Pastoral Resources

Our oil problems are only going to get worse. Our trade balance is only going to get worse. So we have to slow the growth of U.S. oil consumption, particularly imported oil consumption.

So we in Congress have a very clear choice. We can take largely symbolic action and sit back and fiddle while Americans burn more gasoline. Or we can pass concrete, effective legislation that will save consumers money while significantly reducing U.S. oil consumption.

I don't see a groundswell of people willing to raise gas taxes right now. That leaves fuel economy standards as the only effective tool we have as a nation to make a dent in our dangerous and ever growing consumption of oil.

Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.

First, we should not be opening our coasts, all of our coasts, to oil drilling when we have not taken the first step, not the first step, to conserve oil.

We are considering various ways of making use of our oil and gas downstream industries. This is to be complemented with the import of oil and gas from other sources as raw materials.

With gas prices nationally, and especially in our area, increasingly on the rise, it is more crucial then ever that we take steps to diversify our energy sources and reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

So when you go up against the Far Right you go up against the big financial special interests like the Halliburtons of the world, the big oil companies, the big energy companies who work so hard to rip us off.

There's a lot to be said about what's happening to our ocean, big companies polluting it with their oil and all the raw garbage that's being spilled in there.

We were told this war would be over in a matter of weeks, and that the Iraqis would be able to finance it with oil sales. We were promised it was not a mission of nation building.

This is a bipartisan effort. This is just good common sense. This is where the public wants us to go. They want us to not be so dependent on foreign oil.

Financial service providers act as the lubricating oil in the economy. They link consumers who want to invest their savings for a good return with companies who want to borrow on best terms for expansion.

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.

When my job was attempting to predict future economic developments for the Shell oil company, I was frequently reminded of an Arabic saying: 'Those who claim to foresee the future are lying, even if by chance they are later proved right.'

If the world market believed that we were serious about energy independence and we were going to utilize all of our own existing resources, the speculators would stop speculating up they start speculating down as we get our own oil out of the ground.

So, I think even in Saudi Arabia there is movement. And we have to remember that over the years they've stabilized the oil price and that is tremendously important for the economies of the world. I think we have no choice but to work with the government of Saudi Arabia.

Five years of Republicans' failed energy policies have resulted in Americans paying twice as much at the pump as they did in 2001, while big oil companies make triple the profits.

It might have been offset for us if the revenue from our own oil and natural gas that was just developing had been available to the Labor Government, but the oil revenues were just coming in when Labor fell in '79.