. This Congress refuses to produce natural gas in this country. There has never been a gas well that polluted a beach. Look at this chart. Off- limits. Off-limits. Off-limits. There should be another one in the middle. There should be one up here in Alaska.

We have said that we are not going to produce fossil fuel. Natural gas is a fossil fuel. We are not going to produce oil.

Our farmers need relief. They need affordable energy to drive their tractors, to dry their grain after they harvest it, and to buy their fertilizer.

Folks, this country's economic future, not just farming, but our ability to manufacture, our ability to heat our homes this winter-- right today, we are putting $11.50 natural gas in the ground for next winter's use. Last year at this time, it was $6.50 to $7. Do the math. That's a 40 to 50 percent increase in natural gas costs.

We have lost half of the fertilizer factories in America. That's why our farmers are now using foreign fertilizer. That's why it is costing them 300, 400 and 500 percent more than it did just several years ago. Folks, we have to produce energy in America if we are going to farm and have affordable food, if we are going to manufacture products and if we are going to have an economy that competes in the global economy.

We are not in a sole economy any more. We are in a global economy. We have to compete.

In America, we pay $125 for oil. Everybody does. But we have had the highest natural gas prices in the world for 8 years. And the margin is increasing because we refuse to produce energy for America. All of these other debates are going to be academic. We won't have factories. We won't have successful farmers. We'll be buying foreign fertilizer to grow products in this country. We'll be buying foreign tractors to produce our farms. We'll be driving foreign cars because we won't have a manufacturing base left.

Clean, green natural gas is the answer.

And we need to open up. And we need to drill for oil, too. There has never been a natural gas well that has harmed us economically and environmentally. Clean, green natural gas.

I'm delighted today that we're talking about energy. I think it's vital because I want to tell you something; if we don't get a lid on energy prices in America, there will be no level of government with a budget that will balance. The cost to heat our schools, the cost to heat our hospitals, the cost to do everything is going to explode. The cost to move goods and services is exploding. And it's about time, Americans.

I had a young lady say to me last week, she said, Mr. Peterson, I make $320 a week. I used to spend $90 to drive to work, now I'm spending $140. How do I pay my bills? What she doesn't know is she heats her home with natural gas, and the natural gas that we're putting in the ground today for next winter's heating is $11.50. Last year, it was running between $6.50 and $7. She's looking at a 50 percent increase in home heating costs next year, which she cannot meet.

Folks, the average working American is struggling to pay their bills because of energy costs. Our State governments, our county governments and our hospitals and our schools are going to take money away from the classroom to heat those facilities. If this Congress does not address the energy issue, we're going to collapse the economic viability of this country.

Energy runs this country. We've had $2 gas and $10 oil most of our lifetime, with a few spikes in the seventies, eighties and nineties. Folks, we have $125 oil, $11.50 gas. We have not had a storm in the gulf in 2 years that always causes spike prices. We've not had a major country that supplies oil to us all tip over or have a coup that took away the government and took away that supply of oil.

I'm predicting that countries like China, who are amassing energy all around the world, we'll read one of these days where they have purchased all the oil and gas that one of the major contributing countries can produce for the next decade and we won't get any of it.

Folks, if we have a storm in the gulf this summer like they're predicting, and they're predicting them, if we have any kind of terrorist attack on a supply system, $125 oil will seem cheap to us. I'm not sure this economy can handle $125 oil.

I am for every renewable there is, but let's look at the Energy Department's prediction: Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, renewables, hydro and non-hydro, that's their prediction. We've spent $30 billion for renewables. Folks, if we double wind and solar--and I wish we could double it every year--but if we double it, we will still be less than three-quarters of 1 percent of our energy needs.

Where is the renewable coming? The renewable that's grown the fastest is wood waste. With pellet stoves heating hundreds of homes, with factories heating their factories with wood waste, wood waste has been the fastest growing energy renewable.

Folks, America better get serious. And we'd better open our Outer Continental Shelf, we'd better do ANWR, we'd better do the Midwest. Coal-to-liquid, coal-to-gas, wind, solar, we need it all, folks. America is in an energy crisis.

This has been an interesting discussion. Oil prices record high, $119, gas prices, $11. And is Congress acting? What is on the table here to help Americans for affordable energy? Very little, folks. We're about restricting supply.

Consumers are paying the highest prices. The people in my district, and I'm sure in yours, are struggling to drive long distances. I come from a rural district. People are paying $20 and $30 a day to drive to work. They can't afford that. They're struggling now to catch up with their winter heating bills, which were unreasonably high.

Well, who's the bad guy? Who's causing this price rise? Mr. Markey from Massachusetts said it's Big Oil because they just charge too much. He also says it's because we're putting 70,000 barrels a day in the SPR. Well, why are oil prices high, folks? It's because this Congress, three decades ago, locked up supply. Look at the red on the map. That's the Outer Continental Shelf. We're the only country in the world who doesn't produce gas and oil there. The only country in the world. There are huge reserves in the Midwest.

This body and the Democrat Party have been talking about locking up the shale rock, there's been legislation to do that, the Roan Plateau, the best gas reserve in the Midwest, locking them up.

They talk about us not being dependent on foreign energy, but everything they're doing makes us dependent on foreign energy, where we have no control. Yes, prices for energy are set on Wall Street. Right or wrong, that's the system. They set the prices. When you lock up supply, if we stopped growing as much corn, prices go up. If you stop making as much steel in this country,

if you limit, steel prices are going to go up. We're limiting the production of energy.

Are we against wind and solar? Absolutely not. Look at the chart here. Here's the renewables. They think that's going to be an instant answer. I want all the wind we can get, all the solar we can get, all the geothermal. We're promoting biofuels. On the biofuels issue, we mandated 35.5 billion gallons a year by 2030. We had 6.5 billion gallons last year.

Corn prices have tripled. Wheat prices have tripled. Food prices are getting so people now are struggling to go to the grocery store after they've been to the gas station. If we have a bad crop failure down the road, not only are food prices going to go crazy, but ethanol prices. Folks, I think we better be very careful about the biofuels. I'm not opposing them, I never have, but I would be surprised if biofuels can increase the use of gasoline we need in growth. Energy prices, folks, are dependent on supply. If we double wind and solar tomorrow, we're at less than three-quarters of 1 percent of our energy supply. I hope we can do it.

Folks, we need to produce energy so Americans can afford to live.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a deep concern. We, as a country, will be a second-rate nation in the next decade if we don't have an energy policy. America needs an energy policy. We need to have a plan of how we're going to have available, affordable fuel for everybody to run our companies, to heat our homes, to drive our cars.

We don't have an energy policy, folks. We have a policy where we've locked up our resources and we're going to let the rest of the world produce. Our dependence on foreign oil has increased 2 percent a year every year for 20 years.

We are on that path of maybe going to 3 percent a year. Because when we don't produce, they do and we pay. We have the rest of the world consuming greater and greater amounts of energy making us now bid for our energy.

I find it interesting. They like to say it's the six big American oil companies, or I guess it's five, that are the cause of our energy prices. The fact is, this Congress and the last three administrations are the reason we have high energy prices. This Congress locked up. This map right here shows we're the only country in the world that's locked up the outer continental shelf, the best and safest place to produce energy. Every country in the world produces there. Cuba will soon be producing energy 50-some miles off our coasts where we prohibit.

We need to have an energy policy. We need to open up our midwest. We need to open up our offshore. I have the bill. I heard talk in here a little bit ago about how we are going to savage the beaches. My bill opens up for natural gas only. The first 25 miles are locked up. The second 25 miles are only open if States choose to. The second 50 miles are open; States can still close it with the legislation. And the second hundred miles are open.

I ask for some Member of this Congress to show me a natural gas well that has ever polluted a beach. Natural gas bubbles up under the ground all over the country from gas pressure in the earth. Natural gas comes out of the ground naturally, and if we put a 6-inch hole in the ground, it comes out in a commercial way that we can heat our homes.

America has had the highest natural gas prices in the world. Natural gas is not a world price. Oil is a world price. Natural gas is not a world price. For 7 years now, soon going on 8, we've had the highest natural gas prices in the world, and our fertilizer companies are leaving because they use so much of it. Our petrochemical manufacturers are leaving, our polymers and plastic companies are leaving. People who have bend metal, treat metal, cook food are going to do it in other places where natural gas is a fraction than it is here. Clean, green natural gas is what America ought to be running on until we have viable renewable.

