Date: 2008-09-09
Speaker: LINCOLN DAVIS (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Tennessee

Thank you. Mr. Ross. Certainly. its always a pleasure to be here to speak when the Blue Dogs have a special session and an opportunity to come and speak before the Members of Congress. as well as the American people. There are some facts that I believe all of us need to know. I think the American people need to know this. When you look at the oil reserves. the proved oil reserves. that we have in the world. America has about 3 percent. When you look at the actual production of the consumption of oil in the world. we produce about 10 percent of the worlds consumption. Unfortunately. we consume almost 25 percent of all the production in the world. and in doing that. it makes us almost be a hostage to oilproducing countries. Now. lets talk a little bit about how much oil that we use. We use over 7.5. almost 8 billion barrels of crude oil a year. We produce about 2.5 billion of that. and the rest we import. mainly from our hemisphere. some small amount from the Middle East. but mostly. from our hemisphere. whether its Canada. Mexico. Venezuela. Different parts of our hemisphere comes to America. Now. what does that tell me? If we have got 3 percent of the oil reserves. then were always going to be held hostage. But where are those reserves located? They tell us that weve got roughly 150 billion barrels of crude oil in the Outer Continental Shelf. Thats the max. Good estimates say we probably have no more than 85 billion barrels of crude oil in the Outer Continental Shelf. add about 10 billion max up in ANWR or about 7.5 billion that we could actually take out of ANWR for a profitable margin for our oil companies. That being the case. we have a 1year supply in ANWR. Were hearing from folks who are making this a political issue that we just drill and drill our way out of it. We import 5 billion barrels of crude oil a year. 5 billion barrels. If we. in fact. have 100 billion barrels of crude oil. which is the estimate that we .would have probably in both ANWR. in the Outer Continental Shelf in Alaska. in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Pacificabout 24 billion in the Outer Continental Shelf in Alaska. 20 billion barrels in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Pacific. in the gulf about 44 billion. very little on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf. about 3 to 4 billion barrels. little over .100 billion barrels total. Thats a 20year supply of what were importing today. And we will use all that up. and if we have another war. by the time we have to defend ourselves and have the abundance of oil. are we going to go to Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Iran and ask them for oil so we can fight them with it? I think we have got to look at alternatives more than we have ever looked. Ten years ago. in 1998. the average price of a barrel of oil was $14 a barrel. Let me rephrase that. Just 10 years ago. $14 a barrel. Volatile conditions in the world. overconsumption. and in many cases. an unplanned energy policy that will make us totally selfsustainable has not occurred. I did some research on windmills. From 1850 to 1900 over 6 million windmills were sold in this country. They ground our corn with it to make cornmeal. They ground our wheat to make flour. In some cases. they even used it for electricity. In 1880. this country had 50 million people in it: 9.5 million families. 8.5 million households. In that 50year period of time. 6 million windmills. They were smarter than us because weve become dependent on the combustion engine. Weve become dependent on foreign sources for our crude oil. It is time that we take a serious look at all the alternatives. including wind and solar. including nuclear. Im not sure Id like to say this. T. Boone Pickens is one of those guys. Mr. Speaker. that helped fund Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. When that guy comes to the Democrat Caucus and says you are on the right track. a staunch Republican. it tells me we are doing something right. I would love to spend about 20 minutes here.