If we think, as a Nation, we can continue consuming 33 to 40 percent of the world's energy, we have another thought coming. Disaster is facing the United States. I don't care how many billions we pour in it, we are not going to continue forever increasing and doubling our per capita consumption of energy every 15 years. It just can't be.

Nothing is really being done to freeze our per capita consumption and I have also made such major points that we are not doing enough for mass transit and we are not doing enough for recycling of material which uses much less energy than the virgin material.

Take the issue of commercial aviation versus private aviation. Private aviation uses more fuel than commercial aviation by far. That is a big factor. I take off from the Erie airport and the plane is half empty. It is followed by five or six company jets, each taking one president, and they use more energy than that one plane coming to Philadelphia and Washington.

The railroads can transport much cheaper per fuel unit than the trucking industry. Yesterday, I read in the paper where the Defense Department has been ordered to cut back on the use of vehicles and airplanes, which may be a good thing. They may be overusing then. But nowhere have I seen anyone proposing to do away with the Memorial Day races in Indianapolis. I fail to see what purpose they serve, or all of these other thousands of drag races throughout the United States.

Secretary MORTON. I think one of the ways we might get at this is for you to put a bill in that does freeze the per capita use of energy and we will be very happy to respond to it. I think what we are dealing with here is the American way of life. What we are trying to do through the development of better highways, hopefully the answer to a lot of this is in Detroit, with more efficient cars.

I think the marketplace is going to have a tremendous effect on the per capita use of energy if gasoline gets to a dollar, and there is no reason to think in several years it might not reach that point. It becomes a much bigger piece of the action as far as the gross national product is concerned.

You are so right, that the energy ethic that we have grown up under, that the American way of life has been built on, is a highenergy consumption plateau, and if we are going to do it, where do we start? Do we cut out recreational boating, do we cut out automobile transportation in the cities, do we cut out taxicabs? There are many approaches to it. But I think it is so encompassing and so affects our way of life that to come forward with a discipline-type, regulationtype approach regulates the very way of life of America.

I think this is something we together, the Congress, the Executive, and the institutions that are involved in this, all have to reckon with. I have been given the mission to set up an energy conservation office within the Department of the Interior. What should be the goals? We have sort of had in our minds, we should aim at a 5-percent reduction as far as individuals and institutions and including the Government is concerned. If we were able to achieve that goal, the shortage situation we face, short term, perhaps this summer and next winter, would be alleviated.

How do we do this? I am so glad you are thinking this way. We are thinking this way, but how do you do it without shutting America

down in terms of economic freedoms, social freedoms, architectural freedoms? The World Trade Center uses more energy than the whole city of Schenectady, N. Y. Is it right or is it wrong?

These are questions that I think we have to answer one at a time. It is a very difficult point. You are so right.

Mr. UDALL. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. VIGORITO. In the long run, the marketplace will solve some of these problems. When gasoline gets to $1 a gallon, as you mentioned, a lot of our priorities will have to be readjusted, like fuel. I just wanted to put that out.

Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. You answered that.

Mr. UDALL. Mr. Hosmer.

Mr. HOSMER. I would like to ask you the same question I addressed to Senator Jackson, concerning the geothermal steam bill that we passed, I now find 3 years ago rather than five. It just seems like 5 years ago, because thus far we haven't any regulations, there has been not one single lease let. It is a resource that is being untapped. My question is simply. Mr. Secretary, are you willing to kick the hell out of someone in the Interior Department to get that thing unlocked?

Secrtary MORTON. Yes, I have done that. The Interior Department has told its Secretary on several occasions that the 102 statement, which has this thing in the logjam situation, is right around the corner. I asked recently, what the hell corner? It is going to be out the next week, the next week, the next 50 days, the next 60 days.

I am not going to tell you when it is going to come out because I will be putting my neck on the chopping block. I am willing to kick he hell out of people. Every week I am told it will come out, isn't hat right, Mr. Lay?

Mr. LAY. Yes, sir. I assure you, the Secretary has kicked the hell out f a lot of people on that one.

Mr. UDALL. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOSMER. Yes.

