Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Further, to clarify, the Senator is aware, then, that the renewable standard is higher than that proposed by the Clinton administration because it is 10 percent instead of 7.5 percent. Is the Senator aware that the penalty in the Bingaman-Daschle proposal is twice as high as that proposed by the Clinton administration?

Mr. NICKLES. Does that 12 percent include hydro?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, we are going to vote on this amendment shortly. Staff should notify their Senators. I wish to make a couple comments. One, the Department of Energy supports this amendment. It does not oppose it. Two, as to colleagues saying this amendment does not cost anything, they are not talking about the people who know something about the amendment. The Energy Information Administration talks about the cost to States in the millions and millions of dollars. The State of Florida shows about a $450 million increase. For my colleagues' information, I have a letter from the Public Service Commission in the State of Florida. The letter says they support this amendment to lower the amount of the penalty from 3 cents to 1.5 cents, and that it would reduce the cost of the Federal mandate on the Florida ratepayers. I happen to think those people know something about this issue. I have letters from utility companies. Some people say these are oil companies. I am talking about utility companies. This is not oil companies versus other companies. This is about an assault on ratepayers because we are getting ready to say you have to have 10 percent of your power from renewables. We did not change that. But if you do not make it--and I will tell my colleagues, it is not easy to make that. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about the city of Jacksonville. The city of Jacksonville has a renewable standard of 7.5 percent. They have tried a lot of alternative sources of power. Guess what. They are not there yet. I hope they get there, but they have found out that some of these alternative sources of power cost a lot of money, and the ratepayers are objecting. Nantucket, a very pristine area a lot of us have enjoyed off the coast, wants to have renewables. They talked about having a wind farm. Wind farms are subsidized a lot through the Tax Code. There was an effort to build a wind farm off the coast, but there is a lot of objection from environmentalists because of what it would do to bird, migration and to the environment as well. The point is, yes, there is a desire by many to go to renewables, but there is also a penalty. This bill has a very high penalty. It has a penalty twice as high as that proposed by the Clinton administration. What Senator Breaux, myself, Senator Miller, and Senator Voinovich have offered is a compromise. It does not eliminate the renewable standard. It says let's reduce the penalty to the same number the Clinton administration proposed. How much is the penalty? It is 1.5 cents a kilowatt hour. How much is that? The wholesale cost of electricity is 3 cents around the country. In some areas, it is as low as 2.2 cents, and in other areas it is closer to 4 cents. The nationwide wholesale cost of electricity is right around 3 cents. The penalty under the Bingaman proposal in the underlying bill for not complying is 3 cents. That is a lot. That is 100 percent of the cost of electricity. We are telling people you have to pay that kind of penalty if you do not make the target. That is a heck of a gun at your head. As a matter of fact, the penalty is so high on some utilities that produce a lot of electricity--and, yes, maybe electricity is primarily produced by coal, oil, and gas--it is a heavy hit. It is not insignificant when the CEO of Southern Company estimates the cumulative cost of this mandate on Southern Company through the year 2000 will be from $3 billion to $6.5 billion. That is not insignificant. For somebody to say they think it will not cost anything is absurd. Did the CEO of Southern Company put his name on this letter, and is he factually wrong? I do not think that is the case. It is the reason this amendment is supported by almost every utility in the country. It is the reason this amendment is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the NFIB, and the National Association of Manufacturers. Somebody is going to have to pay the bill. Guess what. It is not the utilities that pay the bill. They are going to pass it on to their ratepayers. If we do not adopt this amendment, there is going to be a significant hit on ratepayers. It is going to happen and people should know it. They should know we are voting on whether we are going to have electric rates go up significantly. This amendment tries to mitigate it. They are still going to go up because there is a penalty of 1.5 cents. That is about 50 percent of the wholesale price of electricity. That is still pretty significant. If we do 3 cents, it is 100 percent. That is a big hit, not to mention the fact in addition to the 3 cents, there is also already in the Tax Code--it has already been agreed upon--a 1.7- cent tax credit for renewables. So we give a tax credit. That is great. But to have this heavy a mandate is a big hit on consumers. It is in the hundreds of millions of dollars in almost every State, including States in the Northeast. I am going to correct my colleague