Secretary Richardson, welcome.

Mr. Secretary, I commend you for your bold decision last week to add oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This creative and simple solution reversed a decade-long decline in our SPR inventory.

Your decision is a watershed event. For too many years, Congress and the White House--under the control of Republicans and Democrats--drained oil from the SPR.

In 1996 and 1997, we sold $450 million of SPR oil for deficit reduction.

Following Operation Desert Storm, revenue from SPR oil sales was diverted to pay SPR operating expenses -- despite requirements in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act that the money be used to buy replacement oil.

For too many years we treated our SPR reserves as a petty-cash account. Whenever we needed a quick deficit reduction fix, Congress and the administration agreed to dip into the SPR and sell some of our emergency reserves.

Last week's decision to increase our SPR inventory reverses a decade of bad SPR policy.

You will have many accomplishments during your tenure as Energy Secretary. I am very pleased that this SPR decision will be one of them.