Mr. UDALL. I was shocked when last December, the subcommittee on rrigation and Power of this Committe took a field trip to look at eothermal. We went over to Mexico, 25 miles from the U.S. border. could see the mountains of my native State and California across the ne, and here are the Mexicans, whom we had thought of as backward the field, putting on the line geothermal power generating elecicity, something like a third or a fourth of the energy of Hoover am. Here are our friends and neighbors, the Mexicans, 10 years ead of us.

Mr. HOSMER. It is not technology and research and development of billion you need, you really don't need that. It is just letting private lustry come in and do the job that it is capable of doing with its rrent technology when there is financial profit.

You have a bunch of bureaucrats in your Department trying to ke a career out of geothermal steam, which in the normal sense is right; it is the instinct of the bureaucrat, but I think we have to short the institution and start getting the Btu.

Secretary MORTON. Let me put it in perspective. Even if we are cessful, the most optimistic framework we are talking about is a y low percentage of your total electricity. Now, too, you have to ember, and this is something I have to be reminded of 25 times a

day, we are still pretty new under our whole response to the National Environmental Policy Act and how really to do it.

It took us about 18 months to write the 102 statement for the Alaskan pipeline. It was a very, very complete, comprehensive thing. Environmentally, the whole problem of geothermal steam and the entrance into the depth of the earth to conquer this heat, use it, and dispose of the byproducts of it, have tremendous environmental problems.

I am very free to admit, Mr. Hosmer, that we are still into thirdgrade reader stage in learning how to really analyze and put together environmental impact statements of a very complex nature. We are improving. I think we have learned a great lesson in the pipeline statement, but we have this one. We also have the oil shale problem. We haven't yet come up with an environmental impact statement that I am satisfied with or the Department is satisfied with for the development of oil shale.

Now, why have we been so slow? I think the reason is because these two areas present tremendous environmental problems and in the light of not having any real previous history of measuring the environmental problems that are concurrent with oil shale and with geothermal

steam.

Mr. HOSMER. I understand the problems but I think the cause of this delay goes deeper than the environmental area. It has to do with classification of land and the other elements of the economics, and the bureaucratic process.

Secretary MORTON. The Organic Act would help us.

Mr. HOSMER. I think I had better yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Massachusetts and give him a chance to get a question in.

Mr. UDALL. You have 1 minute remaining, Mr. Cronin.

Mr. CRONIN. I wanted to follow up on the previous point of $1 a gallon, Mr. Secretary, because we in the Northeast, particularly Massachusetts, are really feeling the crunch of the gasoline shortage. We closed 278 gas stations in the last 7 weeks. Gasoline is beginning to

run out.

I have sponsored legislation that would require the automobile made in the United States of America to produce 20 miles per gallon. Normally, this has been met with reactions. "The American consumer isn't going to give up a 4.000-pound automobile and air-conditioning and all that goes with it," but yet other countries in the world can do it.

I think rather than cutting out our way of life, what we really need is to add onto this question of environment and energy a third "E.“ that of efficiency; and just as we required our automobile manufacturers to put on the antipollution devices that have increased our gas consumption considerably, I think we should require them to produce efficient engines that will give the American consumer what he wants. while recognizing these deficiency problems.

Also, talking about efficiency standards with the appliances we use, they should be labeled and the choice left up to the consumer. The American housewife did quite well when it came to food prices, and I think they would do the same with the other.

Mr. UDALL. Mr. Bingham?

Mr. BINGHAM. I would like to join in welcoming the Secretary. Mr. Secretary, does the administration's energy policy include the concept of a target of self-sufficiency?

Secretary MORTON. Yes. We have got to be very realistic about this. What we are trying to supply here for this committee-and we are going to need a little time-is the quantification of what various elements in the President's program and the administration's thrust, actually will produce. When we understand what we can achieve, I think we can then come down on realistic targets.

Mr. BINGHAM. Does it include the concept of cutting imports to zero?

Secretary MORTON. No, it does not.

Mr. BINGHAM. That is what I mean by self-sufficiency.

