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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the reason I wanted to speak this afternoon is to address the issue of energy policy and gasoline prices.
It seems now that we are in the finger-pointing mode trying to blame one another for what is in effect a market condition; that is, the increasing rise in the price of gasoline.
My point this morning is that it should come as no surprise to any of us that gas prices have gone up. Why is this so?
First of all, thanks to Senator PETE DOMENICI, the chairman of the Energy and Water Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who yesterday in response to a question on a national TV program made, I think, the most succinct statement on this, we have the basic answer. He said, ``The chickens have come home to roost.''
He said that after 7 years of the Clinton-Gore administration policy, which is in effect no policy with respect to improving our energy situation, ``The chickens have come home to roost.''
While we have enjoyed a great time of prosperity in this country, we have been doing nothing to ensure that we would be able to provide the energy resources--the oil and gas on which our economy runs--at the time when our economy is up and running, as it is now; and, therefore, we should not be surprised that the demand for this product has outstripped the supply. He is correct in that.
Thanks to Senator MURKOWSKI, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, we have the statistics which back up this statement.
Since 1992, U.S. oil production is down 17 percent, but consumption is up
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It should come as no surprise to us that when demand is greater and supply is less, the price is going to go up. Only those who do not understand the free market would fail to appreciate this fact and point the finger at someone else.
Imports, we learned from Senator MURKOWSKI, are now at 56 percent of our total supply and growing rapidly. In fact, they are in the neighborhood of about 62 percent during some months--specifically during this period of time.
By comparison, in 1973, during the time of the Arab oil embargo, we imported about 35 percent of foreign oil.
Remember how we were complaining at that point about how dependent upon these OPEC supplies we were--35 percent then and up to 62 percent now.
We are approaching twice as much dependency on foreign oil supplies as we had during the time of the great oil embargo of the early 1970s.
At current prices, I might add, the United States spends $300 million a day on imported oil. That is over $100 billion per year on foreign oil, which, incidentally, is about one-third of our entire trade deficit.
This puts into clear perspective the amount of our reliance on these foreign sources.
Are the people who supply this oil from abroad our friends when it comes to the supplying of this particular product? Are they working with us to keep the prices down? No. We know, as matter of fact, in this area even that our friends are willing
to take advantage of the great demand and thirst for this product in the United States.
The OPEC nations, which include our friend to the south, Mexico, and other countries in this hemisphere, but most especially the countries in the Middle East led by our friend, Saudi Arabia, have restricted the supply so as to drive the cost of the product up.
It is real simple. When we don't have control over the supply that our friends do, they will take advantage of us. Frankly, we can't blame them. That is part of the way the market operates. We would object that they have gathered together in the form of a monopoly or oligopoly, and they are controlling the price. But it is their ability to do that on the foreign market. We understand that. We should not be surprised by it. But we should be committed to doing something about it.
For 7 years, this administration not only has not done anything about it; it has gotten us more and more deeply in the hole of reliance on foreign oil.
I have a friend back home--a rancher. The Presiding Officer will probably appreciate this kind of western humor, since he likes to collect these items. He said he has an attitude. He said: When you are trying to get out of a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.
I submit that we are going to keep digging the hole deeper and deeper if we don't stop this reliance on foreign oil, and if we don't start doing something about increasing our supply here at home.
It turns out that we have plenty of opportunities, which I will get to in just a moment.
One other fact that I think is important to note is that 36 refineries have closed since 1992. We have had no new refineries built in this country since 1976. It is not only the fact that we have less oil being produced in the United States, but also that less oil product is being refined in this country primarily because of the stringency of environmental regulations.
What has been the administration's policy? Its energy policy says that we should have a mix of energy sources. But let's look at the facts.
We have the lowest production in this country since world War II. We are importing more oil than ever before. We have regulations and taxes designed basically to close the oil industry. The President himself vetoed a bill to open so-called ANWR in 1995 with 16 billion barrels of oil--that is about a 30-year supply of imports from Saudi Arabia--and has instead advocated increasing royalty rates, which, of course, would make foreign investment even more attractive to U.S. companies and cause them to not want to produce oil here in this country.
