"We are on a collision course with disaster and we have to do something very meaningful about it."

Washington, D.C. - On October 17, 2005, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett led a group of six Republican colleagues, including the Chairmen of the Intelligence and Science Committees in a one-hour Special Order speech before the U.S. House of Representatives discussing the urgency of the U.S. government responding to the threats to the U.S. economy and national security posed by global peak oil. Congressman Bartlett was joined by Congressmen Gil Gutknecht, Wayne Gilchrest, Peter Hoekstra, Sherwood Boehlert, and Vernon Ehlers.

A transcript of the text of the speech and link to the Congressional Record, (including the charts), will eventually be posted on Congressman Bartlett's website. A copy with the charts and copies of individual charts are available upon request by calling Lisa Lyons Wright at 202-225-2721 or via email to lisa.wright@mail.house.gov. The C-SPAN toll-free number to order copies of floor speeches is 1-877-662-7726.

Excerpts:

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett:

I have here an article that appeared on the front page of USA Today. It is above the fold. It is the center article. It says: Debate Brews: Has Oil Production Peaked? Whether you believe, that oil has peaked...or whether you believe that we need to do something about energy because of this national security concern, what you are going to do is essentially the same thing, you have to free ourselves from the dependence on oil, most of which is foreign oil.

Congressman Gil Gutknecht:

..It seems to me it would be worthwhile for us at the Federal level to do more to encourage more use of renewable energies like ethanol... it is better for the environment; it is better for our economy, because in the month of August we spent $22 billion, over $22 billion, the United States, in buying oil from countries that are not particularly friendly to us...I think we ought to set as a vision that we are going to become energy independent. I tried to offer last week in the energy bill that we had what we described as a 10-by-10 amendment mandating that by the year 2010, 10 percent of our gasoline will be renewable energy...I am having it redrafted as a bill. I am planning to offer it as a bipartisan effort. I think energy policy does not have to be partisan. But these numbers, I think, speak for themselves. Even if ethanol were more expensive, because of the environment and in terms of keeping more of those dollars rotating through our economy, it makes sense to use more renewable energy.

Congressman Wayne Gilchrest:

I think most people think that oil will go on forever, that there is plenty of reserves out there, that they will never dry up, they are not a finite resource, they are there for the foreseeable future, and that nature is not dynamic, but it is static.

Well, I think the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is bringing to the forefront that what is at the bottomless well is not oil; and if it is not initiative, ingenuity, and intellect, we are in for a lot of problems in the very near future. If, at the bottom of the bottomless well is initiative, ingenuity, and intellect, we will take the next logical step in cultural evolution... Oil is not going to last forever. The horizon is seeing to its completion in a number of decades, and so the transition to find alternatives to that type of fossil fuel is now... The idea that we need to transition and find alternatives to our transportation needs is vital.

Congressman Peter Hoekstra, Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:

...there are those that would advocate that say we have not reached the peak yet... the only debate should be over when we peak, not whether we will or will not peak. It is going to happen. But that only provides us what I believe is a short window, a very small window of opportunity for Congress and the United States to address this issue...We know that our demand is going to continue increasing. We know that global demand is going to continue increasing, especially for two significant countries like China and India coming on-stream, their demand for fossil fuels is going to increase dramatically. With increased demand, probably static production, we know that we are going to continue seeing increases in the pressure for the prices of fossil fuels...I think this is a national security issue. We are extremely vulnerable. Today we import about 60 percent of our fossil fuels. Who do we import from? ...Saudi Arabia, roughly 15 percent. Venezuela, Hugo Chavez who has shown himself to be not a great friend of the United States, we get about 13 percent from Venezuela, and we get about 11 percent from Nigeria... it becomes a national security issue, because at any particular given time, if these countries believe, or their leaders believe that they want to hold us hostage, they have the potential to perhaps do that...we need alternatives. It is a national security issue. It is only going to become a larger national security issue in the future...When I take a look at the mix of Members that we have here...I am optimistic that we actually can come together with a legislative fix to address this issue and hopefully do it in this Congress.

Congressman Sherwood Boehlert, Chairman, Committee on Science:

...we have 25 percent of the world's energy consumption but we have only 5 percent of the population and only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we are consuming 25 percent of the world's energy output. Now, something is wrong there...we are on a collision course with disaster and we have to do something very meaningful about it. We are consuming 21 million barrels of oil a day in the United States. 21 million. We import 14 million barrels of oil a day. So we are starting every single day with a couple of problems on our hands. Number one, if we are importing 14 million barrels of oil a day and oil is costing $60, $65 a barrel, that means we start each and every day somewhere in the neighborhood of $750 million, three-quarters of a billion dollars in the hole, in the red in our balance of trade deficit... the saddest part...some of that money that we send abroad to purchase this oil...ends up in the hands of people who are trying to undermine everything that is so dear to us that we cherish... So, in effect, you could make an argument that we are helping to sponsor terrorism...we are also doing something that is mind boggling to me. We are concentrating all of our efforts not on how we can conserve energy, but how we can consume more and find new sources of energy. Now, that is important. We have got to constantly be searching for new sources of energy but we ought to think in terms of how we can conserve energy, and making our vehicles more fuel efficient is a way to do it.

Congressman Vernon Ehlers:

I am a physicist. As a physicist, energy is tangible to me but to most people energy is intangible. You cannot touch it, see it, feel it, smell it or taste it. In other words, with our senses we cannot detect it...if energy were purple, we would certainly change our energy use habits and we would do a much better job of conserving there is no faster, cheaper way to increase our oil supply than to conserve what we use....we can get the use of more energy at lower cost by doing that than by any oil exploration scheme and refinery-building scheme or anything else you wish to do... we are being held hostage by other countries. Our energy costs are being used against us in various ways, and we simply have to start conserving energy, using it more efficiently, imagining that it is purple and keep trying to reduce the amount of purple that we produce by our use of energy.

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett

October 17, 2005