Solving America's Energy Crisis

SOLVING AMERICA'S ENERGY CRISIS -- (House of Representatives - April 26, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, President Bush invited the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Abdullah, to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and met with him yesterday. Here is a photo that has been on the White House Web site and in many newspapers around the country showing the President and the Prince holding hands. That is a sign of friendship over there in that part of the world.

But I was struck by the fact that the focus, of course, was the subject of oil.

As we watch what the President said, or at least what was reported, our President is in a position of begging. America begging. America begging a dictatorship to ease up on oil prices.

My colleagues might recall the President asked the Saudi prince to take it easy before the election in November, kind of keep prices down a bit, but since the election, they have just skyrocketed. In California, people are paying over $3 a gallon. In Ohio I can tell my colleagues I have paid $2.50, $2.57. The average price they tell us is about $2.24 nationally, with a 43 percent increase since a year ago, and crude oil prices were up Monday about $54 a barrel, up $37 from a year ago.

Now, the United States consumes about $7.1 billion worth of petroleum, and two-thirds of it is being imported, Saudi Arabia being the largest supplier. In essence, America is totally dependent. People have to understand this, because until the American people really understand this, we will not change. Every time we buy a tankful of gas, two-thirds of the money we spend goes somewhere else, and it goes to places that are undemocratic.

The New York Times reports today, and it has this picture in the paper, about the President's meeting, and it also has an article about Venezuela, which I will submit to the RECORD. Venezuela provides about 15 percent of the oil that we consume. In fact, I have a chart here that shows from the Middle East where we get about 30 percent of the total supply, with Saudi Arabia being the largest supplier, along with Kuwait, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and then Venezuela about 15 percent; nearly half of what we consume comes from those regions of the world. America has to understand this, because until the people of the United States understand, this place will not change.

If we look at the sad energy bill that passed this Chamber last week, without my support, it lives in the past. It lives in the 20th century, not the 21st century. There is a theory: If you just put more holes in the ground, all problems will be solved. Well, that is not going to happen. We have to think in a different way.

Now, Venezuela, as the article in The New York Times today confirms, has become a bit antagonistic toward the United States because we have an administration who is trying to get rid of the President of that country's government. Now, whether you like Venezuela or not, the facts are we get 15 percent of our oil from there, and without that 15 percent, we have to get it from somewhere else, and the prices are going to go up. Now, the President of Venezuela believes that the United States is planning an invasion of his country, and he has threatened to cut these oil sales. It is not a very pretty picture when we look around the world, whether you look at Colombia, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Middle East. So it is not surprising that the President is holding hands with the prince.

What is truly dangerous and tragic about this trend is America is not independent. We had a Declaration of Independence at the beginning of the Republic to cut our umbilical cord to Britain for political and economic reasons. But imagine an America that was energy independent; again, where we put all of this money, that is making others rich, in the pockets of producers in this country, starting with the farmers of America who today, within 5 years, could displace 25 percent of our imported petroleum with the use of clean, burning biofuels based in biomass, in ethanol, in biodiesel, soy diesel, fuels that we can produce today on the fields that are lying fallow across this country. Imagine what biogenetics can do to produce greater BTUs per ton of what we can produce. We do not need a new hydrogen age right now; we can use what we have today to displace these purchases. We are not doing it.

Imagine, imagine an America that was energy independent; again, where when you went to the gas pump, you enriched your own community, the farmers that live around the communities that you live in, and that the gas pump that you drove up to, you could buy ethanol at E85, or you could buy 100 percent soy diesel. Do my colleagues know, in Ohio you cannot do that. Minnesota has seen the future, Iowa has seen the future. There are some places in this country who have seen the future, but the majority of our people have not seen the future.

Renewable biofuels, domestically produced, could directly displace imported petroleum, and our energy bill last week should have done that. Some of us want to live in the 21st and 22nd century; we do not want our President to be holding hands with the crown prince and begging

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