on the Texas renewable standard. I have the greatest respect for my colleague from Nevada. I love him like a brother. The Texas renewable standard--and maybe we should have the Senator from Texas present because he argued this before in this Chamber, and he said the underlying bill--to paraphrase Senator Gramm of Texas--is so far from being the Texas renewable standard it is remarkable. What we have in Texas is capacity, not energy-produced, and what we have in Texas is equal to a 2-percent standard, not a 10- percent standard. There is a big difference. I believe I understood the Senator from Nevada to say there was a 15- percent renewable. My guess is that includes hydro. The underlying bill does not include hydro. Hydro is pretty clean power. We have Hoover Dam. That is pretty clean power. It generates a lot of electricity. It is water. It is great power. It is cheap. It is very good power. It is not included as renewable under the definition of the underlying bill. So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I am going to insert in the Record several statements. I want to insert a letter from the American Corn Growers Association, very big advocates of renewable sources, but they are also supportive of this amendment because they believe this is a proper mix. They also know that their ratepayers, their users, the ones who grow corn, buy a lot of electricity, think this is the proper blend. They want renewable sources. I will read a part of this letter. ACGA also supports a fair and equitable renewable portfolio standard requiring a portion of the Nation's energy to come from renewable sources. However, while we want to do everything we can to promote renewable production by farmers we must oppose undue mandates that will impose additional fuel costs on all rural consumers. Senator Nickles' amendment will significantly reduce the cost of complying with the standard, and in turn protect rural America from excessive price increases for electricity, by cutting the energy credits from 3 cents per kilowatt-hour to 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. I also wanted to mention a company called Mid-America Energy Company. This is a company that is based in Omaha, NE. They have analyzed this proposal and developed estimates on increased costs that will result from its enactment of RPS. According to our preliminary calculations, implementing RPS in S. 517 will begin increasing electricity costs for Mid- America's regulated and competitive customers in 2007 by 600,000, with costs rising to more than $40 million in the year 2019. This is in rural America. This is in Middle America. This is in the corn-growing areas. This is one of the largest utilities in the area that said this is going to be a big hit that they are going to pass on to their consumers. I am surprised there is any opposition to this amendment because this amendment does not eliminate the RPS standard, it does not eliminate the 10-percent standard; all it does is say, let us reduce the penalty to 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. It is the same proposal the Clinton administration supported. I do not say things lightly on this floor. I want to be as accurate as possible, and if I am ever inaccurate, I want to be corrected, and I will stand corrected. This amendment will save billions of dollars. I had one letter from one company, Southern Company, that said it was billions of dollars of expense to them and their customers. That is a few States. I cannot say that is one State. It is a few States. It is a big utility. In my State, for one company, it is something like $60 million. They showed it each year: Here is the production. Here is their cost of compliance. And it increases substantially. By the last year, it is something like $60 million. Senator Kyl alluded to the fact that in my entire State it is over $100 million. The State of Vermont, I believe he said, was $7 million. This also came from the Energy Information Agency. So maybe people are able to distort figures and say it does not cost anything. It does cost something. One cannot say that companies are going to have to pay 3 cents per kilowatt hour if they do not meet a target and say it does not cost anything. There are significant costs, and ratepayers will pay for it. I do not think the utilities pay for it, I think the ratepayers pay for it, and I think it is time we stand up for ratepayers. So I urge my colleagues to support the amendment I have offered with Senator Breaux, Senator Miller, and Senator Voinovich. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. I know the Senator is going to move to table this amendment, and I think that is fine. I think we are ready to vote. The Senator has mentioned this is the fourth amendment we have dealt with in regard to renewables. One of the reasons I think we have had a few amendments dealing with this is that it costs so much money, and we have never had a hearing, and we never had a markup. I happen to be a member of the Energy Committee. I would have loved to have participated in a hearing and a markup on this section. I would love to hear from experts on both sides of this aisle how much this amendment would really cost, but we were denied that opportunity. So it is one of the reasons we have to legislate on the floor of the Senate, because we did not have the opportunity to do it in committee.