I met with wind people this morning. I'm for all the wind we can get. But if we double wind and solar, which so many people are counting on, in the next 5 years we will be less than three-quarters of 1 percent of our energy needs.

I find it unexplainable that we have the highest fuel prices for trucks and cars, the highest heating home costs on record, and this Congress doesn't even talk about it. We don't have a plan. We are doing stimulus packages because energy is taking the life out of our economy.

We're going to need to do a stimulus package every 6 months, because as soon as we inject another $220 billion in, the energy policies of this country are going to suck it right back out because Americans are going to spend more and more. We have $3.40 gasoline, soon to be $4, and if we have a storm in the gulf this summer, we will be looking at $5 gasoline. $5 gasoline will sink our economy.

We must have an energy policy.

Madam Chairman, on April 10, 2008, let the record show, oil is $110 and rising, natural gas is $10.56 and rising, gasoline and diesel prices at record levels in all our communities.

Folks back home are scared. They want us to help them. An amendment I will offer later will help, the NEED Act, to this bill because it will provide the ability to produce clean, green natural gas on out, out of sight, offshore. It will provide $20 billion to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and the beaches there, $20 billion to clean up the Great Lakes, $12 billion for San Francisco Bay clean-up, energy efficiency and renewables, $32 billion, carbon capture, the famous discussion in the Senate now, $32 billion. And it'll be mandated spending. The appropriators can't screw it up.

America's economic future is in trouble. Energy prices will prevent people from having a job, having an economy and being able to afford their vacations and go to the beautiful beaches that we have.

I think Roy Ennis says it best, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. Energy is the master resource, the foundation of everything else. Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, natural gas and transportation fuels make our jobs, health and living standards possible. Energy is the great equalizer, the creator of economic opportunity and environmental justice. Push energy prices up, everybody suffers. When energy costs get too much, industry lays people off or just leaves. Jobs, income and tax revenues vanish. Government social programs wither. Town and leadership migrate to other cities, other countries. Social ills multiply. That's why I say the fight over energy is the critical civil rights battle of our era. Your utility bills, the price you pay at the pump, your job security are in danger, and not just because of the Middle East oil wars or competition from China and India. Our rights are being endangered because of what's happening right here at home.

This Congress is the cause of high energy prices. There's no action here to fix the ills of the past. We're locking up our energy supply. It's not even to be debated. It's not even a priority.

Congress is the reason America doesn't compete energywise. And, folks, in a period of time, we won't compete in the global economic economy, and we will not have jobs and a future for this country. We have the potential of being a second-rate nation because we, as Congress, have caused the energy crisis and are refusing to fix it.

Offered By: Mr. Peterson of Pennsylvania

Amendment No. 6: Before section 1 insert the following:

Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of a talented high school choir in my district, the State College Area High School Master Singers of State College, PA, which was chosen to perform at New York City's world-renowned Carnegie Hall on March 10, 2008.

The State College Area High School Master Singers were selected out of dozens of high schools across the country to perform in this concert. The event featured 200 students from four States, and was the capstone of Carnegie Hall's yearlong National High School Choral Festival. The concert was conducted by Dr. Craig Jessop, esteemed music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who was working with the choirs and their conductors throughout the year. Known best for their legendary musical performances, Carnegie Hall is also a pioneer of music education, and I am thrilled that these students were given such a remarkable opportunity to showcase their talent.

Led by Robert Drafall, the Master Singers is comprised of sophomores, juniors and seniors, and performs in a variety of venues as well as performing at the Heinz Chapel Chamber Choir Invitational, The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, and The Celebration of African American Spirituals. The Master Singers have distinguished themselves in earning superior ratings at adjudicated festivals in New York City, Toronto, Virginia Beach, and Chicago. They were invited to participate in a master class with the famed a cappella ensemble Chanticleer, and they have collaborated with the Central Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra and with the State College Choral Society and Orchestra in a performance featuring Metropolitan Opera Audition winners.

I am privileged to have one of the four schools in the Nation chosen for the Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival residing in my Pennsylvania district. I commend these students and their leaders for their accomplishment, and congratulate them for representing the State of Pennsylvania in their performance at the famed Carnegie Hall on March 10th.

Mr. Speaker, I stand ready to support every renewable form of energy that we can produce. We can't do it fast enough. But a year ago we had $55 oil. Today we have $100 oil, and I'm not going to blame the Democrats like you blamed Mr. Bush. We are all guilty. Congress is the reason we have hundred dollar oil. And I think the Bush administration could have been a lot more aggressive in its energy policies, but the 2005 act had a lot of things in it that your side fought that are reaping benefits today.

But hundred dollar oil is because this Congress has decided we are not going to produce oil and gas anymore, clean natural gas. We are not going to do coal to liquids, coal to gas. We are going to do just renewable.

Let's look at the chart.

At the top, the orange, the buff, the yellow, yellow is nuclear, coal, this is our energy use today, and this is a projection on the right-hand side, on the right-hand side of where it's going to be by 2030 according to the Energy Department.

If we double wind and solar in the next 5 years, it will be less than 3 quarters of 1 percent of our energy use in America. We have to double it. We have to quadruple it before it really makes a measurement difference.

Oil companies make huge profits when they own the rights to oil and Congress locks up the ability to harvest them in America and forces us to go offshore to buy them. We have been gaining 2 percent a year since I have been here. This will be the 12th year. Every year dependence grows 2 percent because Congress has locked up supply. We have to go over there to buy it, foreign unstable countries.

And when you own it and we lock it up and the market goes high and crazy, Wall Street does that. Oil companies don't set the price; Wall Street does. I have been trying to produce clean natural gas. I haven't been able to get a majority for that. Clean and natural gas. I haven't been able to get a majority for that. And that's the one that's vital to the manufacturers of America because it is not a world price, and we have the highest prices in the world.

However, what hope does this bill actually give to young families with home heating costs? Nothing. What hope does this bill bring to poor folks living in rural and urban America who struggle to drive to work, to school, to the doctor's office, to do their shopping? It doesn't do anything. What hope does this bill give to independent truckers who are struggling to pay their fuel oil bill, soon approaching $4, if they try to make a profit with their independent trucks? It doesn't do anything. What does this bill do for rural and suburban seniors who keep their thermostat at 58 degrees last winter and this winter so they can cut their fuel costs? It doesn't do anything.

What does this bill do to prevent the tragedy that happened in my district last year when an elderly gentleman tried to warm, on a sub- zero night, by putting coal in a wood stove and he burned in a fire? This bill would not have saved his life.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to, I hope, bring some balance to this debate. I was stunned in my office listening to the opening comments that it is going to be a new era in America on energy prices.

Americans are struggling to heat their homes. Americans are struggling to have fuel to drive their cars affordably. Companies all across this country are struggling to make a profit because of energy prices. And the bill before us will not change that in the next 3 to 5 years.

I don't oppose better CAFE standards. It takes 2 or 3 years to design new cars, other years to build them. You are 4 to 5 years away from people. And the poorest among us seldom ever own a new car with high efficiency standards, the poorest among us.

Folks, America needs more affordable energy. We have the highest energy prices in the world because of this Congress, because we have locked up natural gas reserves, we have locked up oil reserves. We have not allowed the movement that should be in coal-to-liquids and coal-to- gas, and there has been resistance to expanding nuclear which provides the vast majority of America's energy. I hope renewables become a major force, but it will be years if not decades.

Today, Americans need affordable gasoline. They need affordable diesel fuel to fuel our trucks. They need affordable home heating fuel to heat their homes. They need affordable natural gas. And this bill does nothing for any of those.

The ethanol, biofuels, the second part of this bill, it is futuristic. We now have 7 billion gallons; that mandates 36 billion. It limits 15 to corn. And we know that corn was $1.80 when it started; it is $4.37 today, and rising. It is going to raise food prices. God forbid we get dependent on corn and we have a bad crop year. We will have high-cost food and unaffordable energy.

