John Peterson

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is September 27. We are just finishing the first week of fall. It doesn't seem possible, Mr. Speaker, that summer has slipped by. We are now entering the fall season. That means the cool nights and chilly days will soon be coming. The northern part of the country has already had a couple of movements of Canadian air down where we have chilly nights. That will soon cover most of the country. That means the heating season will begin. The question I ask is this: Is America ready for the most expensive heating season that we may have ever faced? Yes, all of the last week, the first week of fall, we have had $82 oil. In fact, at the close today it was just 12 cents, it would have been $83 oil. I remember when $50 oil caused a panic, and $60 oil was going to be the end of all, and then $70 oil, and this week we have had $82 oil all week. I haven't heard many people talk about it because that price hasn't hit us yet. It hasn't hit the pump yet. It hasn't hit home heating costs yet. But $82 oil will give us the highest home heating oil prices we have ever had. It will also give us very high propane costs to heat our homes. Now, 60-some percent of our homes are heated with natural gas. The current price of natural gas, which is at the low ebb because of the summer low usage, is at $7 today. That will soon be rising as we get into the fall season and gas consumption increases. This year, all of the gas distribution companies are warning their customers that they will pay from 9 to 15 to 20 percent more this year than last. That is only on a prediction, because that depends if we have no storms in the gulf or no major supplier of gas that goes offline. A storm in the gulf, and we have not had one that really damaged the gulf now all of last year and all of this year, would give us $90 to $95 oil quickly, could give us $12 to $15 gas quickly. Then we would have real pain in America, not only for those that are heating their homes, but the ones that buy this energy every day of the week, every week of the year, the manufacturers and the processors in America that run our plants: the steel mills, the aluminum mills, the chemical plants, the fertilizer plants, those who process our goods, those who bake our bread, those who cook our foods. I was talking to Hershey Foods today about the energy they use to roast the peanuts and melt the chocolate and make the candy. Energy is consumed in every process of life. What has this Congress, in the few months we have been here, what have we accomplished to stabilize energy prices? I am just going to turn this chart over because that simplifies what we have not accomplished, because we haven't accomplished anything. There has not been one bill passed. There has been nothing changed. But we have been stirring around doing things. I want to ask you tonight, Mr. Speaker, are the things we have been doing productive and helpful? Will they help Americans heat their homes and drive their cars with affordable energy? Well, the legislation that has been approved by this body, and I believe the Senate, removes 9 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Roan Plateau that was permitted. All the NEPA studies were done. All the environmental assessments were done. It was ready to be drilled. This legislation takes 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off the market. This legislation also locks up the oil shale reserves in the West. What are the oil shale reserves? Well, some think it is the largest reserve of oil in the world. We still haven't figured out how to unlock it from the shale rock. But to the north of us, we have the tar sands that are very similar. It is going to take a lot of energy and a lot of heat to warm it up and get it out of there. I was talking to a Canadian company this morning, and in Canada they are now producing about 1.5 million barrels per day of tar sand oil. Their goal in a year or 2 is to be at 3 or 4 million. They have been working on that for a long time, because it was a process that they needed to develop and that they needed to refine. They needed to figure out how to make it work. Now, it seems that we down here in the States ought to be working just as diligently on the shale oil reserves so that we would be energy independent. The lady from Ohio was just talking about dependence. What we are talking about is the issues I am talking about here. Taking the 9 trillion cubic feet away, taking the shale reserves out, will make America not less dependent, but much more dependent on unstable foreign countries. I don't understand the lack of urgency in this body. We have not had an urgency in this body since I have been here that I think is adequate, because America does not realize that $82 oil might almost be a plateau upon which we can have spikes. If we have a storm in the gulf, it will spike. If we have a major sender of oil or a country we are getting a lot of oil from has any trouble with their government or any instability there or any kind of explosion in a pipeline or a loading dock, we can have $100 oil. And we know then we would be looking at maybe $3.75 to $4 gasoline. We currently don't have $3 gasoline in most of the country, some parts, but we soon will have, because $82 oil will be more than $3 gasoline when it catches up in the pipeline. The legislation we have before us is making it very difficult to produce in the Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve that was set aside a long time ago. The rules are being changed. They are making it harder to permit. They are making it harder to produce there. That is a $10 million oil reserve. Then this one is the one that surprises me. I know a lot of Members of Congress hate oil companies, hate big oil. But we passed legislation here in the Senate, it is not law yet, thank God, that increases the taxation on anybody who produces energy and processes energy by 5 percent. So any company that produces energy in America will pay a 5- percent higher corporate income tax than anybody who manufacturers anything else. Now I don't know why we would do that. I know they want to get at the five big oil companies, but probably 75 to 80 percent of the production is not by big oil. They are the processors. They are the refiners. They are the marketers. But there is company after company that are investing billions in America and billions around the world to produce energy that are not big oil. They don't market oil. They drill and produce and move and transport petroleum and other products to the marketplace. Well, we are causing them to pay these taxes. I have two refineries in my district still. One is a Penn grade crude refinery, American Refiners in Bradford, about 10,000 barrels a day, just a small refinery. They are going to pay 5 percent more corporate taxes than any other business in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Is that fair? No. That is not fair. What will that do? That will make energy more expensive, not less expensive. It will not encourage people to produce in this country. It will encourage them to produce in other countries so they don't have to pay it. United Refinery in Warren, Pennsylvania, that gets Canadian crude, gets it under the lake; it comes under the lake in a pipeline. It is a very good refinery. It has been growing about 70,000 barrels a day now. It is a company that I am very proud of and have worked with for years. They are going to pay 5 percent more corporate taxes now if this becomes law. That will make it more expensive for them to produce the gasoline and fuel oil for our people. Who will pay that? The consumers. We will pay that. Also, the language that we have been working on, I was fortunate in the energy act in 2005 to put an amendment in that took away redundant NEPAs. Now, NEPA is a study. It is an environmental assessment that is very important that we do before we do anything on public land. Well, those who oppose the production of energy, and that is a lot of people in America, who don't want us to drill for oil, who don't want us to drill for gas, who don't want us to dig for coal, don't want us to use fossil fuels, and don't want nuclear, so they fight it. They fight it in the courts. They use processes to make it difficult. I had people telling me in the West they had leased 6, 7 years prior and were still unable to drill a hole in the ground and bring any oil or gas up. It was because they were being caused to do a NEPA study for every step in the process. Now, a NEPA study is a complete environmental assessment, and it's appropriate. But should you do five or six NEPA studies before you can drill for gas or oil? I don't think so. I don't think that is fair. That is just about delay. That is not about environmental protection. That is to prevent the production of energy. I don't understand, because when you look at the chart, and let's look at it, we are using 40 percent petroleum, and currently 66 percent of that comes from, as the gentlewoman from Ohio said, foreign, unstable non-democratic governments that you really can't depend on. Natural gas is 23 percent of our energy. That is the one that has been increasing. About 12 years ago we took away the moratorium on using natural gas to