Date: 2008-06-18
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again I rise in support of H.R. 5909. the Catching Operational Vulnerabilities by Ensuring Random Testing Act of 2008. I just wish we had the Catching Operational Vulnerabilities by Ensuring Real Energy Production in this Country Act of 2008. The gentlelady from New York has suggested that its almost insignificant what we do offshore and that we are not actually going after those things right now. Well. let me just put some facts on the table. According to the U.S. Minerals Management Servicenot a Republican or Democratic operationAmericas deep seas on the Outer Continental Shelf contain 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Now. to put that in perspective. the United States consumes 23 trillion cubic feet per year. so 20 times. almost. what we get per year. And 86 billion barrels of oil contained in the deep seas on the Outer Continental Shelf. 86 billion barrels of oil. and currently Mie U.S. imports 4.5 billion barrels of oil per year. So thats about the equivalent of a little less than 20 years of our imports. But 85 percent of the lower 48 Outer Continental Shelf energy resources remain under the lock and key of the Federal Government. Now. why do I say this deals with operational vulnerabilities? We have said in this bill that if you tip off people that theyre being investigated. they might not act as they normally do. They might take advantage of you because they know that you are doing these covert operations. Similarly. we are the only developed Nation in the world that forbids safe energy production on our Outer Continental Shelf. No other country in the world does that. Brazil just explored on theirs. and they found the largest single gas find in modern history. In fact. some people are saying that Brazil will now be energy independent and not even have to deal with their ethanol production by way of sugar. Oh. by the way. we could be importing ethanol from sugar from Brazil at much lower costs than ethanol produced by corn in the United States. We have a 53 cent per gallon subsidy for cornbased ethanol. and we have something on the order of a 51 cent tariff on any ethanol brought in produced by sugar from Brazil or anywhere else. and I believe the farAr bill brings it down to 45 cents. So we basically have put ourselves in the hole by about 90 cents per gallon with respect to ethanol that makes more cents from sugar than that that were producing in corn. But even though Brazil is the leader in the world in ethanol produced by sugar. it went ahead and explored on their Outer Continental Shelf. And what did they find? The largest single find. Now. if you had looked a year ago or 2 years ago about the proven reserves for Brazil. that would not even be there because we didnt know about it. The other thing is. with technology. already known fields can produce more than they ever did before. One of the reasons I have a little bit of knowledge of this. I grew up in Long Beach. California. .l 1145 We have been producing offshore Long Beach since before I was born. Every single citizen of the State of California who has any interest in the schools of California is proud of the fact. frankly. that there are subsidies that go to our schools from the royalties paid as a result of producing offshore Long Beach. Now we havent had a major oil spill in my lifetime. We have I think over 1.000 rigs in the gulf coast that have been sitting there during these tremendous storms that we call hurricanes. including Katrina. that came through that area in the last few years. Not a single drop of oil has resulted. even though we have had massive destruction of all other kinds of facilities in that area. The United States companies. that some on this floor have berated. have spent billions of dollars in development of new technology to make it safer. And the suggestion that somehow they are hiding. somehow they are not utilizing these leases that they have. is just a fantastic claim. because it is utterly preposterous that they would pay money for leases and then not try to see what is there. The fact of the matter is that 52 percent of the oil and gas wells that have been drilled by American companies. 52 percent over the last 5 years. have turned out dry. Now. did they get these leases because they wanted to find dry wells? No. They went because there is a certain risk. It is not as easy as is suggested on this floor of the House that. okay. I am an oil company. I make money. I have friends who have worked on oil rigs who are missing fingers from the work that goes on there. I have friends that have worked in South and Central America who have worked on rigs at all time using what is called drilling mud. using those drill bits. losing fingers. working hard at it. realizing that you dont have a guarantee of every time you put a well down. you are going to get oil up. So I just find it fantastic that in this argument. number one. we are told. well. we dont have that much oil. It is really the fault of Americans because they use so much oil. I dont know whether that sells too much. blaming Americans for using energy that allows their lives to be better than our parents and grandparents generation was in terms of the standard of living. And secondly. to berate American companies that are leaders in the world in technology around the world. It is strange to me that some on the other side of the aisle believe that it is important for us to make sure we dont have any Outer Continental Shelf drilling off Florida. for instance. when Cuba has lease agreements with a number of countries. including China. although they havent yet started to drill. that would allow them to drill within either 45 miles or 60 miles of our Florida coast. Now maybe it makes sense to tell the American people that they are at fault. I dont believe they are at fault. I think they are looking at us for some solutions. We have a solution here to the problem of the possibility of tipping people off to testing. It makes no sense to me. and most on my side of the aisle. for us to be the only developed nation in the world tipping off the rest of the world that we are going to close off most of our areas of natural resources. Remember. when we got Alaska. some referred to it as Sewards Folly. Maybe we didnt realize the folly until now when we intentionally cut off our ability to be able to environmentally and safely explore and produce energy in Alaska. But we divert a little bit from this bill. This bill is the Catching Operational Vulnerabilities By Ensuring Random Testing Act of 2008. COVERT testing. I congratulate the gentlelady for bringing this bill forward. I congratulate the chairwoman of the subcommittee for working on this along with those of us on this side. I congratulate the chairman of the committee. the gentleman from Mississippi. for bringing this forward. With that. Mr. Speaker. I will yield back the balance of my time.