Thomas Mott Osborne: “as I travel my district in Nebraska, the number one concern is high fuel prices, and I would assume that is true for a…”

“as I travel my district in Nebraska, the number one concern is high fuel prices, and I would assume that is true for a great many Members in this Chamber. The reasons are somewhat obvious. Worldwide demand for petroleum has increased. China and India are using more oil than ever before. We are nearly 60 percent dependent on foreign oil at the present time. OPEC can, to some degree, set oil prices because of that. And of course more recently the hurricanes have shut down some of our refineries. So we took a good first step last July in passing the energy bill. The renewable fuel standards require 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol or biodiesel by 2012, which nearly doubles the amount of renewable fuels. Also the energy bill expedites access to 2 trillion barrels of oil in U.S. oil shale deposits. And also it promotes an initiative for the production of hydrogen fuel cells, which I think in 15 to 20 years can pretty much remove demand for petroleum fuel products. However, we do need some immediate relief, something quicker than the energy bill passed in July can provide. We have had no new refineries built since 1976. It is almost impossible to get a building permit for a new refinery, and so as a result our refineries are operating at roughly 95 percent of full capacity, whereas most in the industry operate somewhere around 75 percent to 80 percent of capacity. So any slight disruption in the process can put us right over the edge, as happened with the hurricanes.…”