Byron Dorgan: “my colleague, Senator Wyden, just offered an amendment on his behalf and mine. He spoke in support of it. Obviously, I…”

“my colleague, Senator Wyden, just offered an amendment on his behalf and mine. He spoke in support of it. Obviously, I am a cosponsor so I support the amendment. It is an amendment that is very simple. We are putting oil away underground in something called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or SPR. The purpose of putting oil underground at this point is in the event that we would have an emergency at some point in the future, we would have a substantial inventory of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That SPR is nearly full. As I understand, it is well over 98 percent filled at this point. Yet we are still, each day, taking about 100,000 barrels of oil off the market and putting it underground at a time when we are effectively paying the highest price ever for that oil in order to put it there. There are two problems with that. No. 1, at a time when we have very high prices, which means we have lower supplies and higher demand, it makes no sense to have 100,000 barrels a day taken off the market and stuck underground. Even more than that, it makes no sense to do this, with the last increment to be put into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, at a time when oil is $55, $57, $58 a barrel. Our amendment is very simple.…”