Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, Senator Murkowski and I released a bipartisan energy bill. We hope to mark up that bill next week, but critical to that Energy bill is the modernization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Forty years ago, we created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to prevent economic distress caused by oil disruption. People remember exactly what happened with the Arab oil embargo in 1973. The law that created the SPRO--the Energy Policy Conservation Act--was enacted in 1975 specifically to help protect the U.S. economy from energy disruptions.

The core policy reason for having the reserve really hasn't changed, nor should it. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an important asset to our energy security. We need it as much today as we did then. Perhaps even more so now that we have so much volatility.

Clearly, we have seen dramatic changes in our energy policy landscape. Instead of importing a lot of oil, we have become a bigger producer in the United States, and our oil infrastructure and refining capacity has reduced our ability to make sure SPR is available in case of an emergency.

In fact, the Department of Energy did a test sale in 2014 and identified a series of challenges associated with the way the SPR distribution works today. That is why I think it is so important. These very supplies that make us more secure in one respect are also stressing our national infrastructure and may actually lessen our ability to respond in an emergency. That is why it is so important to modernize the SPRO, to use the resources we have there, to make sure we make investments.

Some may have seen the Quadrennial Energy Review recently produced and released. Its key findings--I am now reading from the report--show that multiple factors affect U.S. energy security. These include U.S. oil demand, the level of oil imports, the adequacy of emergency response systems, fuel inventory levels, fuel substitution capacity, energy system resilience, and the flexibility, transparency, and competitiveness of the global energy marketplace.

The report goes on to say the United States is the world's largest producer of petroleum and natural gas. Combined with new clean energy technologies and improved fuel efficiency, U.S. energy security is stronger than it has been in over half a century.

But the report goes on to say: Nonetheless, challenges remain in maximizing that energy security benefits of our resources in a way that enhances our competitiveness and minimizes our environmental impacts of their use. The network of the oil distribution has changed significantly.

So the Strategic Petroleum Reserve's ability to offset future energy supply disruption has been adversely affected by global domestic and global market development, and so there is a need for an upgrade.

I think people can all agree it needs an upgrade. So that is why we raise a question about a transportation bill on the floor that takes money out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve not to upgrade that energy security need but to put it into highways, which will do nothing to secure us if there is an energy supply disruption.

The report goes on to say the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to protect the U.S. economy from severe economic harm in the event of a supply emergency associated with spikes has been diminished. It has been diminished.

Changes in U.S. energy production are stressing and transforming the way energy commodities are transported in the United States.

Some of these commodities, the report goes on to say, such as coal and ethanol have traditionally relied on rail and barge transport to move these products. These transportation modes, such as rail, barge, and truck transport, are also shared by agriculture and other major commodities and are being joined by significant growth in the use of transport of oil and refined petroleum products.

So it creates a limited infrastructure capacity among these commodities. The report goes on to say that those costs are being increased in shipping and then being passed on to the consumer. So literally, by taking money out of the SPR and not investing it in the modernization of our energy infrastructure and security--we are taking money and building highways--we are making it more expensive for consumers to get products and to secure our economy.

The Department of Agriculture has indicated that disruptions to agricultural shipments--that is, agricultural products that can't get on the rails because we have so much oil, natural gas, coal, and all these other things or just sand for drilling--are basically causing a disruption so big that it is bigger than the disruption to agriculture caused by Katrina.

So we have supply. But the economic challenge of having other products displaced or having the cost to consumers go up is what is threatening us. Even the ability to maintain adequate coal stockpiles at some electric powerplants has been affected by rail congestion. That comes directly from the report. Why is that so important? Because all these energy commodities are important to us. These agricultural commodities are important for us.

The quadrennial review calls for an update to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Department of Energy should make infrastructure investments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and its distribution systems to optimize the SPR's ability to protect the U.S. economy in an energy emergency. That is right from the report. The report calls for creating a multimodal freight program to make sure we improve investment in freight and to make sure there is Federal action on shared transportation infrastructure that makes sure we can move our energy products.

It says we have to work on our waterways as well because the waterways are critical to moving our energy products around.

The report goes on to say that the Federal facility that consists of a network of 62 salt caverns at four geographically dispersed storage sites need upgrading. A lot of this is happening in the south of our country, in Louisiana and Texas. We need to make sure our economy does not see another disruption or price spike without our ability to update the SPR and actually get the product out.

The report called on DOE to make a $2 billion investment to increase the incremental distribution of SPR by adding a dedicated marine loading-dock capacity at a gulf coast terminus--my guess, again, is probably in Texas or Louisiana--and that Congress should update the SPR to be more effective in preventing serious economic hardships to the U.S. energy supply and making sure we optimize our capacity for infrastructure distribution. The report also calls for an additional $2.5 billion over 10 years to make sure we are making these connectors.

So not only are we required to do this as a country--to make sure that our country is safe and secure and that we take advantage of the product we have--but we are also a member of the International Energy Program. As to members, they make sure every country is doing what they should to make sure there is an increase in supply and that we can withstand anything--a world event, a natural disaster, a hurricane or critical infrastructure destruction by some cyber event or by an actual attack. So the SPR is like a rainy day fund, an account that makes that infrastructure work.

There are two things in particular we should consider when we are thinking about the drawdown of this product that is not specifically tied to an emergency.

First, we should make sure this investment is an upgrade to the SPR's infrastructure and for its emergency capabilities. That is, if we are going to take money out, it should go to infrastructure in responding to emergencies and not just to the highway bill for highways. We need to make sure the SPR's critical systems and equipment, which are nearing their life-end operational capacity--that in fact there is the $2 billion that is needed to repair that. I am not even sure you can sell money out of the SPR now onto the marketplace because all of the apparatuses and the functioning capabilities for it don't work correctly now. I know we want to mark up a transportation bill that has this money in here, but we may not even be able to collect on it. Let's make sure we do our repairs.

Secondly, let's make sure the receipts from the SPR sale should be used to improve the critical urgency and energy infrastructure investments that we need.

Now, some of my colleagues talk about how expensive this oil was when we bought it and now what we are selling it for. I could say taxpayers are definitely not getting their fair share. But one way to make sure they get their fair share on this investment is to make sure it is invested in the energy security infrastructure that our Nation needs. Now would not be the time to damage our Nation's emergency preparedness by giving this money away in a transportation deal that is only about highways.

I hope, my colleagues, if we are really serious about this effort, if we are going to sell SPR at any price and affect the American taxpayers, that we will follow the recommendations of the Department of Energy's Quadrennial Energy Review that found that many different areas of our energy infrastructure need investing. We could make investments in resiliency, reliability, and security, and focusing on hardening our infrastructure, particularly our transportation systems, which are going to be critical for how we move this product around in the future, and, also so that we have port connectors, which are challenged by the movement of critical freight in critical freight corridors.

We want our country to continue to be self-reliant and to have the great products we are exporting through our ports, but they too need the infrastructure investment. Multiple commodities are competing, and they can't even get on the tracks or through our port corridors without making further investment.

I believe the Secretary of Energy needs the flexibility to manage the SPR and the SPR assets. I believe, if the Secretary of Energy or the President of the United States thought it was such a great idea to sell money out of the SPR for highways only, we would hear them saying so. We don't.

I think we need to provide the Secretary with the dependability to make these decisions about our energy security and make the right investments for our future. I hope we can get this right before this bill is done here in the Senate. Otherwise, we will not be doing ourselves any favor when it comes to energy or energy security.

I yield the floor.

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