I get letters from constituents who say we should close down any offshore drilling or any drilling of oil in the Alaska reserve. I think these people need to appreciate that there was an area cut out of the wilderness area in Alaska and designated specifically for the production of oil. It is a very small area. We created a vast new wilderness on the North Slope of Alaska. It is a beautiful area. I have been there. But we created a very small island in there in effect that does not have any particular environmental benefit compared to the areas around it.
We said in that particular area we would explore for oil. It is in that area that we are talking about producing this 16 billion barrels of oil.
I have been to that area. I suggest anybody who believes we should not pursue the exploration for oil in that area ought to visit it. I think they will see two things. First, we have found a way to drill for oil that is very environmentally safe and benign. In effect, in a very small area about the size of this Senate Chamber, up to 10 wells can be drilled at a depth of about 10,000 feet with another 10, 15, or more thousand feet of drilling horizontally to a point of oil. We have a very small area where the oil drilling is actually evident from the surface of the Earth but a very large area underneath from which the oil is taken. This is done in an extraordinarily environmentally safe way. You cannot even tell, when you are on the surface, what is being done.
We can explore for and obtain oil from these sites, such as the Alaska oil, as well as offshore sites, using the same technology without environmental damage. However, the administration has precluded us from doing so.
Now, we have a great deal of coal, much low sulfur. The cleanest coal in the lower 48 States was locked up when the President declared the large area of Montana a national monument and, therefore, we could not take advantage of the low-sulfur coal that is located in that area.
Nuclear power is the cleanest of all, but this administration has been opposed to nuclear power. In fact, there have been no new power plants, and the President, of course, vetoed the nuclear waste disposal bill. This is essential for the further development of nuclear power.
With respect to hydropower, we have a Secretary of Interior who says he was to be the first Secretary to tear down dams. We cannot produce hydropower without dams.
With respect to natural gas, vast areas of coal development in both the OCS and the Rocky Mountain area have been closed to natural gas.
The bottom line is this administration's policy is not conducive to the development of new sources of energy in the United States, even environmentally safe, environmentally benign sources. Instead, virtually every policy this administration has pursued has had the effect of reducing U.S. oil production and increasing our reliance upon foreign sources. All that does is enable those foreign sources to take advantage of this reliance by reducing their production and jacking up the price. American consumers are paying the result of that at the pump.
I have one or two other statistics. Since the start of the Clinton-Gore administration, according to Senator MURKOWSKI's figures, domestic oil production in the United States has fallen by 17 percent for the reasons I articulated. We can't, with that level of reduction in U.S. oil production, maintain a level which enables the U.S. to control our own destiny in terms of the price of oil. We are already spending over $100 billion per year on foreign oil, about a third of our trade deficit.
As a result of these facts, I have joined with Senator LOTT, our majority leader, and others, in introducing the National Energy Security Act of 2000, S. 2557, the goal of which is to roll back our dependence on foreign oil to a level below 50 percent.
In conclusion, there has been a lot of finger pointing. Some say it is the result of taxes. I support, at least
temporarily--in fact, I would support permanently--removing the 18.4-percent Federal gas tax. People say that is only a drop in the bucket. It is almost 20 cents on the price of a gallon of gas. That is not peanuts if you have to fill your car as much as a lot of folks do.
The EPA has been changing its mind about additives. In some parts of the
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We have fewer refineries, as I indicated.
Most of all, it is ``the chickens are coming home to roost'' answer that Senator DOMENICI provided; namely, that we have decreased the United States oil production at the same time we are relying more and more on foreign oil. The net result of that should come as no surprise to anyone. We are going to have to pay higher prices at the gas pumps as a result.
It is time that the United States had a clear strategy, a good energy policy, that promoted the development of oil resources in the United States in a safe and environmentally clean way. That can be done. I believe under a new administration which is focused on developing an energy strategy that will suit the American people, it will be done.
I thank Senator THOMAS for making some of his time available to talk about this important subject.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. BUNNING). The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona.
Quite often we have difficulties, we have problems, and we really don't think about the policy that has created it--or in this case, the lack of policy.
I think it is very important that as we have the great growth of energy use in this country, that we take a look at our policy and not let ourselves become captives of overseas production.
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