Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. No. I am sorry. I am wondering if we could have some additional time. Did the Senator want to speak for a certain amount of time?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Will the Senator yield?

Ms. LANDRIEU. The Senator is correct. The Senator from Louisiana could answer as well, Senator Vitter. I will yield to him for a response. We get the benefit of jobs. We are happy for the jobs, and we are proud of the technology we are developing. The Senator from Alabama is correct. This oil and gas that comes through our State and is generated in and around our State goes to the benefit of everyone to try to keep the lights on in Chicago, New York, California, and Florida. We are happy to do it. We are not even complaining. We are just saying, in light of this, could we please share less than 1 or 2 percent of the money generated. Last year we gave $5 billion to the Treasury.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator from Florida. I wanted to say that he has made some excellent points about our need for energy independence. He has stated it eloquently and correctly in terms of our overdependence. In large measure that has been what so many of our debates in the last few weeks have been. As the Senator knows, the underlying bill we are trying to get to a final vote on within a few hours actually addresses so many of the concerns the Senator has so rightly raised. He is correct that we can move to a new kind of vehicle that you can plug in at night, drive during the day, switch from electricity to gasoline. That gives us extraordinary hope, without compromising our industry, without Draconian measures. What he spoke about is real, it is not fantasy, and it is in this bill. The ethanol provisions that he talked about are in this bill because of the great work of Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman, a Republican and a Democrat. Yes, they are from the same State, but they have different views--some more conservative, some more liberal. But they have come together on a great, balanced bill. We are attempting to pass this good bill today. We are very close. We are down to the last few amendments. The Senator from Florida has made some excellent points. I also want to say he has been tireless in his advocacy for Florida. He is a Senator from Florida, along with Senator Martinez. They have been down here for hours telling us about their beautiful beaches. We acknowledge it. In Louisiana--I tease the Senator from Florida--we know about those beaches. We grew up on those beaches as well. People from Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana spend a lot of time on those beaches. We want to help them preserve their beaches. I wanted to ask the Senator: Does he intend, if we can get our situation cleared up, to support the amendment we have on the floor, which is a revenue coastal impact assistance sharing? He has been so good in his comments about the contribution that Louisiana and other coastal producing States make. I know he is aware that this amendment we are considering is not a drilling amendment. It is not a boundary amendment, the Bingaman-Domenici-Landrieu-Vitter-Lott amendment. I wanted to ask him to comment on that.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator for those comments. Again, I recognize Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman, who have tried to work through the great differences between all of us, representing our individual States, trying to move a bill forward that achieves the purpose we all want. The goal of more energy independence for our Nation, stronger conservation measures, opening the supply of different types--that is the purpose of the bill. So as we get to the final hours, having debated this bill now for 2 hours, I hope we can stay in the spirit of moving this important legislation. One of our colleagues from Virginia said this morning that in his opinion this might be the most significant piece of legislation we may pass this Congress. We have tried for 14 years. The Senator from Florida is aware we have tried to pass an energy bill. This is not an easy bill to pass, not because Democrats and Republicans disagree, but because regions of the country disagree about how best to achieve that goal. It is an extremely difficult piece of legislation. If we had not had the two leaders we had, with the patience of Job-- as I have said many times, I don't know how they have brought us to this point. I know it is the Domenici-Bingaman amendment that is pending. Senator Vitter and I are cosponsors. Both Senators from Mississippi came earlier to speak on the amendment. We hope sometime in the next hour or so--hopefully sooner--to get a vote on the amendment-- it would be a bipartisan vote--and then move on to take care of the other amendments and finalize the bill. The Senator from Florida knows that despite our differences on this issue, we will agree to debate it in the future. This debate will go on. The underlying debate is not about the moratoria. It is not a drilling amendment. I look forward to having his support.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I understand Senator Byrd is preparing to offer his amendment. I ask for the Senator's consent to speak for 3 minutes on a different subject before he begins.