Secretary MORTON. I think that would be a wonderful achievement and we don't see any technology right on the horizon in the foreseeable future that we can go to zero. I mean, we have been a long way for a long time from zero, and we are moving, of course, to what looks like about 40 percent of the imported energy, and this is of great

concern.

If we could level off at today's import levels, we would be making a great achievement. But to be very realistic, I think we are going to see several percentage points increase in our import level before we are able to level it off, no matter what program is in effect.

Mr. BINGHAM. Mr. Secretary, are you hampered in the Department by the fact that other agencies in the Government are working on the R. & D. in the energy field? Is there overlapping? Is there lack of coordination? Is there undue competition?

Secretary MORTON. I don't think so. The mission that the National Science Foundation has is a little differently structured than ours. The big R. & D. effort is in the Atomic Energy Commission field. I think where we get in trouble is in the policy direction.

Now, Congressman Cronin brought out a very good point. New England has been hampered, but New England hasn't a refinery. It has been almost impossible to get a refinery sited in New England. A big refinery to serve the Boston to Portland, Maine, area would have a dramatic effect on the supply situation in New England. But the environmental ethic versus the energy supply problem has not been resolved. It is sort of like Con Edison's plant in New York which we are familiar with.

They have been trying to site a plant on the Hudson River for about 12 or 14 years and haven't been successful. It is those conflicts that haven't been resolved. That is why we have gone to the Congress with plant siting proposals, and that is why we have gone to the Congress with proposals for reorganization of the whole natural resource area into one single department, where these trade-offs can be made early.

These are the areas where I think conflicting positions have held us up in meeting the energy demand.

Mr. BINGHAM. One question with regard to Senator Jackson's bill. He proposed five separate development corporations in different fields. If we were to go the route of the Comsat type of corporation for development, would you be in favor of a single corporation for this total task, or do you like the idea of separate corporations?

Secretary MORTON. I don't like the idea of a corporation at all because I don't think you need it. But certainly one would be preferable to five. I am afraid you are going to get more of a conglomerate situation and more of a situation where the necessary trade-offs will not be easy to make, and there will not be an authority that can make those trade-offs. This is one of the reasons we are going for a Department of Energy and Natural Resources, so that early on the necessary trade-offs can be made and things are not constantly and constantly delayed.

Congressman Hosmer's point is well taken. We haven't been able to move forward at a reasonable pace, even in some of these energy areas, because of the method, statutes we are operating under and the methods we have organized.

Mr. UDALL. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Steiger.

Mr. STEIGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, it is genuinely good to see you.

One question. I have been receiving, and I suspect you have, and I know my colleagues have, a rather rising crescendo of mail and comments. Mine started with what I would recognize as the professional "deep breather", but it has now spread to such people as the independent service station operators and some fairly sophisticated people and the theme is always the same, that the fuel crisis is contrived by major oil companies to achieve a high level.

I wonder if you would address that from your own personal knowledge, in your own very competent and terse way.

Secretary MORTON. Thank you.

Well, in the first place, there has certainly become an awareness of the independent filling station and distributors that have been closing. You can correlate that to the "Ma and Pa Grocery Store" that tried to survive under the development of the supermarket, and there is a correlation. A lot of these independent operators have to operate on a rather substantial margin because they enjoyed a low volume of sales.

Their cost increased, their margins did not increase, and they suf fered the economic consequences.

Now, it is perfectly natural, also, that as more and more investment was made by the major oil companies in the retail outlets-and if you will drive across the country today, you will see filling stations that probably cost several hundred thousand dollars with all of the facilities, much of that financing by the oil companies themselves— there is a natural flow of products into those stations because they are part of the family.

Where we perhaps have failed is that we haven't had a program ongoing that has kept the independent refiners operating, which have been the primary source of supply to the independent distributors and filling stations.

The import program, I think, as it was operated, failed to do this successfully. The independent inland refiners depended a great deal on the base of production in those areas, in the States of Montana. Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and the rest. The result is, as those

lies decreased and production levels lowered, they became depend

imported fuels and the imported oil was not there, was not