MIDWEST CLEAN AIR GASOLINE RESERVE ACT JUNE 29, 2000 -- HON. JUDY BIGGERT (Extensions of Remarks - June 30, 2000)

[Page: E1171]
---

HON. JUDY BIGGERT OF ILLINOIS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, June 29, 2000

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Speaker, I represent a suburban Chicago district and, as we all know, the Chicago area now faces the highest gas prices in the nation. This is not a distinction of which we are proud or happy.

Today, Governor Ryan of Illinois and the Illinois General Assembly took an important step to provide the residents of Illinois with some relief, and they should be commended for their swift action. In one day, the General Assembly passed and the Governor signed a law that suspends the Illinois gas tax for six months. They were forced to take the extraordinary action of sacrificing badly needed road improvement funds in order to give consumers at the pumps an extra ten or twenty cents per gallon relief.

We cannot allow residents of states like Illinois and Wisconsin to confront this situation again in the future. The burden is just too great on individuals and small businesses in the region.

That's why I rise today to announce the introduction of a bill to help prevent future crises involving the price and supply of gasoline in the Midwest.

The Midwest Clean Air Gasoline Reserve Act would give the Secretary of Energy the authority to establish a Midwest reserve of reformulated gasoline or the petroleum products used to make reformulated gasoline. The President would release this stock of reformulated gasoline in the event of a severe energy supply disruption, a severe price increase, or another emergency affecting the Midwest.

We know now that two factors adversely affected the supply of gasoline in the Midwest, causing prices to rise. In addition to pipeline disruptions, Phase 2 of the Reformulated Gasoline--or RFG--program required the inventory of Phase 1 RFG gasoline to be purged from the supply chain. In this case, supply was interrupted at the same time that inventories were depleted. And in the Midwest in particular, sources of reformulated gasoline are few and far between, and difficult to replace when supply is interrupted. As a result, the price of reformulated gasoline spiked.

With a Midwest, Clean Air Gasoline Reserve in his arsenal, the President may have been able to combat this crisis when it presented itself, at least reducing the initial impact on consumers.