Byron Dorgan: “this is the right subject, this issue of alternative fuels. I commend all my colleagues for being here to talk about…”

“this is the right subject, this issue of alternative fuels. I commend all my colleagues for being here to talk about this important issue. I have mentioned often on the floor of the Senate, we live on this little planet of ours, and on this planet we circle the Sun, and we happen to live on a little patch on this planet called the United States of America. A substantial amount of oil is used here. We use one-fourth of all the oil that is pulled out of this planet every single day. About 84 million gallons of fuel is pulled out of this planet every day, and we use one-fourth of it in this country. Unfortunately, much of the resources--the oil resources--exist elsewhere. Over 60 percent of that which we use in oil comes from off our shores, much of it from very troubled parts of the world: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and so on. In a circumstance where we have such a prodigious appetite for energy--oil in this case-- and so much of it exists off our shores, it makes us very vulnerable-- extraordinarily vulnerable. If tomorrow, God forbid, terrorists should somehow interfere with the pipeline of oil to the United States of America, we would be flat on our back. Our economy would be flat on its back because we get up every single morning in this country and we pull the switch, we start the engine, we do all these things that heat the water for the shower and air-condition our home. We have such an unbelievable appetite for energy.”