Mr. NICKLES. Before the Senator moves to table----

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. I want to insert something into the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague yielding for this request. I know he wants to move to table. Earlier, I was looking for a letter I could not find. This is a letter from the Northeast Utilities. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. The key point of this letter says: PSNH will be the only utility in New Hampshire that would be required to participate in the program. It creates a very uneven field for us and will cost our consumers an estimated $22 million a year. It talks about the impact on the northeastern part of the country, including New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I think we are having a good debate. I think it is informative to my colleagues. I thank and compliment my colleague from New York, Mr. Schumer, and my colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, for their leadership in bringing out an amendment and exposing this for what it is. It will greatly increase costs, a couple of costs. I haven't heard too many people talk about what is very obvious. We have already agreed to an amendment that extends the ethanol subsidy in the Tax Code. That is just a fact. We have extended it, I believe, for 10 years. Ethanol now receives a subsidy of 53 cents per gallon. It doesn't pay an excise tax that goes to the highway trust fund. That is already the case. That is present law. We just extended that for 10 years. Presently, we are producing a little less than 2 billion gallons of ethanol a year. So that costs the trust fund a little over $1 billion. The trust fund loses that because we give ethanol the advantage over all other fuels. That is about $1 billion. OK, that is present law. What the bill does if you look on page 189 of the bill, is increase the ethanol mandate. Right now, we are producing about 1.9 billion barrels per year. It says in the year 2004 it goes to 2.3 billion. It doesn't sound like a lot, but that is about a 20-percent increase. Then, over the period of time to the year 2012 it goes to 5 billion. We go from 1.9 billion to 5 billion. That is a little less than a 200- percent increase in ethanol. So ethanol gets it both ways. They have the subsidy, so much per gallon it doesn't pay in excise taxes that all other motor fuels pay, and now we are going to mandate in addition that subsidy: Oh, yes, now refiners, you have to make 5 billion gallons, which is over two times what we are making right now. That has a cost to it. Some people say there is a cost of an additional 4 cents or 5 cents a gallon. I think it probably does because it is more expensive to make than gasoline, probably to the tune of about 20 cents a gallon. But it also has a cost to the highway trust fund. I have heard people say when we take up the budget we are going to have to add billions of dollars to the highway trust fund. If we keep the ethanol mandate as it is, in addition to the tax subsidy, but increase the amount that must be produced from current law into a Federal mandate of a figure that I guess came from the sky--all of a sudden we are going to do 5 billion gallons--that means we are going to have to more than double the capacity of the plants we have right now. The highway trust fund, which is presently losing in excess of $1 billion, is going to be losing in excess of $2.5 billion, if my quick math is right. If you are talking about 53 cents a gallon, and if you are going to make 5 billion gallons, that is over $2.5 billion that the highway trust fund is not going to get every year. I believe ethanol vehicles--and they may be just great and it may be a fantastic fuel, and I am not arguing that--do damage to the roads. The highway trust fund is to repair the roads. Whether the cars are running on diesel or gasoline or ethanol, those roads have to be maintained and repaired. We are creating a giant gap or loophole for the highway trust fund that is going to be ever expanding by this ever- increasing mandate. My point is that I think we can have it one way or the other. We can probably afford one, or maybe the other, but I question both. If we have a tax subsidy--and I see my friend and colleague, the former chairman of the Finance Committee, for whom I have the greatest respect--the tax subsidy giving the 53 cents exclusion from the highway gasoline tax is already in the law, and it has been extended. Fine. That is one big one. But to also say we should have a mandate to more than double the production I think is a lot to ask. That is a lot to ask of the highway trust fund, which most of us want to make sure we keep our highways maintained. We are creating a big void. We are facing a lot of highway work that needs to be done. But where is that money going to be coming from? For awhile some people said maybe we will have general revenues pick it up. I think there is some legitimacy in having a highway user fund, having users pay for highway maintenance. That is the whole purpose of having a gasoline tax or diesel tax; it is for highway maintenance. To take one particular fuel and say we are going to exclude it from a very significant portion