Energy
ENERGY -- (House of Representatives - September 18, 2008)
Mr. LATTA. Well, I thank my friend from Georgia for hosting this tonight because, once again, energy is the number-one topic on everyone's mind in this country. It has been a number-one topic since I have gotten here, and I think it's going to be topic for years to come. It's really important for me.
My district, as a lot of you already know, I represent the number-one agriculture district in the State of Ohio, and I also represent one of the top 10 manufacturing districts in Congress. If we don't have energy in my district, we are not going to survive. If we don't have energy for those farmers, they can't get out there and plant those crops.
To tell you a couple of examples that have been going on, I have had meetings across my 16 counties, talking with farmers all over the entire district. Right now I have talked to many a farmer that when they go out with their tractor in the morning, and by the time they get back at night, they have put $800 to $1,000 of diesel fuel through their equipment in 1 day.
They talk about their fertilizer, they talk about the chemicals that they have to put on that land and make that land productive. They are coming back, and they are saying, you know, we are paying two and a half to three times more than we did 2 years ago for the same product.
The question is, well, these farmers are all getting rich right now. No, they are not, because they are out there having to pay all these high prices for diesel. They have to pay all these high prices when it comes to fertilizer. They have to pay all these high prices when it comes to chemicals, and they can't afford it.
What is happening, of course, is when people go to the store, and they buy that loaf of broad, when they buy that gallon of milk, they are saying, gee, why are prices going up? I can tell you why prices are going up, because these energy prices are out of control in this country. These energy prices are out of control because this Congress, this Democrat-controlled Congress, is not acting today to make sure that we can put food on the table and keep this price cheap for Americans.
We were able a few years ago, and up to this year, say that most people within 42 to 43 days were able to pay for all of their food in those first 42 to 43 days of the year. That's what we need to do in this country, because if we don't, it's the same thing that is going to happen on manufacturing side, we are in that same situation where right now the United States is the number one manufacturing country in the world.
Well, guess what, next year we drop to number two, and we all know who number one will be, and that will be China. They have been out there making sure they have that supply, but also they have that supply of energy that they have for the future.
So it's very, very important for not only the Fifth Congressional District of Ohio, but it's also important for this country of ours, this great country, to make sure that we can meet the energy needs of the future. I know that one of our Members not too long ago told us a story about a trucker, a long-haul trucker in his district. He said he got a load to go from Texas to California and back.
He was paid $1,700 for the entire load. Well, it cost him $1,500 in fuel, so by the time you figure the cost of insurance, buying that truck and everything else, it would have been cheaper for him to let that truck stay at home and just leave the keys in it. Now, I have had truckers call me, independent truckers, saying you know what, Bob, we have got real problems out here. We are actually turning our keys back over to the finance company because we can't afford to even run our trucks anymore. We can't afford to do our job.
In Ohio, when we have 80 percent of all products being delivered by truck, how are we going to get things to the consumer, how are we going to get the product to market? So that's what we have got, massive problems right here, not only in Ohio, but across this country.
As has been mentioned a little bit by the gentleman before from Tennessee, we are talking about renewables. I am 100 percent behind renewables, because it is kind of interesting in my district, we already have one solar manufacturing plant in business right now. We have another one that's going to be online next year.
We also have a company working on a hydrogen engine, we have the only four wind turbines. I can see from them from the backyard of my house in Bowling Green. We also have two ethanol plants in my district.
The one thing is a lot of people like to think on the other side of the aisle, and some of the environmentalists, all this is going to happen overnight. It's not.
I was privileged to be one of the Members that went up to ANWR not too long ago, but we stopped in Colorado first at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. When we were there, it was interesting, because I was fascinated because everything I just mentioned from solar to wind to hydrogen to ethanol, that's what they are doing out there right now.
Every time that we talked about something, they showed us something, for instance, we were talking about on the hydrogen side. They said this is what we would like to do on the hydrogen. It was kind of fascinating, because, well, we could create the hydrogen, because we could take a wind turbine and break down that electricity, break them into hydrogen, and we could run it down to like a hydrogen filling station so you could fill your car up right there.
But the same question I always asked every time we got through a subject is how long and how far are we? They said, we are not there yet. We are not there yet. We are off for quite a ways. It's just like the electric cars, they showed us electric cars.
A lot of us in northwest Ohio, and I know across this great country of ours, a lot of people have to drive more than 50 miles one way to work. Well these cars, you can only go 60 miles before you have got to plug them back in. Well, that's a real problem.
You can't just go 60 miles in my district because you would never get home that night. If you are driving 100 miles one way, you have got a problem there. You know, but those are things we are working on for the future. As my friend from Tennessee mentioned earlier, these things are down the road, we are not there yet.
It's the same way when we talk about the wind side. You know, we have seen a lot of commercials on TV, from T. Boone Pickens and how much we would like to have, in the near future, by wind power. Well, the problem with that is it's going to take maybe 150,000 to 200,000 wind turbines to get us to that point. We are not there, next year or the year after, or the year after that. We are talking maybe 2020 or 2030.
We have got to have energy now. If we are not going to have energy now, we are not going to be able to manufacture. We are not going to have farmers in the field. This winter we have people telling me right now that we are not going to have the fuel to put in their tanks at home to make it through the entire winter when it comes to home heating oil.
We have a lot of work we have got to get done, and we have got to get it done now. When we went to ANWR, it was really fascinating in that when we were up there we flew up by Fairbanks into Prudhoe Bay. When Prudhoe Bay first came on line, they were talking about it might only produce around 9 to 10 billion barrels of oil. Now they have revised that, it could be up to 13 to 15 billion barrels.
The pipeline up there, you know, it's 800 miles long. That brings that lifeline down to the lower 48 to make sure that we have fuel. At its peak it was bringing down about 2.1 million barrels a day. Today it's only bringing down 700,000 barrels a day.
The thing that really concerns me when I hear that, when that number gets down to 300,000 barrels a day, and we are losing about 15 percent capacity every year up there, when it gets down to 300,000 barrels a day, that pipeline won't be able to flow any more. If there is oil in the pipeline, it will clog it up and they won't be able to go back in there and clean out the pipeline. That means that the pipeline is finished. When we are importing 70 percent of our oil every day into this country, we can't afford to shut that pipeline off.
It has also been demonstrated why we need diversification from where we get our oil in this country. When you have a hurricane and you have to shut down oil rigs in the gulf, and the refineries are out there, we have a problem. We have to diversify. We have to be up in Alaska. We know there is a known source of about 10.3 billion barrels.
So we have to drill and make sure that we have that oil for the future. Just real briefly in summation, when we are talking about what we want to do up there, we are talking about ANWR which is 19 million acres, the size of South Carolina. Section 10.02 land is about 1.5 million acres, and we need 2,000 acres to get this oil out. We have to make sure that we can get this done so we have a future for this country.
I applaud my friend for having this all-important special order tonight to bring up this subject about why we need energy for this country.
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