Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2006

MAKING EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 -- (Senate - April 27, 2006)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I will be brief and explain the amendments. I thank my friend from Texas and others for allowing me to go ahead.

AMENDMENT NO. 3723

The first amendment is a very simple one. It asks the GAO for a report that includes a review of the mergers between ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, and other significant mergers in the oil industry that have occurred since 1990, to look at the impact that vitiating the mergers would have on market concentration, market power, wholesale and retail petroleum prices, and an assessment of the impact of prohibiting any one company from simultaneously owning assets in each of the oil industry sectors: exploration, refining, and distribution.

To me, very simply put, one of the problems--not the only one--we have is we have allowed the oil industry to become too concentrated, letting the No. 1 and No. 2 companies merge because there was a lull in the market at a given time, and then letting No. 3 and No. 4 merge. The second largest foreign company, which I think is the sixth largest American company, all created too much concentration. I think it is one of the reasons that these days we see the price as high as it is.

The prices are sticking. When the spot market goes up, the price immediately goes up; when the spot market goes down, the price takes a long time to go down. When Katrina affected Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, and they get most of their oil from the gulf, the price goes up the same amount in California.

I think it is high time that we reviewed these mergers. I don't know if they can be undone. I don't know what the effect would be, but to sit here and shrug our shoulders at this recent phenomenon of mergers doesn't make much sense. This amendment asks that a review be done.

The amendment would also provide more funding to the Energy Information Agency to assure accurate, real-time collection of price and data supply. I think we are not getting that kind of accurate information.

The big oil companies like to be shielded behind the wall of conflicting data and interesting jargon. It is too easy for them to pull the wool over consumers' eyes. The EIA is a nonpartisan governmental agency. This amendment would allow better information to come forward and make sure that we do the right thing.

AMENDMENT NO. 3724

The second amendment deals with port security. I know my colleague from New Jersey has offered one. I have been involved in this issue for a long time, as has he. When I went with my friend from South Carolina, Senator Graham, to Hong Kong to visit the ports there, I was utterly amazed at the port security system they have. It showed that we could have speed both in commerce and security. Their checking of containers for nuclear and other types of devices, checking in a variety of different ways, and having computers crossmatch those ways is incredible.

My amendment would require that the system we saw--not the specific system but what the system does that we saw--be implemented at all container security initiative ports around the world within 3 years. There are 43 CSI ports. They account for 80 percent of worldwide container traffic. It would be a huge boon to preventing the worst that could befall our country, and that is a nuclear weapon be smuggled into our ports.

The amendment mandates that every container pass through the same type of layered screening system, as at the terminal port in Hong Kong. Every container must pass through an advanced radiation portal, internal imaging system, be tagged and cataloged with a label, an RRFI, or a GPS device. It would make us far more secure.

The second amendment also requires that Homeland Security send to Congress within 180 days a detailed plan on how to deploy this system.

Those are the two amendments. I look forward to debating them as we move forward.

I thank my colleagues from Mississippi, Washington, and Texas for their courtesy.

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