Video

May 12th, 2008, U.S. Senate. Senator Jon Kyl [R-AZ] gets to the heart of the energy problem: "The Federal Reserve needs to refrain from reducing interest rates further. Our currency is the foundation for our economy. Without a strong dollar, our economy will not be able to achieve the stability that is necessary to control oil prices for the economy." Finally someone other than Ron Paul gets it. Fake politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders [I-VT] spend their precious time in the Senate reading heartbreaking letters from Americans that can't keep up with the cost of living, only to blame oil companies, foreign cartels, overpaid CEOs and shady speculators for the high prices. IT'S THE FALLING DOLLAR, STUPID! Time to ring the Fed? You can ring Ben's bell, Senator Sanders. As to drilling in the Artic, having a comatose dollar with no end at sight and a gigantic Government burning oil like there's no tomorrow, drilling now would be a disaster in more than one sense. Representative Roscoe Bartlett [R-MD] knows about it, be sure to keep that natural reserve. ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- (Transcript) Mr. President, tomorrow we are going to be voting on a couple of different bills, one of which was discussed by my colleague from North Dakota. The other is called the Domenici bill for the senior Senator from New Mexico. I believe that while the Domenici bill does not answer all of the questions with regard to energy production, it is a very good start because, first and foremost, it addresses the production side. We know there is a huge demand and not enough supply of energy. In many respects, the Domenici bill seeks to remedy that imbalance and provide for more production. In the last 30 years, U.S. consumption of oil has grown moderately. Our dependence on foreign oil has doubled to more than 13.4 million barrels per day, but our domestic production has remained relatively flat. Whether oil is purchased domestically or from foreign sources, we are feeling the negative effects of high prices more than ever. We have to do something to help bring down the price of oil and gas at the pump, and today's average was $3.78. What the Domenici amendment does is open up new production, for example, 2000 acres of the 19 million acres of the Arctic Plain which was specifically designated for oil and gas leasing so that with its new environmentally sound directional drilling, very low footprint, at least a million barrels of oil could be made available, roughly 1 million barrels a day for 20 years. That would make a big difference. It also allows that States on both the Atlantic and Pacific could petition the Federal Government to opt out of the current broad moratorium on drilling and, in a responsible, environmental manner unlock potentially millions of barrels of crude oil. The Domenici amendment streamlines and consolidates the refinery permitting process since frequently that is the bottleneck in getting refined gasoline to the consumer. It eases difficulties usually encountered when they want to build or expand refineries. We haven't built a new refinery in about 30 years. The amendment suspends delivery to the SPR, echoing comments of my colleague from North Dakota. This is not a magic bullet. Simply not buying some oil and putting it in the SPR, while it won't hurt anything and might actually help a little bit, is a very modest proposal and does nothing to actually add to the supply of energy. But the Domenici amendment includes this provision as well. It is not going to do any harm, and it could do some good. The amendment also allows for the long-term procurement of synthetic fuels by repealing section 526 of last year's energy bill which placed certain emissions requirements on Air Force fuels, for example, and repeals a provision of last year's bill that stipulated a moratorium on oil shale development. U.S. domestic oil companies are doing a lot of research into the potential for shale converted to oil. If we were able to accomplish this, we could produce much more oil in the United States as a result. (...) [ http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congres... ]