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“THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H139-H145 on Feb. 1, 2006.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, I profoundly appreciate the privilege to address this body and on a subject matter before us that we have not had the opportunity to debate and deliberate within this Chamber and one of the broader subjects that I would like to address in this upcoming 60 minutes, Mr. Speaker, is the President's State of the Union address last night. I have a copy in my hand here, the one I took notes on as he spoke in this Chamber last night.
Before I move into that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a couple of subject matters that were raised by one of the previous speakers and point out that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, this seems to be something that is debated across this country intensively by the mainstream media. It fits within the same category of the PATRIOT Act which we extended at least from this floor today.
I sat through in the Judiciary Committee at least part if not all of the 12 to 13 hearings that we had, and we asked continually, give us some names, give us some specific examples of someone who had their rights trampled or abused or usurped under the PATRIOT Act and I say also under FISA. The criticism continues, Mr. Speaker, but I still continue to ask, name the case, name the individual, give me the circumstances by which these laws that have protected us so well have been abused by anyone this administration or the opening by which that might be done. I have not heard that answer, and I continue to ask that question.
This country has not been attacked because we have been prudent in our surveillance. This surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been used by many Presidents and only challenged now after it was brought forward in the New York Times, the very morning that there is a PATRIOT Act vote in the United States Senate. I would question the motives of that newspaper that sat on that story for a year. We need to continue to ask that question and what was the motive of the paper, and by the way, what was the motive of the Members of this body and the other body when they had been briefed on FISA and those kind of foreign intelligence surveillance, they did not seem to have an objection when they were briefed. They only had an objection when they were briefed by the media. We have a larger responsibility than that, Mr. Speaker, and I would point that out.
Also, one of the previous speakers addressed the issue of ``our addition to foreign oil.'' I would ask those people, help us use this domestic supply of energy that we have. Let us unlock ANWR, let us unlock the Outer Continental Shelf. Let us develop these domestic supplies of renewable energies that we have. Let us join together in a bipartisan effort to grow the size of this energy pie.
So those two in response to the previous remarks that were made, Mr. Speaker, and then I would also address the idea, the President covered a whole series of subject matters last night. Our national defense is one. Energy is another. Education is another.
Of course, one of the key components to our national security is immigration, border enforcement, and here with us tonight to address the border security issue and border enforcement and I expect will have some kind words to say about our brave border patrol is the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller) to whom I would be pleased to yield to.
Mr. KELLER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I have just returned from the Mexican border and I am here to report my findings.
We were 5,000 feet up in the mountains along the border California shares with Mexico at 2:00 a.m., freezing in 30-degree weather with the wind howling in our faces. Eight shivering young men, illegal aliens in their late teens and early 20s, sat on the cold ground in handcuffs, grateful to be caught. One of them pleaded with the border patrol agent to find his girlfriend Maria who was still stuck on one of the cliffs.
Illegal aliens, like the ones I saw in handcuffs, continue to enter the United States from the Mexican border at the rate of 8,000 per day. Today, we have 11 million illegal aliens in the United States.
Illegal immigration presents a huge problem. That is why I decided to spend a week along the southern border to see firsthand how bad the problem was and what Congress could do to fix it.
Last year, our border patrol agents arrested 1.2 million illegal aliens attempting to enter the United States from Mexico. Significantly, 155,000 of those arrested were from countries other than Mexico. They included illegal immigrants from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Our porous Mexican-U.S. border offers the perfect cover for terrorists, especially since tighter controls have been imposed at airports.
This poses a very serious national security problem, according to CIA Director Porter Goss. I personally spoke with border patrol agents who had apprehended suspects on the terrorist watch list.
One night while I was riding along with the border patrol two illegals from Pakistan were captured. One convicted sexual predator was caught trying to cross, so were wanted murder suspects, drug dealers and smugglers.
I was impressed by the bravery of the border patrol agents who escorted me. I saw a border patrol supervisor get out of his vehicle, pull an illegal alien off of a 10-foot wall and arrest him despite his violent attempts to resist the arrest.
The border patrol agent I rode with told me he had been shot at on several occasions. Twenty-three of his colleagues have been killed in the line of duty since 1990. For example, border patrol agents Susan Rodriguez and Ricardo Salinas were gunned down by a murder suspect. Agent Jefferson Barr was shot to death by a drug trafficker.
If the job of a border patrol agent sounds dangerous, imagine the risk to people who actually live along the border.
I sat down in the living rooms of four different families who own ranches along the border. One couple, Ed and Donna Tisdale, documented on home video 13,000 illegal aliens crossing their property in one year alone. The Tisdales had their barbed-wire fences cut by illegals, running off the family's cattle. When their dogs barked to scare off intruders, the dogs were poisoned.
Another rancher told me about numerous break-ins at his home while his family slept, as illegal aliens tried to find food and clothing. One morning his daughters had gone out to feed their pet bunnies, only to find them skinned and taken for food by illegal aliens trying to escape to a nearby highway.
