News & Events

Thank you, Matt Gonring, for that nice introduction.

I’d like to thank Steve Eisenbrown, Ted Crandall, John McDermott and Bob Russ of Rockwell Automation for putting on this marvelous event.

Rockwell is a great company which has been a leader in terms of energy innovation and efficiency—a topic I’d like to discuss today. It’s the No. 1 priority for manufacturers, and it is one of the most important issues facing our nation.

Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma exposed a secret that no one in Washington has wanted to reveal for over 20 years—the United States has a fundamental weakness in our energy infrastructure, and it’s only going to get worse. Without immediate action by our leaders in Washington, our country is poised to experience larger disruptions of our economy, higher prices for a gallon of gasoline, record-high home heating bills and inflationary pressures because of the cost of energy to produce every manufactured and agricultural good.

As the hurricanes hit our coastlines, they slammed into our energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, cutting national supplies. Today, half our energy production in the Gulf region is still damaged. Underwater pipelines, including vital chokepoints where gas comes in from different wells, are broken.

As quickly as rapid-reaction crews perform underwater repairs, the damage has caused natural gas prices to skyrocket.