of the highway tax is one thing. Now we are going to have a mandate that, oh, yes, you have to increase your production by another 160 percent. I just question whether it is affordable, whether it is affordable for the highway trust fund, and whether it is needed. I do not mind encouraging alternative sources of fuel. I certainly don't mind helping agriculture. I certainly don't mind doing anything that will reduce our dependency on foreign sources of fuel. But I look at this and I say: Wait a minute, aren't we going to far? Aren't we doing too much? We are doing the tax exemption. Do we really need a mandate that says you have to produce that much? I ask: Can we make this 2.3 billion gallons in the year 2004? Can we really increase production in all these plants in 2 years? At that point, we are at 2.3 billion. Maybe we can. In another 8 years, can we double it? Heaven forbid that we let the marketplace decide which fuel we should be burning.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate the question. I have seen something like it. I will allude to it. I hope we can fix it at a later date. That deals with the renewable portfolio standards that are also in this bill. To show you how similar they are, in that particular section of the bill, there is a mandate that 10 percent of the electricity be produced from renewable fuels. Incidentally, if you can't do that, you can buy a credit for 3 cents per kilowatt hour. That is the price of electricity in the wholesale market today. In some cases, it is a lot less than that. You can get out of that mandate by giving the government 3 cents per kilowatt hour. Wow. That is expensive. That is the equivalent of about a 5-percent increase in the electricity bill. I see this as very similar. This says: OK. Buy a lot more ethanol--up to 5 billion gallons--more than double what we are buying right now. And, oh, yes. We are going to subsidize that, too. We are going to mandate that you buy it and subsidize it. But consumers are going to pay for it. They are going to pay for it by having a shortfall in the highway trust fund to the tune of over $2.5 billion a year. Obviously, if you are exempting 3 cents a gallon and mandating that you manufacture 5 billion gallons, the trust fund is coming up $2.6 billion short per year. As consumers of fuel, users of the highways are coming up short. That means other fuels or general revenue is going to have to make up the difference. It just doesn't fit. I happen to think there is a reason why people say, well, we need the 53 cents per gallon to make ethanol competitive with other fuels. In other words, it is more expensive. I think that is obvious. I understand the proponents, and I respect the proponents, but they are saying we need the tax subsidy to make it competitive. It is more expensive to produce ethanol than it is gasoline. So we give them the tax subsidy so they can afford to do it. We are now going to mandate that they more than double the production. If it is more expensive to make, that means the price of gasohol is going to go up. I think the estimates of 4 or 5 cents a gallon are probably accurate. That may not sound like very much. It is probably about a 6-percent increase in gasoline costs. Consumers are going to pay for that. I was shocked. I didn't know until I heard Senator Feinstein mention that under current law there is an import fee on ethanol. I asked my staff. I started looking for it. Where is it? It is not in here. It is in current law. The ethanol industry has already been successful in having protectionism, saying we can't have ethanol imports. There is only domestic product. Guess what. We import a lot of gasoline. We import a lot of oil. We import a lot of fuel. Right now we are saying we are going to mandate this much more production but we are going to keep the protection. I am troubled by that. Consumers will pay. If ethanol were competitive, it wouldn't need a tax subsidy and it wouldn't need us mandating 5 billion gallons by the year 2012. It costs more to produce. Consumers will pay it. This bill is going to cost consumers. I know there are charts floating around here on the cost per gallon. I think 5 or 6 cents per gallon is a good estimate. To answer my friend's question, is there another example of that? Yes. It is in the renewable portfolio standard. It is a 3 cents per kilowatt hour credit which we mandate in this bill. Senator Breaux and I and others will have amendments to reduce that from 3 cents per kilowatt hour to 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour, which is the same amount the Clinton administration proposed. We will reduce the penalty--the tax--that is in the bill. This bill we have before us right now increases the price of gasoline because of the ethanol standard, and it increases the price of electricity because of the renewable portfolio standards. I compliment my colleagues from New York and California for trying to address the gasohol tax increase that will hit all consumers, all gasoline purchasers. Later on we will have an amendment to hopefully reduce the electricity penalty that is in the bill as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague, Senator Craig from Idaho, for his