Date: 2008-02-26
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

I thank my friend from Tennessee for yielding. Madam Speaker. when we look at the economy that our Nation is facing and what we should be doing about it. quite frankly. in the area of energy. what we need to see is our Nation take on the issue of energy as a scientific challenge of our time. Really. it should be nothing less than the Apollo Project of our time where our resources for research and development and our educational institutions look to answer the question: How do we make our country energy secure in a way that is respectful of the environment and our public health? I was noticing today that oil is trading at $100 a barrel. This will probably continue to climb. It will continue to climb as long as we continue to embargo our own oil resources off the Atlantic Coast. the gulf coast. the Pacific Coast. the Western States. and Alaska. And. yes. we need to do a great deal to improve the efficiency of automobiles. We need to do a great deal to improve the efficiencies of our highways. which waste massive amounts of fuel. But in terms of our economy. we cannot continue to have our families suffer the high prices that come when we say we will continue to be more and more dependent upon importation of foreign oil sources. We also are more and more dependent upon the marketplace with regard to natural gas. When we see our chemical companies shutting down plants in America and instead saying theyll build plants in the Mideast because the cost of natural gas is so much cheaper there. perhaps 25 cents to $1 per million Btus. whereas here it may fluctuate to $6 or $8 or $10 or $12. it is something thats costing jobs and costing our economy. ] 1645 It is something that is costing jobs and costing our economy. It is difficult to see our President of the United States go and talk to Saudi leaders and ask them to increase production of oil recognizing that we are at their mercy as OPEC continues to set prices. We can change that by saying we will explore in environmentally responsible ways Americans oil resources. Lets look. for example. to shale oil in Colorado. Estimates are 2 trillion barrels of oil there. 2 trillion barrels of shale oil. We cut that off in our omnibus spending bill. This is forcing us to continue to import oil. some 60 percent. We limit development on natural gas. We also have situations where we are hurting our coal development. Our energy bills that we are facing this week and have faced for a while have not done much to improve our use of coal. but we have some 300 years worth of coal. What we ought to be doing is focusing our research and development dollars into using coal and cleaning it up so it does not have emissions. so it does not have large levels of COs. so it does not pollute. That is a scientific challenge of our time. That is something we should be challenging our students as they go through school to think about how they can solve these issues. how they can create clean energy from our abundant resources of coal. how they can continue to find ways of using oil resourcefully and with environmental respect. This is not something we are aoing enough of. So what hbppens? It costs families more to go to work. it costs families more to feed their families. Look at what is happening with wheat prices. Yes. there are problems with wheat production in other parts of the world. but a big part of those costs has to do with the cost of transporting things. Last summer. flour was sold at about $16 per hundredweight. Now it is $40 or so. probably climbing to $60. How will we handle it if a loaf of bread doubles on top of the increased prices people have to pay driving their cars to get to the grocery store? It is too much of a burden. If we treat our energy needs as our Apollo project of this 21st century. of this decade. we would find jobs and more jobs and more jobs come out of this. The best economic stimulus package is a job. That is where we should be focusing. What can we do to build our infrastructure there? What kind of jobs come from building efergy power plants? What happens when we start to put all our laborers. carpenters. ironworkers. boilermakers and electrical workers to build these plants? Let me tell you how big this demand is. We have 400 old coalfired power plants with inefficient or no pollution controls on many of them. We need to replace those 400 coal power plants. and because our energy demands of this country are going to double by 2050. we have to build an additional 400. We have to replace 100 nuclear plants and build an additional 100. What that means is. starting in 2010. a ribboncutting ceremony to open up a new coalfired power plant every 2 weeks and a new nuclear plant every 22 months. These are massive jobs for America. We should be making those investments so we have those jobs. And the best thing we can be doing is finding ways to clean up our resources. Why. the Pittsburgh coal seam alone. as my friend from Tennessee knows. overlaps my State of Pennsylvania. Ohio. West Virginia. Tennessee. Kentucky. and Alabama. And that is just one of our vast resources. Lets focus our energy on.doing what is right for the longterm for America. for Americas jobs and Americas economy. and stop saying "no" to energy security.