The economic impact of crossers who are successful is catastrophic.
Illegal immigration costs taxpayers $45 billion per year in health care, education and incarceration expenses. The cost of the estimated 630,000 illegal aliens in Florida is about $2 billion a year, meaning every family in my congressional district pays a hidden tax of $315 each year, and yet still faces depressed wages because of illegal immigration.
So how do we fix the problem?
First, we need to crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. Jobs are the magnet drawing illegal aliens across the border, and the United States House of Representatives has acted to make it mandatory for employers to check the paperwork of new hires or else face stiff penalties if they do not. Now it is up to the Senate to act.
Second, we need to complete construction of the double fence for 700 miles along the border near populated, urban areas. San Diego saw a steep reduction in crossings, from 500,000 down to 130,000, when the double fence was completed there.
Third, where mountains and rugged terrain make completion of a double fence impossible, we need to have a virtual fence. Congress needs to appropriate more money for infrared cameras that enable agents to see the entire border.
Finally, we need more border patrol agents. Although Congress has tripled the number of border patrol agents since the late 1980s, more are still needed.
Mr. Speaker, one million illegal immigrants come to America legally each year, and my staff members spend the majority of their time helping those who want to come to our country to work hard and play by the rules.
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We are protected from dangerous people entering the country at our airports. IDs are checked against the terrorist watch list and baggage is screened. Well, who is doing the checks on the 8,000 people who arrive here illegally every day? Who is our last line of defense? It is a Border Patrol agent in a green uniform working alone.
At 2 a.m. tonight, after all of us are asleep, he will be working somewhere near the top of a cold 5,000-foot mountain along the California-Mexican border. He will get a radio call telling him to approach a group of illegals who have been spotted by an infrared scope and are located near the top of that mountain. He will track their footprints in the dirt and make his way toward them. As he approaches, there is something he doesn't know: Are these illegal aliens a group of harmless teenagers who are scared and freezing, or are they heavily armed and dangerous drug traffickers, like the ones who have killed so many of his colleagues?
Either way, he will approach them, because it is another day on the job. Mr. Speaker, I have a message for that Border Patrol agent working tonight: the United States Congress knows you are there, we appreciate your service, and help is on the way.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida. I appreciate his travel down to the border. I have done that on occasion myself and traveled the border at night and flown in helicopters and had my meetings with the Border Patrol down there. It wasn't quite as eventful as yours appears to have been, Mr. Keller; but for those of us in the House of Representatives who have not gone down and had personal experience on the border to see how it functions and how sometimes it doesn't function, I think it is important for us to take that visit and do that.
The statement that was given that there were 1.2 million stopped at the southern border last year, of course we know that is a rounded number. The number in a little more precise term is stuck in my head: 1,159,000 illegals, and I say collared at the southern border in the last year. And of those, there were only 1,640 that were adjudicated for deportation. The balance of them, in summary terms, were released on their promise to return to their home country. Many of those who were other than Mexicans, the 155,000, were simply released into this country without an expectation of going back to their home country.
In that haystack of humanity, the Border Patrol has testified before our immigration subcommittee that they believe they stop one-third, maybe one-fourth, of those illegal crossers. So we know that that 1.2 million multiplied times three or four gets you in the neighborhood of how many actually came across and how many came in here and successfully completed their crossing and stayed. That numbers approaches, I believe, 4 million in the last year.
That 4 million-strong haystack of humanity includes people looking for a better life, but also in that are the needles in that haystack that are terrorists, drug dealers, criminals, rapists, and people who wish this country ill will, along with a pretty good sized portion of them that simply see the United States as a giant ATM, who come here seeking their fortune and then wire the money back, go back and withdraw that money from their banks and live happily ever after.
That number, in 2005, when the report comes in, will be very near, if it does not exceed, $30 billion wired south of our border, $20 billion into Mexico and another $10 billion into the other Central American states. That is a huge number. We say we cannot get along without this economy, but the illegal labor in this country is generating about $76 billion in wages. That $76 billion amounts to 2.2 percent of the wages that are earned in the United States, even though they are 4 percent of the labor force.
So the argument we cannot get along without the illegals is a specious argument and is just plain false. We will find a way in this country. There are 7.5 million people being paid not to work, on unemployment. There are another 5 million that have exhausted their unemployment benefits and are still seeking work. So there are 12.5 million people in this country looking for work. And of the 11 million illegals in this country, 6.3 million illegals are in our workforce. So the 6.3 million that we have to replace if we shut off the jobs magnet could come from the unemployed and that 12.5 million that I stipulated.
Additionally, there are 9 million young people in America between the ages of 16 and 19 that are not in the labor force, even in a part-time job, for whatever reason. There are about another 4 to 4.5 million between the ages of 55 and 69 that are not working that might be if we didn't have penalties in there for their work. So you begin to add that up, and it is 13 million added to the 12.5 million. So there are about 25 million people in this country that would be sitting there to fill the 6.3 million vacancies if we shut off the jobs magnet. So one in four. And that doesn't include the 51 million between the ages of 20 and 64, between those ages, that are simply not in the workforce because they are retired, they choose not to work, or whatever the reason might be. That takes us up to 76 million in a potential workforce to tap into or to replace 6.3 million.