speech. I also compliment Senator Murkowski for his leadership in trying to put together a good energy bill, as well as Senator Stevens. Both have made extensive speeches on the need for exploration in Alaska. I happen to respect both individuals very much. I happen to have accepted one of their invitations to visit the area. And I believe all Senators received this invitation as well. I encourage my colleagues to do so. I think there is a long tradition in the Senate where we have given home State Senators great latitude in making decisions that impact their States primarily. I am kind of bothered by the number of people who are coming out against drilling in ANWR without ever being there, without ever visiting the people, and without knowing the real impact. Alaska happens to be one of the prettiest States in the Nation. It is one of the largest. I have been to several points in Alaska, including the Prudhoe Bay area and the ANWR area. Alaska contains beautiful scenic areas. However, the ANWR area, and particularly the coastal region, is not one of the prettier areas of Alaska. On the whole, although, it is a beautiful State. When I heard people say we can't mess up this pristine wilderness, I was thinking that maybe they did not visit the area. Again, many States have gorgeous scenic views, and Alaska probably more than any other State. But this particular area can be drilled. It can be explored in an environmentally safe and sound manner without disturbing the environment and without disturbing wildlife. I compliment the home State Senators. I wish people would listen to them. I think too many people have been listening to special interest groups that are trying to raise money on this issue without giving attention to some of the serious national and State problems. We have real national problems. We are importing 60 percent of our oil today. We are spending about $100 billion a year overseas. We are shipping that money overseas to buy imported oil. That 60-percent figure means that we are very dependent on other countries for our livelihood. We have evidence of this in the past when we had curtailments. We had a curtailment in 1973 of 26 percent. There was an Arab oil embargo. This caused long lines at the gas stations as oil prices rose dramatically. In addition, unemployment went up as factories stalled and subsequently shut down. We even had schools closed. We had people who weren't able to get heat. We experienced this in 1973 when we were importing 26 percent and in 1979 when we were importing 44 percent. At that particular time, the OPEC countries didn't like our policy--sometimes our policy concerning Israel--so they wanted to teach us a lesson. They curtailed oil shipments to the United States. Today we find ourselves vulnerable to the hardships we experienced in the past. We are currently importing 60 percent. That number continues to rise. It makes us very vulnerable. Without energy security, we don't have national security. It is incumbent upon us to do something. President Bush, to his credit, and Vice President Cheney's, to his credit, formulated a national energy policy--the first administration to do so in decades. The House, to their credit, last June passed a bipartisan energy bill. My compliments to them. Many of us in the Senate wanted to pass a bipartisan energy bill. I have been on the Energy Committee for 22 years. Every major energy piece of legislation we passed has been bipartisan--every single one. We passed a bill deregulating natural gas prices. It took years, but we did it. In the Finance Committee, we passed a bill to eliminate the windfall profits tax. We passed a bill to repeal the Fuel Use Act. We passed a bill to eliminate the Synthetic Fuels Corporation. Many of those mistakes that were made during the Carter administration were enacted by the Democratic Congress which needed to be repealed. And we repealed them in a bipartisan fashion. We started marking up the energy bill. All of a sudden, the majority leader tells the chairman of the Energy Committee not to have a markup. So the bill we have before us, in my opinion, is in desperate need of improvement. It is 590 pages. It was never marked up in committee. I have been on the committee for 22 years. I was never able to offer an amendment on this bill. Some people say: Why have you been on this energy bill for so long? We have to rewrite the bill on the floor. Why are you spending so much time on ANWR? Guess what. If we had marked the bill up in committee, we would have ANWR in there. We had the votes. I suspect the reason the majority leader told Senator Bingaman not to mark up the bill is because he is adamantly opposed to exploration in ANWR. He may well have victory on the floor tomorrow. We will find out. I hope he is proud. What about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that wouldn't be created because we will not have exploration? What about the billions of dollars that we are shipping overseas to little countries, such as Iraq, that really aren't our best friends? Because he is continuing that policy--he is continuing the dependency, in some cases, on very unstable and unreliable sources of oil. Our national energy is tied to our energy