Energy Crises Affecting Americans

Press Release

ENERGY CRISES AFFECTING AMERICANS -- (House of Representatives - September 10, 2008

Mr. LATTA. Mr. Speaker, I represent one of the largest, if not the largest, ag districts in the State of Ohio. Also, according to the National Manufacturers Association, I represent one of the top 10 manufacturing districts in the country. And over this August break that we had, I was across my district--north, south, east and west--having a lot of meetings with farmers and a lot of meetings with our manufacturers. And the word wasn't all that good. Farmers were telling me that on many a day they're burning between $800 and $1,000 a day for diesel. They're paying much higher costs for fertilizer and chemicals--and in some cases these are up 3 to 3.5 times as much as they were 2 to 3 years ago.

Manufacturers: Not only the cost of shipping being up, but also the cost of the product that they had to produce with. They took me into the warehouses at the factories and they said, you know, a year ago, if you would have been here, this entire warehouse would have been full of the product that we needed to produce what we need to make our goods with. And today, it is only a quarter full. But that's the same price that we paid last year for this year, only a quarter. And it was an oil-based product. They've got a problem, because as that price keeps going up, they have to make tough decisions on manufacturing what they're going to do in Ohio.

You know, we were talking about it just not affecting the farmers and manufacturers out there, but it also affects everyone. For the man and woman on the street, when it comes to thinking about their retirement and their future and putting their kids through college, they have to think, well, are we going to put that in the gas tank, in the oil tank for fuel this winter and not buy that new car or that new washing machine that might be produced in the northern part of Ohio?

I was fortunate enough earlier this summer to go to ANWR with 10 other Members. And we went up there, we saw Prudhoe Bay and what was being done there, and also looking at what was right across from the line of the river of ANWR. And ANWR, if you don't know, is the size of South Carolina, about 19 million acres. We're looking at an area that was set aside in 1980 of what they call section 1002 of about 1.5 million acres of that. And when you get right down to it, all we're talking about in this whole debate, when we're talking about ANWR, is an area of about 2,000 acres. And that translates to about 3.5 square miles in size. But we've got to do it. Because what's happening right now is, when the Alaskan pipeline was at its height, it was carrying about 2.1 million barrels of oil a day.

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