I do not think we have examined those numbers or we wouldn't be having the debate we are having, Mr. Speaker.
I want to take this opportunity to yield some time to the gentleman from Texas, who had spoken to us a little earlier about the immigration issue. I appreciate his stance on the energy issue. In fact, we have stood on this floor a number of times and joined forces together. I joined forces with Mr. Poe of Texas in cosponsoring his bill that opens up the Outer Continental Shelf to both gas and oil drilling. So I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and the work of the gentleman on numerous issues, the first of course being the overriding issue of our Constitution, a document you keep in your pocket every day in case someone wants to question you on what it says and what it doesn't say. I commend you for your strong stand on the Constitution.
And on the issue of border security being a national security issue, because it is a national security problem. It is unfortunate that so many Americans are oblivious or refuse to believe the problem that has been discussed tonight by our friend from Florida and yourself.
And then there is the issue, of course, of offshore drilling. We have heard even tonight in this Chamber a discussion about the importance of having our country not be dependent on other countries for our energy. We are held hostage to some extent to Third World countries that really determine how we are to obtain much of our oil and natural gas. And there were some concerns mentioned tonight that folks in the Northeast are needing home heating oil and we can't depend on foreign countries. Well, we don't need to depend on foreign countries. We don't need to depend on the Middle East as much as we are.
We hear the rhetoric in Venezuela from the president there, his anti-
American comments and how he threatens every once in a while to cut off the oil supply to the United States; and Bolivia, with its new president, is talking about doing the same thing with natural gas to the United States. Once again, the United States appears to be held hostage by Third World countries on our energy.
So what do we do about it? Well, the President mentioned last night several proposals of how we have to go to alternative energy sources, and we need to do that. But we need to take another look at where we drill, why we drill, and why we don't drill. We will start with the offshore drilling.
I have here a chart that explains where we drill off the coast of the United States and where we don't drill. We drill in my home State of Texas, and we're glad to drill offshore. Texans know the importance of drilling offshore. We drill offshore from the State of Texas; we drill offshore from Louisiana and the State of Mississippi. This blue area is the only place we drill offshore, because the rest of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, the entire east coast, and the sacred west coast, if I can use that phrase, we don't drill because there are prohibitions from drilling offshore.
We need to lift the prohibitions in this entire red area. Not the environmental regulations, but the overall prohibitions from drilling in these entire areas. There is much oil in the Gulf of Mexico. There is much oil on the east coast and off the west coast, and we don't drill there for reasons that I think are a myth. The myth is we can't drill offshore safely, that it is an environmental problem.
Mr. Speaker, that is a myth because we can drill offshore safely. Let us just go back recently to two hurricanes that hit this area, this blue area. Hurricane Katrina and then the forgotten hurricane, Hurricane Rita, that came right through this entire area. In this area we not only drill offshore but we have refineries.
My home State, Texas, right here, this district I represent, southeast Texas, 23 percent of our gasoline is refined right here in this area where Hurricane Rita came through and shut down our refineries for a period of time. But during all of the conversations and discussion and moaning and groaning about the disaster of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we heard little, if any, talk about offshore drilling and the danger and the leakage from crude oil coming up from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico because of these two hurricanes. Because it didn't happen. There was very little environmental impact with the hurricanes that came through this area, because we do drill safely offshore.
That should tell us a couple of things. First, these rigs offshore that shut down, and some were damaged, caused little or no economic or environmental impact in the gulf coast. Second, since this is the only place we drill offshore, someone should realize that maybe we should not depend on this entire blue area, hurricane alley as we call it, for our offshore drilling.
With Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, many of these rigs were shut down and some of our refineries were closed down. All of that takes place in this one blue area. We are dependent not only on foreign oil but in our own country we are dependent on this little area of offshore drilling. So we do need to expand. We need to use some common sense and drill offshore safely in this entire other region where there is much crude oil and much natural gas.
We don't do it because people are concerned about the environmental impact. This is actually one of those myths that has convinced so many people in this House and many Americans who are afraid we can't drill offshore safely.
Where do these offshore oil spills come from? Pollution from crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico? Well, 63 percent of the crude oil that comes to our shorelines in the Gulf of Mexico is from nature itself, as this chart shows. Sixty-three percent comes from the natural seepage of crude oil from the bottom of the ocean. That is where most of the pollution comes from.
Second, 32 percent comes from those boats, the shipping industry that patrols the Gulf of Mexico. Three percent comes from those tankers that are bringing crude oil from other countries, like the Middle East. And only 2 percent of pollution, if we use that phrase, in the Gulf of Mexico from crude oil comes from, yes, that is right, offshore drilling.
Now, most Americans are unaware of this. Most Americans think it is just the reverse. They think the crude oil drilling offshore causes most of the pollution, and that is not true.