Now, I am not saying we shouldn't do that, but we should do it carefully. But we can't build America's energy future on CAFE standards. I am all for the fuel efficiency appliances. It takes years for that to happen. Americans today expect more from this Congress. High oil prices on the backs of Congress because we locked it up. Clean green natural gas, the affordable fuels that Americans should be using in greater quantities if it were affordable. $11.37, it spiked a couple bucks in the last couple days because it is cold and we are starting to use a lot of gas. Natural gas is used in heavy amounts to make ethanol, almost an even swap. Natural gas is what will be the hydrogen car if we get there.

Folks, we need affordable energy that runs 90-some percent of this country's energy needs, and we are ignoring it. This bill does nothing. The big bill that we voted on last week did nothing. Natural gas supplies need to be increased; oil supplies need to be increased in this country so we are not buying it from foreign countries. Coal-to- liquid, coal-to-gas needs to be advanced like we are force-feeding cellulosic ethanol. I am not against cellulosic ethanol. It is being sold to do most of the 36 billion gallons, and it is still in the laboratory, folks. I hope it comes out. I hope we build a successful plant. But it won't be this year; it won't be next year. It will be down the road.

People are struggling here in 2007, and 2008 coming, to heat their homes; and they are going to struggle in rural America to drive their car a long distance because they have to drive everywhere, they don't have mass transit. They need money to run their families, and energy costs are robbing them of their ability. Fifty-eight degrees was common for seniors in my district. That is because they couldn't afford more energy.

I'm not opposed to CAFE. I'm not opposed to fuel efficiency. I'm not opposed to biofuels. But, folks, you are overselling them. We have an energy crisis today, not 5 years from now. OPEC told us last week no more oil, get used to $90 to $100 oil. Today it is $92. Today we have the highest home heating costs ever, the highest diesel costs ever, the highest gasoline costs ever. The poor and middle class of this country are struggling to heat their homes and afford to drive.

Under this bill, foreign dependence will not decrease. It is currently at 66 percent, and for the last 10 years, for the last 10 years, 2 percent a year, dependence, 2 percent a year, folks, it is going to continue for the next 5 because this doesn't produce energy for 5. If this continues, 76 percent of our energy will be foreign dependent.

The gentlemen from Massachusetts and California stated we will save 4 million barrels a day with CAFE and biofuels today combined. Not now. Not in 5 years, but by 2030. That is 23 years. Our increase in energy need from population growth alone will be greater than that. We grew 5 billion barrel a day in the last 25 years in need for oil. This will have no impact for 5 years. Can Americans afford no relief for 5 years? $90 to $100 oil can sink the economy of this country. Every recession has been energy related. This country is on the verge of going into a recession because of energy prices. As we conserve and become more efficient, we must have more energy also, produce the Outer Continental Shelf, Alaska, and the Midwest and lessen our foreign dependence, increase nuclear production of electricity, implement clean coal technology, stimulate the production of fuel and gas from coal.

Our growing need for affordable energy is growing faster than the savings in this bill. America expects more of us. They don't want to wait 5 years: high home heating costs, high driving costs, the chance of their job going abroad. We are going to lose a million or two jobs in this country because we have the highest energy prices in the world. Our natural gas prices are higher than everybody, and clean, green natural gas, which you oppose producing, is the best fuel for America's future to get us by this difficult stage we are in.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need policy that will bring energy to Americans so they can afford to live their lives, so they can maintain the manufacturing and processing jobs, so we can afford to move our goods across this country.

We are in an energy crisis, folks. This bill does not resolve a crisis. It has futuristic things in it. But we are not going to resolve the energy crisis in America. People in America expect more of us, and we should be delivering more.

Just yesterday, OPEC told the world that $90 oil is okay and they won't be increasing production. They want $100 oil. They want more.

Now, on the surface, Americans will say, Thank God. We have a Democrat energy bill coming to help us as energy prices continue to skyrocket as we move into the cold winter months. However, what hope does H.R. 6 actually give to young families with high home heating costs? Unquestionably, nothing.

What hope does H.R. 6 bring to poor folks living in rural and urban America that struggle to afford fuel to travel to work, to drive their kids to school and do Christmas shopping? Absolutely nothing.

What relief does H.R. 6 bring to seniors living on fixed incomes who struggle to make mortgage payments and stay warm? Absolutely nothing.

What does H.R. 6 do for rural and urban seniors who kept their thermostats at 58 degrees last winter with temperatures below zero because that is all they could afford? Nothing.

What does H.R. 6 do to prevent the tragedy that happened in my district last year when an elderly gentleman living alone tried to keep warm on a subzero night by putting coal in his wood-burning stove and perished when his modest home burned? It does nothing to prevent that.

What does H.R. 6 do for small business owners and manufacturers who happen to be high energy consumers to remain competitive and be able to keep America's best jobs here? It does nothing.

What does H.R. 6 do to the large manufacturers who have to compete in the global marketplace and provide jobs for middle-class America and compete against countries with cheap labor and cheap energy? It does nothing. In fact, it will continue to push more jobs offshore to countries like India and China where energy is cheaper and more accessible.

The working men and women of America who struggle to heat their homes and travel to and from work deserve action from this Congress. We need to provide them with available and affordable energy not 4 years from now but today.

Yes, Congress is the reason we have the highest world energy prices because we have continually locked up our abundant supplies of gas and oil and coal, increasing our dependence on unaffordable, high-priced oil and gas from foreign countries.

H.R. 6 is not an energy bill. Efficiency standards, conservation and renewables are vital to our future, but they are 4 and 5 years down the road before they provide energy. Americans need energy now, not tomorrow. We have the highest prices in the history of this country; and folks, I am going to tell you, they are going higher. The height has not been reached. We are going to have more than $100 oil because OPEC is in control because we have decided that we are not going to produce energy for America; we are going to buy it from those who are holding us hostage. This bill has some good futuristic parts, but nothing in the next 5 years to heat and cool this country and allow Americans to drive to work affordably. We need an energy bill.

I challenge the bill Democrats, let's do a bipartisan bill and let's argue the points. Let's bring affordable energy to America.

Does the energy bill help Americans who are struggling to heat their homes and drive their cars? For affordable energy, the answer is no.

Despite claims to the American public that they will put policies in place to achieve energy independence, the Democrats' energy bill will not produce a single BTU of energy.

To achieve energy independence, we must replace imported energy with our domestic resources. Unfortunately, the Pelosi bill will make us more dependent on foreign energy, not less.

The Democrat bill relies on much-needed conservation through increased CAFE standards 13 years from now, which will change the fleet, and the production of 15 percent of our electricity from renewables, hardly enough to replace the 13 million barrels of oil we import every day.

If we want to achieve energy security and reduce our dependence on foreign energy, we must increase domestic production of oil and gas in America's energy-rich areas.

As American families and small businesses continue to tighten their belts to cope with soaring energy costs, Congress should be doing everything in their power to relieve this unnecessary burden. Yet today the House is taking a step in the opposite direction, increasing our dependence on energy from foreign, unstable countries.

I thank the gentleman from Texas and my friend from Illinois. It's a pleasure to work with both of you. And I just wish the majority of Congress had a deeper interest in energy.

I guess I find it confounding that this is a chart I have been using all year and it doesn't work anymore. This was the rise. This is annualized by year. It doesn't have the spikes that happened in those years, but this is the annualized figure. And I just find it confounding that last week we were bouncing all over 98, almost 100 one day, and not a word spoken in here about energy. It wasn't a priority. It was not even a discussion on this floor, except for a few of us, in 5-minute speeches or hour speeches, like tonight, talking about it. But the committee is not meeting. The conference committee is not meeting. And I guess the question is how difficult does it have to get. Because here we are approaching the winter season. People have to heat their homes. And 58 percent of them use gas, I think 30 percent use electricity, and 9 percent use home heating oil, and then there are a few other mixtures in there. But nobody seems to be concerned.

I was a retailer for many years, supermarket operator, and I remember back in the 1970s and 1980s when we had the energy spikes that were really severe back then. And as a person in the food industry, you would think people would always have money for food. 1979 and 1980 were very difficult years in my business because people didn't have money to spend.