security, and we are taking steps to secure ourselves. We could reverse our actions significantly by allowing exploration in ANWR. But the majority leader may be successful in keeping it off. My guess is, if we had done the bill as we have done every single bill for the last 20-some years in committee, that it would have been in the bill, and it would have stayed in the bill. I think the majority leader knows that. Maybe his tactic will be successful, but he has totally disrupted the precedents and the standard of using committee procedures to mark up bills. We have committees and a process in which they follow. Why disenfranchise 20-some Senators from marking up a bill? This offends me. This bill has 590 pages. The first bill we considered had 539 pages. Again, no Senator got to mark up either bill. This was put together by the majority leader. This was put together by Senator Bingaman. No other Senators I know of got to mark it up because there wasn't a markup held. Where is the committee report? The standard procedure in taking up a bill is that we will have a committee report and allow individual Senators to make comments supporting or opposing the bill's provisions. However, since we seem to have skipped this process, we have to dig through the bill and find out what is in it. This legislative language and not the easiest language to read. There is no common English explanation for it, as we have in almost every major bill. I am very offended by the process. It was done I think primarily to avoid having a vote on ANWR, or making it impossible for us to put ANWR in. We will have to put ANWR in. It will take 60 votes. If we had ANWR in a committee bill, it would only take 50 votes. The majority leader is able to use the rules and maybe bypass the entire committee structure so he can have a victory. Congratulations. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of people who don't get a job because we are not going to explore ANWR. Hundreds of thousands of jobs? Wait a minute. How many things can we do here? Senator Murkowski has said many times that this will create thousands and thousands of jobs. One estimation is that it might create 250,000 jobs, while others offer higher estimates. How many times can we pass a bill that will say if we do this we are going to be able to reduce our dependency on foreign sources, and, instead of spending $100 billion overseas, billions of those dollars can stay in the United States--that will stay with U.S. companies, that will be American made, that will be American owned--and where the dividends, royalties, and payments will go to workers and employees of American companies? How many times do we have that opportunity? The majority leader may be successful in stopping it, but it makes us more dependent. It makes us more vulnerable to countries such as Iraq and other countries that might be upset with our Middle East policies. I disagree with that very strongly. I disagree very strongly with countless Senators. I would love to know how many Senators have never been up there and are making decisions that say: I know better than Senator Murkowski; I know better than Senator Stevens. I know that both Senator Stevens and Senator Murkowski have been there several times. I happen to have been there, I think, once. I learned a great deal. I have been to Kaktovik, and I talked to the villagers. They are all in favor of it. They are more concerned about their environment than anyone else. They live there 365 days a year. Yet we are going to deny them an economic livelihood? I think that is a serious mistake. I have heard countless people say: We can't do this because of the environmental impact. We are talking about 2,000 acres--2,000 acres-- out of a land mass that is 19.6 million acres. And 2,000 acres may be about the size of an average airport, compared to 19 million acres, about the size of South Carolina. That is a very small percentage, very little negative impact, if you consider the impact to be negative in the first place. We have hundreds or thousands of wells in my State of Oklahoma, as Texas and Louisiana do also. We have not seen considerable negative impacts. A pipeline, is that so bad? You ought to look at a interstate pipeline map and see how many pipeline miles are across the State of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas. You don't know they are there, but they are there. And people act like that would just desecrate this beautiful area. I just question that. As a matter of fact, I look at the ANWR Coastal Plain, and it would take just a small connection to be able to tie into the TransAlaska Oil Pipeline. This small connection would be about 100 miles long. I look at the gas pipeline, and I heard the Senator from Michigan say, oh, she is all in favor of the gas pipeline. That is all new pipeline, and that is about 3,000 miles. The pipeline we are talking about is maybe 100 miles, connecting from ANWR to the oil pipeline that is already built. The oil pipeline is about 800 miles. Now we are talking about a 3,000-mile pipeline, almost all of it new, going through a lot of virgin territory that has never had roads, never had a pipeline on it. This is the gas pipeline that a lot of people