make electricity, and now 21 percent of our natural gas makes electricity. We now, for the sixth year in the row, have had the highest natural gas prices in the world. That has been a serious problem for business and industry, our job creators. Dow Chemical, the largest chemical company in the world, in 2002 used $9 billion worth of natural gas. That seems like an incredible figure. Four years later, in 2006, they spent $22 billion. That's $9 billion in 2002, $22 billion in 2006. In four years, $22 billion, because the price of natural gas had spiked in this country, higher than Europe, higher than all our competitors, five to six times higher than South America. Natural gas prices have been one of the biggest drags on the American economy, because we use it to melt steel, we use it to bend steel, we use it to make aluminum, we use it to make ethanol, we use it to make hydrogen, we use it to heat our homes. In the petrochemical business, which Dow Chemical is in, they use it as an ingredient. Fertilizer, it's an ingredient; plastic products, it's an ingredient; polymers, it's an ingredient. So natural gas is not only a fuel, but it's an ingredient. The face creams that we all like, the skin softeners that keep our face and hands soft, that is a direct product from natural gas. Natural gas is the finest product known to man to make things with. Then we have coal. The bulk of that is used to make electricity. I had a gentleman ask me the other day, how are we coming on coal to liquids, coal to gas? Well, we are not. In World War II, Germany fought us with liquids made from coal. It was called the Fischer-Tropes process. We have paid many universities in this country and researchers to come up with other ways. There are numerous ways now to make liquids. We could make jet fuel, we could make gasoline, we could make diesel out of coal. We have not refined it and we have not made it cost effective, but we know how to do it. We can make natural gas out of coal. But there is such an anti-coal sentiment in America, because it produces carbon in the air. I said to the person, there have been groups in the Senate and there have been groups in the House trying to put pilot projects or some way of helping push the ball down the road for coal to liquid and coal to gas so that we can be less dependent on foreign oil, but not one of those has even come close to having a vote to get in any of the energy packages that are moving. We have clean coal technology to make electricity out of coal. It's much cleaner than the old processes. But there are those who think today they probably couldn't build one of those plants because there is such opposition. Though we are the Saudi Arabia of coal, it's kind of sitting on the sidelines. Eight percent of our energy comes from nuclear. Since the Energy Act of 2005, thirty-some companies have put in plans and requests for permitting of new nuclear facilities, and I think all on existing sites, expansion of current plants and new plants. In fact, I see the other day that the first two permits to come in to build a completely new reactor, not just additions, have come in. But the 35 permits we have in process, I am told by the industry that by 2020 we need them all to just keep nuclear at 8 percent of our electric generation, because our electric use is rising so fast that we need to grow nuclear or nuclear won't be 8 percent; it may be 7 percent, then 6\1/2\ percent. Hydroelectricity is not growing. Clean energy, no pollution, but there's great opposition. You couldn't build a dam in this country today; that is not allowed. So hydroelectric is just where it's at, and that percentage will continue to shrink. As the use of electric goes up, this will go down to 2.5, 2.3, 2 percent. We have lots of dams in this country that have not been harnessed, and there's been a real resistance. The only good news on the chart is biomass, which is wood waste and things, pellet stoves, people heating their home from pellets. You have factories heating in the woods where we have lots of forests and mills where we process wood. They use it to heat the boilers to heat the factory. They use it to top off some of the coal plants, which allows them to meet air standards. It may be 80 percent coal and 20 percent wood waste. Biomass has been growing. Of course, down the road we hope to get into cellulosic ethanol. I will talk about that a little later. Geothermal is a very good form of energy, but a very small percentage. We use that by using the ground temperature, whether we drill into wells and use the well water, or whether we put a loop system in deep enough that you have the ground temperature and you take heat out in the wintertime and take cold out in the summertime to cool your home or heat your home. But that is a very expensive investment and is usually done in new construction, and it is pretty disruptive to do it in an existing neighborhood. Wind and solar are the two sexy ones. They get a lot of talk, and there are a lot of things going on there. But we see the percentage. If we double these percentages, even if we triple these percentages, we are not to 1 percent. These are very small numbers. We all like them because they are clean. I shouldn't say ``we'' all like them. We had a bill introduced this year that was introduced in the Resources Committee that said if a bird was found at the foot of a windmill, it was going to be a criminal offense. I think that language was removed in the bill that moved. But that shows you that someone is not very pro-wind, because birds and bats will occasionally get in that path and hit those blades. But these two, what the problem is, when the wind doesn't blow, we have to have a natural gas generator to turn on. That is what we do. Then solar, when the sun doesn't shine, we have to have a natural gas generator to turn on. When you add these up, wind and solar and geothermal, you are less than 1 percent of the overall energy mix. No matter how much we increase them, they are a fraction. It will be a long time before they are real numbers. So what does that mean? That means whether we like fossil fuels or not, we must have more petroleum, we must have more gas, we must have more coal, we must grow nuclear, we should be growing hydroelectric. Biomass is the only one that is really showing much growth. But I want to tell you, the environmental groups in America that are running energy policy, and certainly today in this House, are anti- petroleum, because you drill a hole in the ground. They are anti- natural gas. I don't understand that one, because natural gas is a clean gas. There is no nitric oxide. There is no sulfuric acid. There is one-third of the CO2, if you are concerned about CO2. It is really the green field. In my view, the only way we will survive or prevent a crisis in America on energy is if we really pull the stops up and open up every natural gas field we can until we can develop some of the renewables, until we can find other sources of energy. We have ethanol. Ethanol now, in 2006 we produced 5 billion gallons. This year, we are at 6 billion gallons. So we are growing. Our ethanol is made out of corn. Brazil's was made out of sugar cane. That was cheaper to make. To make ethanol out of corn, you have two processes. You have to take the starch and turn it to sugar. Then you ferment the sugar and make the ethanol that you use as a fuel. So it is a dual process. Ninety- five percent of all these plants are fueled with natural gas. So we need natural gas for that. Natural gas, like I said, is the only fuel that can really prevent this. We have a lot of petroleum being produced in this country, but we can never be self-sufficient. People who think we are going to be independent are just talking. Natural gas, we can be self-sufficient, we can keep moderate prices. We can expand natural gas use in our auto fleet and save a lot of oil with natural gas, in my view. But natural gas is looked at just like oil. You have got to drill a hole in the ground, and you must not do that. In my opinion, from the administration on down, there are really no strong proponents of coal. There are Members of Congress that are strong proponents, but certainly far from a majority. And I don't look for any progress on coal. I don't look for any progress on petroleum. I have not given up on natural gas, and I will talk about my bill in a moment, because we believe that natural gas is our only hope of diverting an energy crisis in America. What do I mean by an energy crisis? I mean oil prices where we cannot afford to compete. The problem we have today, Americans are struggling, the poorer Americans are struggling, by the time they heat their homes this winter, drive their cars, to have adequate funds left for health care and food and all the other substantives of life. Energy prices are going to make it very difficult on the poor in this country as they continue to rise. But even worse, and I know people don't care as much about companies, but companies and businesses who are employing us, they make up the payrolls. They give people a chance to make a living. We have the highest natural gas prices in the world; and when our companies are paying the highest prices for the fuel they use to make products, then they are not