Committee Hearing-Transcript

BODY:
It is a major new investment in the physical technologies, if you will, the physics of energy, of a kind we've not seen for decades in this country.

So it truly is a balanced bill that provides, once our country goes back to work, probably more jobs, more technology, more development than we've seen in a long while in the field of all forms of energy.

SEN. DOMENICI: Senator, we might mention that ethanol will be in this bill also. Ethanol is a great tool for rural development as well as gives America an opportunity to use less foreign oil. It will be adopted overwhelmingly after a series of amendments. We're glad to have it on this bill to move it along.

SEN. CRAIG: Well said.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Senator Lisa Murkowski, a member of the Energy Committee, whose state is very affected by this bill and is one of the great resources for our whole country for energy.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): Thank you. And my appreciation to you, Chairman Domenici, for shepherding this very important legislation through the process.

You know, before we went on the Memorial Day break, we passed the president's economic stimulus package with the thought in mind that we would stimulate the economy and develop jobs. This is really the second part of that jobs legislation, because with an energy bill, with an energy policy, we do create jobs, and lots of jobs.

We've talked about a lot of numbers, but we're looking at 38,000 construction jobs alone, direct and indirect jobs across the country, not just in my state, but across the country, approximately 400,000 jobs, bringing revenue into the federal treasury.

But we need to look beyond that. We need to look beyond just the job creation at what this energy policy and, quite honestly, from my state's perspective, the construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline gives to the country. It gives to us a level of energy security as it relates to natural gas that we recognize that we need, but we need to push in order to make that a reality.

Right now, as was said earlier, we're somewhat comfortable with our reserves of natural gas. Given five to 10 years, we could be in the same position that we are currently with oil, being over 55, 57 percent dependent on outside sources. We cannot let this happen. The only way that we can keep it from happening is to get Alaska natural gas down from the North Slope into the Lower 48.