are saying would do 100 times the environmental damage of what we are talking about, connecting to the oil pipeline that is already there-- 100 times the environmental damage. I heard somebody say, what about the caribou, or what about the wildlife in the area? I remember flying up there and looking around and looking at the wildlife. Alaska is a gorgeous State that has a lot of wildlife. In that particular Coastal Plain area, when I was there, I did not see hardly any wildlife. I could see more wildlife in my State of Oklahoma or the State of Louisiana in any square mile than what I saw at the time I happened to visit there. I did not visit there when the caribou were migrating in. I care about the caribou. I saw a lot of caribou at Prudhoe Bay. I remember when Prudhoe Bay was originally built, there was about 3,000 caribou. Today, there are 20-some thousand. The caribou herds have multiplied dramatically. I think there are up to 27,000 caribou in the Prudhoe Bay area, about 9 times what there was 25 years ago. So the caribou have been protected fairly well. They have multiplied significantly and have proven not only to survive but to survive quite well with the TransAlaska Pipeline. I am sure they could survive with this small little junction from the ANWR area to the Prudhoe Bay pipeline. So people who are raising these facades, ``Well, we can't disturb the wildlife,'' ``We can't disturb the natural environment,'' what are you doing supporting the gas pipeline that is 3,000 miles through virgin territory versus a pipeline that might be 100 miles connecting ANWR to the TransAlaska Pipeline? That does not make sense. That is absurd. I am just shocked by some of the false arguments that are being raised. I do want to create jobs. I do want to make us less dependent on foreign sources. I do not want Saddam Hussein, who is now talking about having an oil embargo against the United States for 30 days because he doesn't like our policies in the Middle East--I don't want him to hold any type of economic leverage over the United States. Right now we are importing about a million barrels per day from Iraq, from Saddam Hussein. Guess what. The production we expect to receive from ANWR is about a million barrels a day, except that it is estimated to last 20, 30, 40 years. The Prudhoe Bay production that we have had for the last 25 years grew to a couple million barrels a day. Now it has declined to about a million barrels per day. So we have excess capacity of a million barrels, and ANWR could help complement that. Then we would have 2 million barrels per day coming down the TransAlaska Pipeline. That is over 25 percent of our domestic production. Our country--our Nation-- needs that for national security. So to deny this, I believe, is a national security issue. So we should give deference to our home State colleagues of Alaska. We should listen to their advice, and we should allow exploration in ANWR. I urge my colleagues to consider doing what is right for America, what is right for our country, what is right for our national security, and, frankly, what is right for Alaska. This project is supported overwhelmingly by Alaskans because they believe they need it, both economically and for the national security implications as well. So I urge my colleagues, tomorrow, to support Senator Murkowski and Senator Stevens and allow exploration in the ANWR area. Mr. President, one final comment I will make, and that is, there is an amendment pending--I guess we may have a vote on it--dealing with money going to help the steel industry cope with some of the difficulties they have. Some people call them legacy costs, but it is picking up health costs for retirees. I think that is a serious mistake. I do not know why the Federal Treasury or the taxpayers should have to take general revenue money, or money coming from this pipeline to pay pension costs or health care costs for one particular industry. If you are going to do it for this industry, then what about the textiles, what about auto workers, what about railroad workers? You have a lot of industries that have a lot of retirees who are struggling with paying their pensions and/or health care plans. They made those contracts. Is the Federal Government responsible to come in and assume all the costs of those contracts? If so, we have real serious problems. If we are going to do it for one, how can we not do it for another? I think it would be a serious mistake and set a serious precedent that I hope we don't follow. So I urge my colleagues to vote no on the steel legacy amendment, as it has been called. However, I urge my colleagues, with every fiber in my being, to support exploration in ANWR, the Murkowski amendment. Let's listen to the Senators from the State of Alaska. They know this issue inside and out, far better than anybody else. They have been there countless times. Let's follow their advice and open up ANWR for exploration. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Sessions) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Texas (Mr. Gramm) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Texas (Mr. Gramm) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Specter) is necessarily absent.