Pete Domenici: “it probably will come as a big surprise that, for example, the current price for a gallon of crude oil is cheaper than…”

“it probably will come as a big surprise that, for example, the current price for a gallon of crude oil is cheaper than the price for a gallon of bottled water. Many people will say, ``That is great.'' Those who look at the American economy and forget about our oil production and our oilfield workers, they would say, ``Great.'' But if you are looking at how far we have gone in our oil dependence, you will see the small producers of oil in the United States are in the most serious problem they have been in in modern times. The prices are so low that I had two of them come to see me the other day. One last year had $15 million invested in new wells; this year, zero. One drilled 31 new wells last year; this year, 1. We have hundreds of thousands of small wells, called stripper wells, producing 15 barrels a day or less. Many of those, if they shut them in, the oil is gone. The entire reserve is lost. We are not sure how to fix that. It is a very complicated problem. But the amendment that is being offered, which I join in, is saying, with prices this low and the fact that we used a lot of our expensive oil during the Iraqi war, we ought to replenish with $420 million worth of purchases. At least it will stabilize somewhat the faltering prices here and may stabilize the stripper wells that are going down the tube and will not be available to America for the production of oil.”