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, we just had a very vigorous and I think enlightening discussion about liquefied natural gas plants and the situation our country is in, about the desperate--and that is not too strong a word--the desperate need we have for additional gas in the Nation. We had a very good debate about how we were going to provide this additional gas. The technology, which has just been established in the last few years, allows us to drill for gas in places all over the world, convert it to a liquid, transport it to our shores, turn it back into a gas, and turn on our lights, provide our energy, and help our economy move forward. I thought the debate was excellent and in great detail. As usual, Senator Feinstein presented her position beautifully. We received letters from the Governors. Of course, our leaders, the two Senators from New Mexico, also stated their positions very clearly and the vote has taken place. Regardless whether the Domenici position prevailed, which it did in this case, or if the Feinstein position had been agreed to, we still have the situation of having four liquefied natural gas plants in the Nation today, only four. The largest one is in Louisiana. We are getting ready to bring in what some estimate are as many as 40 or 50 of these new plants. They have to go somewhere. I hope as this debate goes on, we can make the wisest decisions about the siting of these plants regarding their safety for our communities, their safety for the environment, and a revenue-sharing provision that would allow the communities that do host these liquefied natural gas plants to share some of the revenues because of the impacts that will occur. One way or another, there will either be security impacts or some environmental impacts--some impacts that the communities that do not bear this responsibility will now bear. This is particularly appropriate because this gas is not going to be used by the borough or the county or the parish in which it is sited; it is going to be used by the whole Nation. I am going to have an amendment. It is going to be a sense-of-the- Senate amendment to get a study underway to see how these revenues could be shared appropriately with the 50 or 60 or 70 sites that are going to be determined in our country--whether they are in West Virginia, whether they are in Louisiana, whether they are in Massachusetts or California. Our communities deserve to have some funding to help with these impacts. I thank the Senator from West Virginia for his graciousness in allowing me to speak, and I put the Senate on notice that this amendment will be coming later this afternoon.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator from Virginia to yield a moment of his time?

Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent for a moment.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank my colleague from Virginia. This has been a very good debate. I understand the feelings of the Senators from Florida and New Jersey. They have very strong feelings they have expressed, and some ideas have been laid out to consider. I understand this amendment will probably not be voted on, but I compliment the Senator from Virginia for his foresight and understanding that we have to increase the supply of gas, particularly oil and gas in this Nation. All of the conservation measures are in this bill and all those we could add when it goes to conference are not going to add up to enough conservation to get us out of the bind we are in. While we want to be sensitive to the individual States, we also have an obligation to the Nation. The Senator from Virginia has raised that issue. He is correct. We will be back sometime next year or the following year debating this issue and trying to come up with some way we can open up opportunities where we can, and maybe perhaps keep them closed in other places. Pretending this will go away, pretending the prices will come down, is jeopardizing the economic vitality of our Nation. Regardless of the position of Mississippi or Louisiana, the national issue demands we come up with solutions. I thank the Senator from Virginia for his foresight and his comments in this regard.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. For one moment, yes.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Michigan. I yield the floor. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thought I would take a moment to acknowledge that here with us today around the Capitol are hundreds of young advocates for a cure for juvenile diabetes. There are three young women who came to my office a few moments ago: Dominique Legaux, Liz Kramm, and Laura Rutledge. I would like to take this opportunity to submit their letters for the Record. All of these letters call on us to focus on the challenges before so many of our young people with juvenile diabetes and call on us to explore the possibility of stem cell research on their behalf. I thank the chairman. I ask unanimous consent these letters be printed in the Record.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I understand, according to the unanimous consent agreement, I now have 10 minutes to speak in opposition to the amendment.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you, Mr. President. I will take all 7 minutes 15 seconds to talk about this important amendment. I do so much respect a lot of what has been said on the floor of the Senate by my colleagues from Florida and New Jersey about their feelings about offshore drilling. Of course, we have different feelings about that in Louisiana, and our experience leads us to different conclusions. But that is not really the subject of this amendment, which is why I have come to the floor to speak in opposition to this amendment. This is not a drilling amendment. This is a security amendment. This is a good stewardship amendment. This is a commonsense amendment. The people of the United States--all 240-plus million people who live in this Nation--depend on us--us right here--to give them good information about their country, about their land, about their water, about their oceans, about their resources. They depend on us to tell them the truth, not to hide things from them, not to pretend we have things when we do not or say we do not have things when we do. That is all the amendment the Senators from New Mexico--both Senators, the chairman and the ranking member--have put in the underlying bill, with support from Democrats and Republicans, with a good vote from Republicans and Democrats on the committee, to put in this bill simply a direction for our agency, the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior, to do an inventory so the American public can understand how much oil, how much gas, how many other resources we might have on the Outer Continental Shelf. No. 1, this is not a small piece of land or territory. It is 200 miles basically out from our coast, a ring around the Nation. If you took the OCS, which is 1.67 billion acres of land, and