competitive in the world marketplace. We have lost more jobs in America than we can count. We blame it on trade agreements; we blame it on lots of other things. But the last 6 to 7 years, natural gas prices were between $1.77 and $2 for years, we had a couple of spikes in the seventies and eighties, and then the climb started. Then came Katrina. Now we are up in the $7 and $8 figure. With a storm in the gulf, we could be back up to $14 or $15 again, because as we enter the heating season, we are at the low ebb of the year, about $7 per thousand, but a lot the gas that is in the ground for this year's use, we paid $8, $9 and $10, because we put gas in storage all for the winter usage. I don't know what the average price is coming out, but most of the utilities have told us 9 to 20 percent more for heating a home with natural gas this year, depending on which utility you are on, when they bought their gas or how they bought their gas. So we are looking at a measurable increase. We are looking at a real spike in fuel home heating prices, because $82 oil will be the most expensive home heating prices we have ever had. Propane comes from both, so propane will be somewhere in the mix. It is always more than natural gas. So the cost of heating our homes this year will be very important. Now, let's bring up the chart on what we think is the solution, the best thing we can do. Here is a picture of this country. You could also have some great big blobs in here where we have locked up huge resources of natural gas and coal and oil that are on public land, because in the West, the vast majority of the land is owned by the Federal Government. But where we are different than any other country in the world is we have chosen to lock up our Outer Continental Shelf. What is the Outer Continental Shelf? Well, Mr. Speaker, that is from 3 miles offshore to 200 miles offshore. Every country in the world produces a lot of their oil and gas out there, because it is very prevalent. Now, we produce in just a small piece in the gulf, and we get 40 percent of our energy from there. This small area down here is what keeps America alive. Otherwise, we would be importing 80 to 90 percent of our oil from foreign countries. I just find it amazing that we have chosen as a country that we are just not going to produce more. Maybe 10 years ago when gas was $2 a thousand and oil was $10 a barrel, it may have been a smart argument, let's buy theirs while it is cheap and save ours for when it is expensive. Well, we are still saving ours. We have $82 oil. We are still saving ours. I think if we had $90 oil next month, we would still be saving ours. I have been here awhile. We have been trying to open up this for a number of years. We had a successful bill last year, but we didn't have success in the Senate. But it makes no public policy sense to not be producing oil and gas off our Outer Continental Shelf. It is the safest with the least environmental impact. The sight line from shore is about 11 miles, so when you are past that, you can't see it. The commotion caused from a drilling rig, a thousand drilling rigs, is less than one storm as far as turmoil on the ocean floor. And there hasn't been a major spill of oil except for the one in Santa Barbara in 1969. The technology of today is when a storm comes or there is a problem, the valve of the rig on the ocean floor is electronically turned off. When we had the tremendous storms in the gulf several years ago, we had very little spillage because when the storm was coming, they turned off the valves. If the platforms move, the rig is ruined, nothing happens. We have always had more spillage in the ocean from hauling oil in tankers than from wells. But we don't prohibit tankers because then we wouldn't have any oil. I don't understand why we are financing all of these countries in the world by being dependent on them. They are not our friends. They were the ones that sent those here on 9/11, but we are funding them with these huge oil costs and we just plain will not use our own. There is no good reason why we couldn't be producing a lot more of our own energy, totally self-sufficient in gas, stable prices and competing with the world with all our manufacturing. We can help oil prices in the world by supply, but we cannot dictate them because we are not that big a player unless we learn how to use our shale oil down the road, and then we could say good-bye to the foreign imports. But it seems to me that we ought to be opening up the OCS. That is the simplest. And my proposal is pretty simple. We are just going to open it up for natural gas. We are going to say the first 50 miles, that is up to the States. Only if the State wants to open it, can they. We are not opening it. The second 50 miles would be open for natural gas only, but a State would still have the ability to say no. They could pass a law in their State and say Congress, we don't want this open. Then it would be protected for 100 miles. For the second 100 miles, our bill would open gas. I would like to be opening oil out there, too, because that is so far out, there is just not an environmental problem. But we are just asking for gas because we think gas is more of a crisis than oil because we are going to lose more jobs in this country because of the highest natural gas prices in the world. Mr. Speaker, $80 oil is pretty painful, but it is painful to the whole world. That is the world price. When we have gas that is twice and three times and four times what competing countries are at, we are at a disadvantage. We have lost half of our fertilizer industry in the last 2 years because of natural gas prices. We are losing our petrochemical industry. Those are some of the best jobs left in America. We are going to be losing our polymer and plastic jobs because of natural gas prices. It just seems to me that we really, really need to change our attitude in this country and say let's be more independent. Those who tell you we can be independent are not being honest with you. I don't know of any way we can be independent. We will also always be dependent on foreign energy in our lifetime. Maybe some day with new forms of energy or new ways of powering vehicles and new ways of lighting and heating our homes, if we can do that, some day we might be. But all of the things that we are working on are still on the margins. We want to grow them all. We want to move them as fast as we can. We want all of the renewables that we can get. But those who tell you that renewables will take care of even the growth in energy needs are not being honest with you. And those who say that renewables displace oil and gas and coal needs in this country are not being honest with you because they just can't. We need to have the OCS opened up. We need to promote all of the renewables we can. The President is promoting cellulosic ethanol. We are at 6 billion gallons of ethanol, and they want to get to 35. That is a big jump. I don't know whether we can get there. They want not to just be corn. And I noticed today corn prices are approaching $4 a bushel again. When we started making ethanol, corn was less than $2. Nobody knows where it is going to be when we go through another season because there are a lot of ethanol plants being built. We will have a lot more capacity a year from now to make ethanol. There are problems with ethanol. It takes a lot of energy to make it. I am not opposed, but it costs a lot to make it. And one of the problems is that ethanol cannot be put in a pipeline system where the vast majority of our energy is put out to the stations. We have to blend it at the station or blend it at the distributorship and haul it in tankers because it has a corrosiveness to it. So unless we change all of the pipelines in the country, ethanol has a serious problem that we have not been able to overcome yet. We have to haul it separately and then blend it at the station in a tank. So it has a distribution problem. The President wants to do cellulosic ethanol which will be from any kind of waste material. It could be from wood waste when you ferment it to make it. Or it could be from garbage, which seems to make some sense. It could be from things like switchgrass and cornstalks and any kind of cellulose, cellulosic ethanol. The problem is that it is still in the laboratory. We think we have about got it to where we can make it. They are funding six plants which are going to be experimental. I am for that, but I think we should be doing the same thing simultaneously with coal. Taking every process we have to make liquids from coal and refining it, improving it so we can do it in volume down the road. Coal to gas and coal to liquid, every measure we know, we ought to be refining those and getting those to where they will help us to be independent. And we should be continuing to promote nuclear. The nuclear we have on the drawing boards will keep us from losing percentage. It will not help us grow, but we need to figure out, and that may be one of the biggest mistakes we made, if we are really concerned about CO2, we certainly should be for nuclear power plants. But we need to be doing all of these, Mr. Speaker. We need the OCS open. We need that clean, green natural gas, affordable and available to heat our homes, run