mr. speaker , i want to try to respond to some of the comments that have been made . 
one comment that has been made is that the u.s. oil companies somehow control the market . 
we consume 21 million barrels a day of oil in this country . 
we only produce 8 million barrels a day . 
we import 1 million to 2 million barrels a day from saudi arabia . 
we import a million barrels a day from venezuela . 
we import a half a million barrels a day from libya . 
we import some oil , believe it or not , from iraq . 
we import a million barrels a day from mexico . 
one thing the u.s. oil companies do not do is control the market . 
they do accept a world market price . 
the reason the price of oil is high is because the world is using about 84 million barrels of oil a day and the world is producing about 84 million barrels of oil a day . 
economies like china and india are growing at 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 percent a year . 
the amount of oil that china is going to need from the world market in the next year is expected to go up perhaps as much as a million barrels a day . 
so that is one reason the oil prices are high . 
the gentleman from michigan ( mr. stupak ) xz4003910 comments that his price gouging amendment does something on natural gas . 
that is true . 
i would like to point out that every state puc in the country already regulates the retail price of natural gas , so in that particular instance , i am not sure that his amendment would do much good . 
the pending bill does have a provision to get information from the gathering systems , the gulf of mexico for natural gas production , which is something that we do not have under current law . 
with that i would just ask us to vote for the rule . 
