Billy Tauzin

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to myself. Mr. Chairman, I compliment the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant) for this amendment. Oil shale may contain the oil equivalent several times the amount in conventional oil reserves and this is an important resource in America. It is rather vast, and we ought to explore it and know whether the potential is real. I think the gentleman is correct in this amendment. I ask all Members to support it.

Mr. TAUZIN. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon).

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, if no one claims time in opposition, although I support the gentleman's amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time; and I would announce that this is the last amendment to be considered tonight. Though we have run through four chairmen of the full committee, I want to thank the gentleman for his patience and endurance tonight, as well as the other chairmen.

Mr. TAUZIN. I will definitely try to keep it in conference.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I would claim the time in opposition, although I support the amendment.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from Michigan's (Mr. Rogers) amendment simply affirms that the waters of the Great Lakes are a shared responsibility of the bordering States and the Canadian province of Ontario over which the Federal Government has no ownership. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It corrects, I think, an ill-advised move that has occurred last month in the committee that sent a message that a Federal agency, the Corps of Engineers, had some span of control over the Great Lakes, which it clearly does not. Passage of this amendment will simply clarify that both the waters of the Great Lakes and the subsurface beneath them are controlled by the bordering States or the Canadian province. We would urge its adoption. Mr. Chairman, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, although I do support the amendment.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield the balance of our time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, to close on this debate against this bad amendment. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, there were an awful lot of committees that contributed to this effort today, and an awful lot of staff members, and I think we owe a great deal to staff on both sides of the aisle that contributed such a great effort to this bill. I particularly want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and his staff, and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) for the incredible cooperation that we got, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), and all of the committee chairs and ranking members. Thank you for a job well done.

Mr. TAUZIN. I thank the gentleman. I am going to make one other comment. Mr. Chairman, I hope Americans focus on this as they watch this debate. That is, while OPEC has an enormous influence upon prices and supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel and home heating oil and jet fuel in our economy, OPEC can meet tomorrow and devastate this economy, as they once did, because we are so dependent upon those sources. Our whole card, our defense, is in our coal program. We have enough coal in this country to last 400, 500 years, maybe 800 years, if we develop it properly. Moving toward cleaner coal does not just make good sense for energy security, it makes sense in this Nation's commitment to the effort in global climate change. As one of the designated co-chairs to the conference that will occur later in the fall on global climate, I am extremely interested in knowing that we are committed to a course not that is going to put anybody out of business or disrupt the American economy, but that we will find solutions to situations where we can reduce CO2 emissions through cleaner coal technologies and gasification projects, like the gentlewoman is sponsoring in this amendment. So I commend the gentlewoman for that. This has all kinds of pluses. This is win-win-win for the American economy, for American security, for our environment, and for our international position on global warming and global climate.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, simply to say that on behalf of the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Hansen), chairman of the Committee on Resources, with whom I serve, we have no objections and, in fact, support this amendment. It complements features of the bill that was reported out of the Committee on Resources that does call for inventorying the Nation's energy supplies. This will be targeted to those platforms off of Louisiana and Texas that contribute so much to this country. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Texas again for highlighting that. My own State is like hers, a major contributor to what we produce in this country for Americans. We produce 27 percent of the oil and about 27 percent of the natural gas, much of it from offshore, much of it, by the way, inside reserves. We have a national wildlife reserve called Mandalay Reserve in my district where wells are producing today. A hundred wells have been drilled to produce energy for this country in an environmentally safe way. That reserve, I promise my colleague, is every bit as sacred to me as the Arctic Wildlife Reserve, but we know we can do this in a good sound way. Inventorying those resources makes sense, and we support the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the gentlewoman's amendment. I commend her hard work on behalf of the clean coal technologies, both with this very important amendment and with her cosponsorship of the NEET clean coal bill. Over half of the Nation's electricity is generated from coal. We cannot escape that fact. About 52 percent of every drop of electricity that comes into our homes comes into homes from a coal-fired plant somewhere in America. We must be working constantly to make sure that we are burning the cleanest possible coal in those plants and in future plants that may be built. The Capito amendment will achieve this goal by ensuring that coal gasification, our most promising clean coal technology, is represented in the DOE's technology program; and at the same time I want to commend the chairman of the Committee on Science, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), for the cooperative effort of our two committees in fashioning language within this bill for the clean coal program. It does in fact emphasize gasification as one of the most principal emphases in the clean coal technology research programs.

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), the chairman of the Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume in closing on our Committee on Energy and Commerce time on this bill. Mr. Chairman, much has been said in the last 30 minutes about this bill, some of it critical. I want to make a point here that I hope all Members will pay some attention to: this bill does not do everything that this Congress needs to do. We are going to take up an electricity bill in the fall, we are going to take up a nuclear policy bill in the fall, we will hopefully renew Price-Anderson. We are going to do a number of other things in the fall which may carry forward some of our conservation efforts in this bill. But this bill is a giant step forward to securing America's energy future. I want to focus on two parts of it that I hope Americans will really appreciate. The first is this awful problem that boutique fuels have caused in our gasoline markets. To all Americans who found themselves, particularly in Chicago and Milwaukee a few years ago, paying incredible prices for gasoline because there was such a shortage, look to the boutique fuel market for your enemy. The boutique fuel market, designed to help clean air, unfortunately ended up with over 50 different formulations of fuel. It is a dysfunctional market that has raised the price in the Midwest from 30 to 35 cents a gallon. This bill begins to straighten out that dysfunction and sets in place a method to lower the numbers of those reformulations of gasoline, still keeping strict abidance with the clean air requirements of our great Nation. Secondly, I want to focus on the CAFE standards in this bill. The CAFE standards to be adopted in this bill will require for the first time in 17 years SUVs and minivans to begin saving fuel the way we require it to be saved in the car fleets of America. Today the SUVs and minivans consume about 2.4 billion gallons of gasoline a year. This bill will require a savings of 5 billion gallons over the next 6 years. That is the equivalent of parking two production years of all the SUVs and minivans that we produce on our highways in America, parking them for 2 years out of that 6. That is a significant floor upon which NHTSA will build its new CAFE requirements. This is only a floor. This is the minimum NHTSA must do, our National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They can and should do more. We will be faced with an amendment later by several of our friends to dramatically increase that number in the bill. Let me warn all Americans, all of us in this room, the numbers we have, the report from the NAS, tells us if you move those numbers too fast, just because you want to, if you push those numbers too high, too fast, you will produce lighter vehicles on the road. History tells us you will have more deaths and injury. The industry can do a great deal with technology to move fuel efficiency up. This bill pushes them hard and we will get new fuel efficiencies in SUVs and minivans. You go too far, and you end up compromising safety. This a good bill, a great step forward. I commend it to a favorable vote of this body.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert).

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, although I support the amendment, I claim the time in opposition, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Bono) to establish the Energy Sun program, a government-industry partnership to recognize promising renewable and alternative energy products and technologies. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 4 already authorizes a very successful EPA and Department of Energy program called the Energy Star program. The point of Energy Star is to educate, not to mandate. It works because consumers want to save energy and they also want to save money on their energy bills. Energy Sun will do for renewable energy what Energy Star has done for efficiency. Many consumers have heard of energy solar panels or wind power, or maybe even a green power program through an electric utility company. But the average consumer has no way of knowing which renewable source or alternative technology is really available, which one is practicable for their own needs. Like Energy Star, Energy Sun program will enhance our country's energy security by educating consumers, and then harnessing the power of the marketplace. I would like to thank the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Bono) for offering this amendment, and I encourage my colleagues to vote for it. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher).

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) for a colloquy. (Mr. TOM DAVIS of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)