mr. hoeven: i want to thank the gentlelady from louisiana for her work on the flood insurance bill. i do hope we have an opportunity to address that this week and will continue to do all we can to help in that endeavor. again, thank you for your important work on that legislation. i also would like to thank the gentlewoman from minnesota for joining me this afternoon. we are today introducing the driver privacy act. i am very pleased to sponsor that legislation with the good senator from minnesota. we have a great group that's joined us as we introduce this bill today. this is all about protecting people's privacy in regard to their automobile. every automobile that will be made going forward, over 90% -- something like 96% of the automobiles that are made now have a black box in them. this is actually silver but we call it a black box because it's an event data recorder. it records information about your automobile. 96%, i think, of automobiles being made now have them, but the u.s. department of transportation is requiring this year that every vehicle have an event data recorder i

hoeven. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would just like to welcome harold hamm today. he has been a pioneer in the balkan. senator franken is not too far off when he talks about discovering oil. he didn't discover the oil but he certainly was a pioneer in discovering methods including hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling, and developing those methods in a way that made that oil recoverable in the billions of barrels, and it is absolutely being in energy renaissance in this country. so by way of introduction i'm very pleased to welcome and introduce harold hamm this morning. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i very much enjoyed my visit to north dakota as well and appreciate your getting that opportunity. senator landrieu. >> i think for your purposes we have an excellent panel this one and want to thank both you and senator mikulski for such a thoughtful opening statement. i'm going to say that my statement for the record but i do want to say that we are witnessing an energy revolution in the country today. producing more energy at home here than we have