No one wants polluted beaches. No one wants an unsafe environment. I certainly do not. No one does that advocates offshore drilling. So the environmental impact is very small if we drill offshore. We can do so safely.
They drill offshore in the roughest waters in the world, and that is the North Sea, and they do so safely. Most of those people that are drilling there are from Texas to begin with, and those folks that know how to drill offshore safely drill all over the world. Yet we have a mindset in this country that we shouldn't drill in these sacred areas because of the environmental impact.
So that myth needs to be denounced as a myth and we need to take care of our own selves, be self-sufficient, because there is plenty of crude oil here, on the east coast, the rest of the Gulf of Mexico, and there is also much natural gas resources that we are not tapping into as well. Not to mention going up here to Alaska, to ANWR, another place where we ought to drill, because we can drill in that area safely.
Hopefully, these two bodies will agree to drill in ANWR. Because gasoline prices continue to rise. Home heating oil prices continue to rise. Natural gas prices continue to rise. The answer is not to look to more foreign countries. The answer is to drill safely, environmentally correct, around the United States coastline.
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Just to mention one other thing, when an oil company goes out here into the Gulf of Mexico and wishes to set up a new rig, they obtain a lease from the Federal Government. They pay for that. Those leases bring in millions of dollars to the United States Treasury that we lease to oil companies for permission and the right and privilege to drill offshore. That is a source of revenue. So more leases bring more revenue to the national Treasury. We talk about the deficit and government spending. Revenue can be obtained from these oil companies that drill offshore.
So it is a situation where I believe more Americans need to be aware that we can do so safely. We have seen hurricanes hit these oil rigs with minimal damage to the environment. We know there is oil and natural gas out here, and if we do not take care of ourselves and become more dependent on ourselves for our own energy, crude oil and natural gas, gas prices will rise, crude oil prices will rise, home heating oil prices will rise, and natural gas prices will continue to rise, and without doing so there is really no answer. We need to do both. We need to look for alternative sources such as nuclear energy, as the President mentioned last night. We also need to drill where we have oil and natural gas available.
I appreciate the opportunity to make these comments. Hopefully working together we can solve our own energy and not be held hostage by other countries.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as I look at the gentleman's lower chart, Pollution from Oil, and it shows 2 percent of the pollution from oil comes from offshore drilling and the balance from the composition that the gentleman describes. For the record, I ask what percentage of pollution comes from natural gas? Does any come from drilling for natural gas? Is there any example of a natural gas spill offshore anywhere in the world that has damaged a beach anywhere?
Mr. POE. That does not occur. When a natural gas well is drilled, it does not cause pollution. So another reason we should obviously be drilling offshore for both of these commodities.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Poe's presence here.
I did see natural gas boiling up out of the water, and I saw it on fire when I went down to visit New Orleans in the early part of September. There was a great visual for what happens if you happen to get a natural gas leak coming down from 8 or 10 feet of water, and it might come from 1,000 feet of water, the natural gas boils to the top. If there is a spark it burns. It burns without a lot of heat. If there is no spark, it dissipates into the atmosphere. I do not have the statistics how much gas just percolates up through the ocean floor, but my understanding is that it is a significant amount. Do you have any background on that?
Mr. POE. I do not have the statistics either, but natural gas is even less of a pollutant than crude oil. Of course there is natural seepage with natural gas just as there is with crude oil from the bottom of the ocean. That is the way nature has been doing business for a long time. I do not have the statistics, but it would be interesting to find out what they are.
Mr. KING of Iowa. We are looking at the distribution of that large volume of natural gas that comes out of Hurricane Alley. We are supplying some of those gaps in that need for natural gas through liquefied natural gas that comes over on tankers, and then we have to run it through a plant and convert it back to our gas form and deliver it through our pipelines. It is essential from our cost to be able to take natural gas as close to the demand as possible and tap into the nearest supply so we do not have that expensive transportation and compression that goes on into the Middle East, bringing it in and converting it back to a gas in the Untied States. It is an expensive proposition.
When I see that red map with leases all around the shore of the United States, that is all accessible to the population centers of the United States which are our coastlines. It would be a natural to tap into the gas that is within 200 miles of its demand as opposed to several thousand miles across the ocean. Would you comment on that?
Mr. POE. Certainly. We bring in liquefied natural gas from the Middle East. It is converted and used in the United States. We need that process as well, but it makes a lot more common sense to use the resources we have, our own natural resources, to satisfy the need for energy in the United States and continue to develop other alternative energy sources as well.
To me it defies common sense that we do not drill offshore. We can do so safely. We have proven that. The best experts in the world on drilling offshore from the United States, they go to other countries and contract out and drill for other countries. Hopefully we can change the mindset in this country.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Poe.
I would like to pick up on that framework that has been laid out by the gentleman from Texas and talk a little bit about the national security of our energy situation. As I listen to the rhetoric that comes out of the Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, for example, it is a bit difficult to believe he is a friend of the United States. It is hard to think that he had our best interests in mind even though he did donate some natural gas for heating over in Massachusetts. I would think their politics might be a little more sympathetic than they are in Texas or Iowa.