What we forget about is 50 percent or maybe 60 percent of Americans spend every dollar they make every week. They don't have any money in the drawer. They don't have any extra cash in the bank. They spend. And when energy prices spike like this, and especially in rural America where I come from, transportation costs are high in big rural areas. People have to travel to work, travel to church, travel to school, travel for everything. And then when you pay your transportation bill and then your home heating bill, in rural America, again, bigger old farmhouses, not a lot of new housing, not as energy efficient as the new modern housing, so they have high home heating bills. And when they spend an inordinate amount for home heating and for transportation, then they have less money. And my friend from Illinois was talking about it. I had tough springs. Usually in my business, I was lucky to break even through March. You had to make your profits the rest of the year. But in those years it was into May before I cracked into a profit because people didn't have money to buy basic fundamentals, food. I was in the food business. And that's what is going to happen in America this year. It could challenge the holiday season because it came this early.

I didn't expect $95 oil, and I'm going to tell you why. Everybody has told me that if we had a major storm in the gulf, and we have been very fortunate in America, we haven't had a major storm in the gulf in 2 years. The first time ever that we've gone that length of time. Everybody has told me this summer, when it was 75 or 80 and I asked what a major storm in the gulf would bring us, $100 oil. A couple weeks ago, I asked a gentleman what would a storm in the gulf bring us. He said $120 oil. Could we handle $120 oil? I'm not sure. I don't think we could handle $95 oil for a long period of time and keep the economy moving, because a great amount of our economy is you and I shopping, buying goods and services, and when we have so much money being consumed by energy, it has to come out of our budgets. And those who don't have any extra cash, credit cards will only give them so much, and then they are going to start cutting their spending.

I think the thing that's interesting is the prediction for America. We have finally gotten this on a chart that anybody could figure out. Usually you see charts and you have lines going up and down. This is energy usage in America up to now. This line in the middle to my left is the projection by the Energy Department of what energy we are going to consume in this country. It doesn't change much.

Now, I wish this nonhydro renewable line up here was just exploding, this red. That's what we are pinning our future on. Now, I'm for it. We are subsidizing. The people are saying we are holding it back. We're not holding it back. This is the projection of the Department of Energy of what renewables are going to grow. That's wind and solar. That's the mix.

Look at hydro. Because we are not building dams and because dams are still being removed, hydro decreases. Now, there is a little bit of growth in nuclear here, very little, if we build the 35 plants that are under permit process tonight. We need to build those new 35 nuclear plants just to keep electric generation at this percentage that it is. I think it's 8 percent, if my memory is correct.

Coal, now I happen to disagree with the Energy Department. They have coal growing. With the CO2 debate, coal is going to diminish. And I think their projections were made before CO2 and carbon became the issue, because I see coal plants being refused by States all over the country. There are permits being denied. And they don't show gas growing, and I disagree with the Department of Energy on this estimate, and they may be a little bit wrong on renewables. But if you double this line, that's a lot wrong. It still isn't very much, is it? Now, I look for gas, because every country that started dealing with carbon as a pollutant and started charging carbon taxes or penalties, natural gas is the big winner because it has a third of the carbon of the other fossil fuels and has no NOX or no SOX, nitric oxides or sulfur oxides; so I predict that it will come up here and coal will decrease. That's my opinion because, as my friend from Illinois has talked about, we ought to be building. I'm going to give the White House credit. They are pushing six cellulosic ethanol plants. I think that's good. That's pretty new technology. That's using woody waste or biomass of any kind to make ethanol, and I think that's good. But I think we ought to be building 10 coal to liquid plants and some coal to gas plants.

Then we look down here at oil. Oil is going to be a major part of America. Now, we have heard lots of speeches on this floor that we are going to replace oil. I wish that were true. I wish that was possible. But what we have decided in America is we are not going to produce oil. We're going to restrict it. The government owns a lot of the oil in America. They have control of all offshore, and 80 percent of that has been locked up by three Presidents, and all the Congresses in the last 26 years have voted to literally not produce energy. In Brazil, who is energy independent and everybody says it's ethanol, well, ethanol is a piece of it. It's a nice piece of it. But they've opened up their Outer Continental Shelf, and I think they just found one of the biggest finds ever off South America just in the last week, and Brazil is producing offshore like we ought to be producing.

But oil is what scares me. Number one, we are not producing it, so we are part of causing the shortage in the world. Number two, we are gaining dependency on foreign, unstable governments, 2 percent a year. And I think if we pass the energy bill that I hear rumored about, it will probably be 3 percent a year. And I hear people say we are going to be energy dependent. Well, there is no way in our lifetime, probably my lifetime anyway, and some of you may be younger, that we can be energy independent. We can be less dependent. I would like us to be energy independent, but we can only be less dependent. But this one just keeps marching on.

And why is it $95? Well, we have countries like China who are producing energy all over the world. They are locking up oil and gas reserves in every part of the world. Every part of the world. They're going to be producing less than 50 miles off of Florida with Cuba, as are five or six other countries. In our waters, actually, they are going to be producing oil that we should be producing. But we have locked up those 200 miles offshore and cannot produce there.

So my biggest fear, and I will just ask the question, what if one unstable administering country topples? What does that do to the price of oil? What if we have a storm like Katrina? What does that do to the price of oil? What if terrorists struck a couple of refineries, some pipelines, some loading stations in foreign countries where we get a lot of our energy? What happens to the price of oil? Will China stop anytime soon purchasing and outbidding us? I predict in the near future you are going to see China announcing a major oil coup with a major supplier that has been part of our supply system. That's what they are doing. They are out there locking it up.

It's interesting in the summertime we get 20 percent of our gasoline from Europe. This spring we had $3.09 gasoline in my market, which we have $3.09 now, at $63 oil. We now have 90-some-dollar oil, and we still only have $3.09 gasoline because gasoline has not yet caught up with the oil price, plus at the end of the summer there was a surplus of gasoline. This spring when the driving season started, Europe was short of gas themselves, so they couldn't supply us with the gasoline they normally did. So there was a shortage in the market, and, of course, that runs the marketplace up. So $3.09 gasoline was abnormal, just as abnormal as $3.09 gasoline is in America today with $95 oil. We are probably looking at $3.49, $3.50 gasoline would sort of be the price if it was being used out of today's oil and with not a surplus of supply.

Here is a chart that tells what we use: 40 percent petroleum, 23 percent

natural gas. Now, this figure has grown a lot because 13 years ago we took away the prohibition of using natural gas to make electricity, and we went from 8 or 9 percent of our electricity made with natural gas. We only allowed it to be used for peak power in the morning and evening when we have to turn them on and off. And a gas generator is cheaper to build, doesn't take very long in comparison to other generators. But now we produce 23 percent, and that number is growing every day, and it will really grow. Coal, 23 percent; nuclear, 8 percent; hydroelectric, 2.7; biomass, 2.4; geothermal, .36; wind, .12; solar, .06.

Now, here is where our future lies, and the only one that is really growing is biomass. How is that growing? Well, we are using it to heat factories. Wood waste has now become a commodity. I'm from Pennsylvania, the hardwood capital of the world. We are now drying most of our wood with wood waste instead of using fuel oil or natural gas because it's cheaper. A million Americans will heat their homes this year with wood pellets. A lot of people don't know about a pellet stove, but a pellet stove is a new, modern, beautiful stove that you can heat your home and it's wood waste. That is a new consumer in the market. And also power plants that are burning coal will top them with wood waste so they can just slide under the air standards where the coal they are burning might just have a little too much emission in it. So they'll use 20, 30 percent wood waste, and they will be able to meet the EPA air quality standards. So woody biomass is the growing one. And now when we go into cellulosic ethanol, we are going to use wood waste again to make ethanol, cellulosic ethanol.

But let's say we really put our effort behind, and we are, solar. So let's say we double solar. Now, it is hard to double something in 10 years. But let's say we double it in 5 years. So we would be at .12. And if we double it again in another 5 years, we would be at .24, if my math is still good. And we take wind and we do the same. We could do that for a number of years, a couple decades. We'd still be struggling to get a percent of our energy from wind and solar.

And yet people seem to think, and I don't know why, but they seem to think it's ready to take over, it's ready to be helpful. But it's not ready to replace that big wide band I had on oil, it's not ready to replace that big wide band on coal. Nothing is. And hydroelectric is decreasing because we're taking dams out and it's becoming a smaller percentage. And nuclear will decrease to 7 percent if we don't open the new plants because, as electric use goes up, if nuclear doesn't go up with it, it will become a smaller figure.