laid it over the map of the United States, it would be from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. It is a huge asset owned not by the Senators, not by the House of Representatives, not by the Governors, it is owned by the American people. They have a right to know what resources are there for them should they need them, should they want to use them as good stewards--not as exploiters, not as destroyers, but as good stewards. We are engaged in a war. We have had a strike against this Nation from terrorists who have all sorts of vile intentions against our Nation. The price of oil is at $58 a barrel this week. Gas is at a record high. We do not know when or if there will be another terrorist attack, but in the event there is some problem--more problems than we have today because we have some, obviously--when the country may have to draw on resources on the Outer Continental Shelf--it may either be because of an emergency or because of economic necessity--we most certainly would like to know what is there so we can make a good decision. That is basically all this underlying bill does. So I know my colleagues have different views about drilling and where drilling should be and whether we should drill, but this is not the amendment. This is not the attack point. You would want to talk about drilling when we get to it. This is about an inventory, a resource assessment of what is owned by the American people for their deliberate thought about what should be done either now or in the short-term future or in the long-term future of this Nation. I urge all of us to vote against this amendment that would strip out this commonsense approach to letting the American people know what they own so they can make, and we all can make, good decisions about whether to use those resources, when to use those resources, or decide never to tap into those resources. But those good, commonsense decisions cannot even be made unless we know what we have. The good leadership of both Senators from New Mexico is leading us to give the American people a full accounting. I come to the Senate floor this morning to say that I strongly support this underlying measure, and I thank them for their leadership. I urge my colleagues on the Democratic side, as well as my Republican colleagues, to hold to this commonsense inventory of our Outer Continental Shelf. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following data be printed in the Record.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I yield back the floor but reserve my time.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, may I ask unanimous consent to speak for 30 seconds as in morning business while we are waiting?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from New Mexico and Arizona. I thank my colleague from New Mexico for moving this Energy bill forward and making such progress. (The remarks of Ms. Landrieu and Ms. Stabenow are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Right.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Right.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the chairman, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, because he is absolutely correct. I share his frustration. All I can say is as we proceed, we will continue to talk about these issues and educate the American people. People are afraid. They tend to be afraid if they are not sure of the facts. Sometimes people get the facts all confused. But as I hope people understand, as I keep speaking the truth on this and people understand there are ways you can do this drilling, particularly for natural gas, that are safe for the environment, that meet every environmental standard we have today, and actually meet the clean air standards set out in our own act, we can most certainly explore these opportunities and continue to work on this bill. I thank the Senator for his comments, for his interest and his knowledge of the subject. I can only say I will continue to try to tell the story, and as the American people learn more about it, perhaps some of the fear will dissipate, reason will prevail, and we can begin to understand that here at home we have places on our shores and off our shores that we can tap into and minimize our dependency on foreign oil and foreign gas. For the short term, this bill, and with the support of most of these Senators, will begin importing natural gas. We have policies in this bill to allow that to happen. It is quite ironic we are setting out in a bill to import more natural gas, and we will not take opportunities to drill for more on our shores. Again, this is a work in progress. Let me share another part of the story that is not just about energy production. It is the great contribution our coast makes to Louisiana. There is the gold coast, the rocky coast, the cliff coast. We are the working coast. We are proud of it. We are the largest and most productive expanse of coastal wetlands in North America. It is the seventh largest delta on Earth. The Mississippi River drains two-thirds of the United States. As I said, it is one of the most productive environments in America. In addition to the energy production I talked about which is right off this shore--and we have 20,000 miles of pipeline that can wrap around the country 10 times, 2,000 miles each way, miles of pipeline that send oil and gas to Chicago, California and to Washington and New York--in addition to the energy we produce for the Nation, through this Mississippi River, we drain the mountains in the West and all throughout the Nation; we also have a great nursery for one of the greatest flyways in the world for millions of waterfowl and migratory songbirds. It also is a nursery for the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is produced because this marsh does not exist anywhere else in the coastal United States. Again, it is an unusually large delta created by the Mississippi River. It is unique. In addition to the energy contributions this delta makes, in addition to the drainage we contribute by our location for the Nation, in addition to the great flyways for migratory birds that this provides, and the nursery for all the gulf coast fish