But as I look at that, I question the motives and I see the dollars that have flowed into that administration in Venezuela, and I look across to the Middle East where we are buying that liquefied natural gas, and everybody in the Middle East is not our friend, and they do not have our best interests in mind either. But the wealth of the United States of America is being spent in purchasing expensive energy resources from overseas, expensive supplies of energy, and we are enriching people who do not have our best interests in mind in the Middle East as well as in Venezuela and other parts around the world.
What kind of a nation would sit on all of that oil that we have up in ANWR, and I have been up there and looked at that? The gentleman from Texas spoke about the environmental friendliness and the safety we have with our oil drilling offshore. I would point out the record of developing the North Slope oil that started in about 1972. Up there when you look at the hundreds and perhaps thousands of wells that have been drilled in that area and the millions and millions of barrels of oil that have been pumped down the Alaskan pipeline, and you fly over from the air and you look for that environmental wasteland that supposedly is up there, all I see is green tundra. And I see a white 50-inch pipeline that goes across the country, across the Yukon River and on down to Valdez. We flew over at about 1,500 feet in altitude. They told me we were over the North Slope oil fields, and I looked out the windows and cast my eyes below and said, Where are the wells? I have worked in the oil fields and have been up on the derrick and I know what it looks like. I expected to see pump jacks like you see in Texas or Oklahoma. I saw none of that in Alaska. All I saw was a white rock pad about 50 by 150 feet, maybe 3 or 4 feet up off that Arctic tundra sitting there waiting in case there needed to be some work done on that well, which would take place in the wintertime on an ice road, the same way the drilling took place in the wintertime on ice roads and ice pads.
It is environmentally friendly because there is not a disturbance to that environment when it is not frozen solid. When it is frozen solid, they build ice roads and come in, they set the work-over rig on that rock pad and pull out a submersible pump, put it in the well and have it ready to go. It pumps oil into that collection system, which I do not see either from the air.
I do not know how it could be any more environmentally friendly. The threat that it would reduce the caribou herd, for example, I happen to know in 1970 they did a census. They counted every caribou, citizen or not. There were 7,000 head of caribou on the North Slope, and that is an American herd. Today there are over 28,000 head of caribou in that same place. We surely did not damage their environment.
Those who watch that herd will tell you that caribou cows get up on top of those rock pads and have their calves instead of dropping them in the ice cold water. They will have them in the spring when the permafrost starts to melt. That is one reason they survive better. Another reason is they have a place to get up out of the wet, and the wind blows the flies away. The wind dries off the calves, and they will dry off and live better and do better. So we see a population that has multiplied four times in caribou.
If you go over to ANWR, there is not a resident caribou herd there, notwithstanding as many times as you have seen the commercials on television. It is not a pristine alpine forest. There is not a single tree in that entire plain where we would like to drill for oil. Not a single tree.
In fact, I have a picture of the furthest most northerly spruce tree that is there. It is about 600 miles further south. I point out for people who did not take 8th grade science and geography, that the circle around the globe known as the Arctic Circle, that is the line that has been drawn around the globe north of which trees cannot grow. So the commercial do not destroy the trees in ANWR is a phony commercial. The commercial that it will disturb the caribou herds is a phony commercial. If anything, it will enhance the caribou herd on the North Slope. There is no resident caribou herd in ANWR which lies just to the east of the North Slope, identical as far as I can tell in ecological regions, at least close to that same kind of climate and ecological region, but they do have a caribou herd that comes in from Canada. They come in and have their calves and when the calves are strong enough to walk, they walk back to Canada. I do not think any thinking person thinks they would be disturbed if we drilled some wells up there and pumped a million barrels a day on down here to the United States to take the pressure off the foreign oil.
That is one thing with drilling in ANWR. There is a lot of gas in ANWR. There is gas developed on the North Slope. That gas that sits there now, we need to build a pipeline from the North Slope on down to the lower 48 States. There is 38 trillion cubic feet of natural feet developed and ready to tap into up there. There is more gas up there not developed, and that reserve has not necessarily been identified in its volume.
But if you recall the map of the coastal regions of the United States that was done in red, the undrilled portion of our Outer Continental Shelf, there are known reserves out there of 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The United States consumes 22.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year. That chunk up there on the North Slope, there is more up there than the 38 trillion, but just by comparison, 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the North Slope of Alaska, and 406 trillion cubic feet offshore of the United States.
Those huge supplies of natural gas, the ability to deliver a million barrels of crude oil a day coming out of the ANWR region, all of the oil that is in that red area of the map along with the natural gas, and this Nation goes anywhere else in the world to purchase at a high price energy that enriches people that sometimes are our sworn enemies, and I would say the leader of Iran would be one of those, and the leader of Venezuela has been swearing at us for some time, and he is convincing me he is our enemy, too. So we enrich them and sit on top of our energy reserves. I would declare that to be a form of economic suicide, to pay a high price for energy when we have it right underneath our very feet and not tap into it and instead enrich our enemies.