So when you look at this chart, now I'm going to switch gears on you for just a minute, what do we hear? Here's what we hear is coming now: this is, I believe, the ``no energy bill.'' It locks up 9 trillion cubic feet in the Roan Plateau. The Roan Plateau is a huge, clean natural gas field in Colorado that was set aside as a naval oil shale reserve in 1912 because of its rich energy resources. This means that 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, more than all the natural gas in the OCS bill that was passed in Congress last year, that little piece in the gulf, will be put off limits. It has already been through NEPA, it's all ready to lease, it's ready to produce. Legislation that's coming before us is going to take it away. What makes sense about clean green natural gas?

Next, it locks up 18 percent of the Federal onshore production, America's natural gas. And that's because of policy changes and further NEPA studies, and making it more difficult to permit is going to slow down the production of both oil and gas production in America.

I was responsible for a small amendment, but a good amendment, in the energy bill in 2005. It took away redundant NEPA studies because NEPA studies take a year. I talked to people who had leased land and in 7 years have not drilled yet because they were still doing NEPA studies because they had to do one for every piece of the process, not a NEPA study, and then produce it with a NEPA study to delay. Locks up 2 trillion barrels of oil shale from the West oil shale.

Now, everybody talked about the tar sands as oil that we couldn't get. Canada has been persistent. They're now producing 1.5 million barrels a day. Much of that is coming into our States to be refined. In fact, they're trying to enlarge refineries in the northern tier, having a lot of problems. Lots of resistance about enlarging those refineries, but that's necessary to produce. But the tar sands are one of the fields that's growing in Canada that's available, and they tell me that shale oil has even greater reserves.

It's going to lock up 10 billion barrels in Alaska, the national petroleum reserve, breaches legitimate legal contracts that are out there that companies have signed to produce oil by trying to make them null and void with legislation.

And then the one that really is bad, $15 billion tax increase. I have two oil refineries in my district, one in Warren, Pennsylvania, American Refineries, and in Bradford, Pennsylvania the original Kendall refinery. They're going to pay, if this bill passes, a higher tax than any other business in Pennsylvania or in America. Does that make sense, that we're going to tax people who produce energy with a greater tax than those who produce steel or food or other products for a profit? I don't think it does. I know what it's about; it's about the hatred of oil companies. Well, Big Oil does not produce.

The other fact I want to share with you, 90 percent of the oil in the world today is not owned by an oil company. The 14th largest oil company in America today is Exxon. The other 13 are countries like Mexico, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia, all our good friends. Dictatorships, unstable governments, unfriendly governments, and they own about 90 percent of the oil.

And now what's worrisome, from what I'm told, is they're using this huge cash revenue for social purposes, and they're not putting the money back. So it could happen in the very near future that those countries could not produce enough oil to supply America. And that's why we have $95 oil, because we're not doing coal-to-liquid; we're not doing all the other things we ought to be doing. We're hoping that renewables can replace oil. I wish they could.

I think America, I think this Congress, I think this administration needs to take a very serious look at the economic viability of this country if we continue, if all we have coming at us is a bill that has, it shouldn't be no energy, it's less energy and more taxes.

I thank the gentleman for allowing me to share.

I can think of five or six.

Would the gentleman yield?

I disagreed with the IAs. I look for gas to get bigger and coal to get smaller because of the CO2 issues.

Now, let's say they're wrong here, because I'm sure lots of people will disagree with them. Let's say they're 100 percent wrong. Right now, when you see hydro and nonhydro, you see hydro decreasing as much or more than nonhydro increases, so there is really no growth in renewables. Let's say they're 100 percent wrong. So instead of having 5 percent, we're 10 percent. It wouldn't even take up the growth need of America. So let's say they're wrong, and we're going to be twice that effective at renewables. I hope they're wrong, but it won't take care of the growth. We will still need this oil, we will still need this gas, we will still need this coal.

I don't have a big chart, but I have a little chart.

It's going to be much higher.

That's the electric map, and it shows, it's the same as this. But it does prove my point, that coal goes down and gas goes up; it gets bigger. But up here at the top, you have the same thing. There is almost no change because the growth in volume needed more than absorbs all these new renewables.

None in Pennsylvania.

One thing I want to mention, what has happened to these high energy prices? Dow Chemical paid $8 billion for natural gas in 2002, $22 billion in 2006, and they are now building plants all over the world because we can't afford America's energy. That is the message we need to realize. Many companies are doing that, and we need to prevent that.

Well, I guess I think the thing we need is we need an energy policy. We need to get serious about energy. Energy, in my view, is the number one challenge of America. I've said this in many speeches; I think it equals terrorism and the security of America. But if energy prices continue to skyrocket and we cannot compete in the global economy and the average American can't get a workingman's job, we are going to be a country in trouble. We are going to be a country that is not first rate. We are not going to be the leader of the world.

Energy availability and affordability should be the number one issue in the Congress. It is unlocking the OCS. It is unlocking the Midwest. It is wiser use of energy. It is using less for transportation, more efficiency. In fact, conserving in the next 5 years is probably all we can do, because everything we have talked about takes 5 to 10 years to produce fruit to bring it to market. So I think America's, I think that the real terror threat of this country is available, affordable energy.

Mr. Speaker, I rise once again on this House floor to talk about an issue that I think is the most important issue that this Congress should be dealing with and that this administration should be dealing with.

Six short years ago, we had $2 natural gas and $16 oil. Most of our lifetime we have had gas that was less than $2 per thousand and oil that was around $8, $9, or $10 a barrel. That is how America grew, cheap, affordable energy. Now, we have lots of other sources of energy, coal, hydro, wind, solar, renewables of all kinds, but the majority of our transportation fuel has always been oil. Four weeks ago, I rose to speak on this House floor. Oil was $82, and most of us were panicked. Can our economy handle $82 oil?

Just a few months ago, I met with an Assistant Secretary of State whose role is to deal with energy. He shared

with me that he and many of his colleagues felt that $70 to $75 oil would really put us in recession because the economy could not absorb those costs. It didn't. Then, we were at $82. Two weeks ago, we were at $90.92. Last week we were at $94.53. And, at one point it was 98- something. Today it is $91.92. Can America's economy continue to afford $90 to $100 oil? I think there are many who are very concerned.

I know that the poorest among us, the average American who spends every dollar they earn every week, and sometimes with the use of a credit card maybe a couple dollars they didn't earn that week hoping to catch up later. And with the winter heating season coming on, you would think this body and someone would be debating energy. Four weeks ago, there was no energy debate on this floor; three weeks ago, there was no energy debate on this floor; last week, there was no energy debate on this floor. And there is a little rumble that there could be an energy debate on this floor, but most people don't think so.

Record high heating oil prices; winter is coming. Record high diesel prices for our truckers who move our goods across this country; winter is coming. Gas prices are on the rise. We have a mortgage crisis, everybody is talking about it. Is the mortgage crisis equal on the impact on America that high energy prices will have? No. Is it important? Yes. No discussion about energy for America.

We passed a House bill some time ago. They passed a Senate bill some time ago. No conference committee has met. We have heard rumblings that a few staffs have met, but no sense of urgency.

I cannot understand for one minute why energy isn't the number one issue facing this Congress, available, affordable energy to maintain our economic base, people to heat their homes, people to drive to work, and to have a few dollars left for food.

Now, we've done a few things. The Speaker sometime a few months back made a declaration that we would stop heating a portion of the complex here with coal and we would use natural gas. And that was because of the concern of the carbon, the CO2, the carbon footprint.

Now, we didn't do anything to put double pane glass in any of the windows in the Capitol or all the surrounding office buildings. They're all single pane. I'm not saying it was right or wrong to switch to natural gas. It costs the taxpayers another $3 to $4 million. But it didn't do anything to conserve energy. We could have put double pane glass on all the buildings in the complex and saved millions of dollars in energy for America.

Oh, we also mandated with recent legislation that all bulbs in the Capitol complex will be the new fluorescent bulb that screws in. I have some of those at home. My wife doesn't like them. I don't like them in a place where I read a lot. They're not quite as clear, bright, and some of them buzz, vibrate a little.

