Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005

TAX RELIEF EXTENSION RECONCILIATION ACT OF 2005

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AFFORDABLE ENERGY

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes this morning to speak to the issue of affordable energy that the President raised last night in his State of the Union Address. He said that keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. I think all of us across the country are certainly keying in to the terminology that he used, ``affordable energy.''

Right now what we are seeing is causing us to choke a little bit at a time when world oil prices are back up to nearly $68 a barrel for crude oil. Yesterday, it was $67.95 for a barrel of crude oil. This is after even an unusually warm winter in the Northeast.

Gasoline prices nationally are averaging $2.34 a gallon. This is up nearly a quarter in the past several weeks, according to the Automobile Club of America. So when we are talking about energy supplies, it is the prices that people in the United States are really focused on. It is not just when it comes to paying the price at the pump, it is also a very heavy reminder to us as we receive our utility bills every month and as we look at the ever-increasing price of natural gas and what it is costing to heat our homes. The cost of home heating fuel in my State of Alaska is through the roof. We have families, we have whole communities that are struggling to make their payments, wondering how cold this winter is really going to be and what it is going to mean to them in terms of the availability of fuel and their ability to pay. It might be warm here, but it is the coldest January that interior Alaska has seen in probably 30 or 35 years or so. The average temperature in Fairbanks this past month has been--I think it was 22 degrees below zero, but that is just the average. So it is cold there. So when we talk about the cost of home heating fuel and what it means to people, it really does hit home.

The President said last night that we must reduce our reliance on Middle Eastern sources of oil. He is setting a goal for us to reduce that reliance by 75 percent. He suggests the way we need to do it, the way we have to get there, is to utilize technology to promote new energy sources and new efforts at energy efficiency. But, really, it comes down to the technology.

As we all know, just last year we finally were successful in moving forward a comprehensive energy bill that promotes ethanol production, promotes hydrogen fuel cell development, promotes energy from biomass, ocean currents, new generation of nuclear power--we took positive steps last year through that bill. The President has clearly recognized that and is seeking to move forward on that agenda and improve on that. He spoke specifically to enhanced wind, solar, ethanol through saw grass. He is looking to that technology that will reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil.

He said, further, we must also change how we power our automobiles. This is significant. It is important. We agree we must work toward this particular goal. We must change how we power our automobiles. But we also have to keep in mind that it is not just the automobiles that are using the oil that we consume as a nation. Think about how we get here, through the airplanes, the aviation fuel, the diesel products, the petrochemical products that we consume as a nation--whether it is Band-Aids or CDs or cosmetics. So much of what we utilize in our daily products is petroleum based.

While we must be honest and say we must figure out another way to power, to fuel our vehicles, we have to recognize that to a certain extent we will still need oil in our society. We will still need these petroleum-based products. We will still need aviation fuel for our aircraft.

So how do we get to where the President wants to get, which is a reduced reliance on foreign sources? It is all about what we do domestically. It is all about what we do with our innovation to provide for additional resources domestically so we are not reliant on Middle Eastern oil, we are not reliant on the OPEC countries. We have to do more in a balanced way to use the new technology to increase the domestic energy production from conventional sources. This means producing more oil, more natural gas, and more coal from American land.

Last night, the President specifically mentioned coal and the use of zero-emissions coal. This is what we need to be doing, where we need to be going. But when it comes to oil production, you have heard me on the floor of the Senate, and Senator Stevens on the floor of the Senate, talking about what the potential is up north in Alaska on a tiny portion of Alaska's coastal plain; the opportunity on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for additional sources of oil that could help America reduce its reliance on foreign sources.

When the President talked about the key to America ending its addiction to oil, often imported from unstable parts of the world, it is through utilizing this new technology. He said: Go there. He might just as well have used ANWR. He didn't use it. All the newspaper articles this morning noted the fact that he didn't use that. But we have already developed and continue to develop a host of new technologies that will permit oil development from the Arctic coastal plain without harm to the environment or the wildlife.

There was an energy conference in Anchorage just a couple of weeks ago where the industry unveiled this new directional extended-reach drilling. It is technology that will be tested this year. It should permit the oil deposits to be tapped from up to 8 to 10 miles away from a well site, 8 to 10 miles away from that well site. This is almost double the 4 miles that drilling currently accesses oil at the nearby Alpine field up on the North Slope. So the technology is moving at an incredible rate.

Further improvements in extended-reach drilling--what this does is allows us to have less disruption on the surface. This means that potentially you are looking at almost a 100-square-mile area that is going to be absolutely undisturbed on the surface so animals can range freely, undisturbed by drilling sites. A 100-mile area is a lot of room, whether you are a caribou or muskoxen--or a lot of caribou. We have also new three-dimensional and four-dimensional drilling technology that will identify small oil pools without the disturbance to wildlife that once was caused by the old seismic technology. We have new equipment that allows oil wells to be drilled within a few feet of one another, thus reducing the size of the pads by as much as 88 percent. Compare this to what we are currently doing on the original Prudhoe Bay oilfield, which is about 90 miles to the west. It is something worth seeing. I hope to have the opportunity yet again this year to invite other Senators to come up north to see for themselves what the technology means as far as reducing disturbance to the land, preventing pollution, and preventing any environmental degradation.

With this new technology--this is according to the latest estimates that we received last year from the USGS--we can develop the nearly 10 billion barrels of oil that we anticipate will be found on the coastal plain. When you look at the prices we are at now and you estimate $55 a barrel, the opportunity for us as a nation to provide for America's needs, and thus reduce reliance on foreign sources, is incredibly significant.

When we look at where we are receiving our oil from now, America today is importing 4.7 million barrels of oil a day from OPEC nations--1.47 million from Saudi Arabia, 1.43 million from Venezuela. These are just the names of the OPEC nations on which we are relying now. ANWR production--given the estimates I just cited from USGS, given the estimates I have of the prices--we estimate we would likely see 1 million barrels per day, potentially as much as 2 million barrels a day. This, again, is according to USGS estimates. This will dramatically reduce our dependence in the future on OPEC and should help to lower world oil prices.

We understand that the President is going to have more to say on several of the measures that he discussed last evening, including energy and his proposal for the national security as well as economic security when it comes to reliable, affordable energy. He understands our concerns and understands that in order to be a competitive nation in a global economy, we must have reliable, affordable energy; an energy source that does not cause us to be vulnerable.

Some may think that ANWR was settled just a few weeks ago at the end of December when we missed by just several votes in the Senate from breaking a filibuster on the issue. But I want to assure Senate Members that the issue of ANWR is far too important for us as a nation to not bring forward again. For the good of this Nation we need a balanced energy solution, one that both increases domestic production of conventional sources and that produces new energy from alternative sources and improves efficiency, improves energy conservation. It has to be all three. I will not stand before you and say it just is the production piece.

That is not a balanced approach. That is not the approach for the future. The approach for the future is to make sure we use our technology and our innovation to get us to the point where we have energy independence. That ought to be a goal for us as a nation, energy independence, and we can get that. But it does have to be a solution that is comprehensive and balanced.

For the good of the Nation, we need to get moving forward quickly in utilizing our new technology to produce more energy from both ANWR and new energy sources.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

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