Senator Shares Energy Proposals With Brookshire’s Executives

Tyler Morning Telegraph
July 1, 2008

 U.S. Sen. John Cornyn paid a visit to Tyler on Monday to discuss fuel and food prices with a local company that could be considered one of the hardest hit by the current economic situation.

Before taking a tour of the Brookshire Grocery Company's main warehouse on WSW Loop 323, Cornyn met with the company's CEO Rick Rayford to hear how high gas and grocery prices have affected the company. Members of the Tyler Economic Development Corpor-ation were also on hand to hear the senator's proposals for combating the economic crisis in Congress.

Rayford described how Brookshire's has cut back on fuel costs by implementing several fuel-saving methods for making distributions.

 "The cost of fuel drives up the cost of food for consumers," he said.

Rebecca Sanders, the company's vice president for consumer insights, said customers are also coming up with creative ways to spend frugally, including making fewer trips to the grocery stores by buying in bulk.

"Our consumers are looking for ways to make their money go further," she said.

Cornyn praised the creative ways companies like Brookshire's, and the American people as a whole, are working through tough economic circumstances.

"It gives me a glimmer of hope," he said. "There's no shortage of ingenuity in Texans, and in Americans in general.

He gave an overview of the new Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, a bill he has co-sponsored in the Senate, which is designed to address the high price of gas at the pump and to provide a balanced approach to America's long-term energy needs.

If passed, the bill would provide for expanded drilling off the U.S. coastlines, bringing in an estimated 14 billion barrels of oil. It would also provide for oil exploration in shale regions of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, with a potential of 800 billion to 2 trillion recoverable barrels of oil.

"When you think about roughly 3 million barrels per day that could be provided, that's 3 million barrels less that we would have to buy from Venezuela, and Hugo Chavez," Cornyn said. "Or from Iran and (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad."

The bill would also look at expanding fuel alternatives, including increased development of electric vehicle technology, using sugar cane-based ethanol rather than corn-based, and exploring the use of nuclear energy for generating electric power, rather than coal.

Finally, the bill would authorize increased funding and staffing for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which would provide increased oversight and transparency of commodities trading and speculation.

Cornyn said he purposely left drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge out of the bill, because its controversial nature might prevent its passage in Congress. However, he said he would support a repeal of the drilling ban in ANWR, if it were to come into future legislation.

The bill has 43 Republican co-sponsors so far.