But the unfortunate part is we mandated them here; those are all made in China. No American jobs. And I have the largest incandescent light bulb plant left in my district in St. Mary's, Pennsylvania.

What are others doing about energy? Well, the one that's leading the world in the fight for energy is China. They're building a coal electric plant every 5 days. They're building a nuclear plant every month. They're building the largest hydro-dams in the world as we speak. They're buying up rights to oil and gas and other forms of energy all over the world. In fact, they've just developed a pact with Cuba. Less than 50 miles off the Florida coast, with Norway and Canada and a number of other partners, they're going to be producing oil and gas right off our coast, while we prohibit offshore drilling.

China and India, the two new giants that are our competition, are increasing their energy use between 15 and 20 percent annually, and they're out securing it. In fact, that's the real reason for the price run-up.

I have a chart here that shows, that I've been using for the last 6 to 8 months and no longer does it work. It doesn't go high enough; 90's up in here. So I'm going to take it down because really it's no longer applicable.

Now, here's what's happened in just a year. In 11 months we've gone from $58.31 to a high of $96.65 on the day this was used in a press conference last week. It actually hit 90-some later that day. But no energy around here about doing something about energy. I find it unbelievable.

What does America want Congress to do? They want available, affordable energy to heat their homes, to run their vehicles, and to power the places they work. Companies who make steel use a lot of energy. Companies who make aluminum use a lot of energy. Petrochemicals, polymers and plastics, 45 to 55 percent of the cost of all of them is energy. Fertilizer that we grow our corn and our wheat and our crops with, 70 percent of the cost is natural gas, energy.

And while we have these skyrocketing prices that have Americans afraid because this $90 oil is not $3.09 gasoline, which is the price at the pump where I buy, it will soon be $3.39, $3.49, $3.59. In some parts of the country it already is.

This spring we had $3.09 gasoline with $63 oil. How did that happen?

Well, oil companies don't set the price. We like to blame them, but they don't set the price. Wall Street sets the price. And there was a shortage of gasoline because Americans don't realize it, but we don't produce enough gasoline in America for Americans.

Twenty percent of our gasoline now comes from Europe. Europe has an excess of gasoline because they switched to diesel in their cars. Many of their cars and trucks are diesel so they have an excess capacity of gasoline, so they ship it over here in ships.

This spring they used more than usual, for some reason, and they didn't have enough to supply us, so we had a gasoline shortage in Europe and America, and the prices were extremely high. And so with $63 oil we had $3.09 gasoline. So you don't have to be a very good mathematician to know that $92, $95, $96 oil doesn't equate to $3.09 again. It'll be much higher. It's just a matter of a few days and weeks until that little extra gasoline that's in the marketplace from the summer gets utilized.

Well, what is Congress doing?

Let's take a look at not what should we be doing, but what are we doing. And we're not even meeting on this for some reason. Maybe that's good. Many of us stood on this House floor a few months back and debated this energy bill and tried to get amendments into this bill, but it was pretty well locked up. There were very few chances for amendment in the energy debate in Congress. But here's what it does. It locks up 9 trillion cubic feet of American natural gas. That's the Roan Plateau, a huge clean natural gas fill in Colorado that was set aside as the oil shale reserves in 1912, because of its rich energy resources.

And this legislation means that 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas will not be available to us. It's already went through the NEPA. That's the environmental assessments. It's passed all those. It's ready for lease.

This provision was not in the original bill, but it was stuck in at the last minute, in the dark of the night. Suddenly when the bill came to the floor, not from committee, but somewhere down the line, in Rules or somewhere else, they slipped this in and removed the best potential onshore gas for America from being able to be produced.

The next part here is, I was responsible in the 2005 energy act for taking away redundant NEPA studies. NEPA studies are an important part of our environmental assessment for everything we do. It's about a year-long process. But abuse of the NEPA studies was to the point of where people would lease oil and gas in America and 5, 6, 7 years later we're still not able to produce it because of NEPA study after NEPA study. They do a NEPA study for the project, then they do a NEPA study for the roads, then they do a NEPA study for the well layout, and then a NEPA study for every well. And this process is a year-long process, a paperwork process that wasn't about the environment. It's about stopping the production of energy successfully. So we took away the redundant waste, and they want to put them back.

The next one's probably the worst. There's huge reserves in the West called western oil shale. It's even

greater than in Canada's tar sands. This oil shale has up to 2 trillion barrels. Now, we need to figure out how to produce it environmentally in a sound fashion. There are companies preparing to do that. But this legislation would say no to shale oil.

When we have $100 oil and we're dependent on foreign unstable countries for 66 percent of our oil, increasing 2 percent a year, and if this bill passes here, it'll be 3 percent a year or 4, why would we lock up the shale oil in the West? It makes no sense to me.

National reserve in Alaska. Locking up another 10 billion barrels of oil. Making sense? No, it doesn't make sense. Alaska's a huge place. The Alaskans want to produce energy. We know how to produce energy cleanly today. But this bill that's been proposed in both the House and the Senate will remove.

It also breaches contracts, which I think will lose in the courts.

But the one down here that really makes no sense, and it's talking about taxing Big Oil. Big Oil produces a small percentage of our energy; 60, 70, 80 percent of our energy is produced by little companies. I have two refineries in my district, United Refinery in Warren, American Refiners in Bradford. This bill will force them to pay higher taxes than any other business in America. That will increase the price of energy, and when you make American production of energy more costly than offshore production of energy, you're going to get more foreign dependent. Does that make sense? I don't think so.

Now, we were talking earlier tonight about how many times they've spent that in the appropriations process. I thought it was four or five. Someone said three or four. But many, many bills have been funded with this tax.

Now, the next one does nothing for coal to liquids or coal to gas. Everybody knows I'm the big proponent of offshore, and I'm going to talk about it a little later. But there's huge potential in America of using coal in the traditional way, but also using coal to make liquids, jet fuel, gasoline, fuel oil, and coal to make gas. And some of the new processes, they want to make gas out of coal and then burn the cast to make electricity in a clean way. But to make that work, we've got to fund some of those and get them online, get the bugs out, help industry make this a productive way to use coal in a cleaner way for the environment. But there's great resistance in this Congress to do anything with coal because we're now in the carbon debate.

Now, I guess, the carbon argument is still out there. Many Americans believe CO2 is a poisonous gas and it's causing global warming and it's a crisis. I think the crisis is available, affordable energy. And as we go coal to liquid or coal to gas, we can do it in a manner that deals with developing the process to make coal to liquids and coal to gas affordable and in a way that we capture the carbon and then use it in another form. That should all be part of the original projects. But, no, we're finding coal plants not permitted all over this country. They're closing the door on coal. And we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. In my view, they're really trying to eliminate coal as one of our energies. And as I'll show you later, that won't work.

And then at the bottom down here, there's a mandate that's part of this legislation in the House version. And it sounds good. And I wish it was doable. And later on some charts I'll show you why it's not, that electricity, 15 percent of electricity being produced by renewables, but not allowed to count hydro. And as I show my charts later, I'll come back to that.

But it doesn't appear in the next 30 years there's any way to do that yet. Twenty States have passed laws and Congress is wanting to pass one that will severely limit what can be counted, but forcing States to produce companies in the whole country to produce 15 percent of electricity from renewables, and if they don't accomplish that then they're going to be fined. And who's the fine going to be paid for? By the electric users. We're going to pay as we pay for more expensive electricity. But it'll still be generated the same old way.

Now, if it was doable, I would say let's take the carrot-stick approach. Let's put some inducements, some incentives for producing electricity with renewables.

Here's our current use of energy. And of course, petroleum, 40 percent; natural gas, 23 percent; coal, 23 percent. Now, natural gas has had the fastest growth because about 12 years ago we took away the prohibition of using natural gas to make electricity. We didn't used to allow them to do that, only in the morning and the evening when you have that extra surge, when we're cooking and washing and doing the home duties and the factories are running too. We need more electricity than we do any other time of the day, so we had gas peaking plants because you can turn them off and you can turn them on.

Seven or 8 percent of our electricity was natural gas. Now in a short period of time we're up to 23 percent, and that's why we have the highest natural gas prices in the world, which are driving major industries out of this country, and I'll talk about that a little more later.

