Many Americans are outraged with the record profits being posted by oil companies.  However, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions does not believe higher taxes for these companies are the answer.  Speaking at an energy summit in Hoover Wednesday, he told the crowd, "the way to break the prices and break the oil companies' profits and the foreign nations that are getting rich off America is to produce more, clean energy."

Senator Sessions, a Republican who serves on the energy committee, hosted the summit, which brought a crowd of about 100 people to the Hoover Public Library.  The president of Gulf Coast Energy also spoke.  Mark Werner's company owns and operates a plant in Livingston, Alabama, where wood waste is converted into fuel.  He said plans are to build two more such plants in Alabama within the next five years.  One would be located in the Birminham area.  Werner said, that in Jefferson County, "there are some abandoned facilities that we could look at." 

The summit  was held in Hoover because it's a city that has shown a strong commitment to alternative energy.  Four years ago, city officials bought vehicles for the police department that can run on ethanol.  A year and a half ago, Hoover began recycling it's cooking oil, and just over a month ago, the city started sending its wood waste to the Livingston plant.  Mayor Tony Petelos describes the efforts as, "a small city doing it's small, fair share in the mix of alternative fuels."

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