Those are big things that matter in a big way. This Congress cannot seem to get together on the obvious. As I listen to the gentleman from Washington in the previous hour speak about us being addicted to foreign oil, I think we have been intimidated by the cult of environmental extremism. The idea that we are going to do something to tap in our energy that is going to upset this Mother Nature that some folks would like to convert back to pre Garden of Eden, and when I say that, that would be back before Adam and Eve walked on this Earth. All other species are fine, but this human species should not compete with other species on this Earth, and I will tell you that as I read it, we are put here to have dominion over all those species, plant or animal. They are here for us to use respectfully and to manage, and we do do that, and we are better than we were 30 or 50 years ago, and we will be better in another 50 years.
We have been extraordinarily effective and prudent in our care with our environment, and no one can point to a single natural gas environmental damage of any kind, and certainly your illustration of the very small percentage of oil pollution that comes from spills should tell us that if we were going to do anything, we should shut down the boating in the gulf as opposed to shutting down the drilling in the gulf.
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I would open them both up because I do not see that there is a big problem there. I see that I have here tonight the gentleman, Mr. Shimkus, who has, I know, a passion in his heart for ethanol. And I want to make that endorsement before I hand this microphone over to him, in that I come from a district that may well be the one that has its ethanol production build out, all the corn we have to supply turned into ethanol, and we are now an energy export center; and I look for that kind of development across the entire Corn Belt. And I would be happy to yield as much times as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus).
Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank my colleague and friend from Iowa. And we have made great strides. We appreciate Iowa's efforts because so much corn has gone to Iowa ethanol production; Illinois corn is now going to the feed lots in Texas, which used to be, which your corn used to go to. So when my producers are looking at the static cost of a bushel of corn, I always tell them, where do you think you would be without new demands going to ethanol?
I have a flexible fuel vehicle. It runs on 85 percent ethanol. And I had one in the last Congress, 2 years ago. I could not fill it up anywhere in my district. Now I can go all throughout my district, go to a regular retail pump and fill it up with 85 percent ethanol fuel. And it is usually, on average, 20 cents cheaper a gallon. So we are making great strides. It is a great story to tell, especially in this area. And as much as, you know, we are from Illinois, you are from Iowa, by definition you have to be supportive of ethanol. And we are. The President addressed it last night. And we also acknowledge the fact that there are other ways you can produce ethanol, and we want to encourage that because we want all the country to have the benefits that we are having and the country would have based upon energy independence. And that is where this debate has to be.
But I am not here to talk about ethanol tonight. I am here to talk about another overlooked resource which we use partially, not to its fullest extent, and that is coal. Now, we all know that we use coal to generate electricity. And a lot of people do not realize that 50 percent of the electricity generation in this country is from coal. And there are new technologies out there that will help us use clean coal technologies, as the President addressed last night. We want to encourage that. We also address that in the energy bill.
Clean coal technologies, the products of research and development conducted over the past 20 years, include more than 20 new lower cost, more efficient and environmental compatible technologies for use by electric utilities, steel mills, cement plants, and other industries. Coal already generates more than half our Nation's electricity, and it is the largest single source of the overall domestic energy production, more than 31 percent of the total.
When we talk about energy, though, we sometimes get confused, because energy is lot of different things. Energy is electricity generation. But energy is also fuel. So we have to be careful that we clarify for this debate all the benefits.
In looking at coal, we have over 250 years of demonstrated reserves, right now, untapped, 250 years' worth of demonstrated reserves. Coal is a readily available domestic resource.
Furthermore, new clean coal technologies, such as the gassification combined cycle, IGCC, which a lot of people know about, coal to liquid and coal to gas technologies. And this is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. The German Army, in World War II, used technology called fissure tropes to take coal and to turn it into fuels to run and operate the German war machine. Fifty years ago.
So what we are proposing and continuing to make sure that we understand it in this arena is that we can take these 250 years' worth of accessible coal reserves and continue to use it for electricity generation, but also use it to make fuel. And it is a cleaner process. So the debates we have had on the floor of the House is, part of it, the refinery issue.
We are addicted, I would say, I would agree with the President, we are addicted to crude oil from imports. So how do we address that addiction? One way we address it is make sure we have our local reserves. That is going the renewable fuels debate. But it also means that we take coal and we can, through current technology available today, we can turn it into gas, which addresses our natural gas challenges, which are really affecting manufacturing and home heating costs for the average consumer. And we can take coal and we can turn it into fuel.
Now, in a best-case scenario, we take that coal, liquid fuel, and then mix it with a renewable fuel and then we have a lot more independence. You have the reserves of coal, you have the local refinery. So you have the coal mine, you have the coal mining jobs, you have the refinery, you have the building the refinery, you have the refinery jobs, and then you have the transportation to the retail location, all in the cycle within the United States, not dependent on any other foreign source.
