Pete Domenici: “One remaining issue is: How do you drill for oil today, and how did you drill for it 25 years ago or even 30 years ago…”

“One remaining issue is: How do you drill for oil today, and how did you drill for it 25 years ago or even 30 years ago, when some of the wells were drilled in California--maybe hundreds of the wells were drilled in California and hundreds, maybe thousands of the wells in Texas were drilled? Has America made any strides in changing the way we drill for oil in 15, 20, 25 years? I can tell you, some of the most dynamic, intelligent engineers in the world have spent years finding out how to drill holes in Mother Earth. As a matter of fact, the expertise in drilling did not just come over these years from people interested in drilling for oil wells. We have had an interest in drilling for many reasons. Would you believe that the great laboratories of America--Los Alamos, Sandia, Livermore--have had a genuine, abiding piece of their research directed at, how do you drill holes into Mother Earth? One time, they were experimenting in one of the laboratories in drilling thousands of feet underground to see if they could tap into the geothermal heat pockets. They learned all kinds of things about drilling. Then they had to drill holes as part of the nuclear weapons activities in the deserts of Nevada. Millions of dollars were put into, how do you do it so you don't waste time, so you don't produce a whole bunch of environmental degradation? Couple that with the resources of the energy companies, which wasn't soft; it was pretty big. It was pretty hot stuff.…”