Pete Domenici: “I rise to speak about a disaster that has occurred within the last 24 hours in the country of North Korea. We now have…”

“I rise to speak about a disaster that has occurred within the last 24 hours in the country of North Korea. We now have on the wire service recognition of the fact that there was a train wreck in North Korea where two trains ran into each other. It appears that between 1,000 and 3,000 people were killed. One report says 1,000 and another report says 3,000. In the meantime, the North Koreans have cut off the telephone lines to the area and have closed the border, so considering the nature of the country, I do not know when we will find out how many. The reason I rose to talk about it is because the substances that we have been told were in those trains do not come close to the explosive power of liquefied natural gas. They are some kind of a liquefied petroleum and another product like propane, and it must have been sufficient power for this to ignite and blow up. Why would I bring this subject up on the Senate floor? Well, I say to my colleagues, the Nation we live in has been on such an absurd path with reference to diversifying our energy resources that we are currently thinking about using liquefied natural gas in large quantities to take the place of natural gas, which is getting higher and higher in demand and less and less in terms of supply. I believe we ought to get on with producing as much natural gas from our own sources as possible.”