Pete Domenici: “I guess this shouldn't get me started because I should not be here, I have something else to do, but I guess when you…”

“I guess this shouldn't get me started because I should not be here, I have something else to do, but I guess when you are in the Senate, you ought to stay in the Senate. But on liquefied natural gas--I might as well make sure the Senate hears this--we can't get along without liquefied natural gas for the next 25 years, and when you add up demands, unless something really breaks--maybe if we had all of the Alaskan plants for natural gas down here, but it takes long enough to--I think the statement is we must have energy. But we were counting on a lot of it. It is happening, however. It is being bought in place by foreign countries. Let me tell you that what means. Qatar, a country with huge supplies of natural gas, may very well decide that they could sell the whole natural gas field to China. There won't be any ships on the sea on which to bid. That could happen. Right now, natural gas in the form of liquefied natural gas is not coming to America in large quantities. We need a lot more ports to get ready. But they are paying more for it to go to Spain than what we pay to bring it here because there is such a demand. While we sit on the natural gas expecting LNG, the LNG is being bid up and going elsewhere, and we sit here wondering whether we should pass this bill to use our own, which is 100 miles offshore. It isn't all so clear where we are going to get this natural gas, this beautiful product. It is so good that we burn it right in our kitchens.…”