and species, it also serves as a protection for the two million people that live below I-10. This is the main interstate that runs in the southern part of the United States. It goes all the way through Mississippi, to Florida, and all the way through Texas and west. This I-12/I-10 corridor is one of the busiest in the Nation for many reasons. It is a great north-south trade Route. Below this interstate, basically two million people live in Louisiana. As the map shows, this land is all marsh and low-lying wetlands. The people that live here are in some jeopardy. They are in some danger if this marsh would erode and go away as storms--whether they are hurricanes, floods, or rising tides--continue to pound our shore. That, unfortunately, is exactly what is happening today. Yet this wetland that supplies all of this energy, seafood and other environmental benefits to the Nation, we are losing a football field every 30 minutes. We are losing 25,000 square miles every year. In the last 50 years, we have lost the size of the State of Rhode Island. The red on this map indicates a loss of wetland. This is not caused by oil and gas and by fisheries. It is exacerbated by pipeline construction and some exploration, but it is caused primarily by the channelization of the Mississippi River. This river, for all the things I have said it is used for, you could argue the most important thing it is used for, for the Nation, is the commerce--500 tons of cargo, the largest port system in the world. When my friends from the Midwest-- whether it is Senator Harkin, Senator Conrad, or Senator Dorgan and others--want to get grain and corn out of the States they represent, there is not a whole lot of ways to get it out except by barge. It comes down the Mississippi River. We are happy for the trade and the traffic. But this river was levied to keep the water in, to create this major port system for the Nation, and as a result, over decades, the river cannot overflow itself, and it then cannot replenish the marsh. That is what is causing the staggering loss of these wetlands. Then, on top of that--which is probably 85 percent of the loss of wetlands, say our scientists who have been studying this for many years, the last two decades in particular--when the oil and gas industry came in and some canals had to be put in for the drilling, it exacerbated it by allowing the saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to come into this water. We call it brackish. It is part salt and part fresh. It comes into the marsh and kills the marsh grass. The salt is toxic to that particular marsh grass. The marsh grass fades away, and before you know it, you are in open water. I have friends that have fished down here for years and old timers I talk to. It is getting scary because it is not even people that are that old any more who are saying: When I was a kid, you could stand right here in Terrebonne Bay and look out for miles and see land. I took my little boy down there last week, the same place I used to fish when I was a kid, and there is no land left. Senator, what is happening? Where is it going? It is eroding. I have been here for 8 years trying to get this Congress--Senator Breaux joined me, Senator Vitter now joins this effort--to try to get this Senate and this Congress to understand that this delta is not only precious to Louisiana--it is not even Louisiana's wetlands, it is America's wetlands--it deserves our attention. Since we contribute so much toward waterborne commerce, so much to the energy infrastructure and independence of this Nation, we serve as a nursery for the fisheries industry, for the whole gulf coast of Mexico, we serve as a flyway for migratory birds which support a whole emerging and growing ecotourism industry that affects everyone in a positive way, surely we can get a few little dollars to help us save our coast. We are only one hurricane away. We had a terrible season last season. We had five or six major storms. Luckily, they did not hit directly. Unfortunately, our friends in Mississippi and Mobile were hit. None of us along the gulf coast like to get hit. We are in great sympathy and empathy with each other because we know what a major hurricane will do. My people are sitting ducks. It is getting worse and worse. We can save our coast. But we need to use some of the moneys we can get to invest and to do this and we can make progress. The Senator from Washington would like to wrap up on her amendment, and so let me conclude in a few moments. I thank the Senator for her courtesy and time. This is a very precious wetland to Louisiana and to America. It is something that can be saved, must be saved and, if saved, cannot only contribute so much to Louisiana but to the Nation. This issue is not as clearcut as some would like to believe. As I said, I like some parts of the amendment of the Senator from Washington. She has been a tremendous contributor on the Energy bill and a tremendous voice for conservation. What I do like about her amendment is its flexibility. What I do like about her amendment is the opportunity to produce more domestically so we do not have to get it from somebody else, particularly a somebody who does not share our values, who does not have America's best interests at heart. So I agree with that approach. Again, it may be too aggressive for us. But the Senate will decide if that is the case. But I want to say from a State that is producing--and we are going to continue to produce; we are happy to produce--there are some coastal impacts associated with it. But even if we were not doing any production off the coast of Louisiana, this loss of wetlands would still be occurring because of the channelization of the Mississippi River done by the Corps of Engineers, at our request, on behalf of the Nation. It is time we get some help and some support for fixing this wetland. I thank the Senator for her patience and her courtesies, and I wish her the best of luck as we continue to work on our bill.