our businesses, and manufacture products so we can compete in the world marketplace. We need clean, green natural gas as well as cellulosic ethanol, as well as all of the renewables, as well as coal to liquids, as well as coal to gas, and as well as clean coal technology and more nuclear plants. A lot of our competitors, like China and India, they are buying up reserves of oil and gas all over the world. They are building coal plants, coal-to-liquid plants. They are building hydrodams. They are building every form of energy there is at breakneck speed. We as a country are sitting here on our hands twiddling our thumbs, actually today moving in the direction of less available energy, which will make us more costly and more foreign dependent. The legislation that we have before us, if it becomes law, I think will speed up, and we have been gaining in dependence on foreign oil about 2 percent a year for the last 10 years. I think we will speed it up to 3 to 4 percent a year if we go down to the road of taxing oil more, of taking major plateaus and major reserves off the table, refusing to open up the OCS, our dependence will grow. When you are at 66, you don't have to go very far to where you're three-fourths, and then you are 80 percent and the rest of the world will just plain own us because they today, OPEC today sets the price of oil. Five years ago they didn't. They had lost their grip. But today, they set the price of oil. Imports. This is not quite up to date. I am going to have to get a new chart with 2 more years on it. But we are back on a steady climb. I predict it won't be very long until we will be at 70. And if we pass the legislation that is before the House and do nothing else, do nothing to open up, do no OCS, do no Alaskan, and continue to take much of the Midwest out of the picture, continue to lock up more reserves, we will be 70 and climbing towards 75 at breakneck speed and America will be dependent for their total economy, for the ability to heat their homes and manufacture, on foreign, unstable nondemocratic countries who will actually and literally own us. That's not the America I want for my grandchildren and for your grandchildren. I want an America that has a sound energy policy that produces oil, produces gas, produces coal, moves into all of the renewables and does more on conservation. I haven't talked about conservation, but prices are going to force us to conserve. There are many who want prices as high as we can get them so we will use less energy. Well, they are winning. And I am going to tell you, energy prices this winter will be the highest they have ever been, and we will be dependent on weather as to how high they go. Major storms in the gulf, major cold weather where we consume a lot of heat, will set prices far higher than they are today. We are not in control. The weather and unstable parts of the world will dictate what America does for energy.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Yes. The issue should be, the number one issue in the Presidential debate, how do we secure adequate affordable energy for America to compete in the global economy? See, we have never had to compete before, but we have countries like China and India that are stocking up on energy, all kinds of energy, acquiring all kinds of access to energy, building all kinds of power plants and hydrodams and acquiring oil and gas rights around the world, and we are sort of here sitting on our hands saying we can do it with renewables. Now, I am for all the renewables, all we can get of them, but they are growing very slowly, and there has not been the willingness in this Congress and in this administration to say how do we acquire adequate energy supply.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Yes.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's absolutely correct. We produce about 83 percent of our own natural gas. We import a lot from Canada and about 2 percent of LNG, which is liquefied natural gas, from the same area as we get our oil from. Natural gas is not a world price, and a lot of Members of Congress and a lot of people in America don't understand that. Oil is a world price. The gasoline prices can vary. That's a portion of the oil. If you have an excess of gasoline in your country or in Europe, their price drops; if you have a shortage, their price goes up the same as ours. They operate off of the Wall Street market, and their markets.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. They have a partnership with Cuba 50 miles from our Florida coast, and we can't drill within 150 miles of the Florida coast. No, we can't drill off the Florida coast at all. It's all closed at the moment. No, you are absolutely right. We as a country do not have an energy supply plan. We just are kind of riding along, I guess, hoping things will get better, but we do not have a plan. The gentleman from Hawaii is absolutely correct.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Absolutely. I have not talked to a CEO of a major corporation employer in America who either produces energy or uses a lot of energy like Dow Chemical, U.S. Steel, Pittsburgh, PPG, all the big users of energy, and I said to them, I believe that available, affordable energy equals terrorism and a challenge to America's future. They said, you are absolutely right. Every one of them. I have never had a person in that kind of a position or people that have understood this issue and have worked on it all their life and understand it who didn't agree with that. But for some reason, they don't say it publicly. I have been one of the few, and my friend from Hawaii has been one of the few who have been willing to say, hey, clean, green, natural gas can be our renewable, our bridge to the future. We need to realize that we must produce it, more of it. We will take a moment here and look at American energy production. We currently are 40 percent oil, 23 percent natural gas, 23 percent coal, 8 percent nuclear, 2.7 percent hydroelectric, 2.4 percent biomass, and that's woody waste materials, geothermal, wind and solar. I guess the thing that's concerning is this is where all of our emphasis is, and ethanol. I haven't talked about ethanol, but one of the other things that's in the bills is a mandate of 35 billion barrels of ethanol, and we are currently producing 7 billion barrels, mostly from corn. Now, corn has been controversial because corn has gotten expensive, $1.80 corn per bushel is now $3.50 a bushel, has been as high as $4 a bushel. I am not opposed to it. The manufacturing of ethanol, 95 percent of the plants that produce ethanol use a huge amount of natural gas. In fact, ethanol is sort of a swap. Some say it's a winner by a little bit. There are those who say it actually takes more energy to make ethanol, but it's American, it has given our farmers a market for grain. But using the food supply has its long-term problems. If we would become huge ethanol producers much more than today and would have a short corn crop for a bad season, food prices have already increased measurably because hog farmers and beef farmers and poultry farmers now are paying much more for their feed to feed their animals because of corn prices, and also organizations that feed the poor around the world have always used American corn because it was so cheap and are now having to pay twice as much for it as they did before. So using food for fuel is not, I am saying, bad, but it has its challenges. And the other problem with ethanol is that it's corrosive and cannot be put in our pipeline system. And the cheap way to move energy around the country is in pipelines. We can't use ethanol in the pipeline; we have to blend it on surface and either bring it in tankers blended or blend it at the station. Now, ethanol has its limitations. We will kind of move into the next portion here and talk a little bit about ethanol and cellulosic ethanol. The amount of importation of oil, every year our dependence on foreign, unstable countries for petroleum increases about 2 percent. Every year, that's just constant. It just keeps going up. The energy bill we have before us will put another spike out here because it's going to tax energy production. It's going to make major energy fields off limits, and so we will have to do more imports. So with the energy bills that are before us, we are going in the wrong direction as far as energy production. Now, let me get the other chart there on foreign dependence, or the deficit, the trade deficit, huge percentage, $293 billion is the importation of oil. Now, anything we can do to lessen dependence on foreign and the purchase of foreign oil helps the trade balance for America. It's a major portion. In fact, it's about a third of our trade imbalance. When the price goes up, this number expands very quickly. We are at $76, almost $77 oil today. We have not had a major storm in the gulf. A major storm in the gulf can raise prices $10 to $20 a barrel in a day or two. Here is what happened when Katrina hit. That was Katrina. We have not had a storm in the gulf since Katrina. When a major storm hits the gulf, why does it increase prices? It shuts down refineries, it shuts down pipelines, it shuts down the rigs. We stop producing for months because we have