Nuclear, 8 percent. We need all 35 plants that have asked for a permit to expand or build a new nuclear plant to be permitted and built in the next 20 years or this 8 percent figure will continue to shrink, because as electric use goes up, everything on here has to go up or that percentage will go down. We know hydro's going to go down because we sure aren't going to build another dam. In fact, they keep taking dams out. Biomass is the only one that's really shown some growth.

Biomass is woody waste, any kind of fiber, and what's really growing there is that wood waste used to be a throwaway item. Sawdust was something you just got rid of. Now it burns in factories to heat the factories. I come from a heavily wooded area, the best hardwood forest in America. We dry most of our wood now in the dry kilns with wood waste. And a million Americans are heating their homes with pellet stoves made out of dry sawdust. And they are trying to now the expand of the use of them into biomass stoves where any kind of waste material that can burn cleanly could be made into a pellet and can be burned like corn stoves. There are a lot of corn stoves now, but with the surge of ethanol, corn has become quite expensive and is no longer as viable a fuel as it was but it is still being used in biomass stoves and in corn stoves.

Geothermal, not really much growth. A good, efficient way to heat a home. It's costly in the beginning. I know people who have used geothermal, and when they build a new home, they go with geothermal because they are familiar with it. And it is a less costly way to heat your home, especially in milder climates, than traditional fuels.

Then we come to the hope of the future: wind and solar. Unfortunately for many, people think that the renewables here can trickle. They bring petroleum down, coal down, nuclear down. I wish that were true. But I will show you now the chart of what the Energy Department says about the future, and that's this chart in a different way because this chart is about history; this chart is about history and the future. The left half of this chart is history. There is a line here in the middle. This is use in the past; this is use in the future, projected.

Now, I don't totally agree with the Energy Department. I think natural gas will grow and I think coal will decrease for the reasons I just mentioned. The carbon issue is going to decrease coal until we find clean ways to use coal, and we are working on those. But there is great resistance for coal. I don't agree with it. And there is a lot of reluctance in nuclear. I don't agree with that either because we need it too. But I look for natural gas to grow and oil probably to just chug along. Now, $95, $100, $120 oil may decrease oil, but I don't know what we are going to replace it with because we are not doing coal to liquids, which could replace oil. We are not going to run our cars with nuclear. We are not going to run them with hydro. We could run a lot of them with natural gas.

Natural gas, in my view, is the fuel, the clean, green fuel, that's underestimated in this country. And we cannot ever be in control of our oil needs. We don't have enough. But natural gas we have lots of. And we will talk now about how we have locked it up.

First, I want to talk about what natural gas prices have done to manufacturing, manufacturing employment. As

gas prices have risen, manufacturing has decreased. Natural gas is the fuel that we use to run this country. And for the last number of years, we have had the highest natural gas prices in the world.

Here is how fast they have risen. And now we are back up between $7 and $8. During the winter, we will be back to $8 and $9. Now, that's from the well head; that's not the price people pay. So these figures are costs from out of the ground. But America's natural gas prices, historically we were down here under $2, and we were very competitive in the world. But in these years since this rise, we have not been competitive. And in China and India natural gas prices are half of ours. And South America, a buck something; Russia, less than a dollar. Our competition in the global marketplace have much cheaper natural gas prices. And that's a problem for America. Here's the reason why:

Now, there is also a chart I have. I don't have it with me, with some big circles in here, and these are areas where there are lots of gas and oil. But they are locked up. Why? We are the only country in the world that has chosen to lock up our gas and oil. The only country in the world, offshore and onshore. Even with $95 oil and $8 and $9 gas, we're locking it up.

Twenty-seven years ago, Congress, in its wisdom, prohibited the production of energy offshore in these areas. Canada produces, Great Britain produces, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, all environmentally sensitive countries, they produce offshore. We talk about Brazil being energy independent because of ethanol. Ethanol was just a piece of it. They also went out offshore and produced oil and gas and became energy independent, and they don't have to buy this expensive energy from anybody. They have their own.

America could be self-sufficient on natural gas. We could fuel a third of our auto fleet, all short-haul vehicles, all short-haul trucks, all construction vehicles if it was affordable, more affordable than oil and gasoline. It is cleaner burning, no SO2, no NOX, a third of the CO2, if that's giving you gray hair. But for some reason, here's what natural gas is used for. People just have no idea. And ladies, natural gas is the derivative of the skin softeners we all love. I have dry skin. I use skin softeners on my hands every day. I inherited that from my father. All of these products, natural gas is not only used to make them; it's an ingredient: polymers, plastics, tires, carpet. Look at these products. Insulation in our houses. Huge amounts of natural gas. Feedstocks, ethane, propane, butane to make steam, to make power. All of these are feedstocks. And if we go to our hydrogen society, which we are all hopeful in hydrogen, how do we make hydrogen? The only way we have portable to make it is from natural gas.

Natural gas should be the bridge to America's renewable future. Natural gas is the clean fuel. And for us to lock our supply of natural gas in this country up makes no public policy sense. Natural gas has never washed up on a shore. We had an oil spill in San Francisco. It wasn't an oil well; it was a ship. There are ships everywhere that could spill oil. Every moving ship in the waterways, on a lake, a river, a dam, or the ocean spill oil from their engines every day. But we won't drill for it and we won't drill for clean natural gas that doesn't have oil, that isn't oil. I think we should be producing both. But natural gas is the vital part of our future.

We have a bill that we now have 170-some sponsors for but have not been able to get it considered yet. Now, our bill is a bill that gives a lot of States rights. Our bill will say the first 25 miles, and I don't theoretically agree with it, but I have agreed with it to try to get it passed, the first 25 miles is closed, period. You only can see 11 or 12, so nobody is ever going to see a gas well. The next 25 miles it is up to the States. They choose whether they want to produce energy. Their legislature decides. If they want out under the moratorium, they can choose to be out. The second 50 mile is automatically open, but, again, States have a right to pass a bill and have it signed by their Governor to keep it locked up. So Congress could open it, but they can close it back up with just a State-passed legislation. Then the second 100 miles, the OCS, Outer Continental Shelf, is from 3 miles, which is now controlled by the States, to 200 miles. I'm giving the States total control of the first 25 and saying you can't drill. The second 25, you can drill if you have the wisdom to. And the second 50, you can drill unless you have the foolish attitude that you don't want to produce natural gas.

This bill would bring in billions to producing States because of the royalties, $100 billion for the Treasury. Now, we have set-aside funds. We talk about renewable energy. This bill, the NEED Act, would put $32 billion in the coffers for energy research, clean, green energy research; $32 billion for carbon capture and sequestration research to teach us how to burn coal and other fuels and capture the carbon. This isn't talk. This is real money that would put $32 billion to research that.

And we have some spoils of the past that we need to clean up. They have been trying for a long time to get $20 billion to clean up Chesapeake Bay. This bill would provide it. There is $20 billion for Great Lakes restoration because when we first started this country, we used the Great Lakes as a depository for our waste of all kinds. Wrong. We don't do that anymore. This would give them the money they have been looking for for the Great Lakes group to clean up. And $12 billion for Everglades restoration. I saw a complaint the other day that this year's bill didn't give the Everglades as much as usual. This would give them mandatory spending right out of the energy bill. Also, $12 billion for the Colorado basin restoration, $12 billion for the San Francisco Bay cleanup, and $10 billion for LIHEAP and weatherization. You haven't heard any energy debates on this floor, but I'm going to tell you in a few weeks when people start paying high energy bills to heat their homes, you're going to hear a lot of LIHEAP debates on this bill where people are going to say $2 billion isn't enough, $3 billion isn't enough, $4 billion isn't enough. We need more money because people can't heat their homes. They can't heat their homes because Congress has locked up energy and caused energy prices to be unaffordable not only for homeowners but for the businesses that provide the jobs for the people. If America doesn't get a handle on energy prices, we won't have working people's jobs in this country. We won't have a petrochemical industry. We won't have a polymers and plastics industry. We won't do anything like making steel or aluminum or bending it or shaping it. It will all be done offshore where energy is much cheaper and labor is much cheaper and environmental standards don't exist. America cannot be the strong country that we grew up in if we don't have available, affordable energy.