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor to make a few brief remarks about the overall Energy bill that is before us, about some of the strong points in this bill and how we might be able to improve upon it. I would like to briefly mention, along the lines of the discussion that just ensued, importing oil and the challenges that brings to our Nation. I will submit a few documents for the Record and discuss generally the situation that we have in Louisiana. Of course, I will not be offering any amendment at this time but just discussing something I know we will be talking more about as this debate ensues. While I understand the amendment before us is quite an aggressive amendment--and at this time, I have not made a final decision about it--I would like to say something positive about the amendment. One of the points I like about this approach, while it is very aggressive because it is similar to an approach that Senator Alexander and I took 2 years ago on the Energy bill, is the flexibility that it provides to the country to try to make smart strategic choices about how savings can occur and smart strategic choices about lessening our dependence on foreign oil. Coming from an oil-producing State, I can say that the people in Louisiana who produce oil and gas right here at home would like to reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil. The question is--and I think the chairman raises a very excellent point, and it is a real question--can we do that this fast, this aggressively, and maintain our economic position? We may or may not. But I want to say that anything we can do to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, while we recognize that we are just about to open to the imports of natural gas because we virtually have no choice--we have to because we cannot step up domestic production fast enough to meet the demands because China, because India, because our industries--chemical, petrochemical, agriculture, and others--are demanding more natural gas. We are about ready to bring in natural gas, where in some ways, while I support that, it will compound the problem of dependency. It really is a dilemma. I say to the Senator from Washington that I think the flexibility of her proposal is very important, and the fact that this amendment does not say we have to conserve, we could, in fact, produce more domestic oil and gas which I happen to think would be a great idea. I know the chairman and the ranking member support more domestic drilling of oil and gas. I want to say a word about that for a moment. We do not do anything the same way today that we did in the 1930s. Our telephones do not work the same way. We did not even have computers in the 1930s. Everything has changed. Technology for the large part has made everything better. Some people might argue with that statement, but the efficiency, the convenience, the ability to clean up our environment--everything has been made better in large measure by technology. The oil and gas industry is not what it once was when the men and women who started it were paddling in a pirogue, a canoe--that is what we call a pirogue in Louisiana. A pirogue is a canoe--in the marsh pumping the oil out of the ground by hand and digging with shovels and crude instruments. This industry resembles more of the space industry today. It is run by computer. It is highly technical. The environmental advances are absolutely astonishing. I have taken the chairman down to Louisiana. He has seen this with his own eyes. The wells, where they are situated, the offshore platforms, I believe, would make any American proud, even Americans who belong to the California Sierra Club. I absolutely believe they would be proud if they could see the development of this oil and gas industry. In fact, one of the majors told me--and I do not have any reason to doubt them because I think independent studies have shown this--that in the Gulf of Mexico last year, in the entire Gulf of Mexico, that oil company collected three barrels--three barrels--of spilled oil from its operations, and it has billions of dollars invested. That is how good we have gotten. Guess what. We are the best in the world. Instead of bellyaching, we should be proud of that. We should say thank goodness for that old American ingenuity. We did not do it very well in the 1930s, and we did not do it well in the 1940s, but one good thing about America is we never stop trying to be better. It separates us from so many places in the world. Coming from an oil and gas State, I would be the happiest person in the world if we could stop importing oil, drill it at home and explore new places that are appropriate. Some places may need to be off-limits but not everyplace. There is a place that is not off-limits and we are proud of, and that is south Louisiana and the work that we have contributed to this country. I am going to show my colleagues this chart because this is where all of the drilling off the coast of our country occurs: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We have been producing oil and gas and sending $5 billion annually to the Treasury in taxes every year. Yes, there have been some environmental impacts which I am going to talk about in a moment, but they have been minor compared to the wealth that this industry has created not just for this region but for the entire Nation. Does anybody remember we have gone through an industrial revolution? Does anybody remember that everybody moved off the farms and went to the cities? How do people think the cities got lit? It did not wave a magic wand and the lights came on. We have been producing and digging from coal, oil, and gas. So if anybody wants to say that, oh, well, we just do not have to do that any more, heck, the whole country was built on this contribution. People from Louisiana are darn proud of it. Instead of everybody coming to the floor and saying how we do not care about our land and we do not care about our trees and we do not care about our coast and we do not have anything beautiful to preserve, not only do the people of Louisiana love our land and love our water, we survive on it and in it more than anybody in America. We swim more. We eat more fish. We spend more time in boats. We recreate more on the water than probably anyplace maybe except for a very few. Not only wealthy people get to the water, everybody