We have been talking and we are encouraged with our discussions with the administration, and we want to continue to push this issue because I think the public really does not appreciate the great reserves that we have.
The Illinois coal basin, if you look on a geological map, is basically the State of Illinois minus Chicago and Cook County. It also bleeds into western Kentucky a little bit, it bleeds into southwestern Indiana, but it is the outline of the State of Illinois. That is where an abundant access of coal is. And of course we know the other great coal producing States, Wyoming, Montana, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky; and so there are people willing, ready and able to take, to get back into this arena.
But there are always additional challenges that have to be faced. The existing obstacles to move this forward are as follows: there is a high capital investment to begin with. The disadvantage of the environment that we are in today is that we are paying 60 to $65 a barrel for crude oil. There was a time, in my lifetime, when it was $18, and they were capping marginal oil wells because it cost more money to get it out than you could sell on the market. It is good for the consumer, bad for oil exploration. Now at $65 a barrel, you have the opportunity to say, if there is a consistent market signal, that that $65 is going to be here for years to come, that the market will say there is a good possibility of return. I am going to make this billion dollar capital investment. Can the Federal Government help? What can we do because of this high capital investment for the plants?
The capital costs of the plants could be reduced by the experience gained in the actual construction and operation of commercial facilities, in addition to a focused effort by Congress and the administration to address the risks and capital hurdles for new development.
Perceived environmental concerns. My colleague who is leading this Special Order addressed that. Environmental concerns will be addressed by using clean coal technology, IGCC, to reduce emissions of the criteria pollutants. In addition, indirect liquification of coal processes produce clean zero sulfur liquid fuels. We have a debate of high sulfur fuels. We passed regulations that are going to affect the trucking industry. Low sulfur fuels can be produced through coal to liquification, and that addresses one of our major concerns.
You know, to conclude, and maybe join with my colleague in other energy debates, because it is, you kind of develop expertise or a forte based upon the area in which you live, or maybe the committee on which you serve. I am very honored and pleased to serve on the Commerce Committee; and I, in my 9 years, I have served on the Energy Subcommittee. So we have seen this coming, these hurdles that we have in front of us. And we finally were able, after many, many years, to pass a comprehensive piece of energy legislation; but we have to do more.
I want to bring to my colleagues attention the benefits of coal, not just for electricity generation, but for coal to gas, coal to gassification, coal to liquid technology and its use. Coal to liquid technology provides geographic diversity for domestic refining capacity, not all situated in the South on the gulf coast. It could be in the Midwest, could be in Iowa, could be in Illinois and improves national and economic security by lessening dependence on foreign oil and substituting plentiful, more affordable U.S. coal.
Coal to liquid technology also allows for the capturing of carbon dioxide emissions which serves as a bridge to a hydrogen fuel future through polygeneration, which is the linking of multiple types of plants into one such as the coal production of liquid fuels, electricity hydrogen; and that is what the President is proposing, and that is what we are excited about in the whole future gen proposal.
See, we are going to capture carbon dioxide, and through this process you can reinsert it back into the ground; and if you have an area like southern Illinois where you have marginal oil wells, that is going to help the additional oil that is left that is hard to draw out of the ground to be drawn out. So we have great opportunities in the future.
You know, coal has been given a bum rap for a long time. I think what those of us who believe in coal and those who invest and take risks and capital expenses want is just to know what the playing field is so that we can allow technology to meet the standards and there is consistency in regulations.
You know, the problem is when there is inconsistent rules and no one knows what the rules of the playing game is that the risk is higher. If you are going to invest billions of dollars, you want to lower the risk, you want to know what the rules are. We are now at a point with technology and the work we have done through the Department of Energy and clean coal technology research programs that we can get there with clean coal tech for electricity generation. We can turn coal into gas which will affect our natural gas crisis, and we can turn coal into liquid fuels which will help to decrease our reliance on foreign oil. So with that, my colleague, I appreciate the time.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), and I appreciate that presentation. I always learn from these things this evening. And I look across at Illinois and we have a friendly competition in corn production, soybean production and sometimes football, basketball. And I look at the coal production you have and the oil and I think you have gas wells there too running in conjunction with it. It looks like Illinois has a little head start on Iowa when it comes to exporting energy and we are focusing our energies in that fashion too to develop that energy.
I would like to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, a concept and it is a concept I would like to try to sell to America, that we can begin to think about our energy in a little bit different fashion, and that is we need to grow the size of the energy pie. And if you just think in your mind's eye, and I will put a chart out here sometime within the next couple of months that demonstrates this. But there are pieces in every pie, and whether you slice up six, eight, or 10, but just draw that circle in your mind's eye and think there is a piece there for coal and there is a piece for ethanol and a piece for biodiesel and a piece for hydrocarbon-based fossil fuels, both gas and diesel fuel and our oil that we draw out of that.