I plead with this Congress, energy needs to be the number one issue facing this country. Affordable, available energy so we can run this country, so people can live their lives in a normal fashion and have jobs and we can compete.

I think America faces a challenge that it has never faced before. We have always been the big dog. We have always been the giant. We have always been able to handle competition. But we have people today that are building economic bases and they are building the energy support systems to run them. America is going to starve itself of affordable energy by choice because we locked up onshore, offshore major supplies of energy and we didn't allow the adequate trial on coal to liquids and coal to gas and we've had great resistance to nuclear and the undue hope that renewables are the answer.

I wish they were, but let's go back to that chart.

The first half is history. The second half is projection. I don't totally agree with it. Let's say renewable estimates are wrong. Let's say they're 100 percent wrong, and they're going to be twice as much. They still won't hardly be 10 or 11 percent of the energy needed for this country. And our energy growth is going up percentages every year. If we doubled this for renewables, if we tripled it, we would be lucky to keep up with the energy growth. We would still need all of this. And we have people in this Congress thinking we don't need oil; they won't support gas, they won't support coal, they won't support nuclear because we want this.

Yes, we want this, but how do we get this? How do we get that? When wind

and solar are just fractions, and geothermal are just fractions. They're good, they're good sources, they're clean, they're green, they're pure.

You know, we have a lot of groups in this country, I can just think of a few, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and the PIRGs and the League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund, and more. These organizations are opposed to all of these. They grade legislators badly if you support the use of them and the production of them. They would all rate me badly because I know we need this to run this country. If we could run it on these, I would be for it, but we can't. We need to try to grow these, we need to try to get into a hydrogen society, we need to try to do every kind of renewable there is; but at the same time, we must produce oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear to run this country because that's what has run it, and it's what will run it for the next 30 years, according to the Energy Department.

Let's say they're wrong. I think they're off on natural gas. I think the use of gas is going to explode because of the carbon debate, because the carbon debate is going to cause us to shut down coal, not permit new coal plants, not allow us to do coal-to-liquid or coal-to- gas, which would be a clean way to use coal; but they're not even going to let us experiment.

The administration is pushing cellulosic ethanol. That's good and fine, but I keep arguing with them, we need to be experimenting with clean coal technologies and liquids and gas from coals because we have it. Other countries have done it. We just need to know how to do it in a cost-effective way and then try to, if carbon is the big issue, secure the carbon. And if we passed the NEED Act, we would have the money to do it.

Energy availability and affordability will depend on whether America is a competitive Nation. If this Congress doesn't wake up out of its slumber, if it doesn't wake up and realize that affordable and available energy, and I understand why they're asleep. All of our lifetime there has been lots of energy, and it's been cheap, cheap, cheap. It's not cheap anymore, it's expensive and going to get more expensive.

Available, affordable energy will slowly shut this country's economic base down. And the working people of America that don't have white collar jobs, that go to work and make things, as we try to get back into the growth of nuclear, the new plants that are being designed, the bases of them, the big, huge cast bases will be shipped here in a ship from Japan because we no longer have a casting plant big enough to make them.

Much of the high-tech parts of our nuclear plants will be built in Germany because we haven't built them in a long time and we've lost our capacity. I say down the road, how do we defend our country? How do we build the jets and the planes, the tanks and the equipment, the sophisticated equipment? We're going to be buying the parts from foreign countries, who may not even be our friends, built by foreign people who aren't even in this country and Americans will not have the jobs.

Energy is one of the biggest job creators. When you produce energy, a lot of people make a living. When you buy it from Saudi Arabia, when you buy it from foreign countries, when you buy it from the Mideast, the only Americans who get a job are those who sell it, a retail job. I was a retailer, and I'm not saying that in any way to cast aspersions; but right now here in Washington, DC you can buy gasoline made in Russia. Not only produce the oil in Russia, but the gasoline was made in Russia, came here in a ship. Not many Americans get a job from that. But when you buy gasoline made from an American refiner and produced from American oil, a lot of people have made a living.

I hope the next time I rise on this floor there will have been some action from this body, there will have been some voice from the White House. I haven't heard much from the Secretary of Energy about the energy crisis. Every time I talk to any of the people in the Cabinet that advise the President, I talk to them about my views and they listen intently, but not much action; and no action from this Congress, zero action.

Available, affordable energy has the ability to shut the economic base of this country and take us down and make us a second-rate Nation. And the number of poor people in America will continue to grow. Working-men jobs for the people who work with their hands, who have made this country, they're the heart and soul of this country. I was the son of a seventh grade-educated steelworker. He was a darn good dad. He taught me to be honest, work hard, always do my best, and never quit and give up. And those principles he taught me I have lived with all my life. And I thank him today and my mother for teaching me to be honest and upright. But they were working people. Neither of them had graduated from high school. They worked with their hands. They were ambitious.

There are lots of Americans that need jobs to work with their hands, to make things, build things. And this country will no longer be a country that makes things and builds things and creates things. We're just becoming consumers as we export our jobs. And energy, available, affordable energy has exported more jobs from America than any other issue. I will debate that with anybody. And it will continue to export the good jobs we have.

Dow Chemical, the biggest employer and manufacturer of chemicals in the world, used to pay $8 billion a year for natural gas in 2002. In 2006, they paid $22 billion, and they came to Congress and begged. I had them at hearings, and they begged us. The President of Dow Chemical begged this Congress to take action on opening up energy supply for this country so he didn't have to go across the ponds in other countries to build his plants so he could compete. They make products for the whole world, and they can go to countries where energy is a third, a fourth, a fifth of what it costs here and labor is cheaper. And that's why they're going. They don't want to go. He said, I don't want to go. I'm loyal to America. And many companies are loyal. I talk to company CEOs that say they spend millions every year trying to cut energy use, but the energy costs just go up faster than their energy use.

Americans need to conserve. We all need to use less. We need to learn how to use less. We need to figure out how to quit wasting energy, and more fuel-efficient cars, more efficient homes. But folks, we need to have a Congress and an administration that puts energy at the front door of our future and says that we're going to do whatever it takes to compete in this global economy. We're going to provide energy for Americans. We're going to open up our reserves. We're going to produce the oil we need, the gas we need. And we're going to use coal the clean way.

And, yes, we're going to expand nuclear. And, yes, we're going to even maybe build some dams and do some hydro. And, yes, we're going to do everything we can to promote renewables, all of those. And we're going to try to get into hydrogen. It will be decades, but hydrogen society, where we can make hydrogen. If we learn to make it out of water, we've got it made. But then we still have to learn how to transport it safely and how to utilize it, how to sell it, how to process it and distribute it. It takes years and decades to do that. In the meantime, we've got to continue with what we have, and it's nuclear, coal, natural gas and oil, and renewables.

We need to make energy one of the top issues in this Congress, not tomorrow, not the next day, but now. Not next year or two years from now; it may be too late. When we open up a new oil field, if we open up the Outer Continental Shelf, it's 10 years before you have any real production out there. If we start coal-to-liquid, coal-to-gas, it will be a decade before we would have real production. We need to be starting it now. We need to be figuring out how to speed up the process of nuclear to run this country. America needs a Congress committed to available, affordable energy.

And I'm going to conclude, you know who owns the oil in the world? You know who the biggest oil companies are? It's not Exxon. Exxon is the 14th largest oil company in the world. They're pretty big. But 13, unstable, nondemocratic governments are bigger oil companies. And they've kicked out Big Oil in the recent years, taken over their investments, captured their monies. And they're running the oil production in most parts of the world. Ninety

percent of the oil is owned by unstable governments. And any one of them that tips over, along with a Katrina-type storm in the gulf, can give us unaffordable energy overnight. We're vulnerable to a storm; we're vulnerable to unstable nondemocratic governments that don't even like us.

How can America go to sleep? How can this Congress go to sleep at night knowing that we are vulnerable to those we don't even trust with our energy future?

This Congress must have an energy policy soon, and it can't be the one I talked about first that takes energy off the table. It has to be one that puts energy on the table, yes, does conservation, does all of the things to conserve and use wiser, but produces the energy this country needs to compete.

We're in a global climate, we're in a global economy today, and America must figure out soon that everything we do in Congress must enable our companies to compete in the world; and affordable energy is one of the first things we ought to be doing.