to go back in and repair the system that produces it, the pipeline systems, the cleaning systems, the refineries. All that has to be rebuilt because those storms are immense. Last year was the first year in a long time we had a major storm in the gulf. This year we seem to be in a major series of storms right now. We have been lucky. The last two have been south of our gulf. There is one coming now that may hit the East Coast. But when they hit the gulf with $75 oil, we could easily have $90 oil. That means gasoline pump prices of $3.50, $3.75. Also at the current time, here is where America is in trouble. We are dependent on no storms in the gulf for a stable price, or a high price, stable price without further spikes, and we are dependent on no country in the world that ships our oil, most of them are unstable governments, not having a governmental collapse or a takeover or a military coup where we lose millions of barrels of oil per day. We have to pray, I guess, that we have good weather, that it doesn't interrupt the gulf and that we don't have a major country producing oil topple its local government. Here is the problem. This is a picture of America. We produce a fair amount of energy in the middle. We could produce more, and we talked about some of that earlier, but we are the only country in the world that doesn't produce immense amounts of oil and gas offshore. Every country in the world: Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia. I mean, these are all green countries. These are countries with records of being environmentally sensitive. Offshore is from 3 miles to 200 miles. That's controlled. The States control the first 3 miles. The next 197 miles is controlled by the Federal Government. We've had it locked up for 26 years. We've said, we don't need that. I disagree with that. Now, we will have argument that, oh, we can't have clean beaches. All those countries have clean beaches. Oil and gas production today is not the threat to the environment it was many years ago. In fact, the last major oil spill offshore was in Santa Barbara in 1966, I believe. That's a long time ago. And everybody talks about the ship, I can't think of the name of it now, the Valdez up in Alaska. That was a ship. In fact, everybody who knows offshore says that we're more in danger with ships hauling oil, which they do every day, than we are from producing it. Now, what's been interesting here is I have promoted and many of my colleagues have promoted the production of clean green natural gas. They say, well, that will pollute our beaches. Well, there has never been a gas well that's ever polluted a beach. In fact, 11 miles is the sight line, and if you go 25 miles offshore, nobody will ever see it, even from a tall building. It's out of sight. And clean green natural gas, it's a gas, and it bubbles into the air naturally from fissures in the ocean floor every day. And even on land, natural gas finds its way out of the reserves, through pressure and works its way. In fact, I come from the original oil patch, Titusville, Pennsylvania, first oil well drilled by Colonel Drake. It was 68 feet deep. They drilled there, actually it was a dug well because they didn't have the drilling; I guess they couldn't get a driller to come in so they actually dug the well and lined the side with stone like you do a water well, and caught oil at 68 feet. Because oil had been oozing up out of the ground and that stream called Oil Creek had oil on it before we ever drilled an oil well because it naturally oozed out of the ground because that gas sand was very close to the surface, and so they produced it there. And so I've been around it all my life. And it's interesting that we've also had the argument on this floor and across the country that you just can't drill for natural gas. So we've been promoting just natural gas, hoping, because natural gas is our biggest need. Natural gas is what we heat 60 percent of our homes with, 70 percent of our businesses, and is a major ingredient in the production of fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizer, 70 percent of the cost of making it is natural gas, and we have tripled the price in a very short period of time. Petrochemicals, every chemical you buy at the hardware store, every chemical you buy at the grocery store is made with natural gas as an ingredient, 55 percent of the cost of petrochemicals, on average. So petrochemical companies in America are in trouble because we're paying more to make them than other countries. Polymers and plastics, 45 percent of the cost of producing polymers and plastics is natural gas because it's used to heat and it's also used as an ingredient. We all know that making steel and bending steel is a huge cost, and most of it's done with heating by natural gas. The furnaces are run by natural gas. So our steel industry has paid a tremendous price with natural gas, and will continue to pay a tremendous price. In fact, the president of U.S. Steel told me a year or so ago, John, if you don't get a handle on natural gas prices, we won't have a steel industry in America. PPG Industries said the same: if you don't get a handle and stop this escalation of natural gas prices, we won't be in America. And I'm sorry to say that if we don't get a handle on natural gas prices and stop the next peaks, where gas gets just unaffordable, we will be buying bricks and glass from South America, which has natural gas prices a fraction of ours, like $1.25 a thousand, when we are currently at about seven and many times on a winter's average it's about 12 to 13 when you pay retail price. So Russia, China, India, all of our competitors have natural gas prices that are a fraction of ours. And so we believe that we need to produce clean green natural gas offshore. And I'm pleased that a friend of mine from Virginia Beach, from Virginia, Thelma Drake, has come to join us on the floor; and we'd welcome her comments.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Let me just ask you a question: Weren't you surprised in the debate last night that the media didn't ask one energy question, as if energy is not an issue?

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I would be glad to yield to my clean natural gas friend from Hawaii.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's correct.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an issue that's not talked about enough in Washington, and on a warm sunny afternoon, where it's not real hot, it's not cold, not a lot of energy's being used. Not a lot of Americans are talking about energy, but it should be on the minds of Americans. I was disappointed last night as we listened collectively to the Presidential debate. Now, the candidates don't get to talk about what they want to talk about unless they squeeze it in on the side. They get to answer the questions; and last night, not one question was asked about the energy future of America. We've been a very successful Nation. We've been the leader of the world because we have had cheap, affordable energy. That has all changed. We now have expensive energy, and we have short supplies on every hand. When I talk to the biggest employers in America, when I talk to the people that I know understand this country and the manufacture of goods and the process of goods and trade around the world, I say, should energy be a top issue? And they said, it is for us. To remain an employer in America, energy is our number one challenge. Just to give you an example, Dow Chemical, the largest chemical company in the world, located in America, thousands of good jobs in America, their costs of energy went from $8 billion on natural gas alone in 5 years to $22 billion. That's almost tripling the costs of their major use of energy, natural gas. Now, we have some energy bills moving, and we would hope that they would increase supply because when you increase supply, you decrease prices. A lot of us have struggled to understand the energy markets, but this is how I understand it in basic terms. They are not set by energy companies. They're set by Wall Street traders who look at availability of that form of energy, and they run the price up or down by the hour. In the last few days, oil prices have been rising a dollar-something per day, and I checked about 1 o'clock and oil was approaching $77 a barrel, almost the highest price ever, and had been increasing hourly all week. So the price of energy is not set by the sellers of energy. It's set by the Wall Street traders on their view of the availability and the affordability. Now, the bills before us, we'll look at them a little bit, I find somewhat disappointing. They cut off production from the Roan Plateau, a huge clean natural gas field in Colorado that was set aside as the Naval Oil Shale Reserve in 1976 because of its energy-rich resources. This means that nine trillion feet of natural gas, more than all the natural gas in the OCS bill that was passed last year, will be put off limits. The Roan Plateau had already gone through all the NEPA studies. Now, those are yearlong studies that say whether it's environmentally appropriate to produce it. They passed that test. This provision was not in the original Resources Committee bill and had been added at the request, we