There is a piece for natural gas that is energy. There is a piece for nuclear power, hydroelectric and there is a piece for solar. There is a piece for wind. There is a piece for hydrogen. And I am probably forgetting two or three pieces out of this energy pie that we have. But the more pieces we have, the more alternatives we have, the more options that consumers have, and the less dependency we have on foreign oil and foreign energy, and then of course the larger those pieces of the pie are, the more supply there is of energy.
And with supply and demand of course the rule is that then the value of the cost of energy will go down if we can grow the size of the energy pie, adjust the proportion, the percentage of the pie that are those pieces, those components of the different kinds of energy so that it reflects the resources we have in this country, the development of those resources, those being coal, nuclear, ethanol, biodiesel, natural gases sitting in the offshore and crude oil that sits out there offshore, drilling in the ANWR, the development of natural gas resources up in the north slope of Alaska, that the natural gas that is across this country underneath public lands, that we have not talked very much in the last year in this Congress about natural gas underneath public lands; but the statement has been made on this floor and it is in this Congressional Record that underneath public non-national park public lands in the United States there is enough natural gas to heat every home in America for the next 150 years.
And we can drill it and we can tap into it, but we cannot build the roads and the collection system to deliver and distribute that gas because of other environmental infringements and obstructions. And so if we can do things to develop energy that are compatible with the environment, then we have to get away from this cult of environmental extremism, and we have got to get together here and save this economy from America and not commit this economic suicide of purchasing from our enemies, enriching our enemies so that they can buy weapons and hire terrorists and send those people to bomb us, but instead provide that independence for ourselves.
And that is the biggest piece about this energy that I think needs to be laid out here. If we can go at it on all fronts, and I think that the natural gas offshore would be the thing that would reduce the overall cost of the United States the most.
We sit here in the United States of America and the heartland of it and Mr. Shimkus and myself, in particular, are in the middle of the Corn Belt. And everything you raise takes nitrogen to produce it.
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And we purchase nitrogen fertilizer. It takes more nitrogen for corn than any other crop that I know of. And 90 percent of the cost of that nitrogen fertilizer is the cost of the natural gas that is converted into that nitrogen fertilizer. We have nearly lost the fertilizer industry in America because we have not developed our natural gas in America. And that fertilizer industry is going offshore in places like Trinidad and Tobago, and those are American interests, and I am grateful for that. But they are also going to Venezuela and Russia. And we are sitting here paying $15 for natural gas, and they are paying 95 cents in Russia so they can ship fertilizer to us. It will not be long, if we keep down this path, before the entire fertilizer industry is gone and we will see a fertilizer cartel pop up in Venezuela and Russia. And if you think it was a tough deal when you saw an oil cartel seek to control the price of crude oil and gasoline in America, think what it would be like if somebody has control over the cost of the production of our food in the United States of America.
So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to recap. I started out by addressing the President's State of the Union address, and he covered a lot of subject matter. We have addressed the energy intensively, and I do not think we mentioned that he addressed the initiative to develop ethanol out of cellulose. Wood chips, stalks and I think cornstalks, fiber like switch grass. There is a lot of energy there, and we are on the edge of being able to open up that technology. And if we accelerate that he believes, and I have no reason to disagree with his statement, that we could have ethanol production out of cellulose competitive with our current ethanol production within 6 years. That is good for all of us that can raise fiber of any kind. And it can convert waste products to put that in your gas tank at E85 levels, as Mr. Shimkus said. And I certainly support his initiative on clean coal, as the President spoke to that as well.
But the point that he made last night that has not been said here, the central point to his speech that I want to make, is that we fight to win in this War on Terror. And it is the most essential battle that we have as our national security. One of the things we are susceptible to, of course, with that is our dependence on that oil. We can get away from that, but we will still be threatened by our enemies from abroad.
We fight to win. We are winning. And the people on this side of the aisle stood and cheered when the President said that; the people on the other side of the aisle sat on their hands. And when the President said the decisions will be made on whether we deploy troops back out of Iraq by commanders in the field, not by politicians in Washington, D.C., people on this side of the aisle stood and cheered; people on the other side sat on their hands, Mr. Speaker. And when he said we stood behind our military, then we kind of got some support from both sides, but it was reluctant on the one side. And I wonder about that. I wonder what kind of sentiment would not be 100 percent behind every man and woman who wears a uniform and puts their life on the line for our freedom and for our safety. I think that is an absolute commitment that we have made. We have had that debate in this Congress. We have endorsed the President's authority to defend our interests in Iraq and around the world. He has done that. And I am grateful to every man and woman who has gone out there and put their lives on the line and those especially who have given their lives for our safety and our freedom.
It is going to be a long row to hoe to get to the end of this War on Terror. But the freedom that is coming in places like Afghanistan, the freedom that is coming in places like Iraq can be the lode star for a free Arab world. We never go to war against another free people, and to the extent that freedom can be promoted throughout the world, that is the extent by which all people on this globe are free from that curse of terrorism.
So I would ask us all to join together in that cause and let us open up this energy we have in this country so we are not hostage to those countries. Let us not enrich them. Let us enrich this economy here in the United States of America and promote the freedom that comes from a free economy.
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