lives by the water. In some places, one has to have a $5-million house before they can touch the water. In Louisiana, there are people who live in a house not worth $25,000, but they have a gorgeous marsh land behind their house, and those kids go fishing. So I do not like to hear anybody come to this floor and say that we do not treasure our land in Louisiana. We are going to continue to produce oil and gas. We are going to continue to be proud of it, and we are going to continue to tell the story, whether anybody wants to believe us or not, that this can be done in a very safe environmental way. Why? Because we have good regulation; two, we have courts that enforce the regulation; three, we have all kinds of agencies--some would argue too many--that make sure that all of these companies are doing what they are supposed to do. We have a free press, which means a lot because if somebody is doing something wrong, there is nothing I can do or the Senator from New Mexico can do to try to stop them from reporting it. So they can report anything they want. There is open information. I wish they would really tell people what is actually happening. The point I want to make in just a moment is that we are going to continue to do drilling. I appreciate all the good work of my colleagues to try to give more revenues to the State. We get a little bit, but because we are generating so much and helping everybody so much--let me just use this. I wanted to thank my colleagues for their interest in helping us, but this makes my point even better. When the Senator from Washington said she wants us to be more like Brazil, I am going to learn a little bit more about what Brazil has done because I am not quite sure of the details, but I will tell my colleagues about 11 States in the United States and what they have done. Those States are Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Wyoming. Eleven States out of fifty are the only States in the United States that produce more energy than they consume. Let me say that again. There are only 11 States in the United States of America that produce more energy than they consume. So if anybody wants to give Brazil an award, please give these 11 States an award first because we have already done that. We produce oil and gas. We are net exporters of energy--well, we produce oil, gas, coal, nuclear. We can produce energy from a lot of different ways. This is not just oil and gas production. This includes nuclear. This is from the Energy Information Agency, our own agency, not from Louisiana or Senator Landrieu. This is the U.S. Department of Energy Energy Information Agency. This includes nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wood, wind, waste, solar, oil, natural gas, and coal. As the chairman from New Mexico will say, his goal is to increase the choices of all of these so that more States can begin producing something. If my colleagues do not want to drill for oil, then drill for gas. If they do not want to do that, put in a nuclear powerplant. If they do not want to do that, put in some wind turbines. If they do not want to do that, dam up some of their rivers and use hydro. Some people will do that; some people will not. But for heaven's sakes, do something. Do something. If they want to mine for coal, we have given them a lot of money in this bill and they can clean the coal. It can be burned and used efficiently. Put in solar panels. Go get waste from the agricultural areas of their State. That is the whole point of this bill. We have 39 States that need to make some decisions about what they are going to produce to be free because 11 of us have already figured it out. I do not know these other States as well as I know my State, but in addition to being a net exporter of energy, I will also tell the country that Louisiana probably has the most petrochemical plants per capita than any State in the Union. Those products that are produced in my State are not consumed by my State alone. We make these products and send them all over the country and the world. So not only are we producing enough energy for every single person in Louisiana--the 4.5 million of us--and what we need, but we are also fueling every plant, every LNG facility, every petrochemical facility, supplying so much for the Nation and still exporting because people in Louisiana kind of believe in good old-fashioned ``do your part'' kind of work. We also conserve. I am so tired of people saying, oh, the Senator from Louisiana and the people from Louisiana, all they do is waste fuel. I do not have the document, but I am going to submit for the record--I am going to take the last 10 years--the efficiencies that Louisiana, through our industry, has achieved. Yes, some of them have been mandated by this body and they had no choice and they had to do it, but some of it is voluntary. We have tried to be more efficient as well and, of course, we have produced this energy. Let me just point out three or four States that are at the top of this list. Actually, I am probably going to do five States. The States that consume more energy than they produce are California at the top of the list, New York second, Ohio third, Florida fourth, and Michigan fifth. Let me point out one other thing, because you will say, Why isn't Texas on the green list. I want to find where Texas is--here it is, 25. Texas is not a net exporter, but it is close. The reason it is not is because, of course, it is a big State, a huge State--20-plus million people, and they also have so much industry that they supply energy for, that helps us all, they don't quite make it. But I have to say Texas is doing a great deal. Perhaps they could do more. But the rest of these you can understand. Maybe Hawaii is too small. Hawaii is not very big, but they are doing a whole heck of a lot better than California. I want to be clear about who is doing what, who is not, and where we need to go and try to help everybody make the choices that work for their State but that also work for the country. It has to happen. I will stop for a moment on that issue and move to something else.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I am happy to.