think, of leadership because it wasn't in the original bill. This bill will make it harder to produce energy from Alaska's natural petroleum reserve which was set aside in 1923 to help America meet our energy needs in the long term. Additions of tens of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and millions and millions of barrels of oil in Alaska's natural petroleum reserve which would have increased the likelihood of the construction of the gas pipeline that could bring 4 to 6 billion cubic feet of clean green natural gas from Alaska every day has not yet been built. The bill effectively repeals language that I put in the energy bill in 2005 that took out redundant NEPAs. NEPA is a comprehensive, complicated study that you have to go through to make your environmental assessments. Now, what was happening in the West, where a lot of our energy is, NEPA studies were being used redundantly. In other words, you have a study for your original plot. You have a study for the road. Each of these studies takes a year. You have a study for each well location. You have a study for everything you were going to do. And so I had people who said they had leased land 6 and 7 years prior and still hadn't been able to drill a hole in the ground and produce the energy for America. So we did a simple amendment that said you do a NEPA, you do it on all of those things collectively and you go ahead and proceed. Well, the bill we have moving now takes away those redundant NEPAs and allows them to go back to multiple NEPAs. The provision alone adds red tape that will stop 18 percent of the future on-shore natural gas production and oil and hurt those least able to pay their energy bill. The bill doubles the time it takes to get government approval for offshore energy projects at a time when China is drilling within 50 miles of our shore, along with Cuba. Now, also, we have portfolio standards in the bill that says 15 percent of renewable energy must be a part of all electric production. Now, that's a great goal. I don't have any quarrel with the goal. But we mandated it by 2020, and some States with their natural resources can meet that, some can't. We also, with the limit of what can be renewable energy, I know we already had the Pennsylvania law which used more items in their renewable portfolio package, and so the Federal one-size-fits-all mandate, we should have had a carrot approach, where we put a carrot out there, where we encourage, we assist, we help. But this mandate will make it very difficult for States who do not have the right sources of energy available to them because it will make it very difficult for them to produce electricity and meet that mandate. We have an interesting issue in every appropriations bill this year that's a mandate that CFL light bulbs be used in every building. Now that sounds good. Those are highly energy-efficient light bulbs, the little ones my wife and I fight about because I bought them and put them in, and she takes them out because they buzz and make noise and don't give quite the quality of light we are used to with our incandescent bulbs. We have had that discussion ongoing, but we have mandated them in government buildings. The sad part of the story is they are all made in China. We do not produce one in America. The Senate had severe changes in CAFE standards in their bill, which I think would be part of the discussion when we have a conference committee, if we have a conference committee on energy. Many Members of the House, bipartisanly, are concerned that the mandates in the Senate bill will be harmful to the American auto industry. That's another issue, that we need to have more fuel-efficient cars. Nobody argues, we need to. I think we may have been a little too easy on the auto industry in America, because it seems like every time we have an energy spike, they are never ready for it, and they lose a piece of the market share. Because Americans have chosen to purchase cars that were not fuel efficient, energy prices would go up, and we would buy more fuel-efficient cars, and energy prices would come down, and we would go back to buying high gas users again. We need to have a more fuel-efficient auto available to us, and we need to use our energy as wisely and conservatively as possible. But hopefully, in the end, we will have a CAFE standard that will not disadvantage the American automakers. Now, one that bothered me the most, I guess, was the $15 billion to $16 billion tax increase on energy production. Now, I know what that's about; it's about the hatred of the big oil companies and their big profits. Well, someone said to me one day, well, how come they have made such profits? Big oil companies over the years purchase the ability and the rights to oil all over the world, including in our country. They purchase those rights, assuming that $25 or $30 would be the price they would receive for their oil. Well, we don't have $25 or $30 oil anymore, and when you sell $75 oil and you were going to be profitable at $30 oil, you are going to make a lot of money. Why do we have high oil prices and energy prices in America? Because this government and this administration have not opened up energy supply. When you don't open up energy supply and you help create a world shortage, you force prices up. It's the traders in Wall Street, again, who determine adequacy of natural gas or oil or other commodities to the marketplace. Now, in oil, it gets quite confusing because you will have an oil price set by Wall Street and you will have a gasoline price that sometimes doesn't make any sense. This spring we had gasoline prices higher than they should have been, as a result of 60-some dollar oil, but it was because there was a shortage of gasoline in the world. Fifteen percent of our gasoline now comes from Europe, and when Europe didn't have the gasoline for us, we had a shortage on gasoline. So our gasoline market went higher than it normally would have. So it's interesting that these Wall Street players run up the price because there is a shortage in the world.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. As we look at the chart that we have in front of us, it's called the NEED Act: $150 billion will go to producing States, with an incentive for them; $100 billion will go in the U.S. Treasury, $32 billion for renewable energy research. Now, that's real money for renewable energy research: $32 billion for carbon capture and sequestration research, which is the big issue of the day, unfortunately, getting more play than energy availability and affordability. And I'm going to say this: if carbon sequestration is a bigger issue in this Congress than energy availability and affordability, this country will not compete. We have to have available, affordable energy. And the advantage of clean natural gas is it has a fraction of the carbon of the other fossil fuels. It's the clean green fuel. It's about a third of the carbon of all the other fuels. So clean green natural gas. But it has to become affordable and stably priced. For the Chesapeake Bay, $20 billion, $20 billion for the Great Lakes restoration, $12 billion for the Everglades, $12 billion for the Colorado River, $12 billion for the San Francisco Bay, and $10 billion with LIHEAP and weatherization. Weatherization of course is an important component there because it helps poor people make their homes energy efficient. We're joined by the lady from Tennessee. We're delighted to have you with us today.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Reclaiming my time, it's interesting. Here I have a chart in front of me that I have not seen before but I found very interesting today. Twenty percent of our electricity now is produced by natural gas, and that has been the big user of natural gas that has really forced natural gas prices up because we changed that about 12 years ago. Prior to that you were not allowed to use natural gas to make electricity, only for peak power in the morning and evening when you have this surge. A gas generator you can turn off and on, but a coal plant you can't. A nuclear plant you can't. But here is the current cost of electricity: Nuclear electricity costs $13.54 a megawatt hour. Coal costs $20.80 a megawatt hour. Natural gas, $49.51 a megawatt hour. Nonhydro, which would be wind and solar, costs $68 a megawatt hour. And the reason for that is that we all wish that wind and solar would produce a lot more energy than they do, but the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, and when it doesn't shine and it doesn't blow, you have to have another system that you've paid for like a gas generator that you can turn on or turn off as the wind blows or doesn't blow and the sun shines or doesn't shine, because we have not yet been able in batteries to store this energy, or in some sort of a heat tank, to where we use it later. We have researched with billions of dollars and we will continue to research, but those are very expensive forms of electricity.