The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S8547-S8548 on July 30, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on my amendment to the fiscal year 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
This amendment prevents the Department of Energy from spending taxpayer dollars on companies that invest significant resources or do business in Iran's energy sector to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Earlier this year, the Department signed contracts with energy giants Shell, Vitol, and Glencore to add almost 17 million barrels to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Open source material indicates that these three companies make up a majority of Iran's gasoline imports.
Companies that sell gasoline to Iran should not receive the support of the American taxpayers, and this body has now gone on record multiple times opposing government contracts with companies that have substantial investment in or do business with Iran's energy sector.
My amendment does not penalize the Department of Energy for this activity, but prevents this sort of thing from happening again. Ending taxpayer support for Iran's energy sector is a commonsense step and crucially important. Most major importers of gasoline to Iran have substantial ties to the U.S. Government, and unanimous adoption of my amendment sends a clear message to those involved in Iran's energy sector: You can do business with us, or you can do business with Iran--
not both.
Modeling and Simulation R & D
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, during yesterday's consideration of the fiscal year 2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill, I noted that the managers included certain report language related to modeling and simulation capabilities for an unconventional fossil fuels program. I would like to ask the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee if their intent was to improve modeling and simulation for unconventional fossil energy technologies, by working in collaboration with universities and industry to establish joint programs for research and development.
Mr. DORGAN. Yes, that is our intent. This legislation would spur innovation and improve modeling and simulation efforts.
Mr. WARNER. I am pleased to learn that, because the Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center--VMASC--at Old Dominion University has extensive experience in modeling, simulation, and visualization of complex systems and events. Its capabilities include a complete suite of visualization software that can incorporate geospatial information with simulation and analysis of energy-related systems and the impact of those systems on various aspects of the environment. It also has extensive experience modeling critical infrastructure components of fossil fuel, electric and natural gas systems. VMASC has also developed capabilities for modeling policy aspects of global warming that can be adapted specifically to fossil fuel systems, and help to identify unconventional oil, natural gas, and coal resources.
VMASC has developed capabilities to model the production of unconventional resources using a combination of computational techniques that can be adapted to simulate a wide variety of scenarios associated with the fossil fuel industry and its relationship to environmental impacts.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman, I worked to develop this initiative to incorporate a capability that the Department has failed to cultivate, yet offers tremendous potential to develop our domestic fossil energy potential. The University of Utah's Simulation and Computing Institute which has worked with both the Office of Science and NNSA computing programs is a leading computing program with tremendous potential to contribute to this effort. This outstanding computing capability is coupled with the vast oil and gas production capabilities at the 25 year-old Energy and Geoscience Institute. This organization operates on seven continents and shares research and technology with its 66 corporate members that all have energy production experience. The goal of this program will be to facilitate the development of unconventional fossil energy resources utilizing state of the art computing simulation and modeling capabilities.
Mr. DORGAN. I agree that high performance computing applications are important research tools that can help lead to breakthroughs in energy production. North Dakota State University, NDSU, uses computational modeling and simulations to help analyze theories and validate experiments that are dangerous, expensive or impossible to conduct. Through its Center for High Performance Computing, NDSU is collaborating with the Department of Energy and its national laboratories on a number of energy research projects.
The capabilities of VMASC, University of Utah, North Dakota State University and other institutions should receive due consideration as the Department of Energy executes this provision.
(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)
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