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Yes. The cost for nuclear is $13.54, and there is a new nuclear. Coal, $20.80; natural gas, $49.51; and nonhydro, $68. Now, we need them all for the portfolio, but we have to have affordable, available energy or Americans won't have jobs. In my view, energy costs are the biggest job killer in America and have been this decade. We blame it on other things, but the cost of energy since it has spiked has stayed there, and we now are at a high plateau where future spikes are coming. We just need a storm, we just need a country to topple, and we'll have $100 oil. And we know $100 oil would be $4 or more for gasoline. We understand that. I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for her comments and for coming down and sharing today. I think the number one issue we need in America is to have a strategy to open up the Outer Continental Shelf for natural gas first, and, further on out, hopefully down the road, oil, because we need both. Natural gas, though, is a clean, green fuel that is low in carbon emissions. It's not a nitrous oxide problem. It's not a sulfuric acid problem. It's a clean, green fuel. And why we have not utilized it as the bridge I find hard to understand. We have had a presidential moratorium and a congressional moratorium for 26 years. The only country in the world to do that. We talk a lot about Brazil's ethanol. Ethanol is part of their portfolio, but Brazil also opened up their Outer Continental Shelf and are now producing lots of natural gas and lots of oil offshore, so they are energy self-sufficient, with ethanol being a piece of it. Now, they make their ethanol out of sugarcane, which is far less costly because we have a two-step process. We have to change the starch in corn to a sugar and then we change it to alcohol, which is the fuel. So we have a dual process, and it takes twice as much energy to do that. The production of ethanol is a high-energy consumer, probably as much energy as we produce, but it is trading foreign imports for American made, so I support it. Now, the push at the White House has been for cellulosic ethanol, which I am in support of too, but it is still, unfortunately, in the test tube. The President was here on the floor talking about it last February, and a few days later I was told that he asked to go see a plant and, unfortunately, there wasn't one. He had to go to two laboratories to where it is being studied. And cellulosic ethanol will be made out of any plant life that is decaying. It could be garbage from our garbage stream. It could be grass like switch grass and other kinds of grass. It could be cornstocks or peapod waste or any kind of waste stream from our food supply, or it could be cellulose from wood, any kind of woody waste. And you then make alcohol as you ferment that. Now, hopefully, that is going to be more cost-effective and will not be competing with our food supply. And I commend the President for producing that, but I think we need to do a number of things. First, we need to expand the conservation wise use of energy. If Americans were told up front where we are with energy availability and affordability, I think each and every American will do something to conserve and more wisely use energy. But I don't think Americans have been adequately informed. I think the press have been very negligent. But, of course, Congress and the White House have been negligent about talking about this issue. The press certainly have not had it on their agenda and have not often asked it in the presidential debates, and we hope that will change. We mustn't waste energy. Recently here in the House we had an initiative that the Capitol complex would be less heated by coal and more by gas, and that was a carbon statement. That bothered me a little because if everybody in the country, if every government does that, all Federal agencies do that, State governments do that, universities, and some universities have already done that, if they all switch from coal to gas, we are going to put more pressure on natural gas and increase the shortage of natural gas and increase the price. What disappointed me was that was the first initiative to have a wiser energy use for Congress and the complex we house, all the buildings we work in. But every window in all of these buildings is still a single-pane, leaky window. Not one energy- efficient window has been put in. It seems like we ought to keep the heat in and the cold out before we change fuels. We need to assist companies and individuals who use a lot of energy with using energy more wisely. That is a government educational process. We need to open up the OCS. We need to open up the Outer Continental Shelf for the production of energy, specifically natural gas. We need to open up more of Alaska and more of the West for oil production. The President has funded six pilot plants for cellulosic ethanol. I have been urging them to fund six pilot plants that take coal and make liquid fuels. That is a German process. When we blockaded Germany during World War II, they made their fuel out of coal. The fissure tropes process, several other processes that have been developed in this country, there are ways to do that. You can make natural gas out of coal. But for some reason, there has been a reluctance in this Congress and a reluctance in this administration to use coal, our most abundant fuel, for liquids and for natural gas, thus lessening our dependence on foreign, unstable countries. We need to figure how we speed up nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is safe. France is, I think, approaching 80 percent nuclear energy for their country, the production of electricity. We had a process here that took, I think, 10 years for a permit. We downsized that in the energy bill to 4 years to permit and 4 years to build, so we now have an 8-year process to build a nuclear plant. One of the problems we're having is that many of the components that are needed in the energy plant have to be bought from foreign countries because in America we don't make the castings to make a nuclear power plant any longer. We're buying those from Japan. I'm told a lot of the other portions are coming from Germany. We no longer have the technology in-house. I find that scary. We must expand the use of clean coal technology. We have the fluidized bed process that we use in Pennsylvania to burn waste coal, the dirtiest, nastiest coal, and burns it cleanly. And if you burn good coal with the fluidized bed process, and if you incentivize the building of new plants to replace the old plants, but it's almost impossible in America to permit a new coal plant. We have put coal off limits. So we're not going to use it for liquids, we're not going to use it to make gas and we're not going to use it to make electricity. And we're not going to open up the Outer Continental Shelf for oil. Folks, we cannot conserve our way out of the energy crisis in America. We need to conserve. We need to use energy very wisely. But if we don't have an energy plan for available, affordable energy for America, I will guarantee you that within a decade, we will not be the superpower of the world; we will not be a front-runner nation. We will be a second-rate nation. We have huge competitors today. America has never had Chinas and Indias nipping at their heels taking away business every day. Those companies have energy plants. They're building nuclear plants. They're building hydro plants, dams. They're building coal-to-liquid plants. They're doing it all. They're acquiring rights to oil fields that have historically been ours. They have a plan for energy availability and affordability. Yes, Americans must conserve and use energy wisely. But Congress and this White House must have an energy policy that says we're going to have available, affordable energy. And in my view, at the front of the pack should be clean green natural gas. And our bill, the NEED Act, opens up the Outer Continental Shelf after 50 miles. We give the States control of the first 50. The second 50 will be open to natural gas only. And the States will have the right, with their legislature passing a bill to say they don't want it open. The second 100 miles will be open for natural gas only. That gives the States control of the first 100 miles for clean green natural gas. We think we ought to be producing more than that, but we're struggling to get clean green natural gas. So we say offshore should be our first initiative. We should have coal-to-liquid plants being built online so we can refine that process. We need to be promoting more nuclear. We need to have all the renewables that we can produce; but, unfortunately, there are only a little bit over a percentage today. And many people are holding that out as the answer. I wish that was the answer; I would be all for it. But those that are telling us that we can conserve and renewables will be our energy portfolio are not being honest with the American public. Just to show you, just a few months ago a bill was introduced in this body that said, if a bird or a bat is found at the foot of a windmill, it would be a criminal act. And that same day I think the Wind Association, and God bless them, I'm for them, but they stated that we would be at 20 percent of the energy portfolio in a very short time, I think in 10 years. I wish that was true, but it's not true. We can't get there that quick. The wind only blows a portion of the time, and we have not been able to store the energy and keep it and use it later. It only blows part of the time. We have to have a redundant source, clean green natural gas, and a complete portfolio for America so we can have jobs in America, so Americans can heat their homes, run their businesses, and compete in the world economy. We can compete with anybody if we're given a fair shake; but we must have available, affordable energy if America is going to continue to be a leader of the world.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I want to commend the gentleman for this amendment. I'm from Pennsylvania. It's cold there. We have a lot of poor people, a lot of low-income people in my district, and weatherization is a huge program. I would just like to let the body know that in my Outer Continental Shelf natural gas bill, we set aside, I think, $12 billion to fund this program. If we open up the OCS for clean green natural gas, we will have an ongoing supply of $12 billion for helping with weatherization.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. While I do that, I think it's a very important issue as we make our schools energy efficient. Energy efficient buildings have very little air exchange. And if you have any kind of a pollution factor in your house or in a school or in a building that is just airtight, it's going to concentrate very fast. And it's very important that we have this kind of a study. But I want to say that we won't have that problem with this building that we're in right now. We won't have that problem with any of our office buildings because they all have single pane, the least energy efficient windows known in America, and we have lots of air exchange. In fact, it's probably what we ought to be doing to make our own buildings energy efficient, instead of going to expensive natural gas to heat them, which will go right out those energy open windows. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to talk about the importance of the legislation we are considering. There's nothing more important to America's economy and security than affordable, available energy, and we are today looking at legislation that doesn't deal with that. Here is our current use of energy: We are 40 percent dependent on petroleum. We are in world short supply at the moment. The oil companies are reporting they are most frightened today because of the lack of oil availability in the world than they have ever remembered. Natural gas, 23 percent. Coal, 23 percent. Nuclear, 8 percent. Hydroelectric, 2.7 percent. None of these major forms of energy will be enhanced or helped. They will be harmed. The legislation coming from the Natural Resources Committee will give us less petroleum and increase our dependence on foreign supply from unstable parts of the world. Natural gas? Nothing. But it will give us less natural gas and make us, again, foreign dependent on foreign, from Canada. Nothing to help coal. We need an energy bill that gives us energy so our renewables can grow in order to meet some of our future needs.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Small business is the future of America. One of the greatest threats to small business in this country is energy prices, the transportation of their goods and the heating of their factories and the use of clean green natural gas in the manufacturing process. It is 55 percent of the chemical business; it is 45 percent of the polymers and plastics business. They use it as an ingredient; they use it as a fuel. It is 70 percent of nitrogen fertilizer. And one-half of our corn is going to be grown this year with fertilizer from foreign countries because natural gas prices in America are the highest in the world. The natural gas supply in this country is in crisis. Twelve years ago, we opened it up for an unlimited amount of producing electricity. Now 20-some percent of our electricity is made with natural gas. But we refuse as a country, we refuse as a Congress to open up the Outer Continental Shelf where we have an abundant supply. How many countries do what we do? There is no one in the world that doesn't produce energy, both gas and oil, on their Outer Continental Shelf. We all talk about Brazil's energy independence. Yes, ethanol was a piece; but they opened up their Outer Continental Shelf. There has never been a gas well that polluted a beach. There has never been a gas well that polluted anything. Clean green natural gas should be a part of this bill; one-third of the CO2, no NOX, no SOX. It is a clean energy. And as a country, we refuse to use it. How blind can we be? It is interesting in this bill, we talked about carbon in the last segment. The other two carbon free, we are doing nothing with hydro, we are doing nothing with nuclear, carbon free. I am for all these renewables, but they are a fraction. Twelve hundredths of 1 percent of our energy is wind; and if we double it, we are now 24/100ths of 1 percent. Folks, I am for all of those, but clean green natural gas is our bridge to get to those. Open it up.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I rise to say that we will be glad to accept the amendment, but I would like to make a comment.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Yes.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I rise not to oppose the amendment but to make some comments.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I find this amendment interesting as someone interested in natural gas and the use of it. I find it a little puzzling because clean green natural gas is America's cleanest fossil fuel. Yet we've made it very expensive because we've allowed it to be used unlimited on production of electricity. I think the last 98 percent of plants built to make electricity are using natural gas. But what we're saying with this amendment and what has been lobbied for in the industry is that we will say to gas distribution companies that sell to our homes and to our businesses, we'll urge you to conserve but we'll charge you enough more that the gas utility continues its current profit structure. I find that a little troubling, personally. I think it might be wiser to open up the supply of natural gas, get the price down so we're not the highest in the world, so people can heat their homes and run their businesses without having natural gas prices be prohibitive and, thus, the companies would be actually selling more gas and we wouldn't have to go down the road of subsidizing their profits because they're selling less volume. As a businessman all my life, I understand the dilemma they're in. As people conserve and when energy prices spike in the winter, people keep their homes at 56. Businesses turn their thermostats down. I went to stores last year in Pennsylvania where they were actually cold. And I knew people who lived in 56-degree houses. I'm not sure we ought to go down that road. I think we ought to produce abundant natural gas and allow the price to work, cheap natural gas. The volume would be there, but we're glad to accept the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Would the gentleman yield just for a moment?

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding me this time. Currently, 3 percent of the grid is renewables. I wish there was a quick way we could turn the switch on and get to 15 in this short period of time. Such a mandate will raise power rates for many. A Federal RPS will undermine the existing programs in 25 States. Nowhere will this be more harmful than in Pennsylvania where we allow 20 different sources of energy to meet our 12 percent RPS. Folks, wind and solar are our hope and dreams, but they are very, very small. And when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, we have a redundant source of energy for them, and that is natural gas, which has become the most expensive source of electricity today because we have been unwilling to produce it. We will cause States that don't have what they need to pay much higher rates, and we will not have the growth and increase of renewable electricity that we want. We have 50 States. Incentivize all of them to go out and meet these standards, but don't do a Federal mandate. It will work some places; it will cause harm in other places. Let the 50 States determine.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, Americans are concerned, and they should be. We had $79 oil this week, $7 natural gas, the highest prices in the world, especially for natural gas. Oil prices are predicted to go to $100 this year with what's going on in the world. America needs to use its resources. Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia use their resources on the Outer Continental Shelf. This bill opens it up from 100 on out. It's the safest place, the least imprint. It's the safest place to produce energy in the world. Everybody in the country laughs at us when I talk to them about why we don't produce there. If we want to have a petrochemical business left in America, a polymer, plastics, fertilizer, steel, aluminum, bricks and glass, if we want jobs for our working people, we need affordable oil. We need affordable natural gas. We have to stop being 2 percent more dependent every year. Every year we're gaining 2 percent in dependence on foreign oil. This has to stop. We need to open up the Outer Continental Shelf.