[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 61 (Thursday, April 26, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H2193-H2197]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY ISSUES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. POE of Texas. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Tonight, I and other Members of the House are going to talk about
energy issues in the United States.
Probably a timely thing to start with are the recent comments by one
of the individuals who works for the Environmental Protection Agency,
the EPA. The more we learn about the EPA, the more we learn that they
are hostile to real American energy for various reasons. Let me give
you some historical perspective that makes this continuous assault on
the oil and gas industry make sense to us now in 2012.
It seems that back in 2010, 2 years ago, EPA Region 6 Administrator
Al Armendariz stood up on his bureaucratic pedestal of power and
spelled out the true intentions that he had and the goals of the EPA.
He declared that the EPA--and he declared this from his marble palace
here in Washington, D.C.--that the EPA would target the oil and gas
industry, calling it an ``enforcement priority'' as if, Madam Speaker,
the oil and gas industry were made up of criminals.
He went on:
I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff
about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was
probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the
meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said.
And here is what he said, Madam Speaker:
It was kind of like how the Romans used to do--you know,
conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a
little Turkish town somewhere. They'd find the first five
guys they saw, and they'd crucify them.
That's right--they would crucify them--as if he is advocating
crucifying the oil and gas industry. What a thing to say from somebody
who works for the Federal Government.
He said he would make examples out of the people in the oil and gas
industry. Probably unknown to him, his speech was all caught on
videotape that recently surfaced. In fact, it was on the Internet
YouTube last night; but today, mysteriously, it seems to have
disappeared and is no longer on YouTube. That was in 2010.
These comments help us to understand the EPA's belligerent attitude
against energy--American energy--against the oil and gas industry. What
came after was one of the most aggressive assaults on the oil and gas
industry we've ever seen. As a Wall Street Journal editorial once said,
the EPA is at war with Texas. I think the EPA probably should change
their name to the War Department because they are at war with America's
energy. They certainly aren't concerned as much about the environment
as they are about putting American energy out of business.
The oil and gas industry supports 9.2 million jobs in the United
States. I wonder how many of those workers Mr. Armendariz wants to
crucify all in the name of his political agenda.
Madam Speaker, we need a fair EPA, one that brings a balanced
approach to the environment and to our energy industry. An attack on
the energy industry is an attack, really, on the American people and
American jobs. Mr. Armendariz seems to be at war with America. He does
not want to really
[[Page H2194]]
help the oil and gas industry become environmentally safe. It seems to
me he wants to kill it, and the effort will kill American jobs, kill
our energy, and kill our national security.
The video also shows he is not concerned about real science, not
about true environmental science or, really, the facts. He just hates
the oil and gas industry. So, Madam Speaker, he needs to go. He needs
to be replaced with someone who cares more about the environment than
personal crusades against industry.
{time} 1910
Madam Speaker, I would like to place in the Record the Forbes article
that was published today regarding the EPA official that I just
mentioned.
[From Forbes, Apr. 26, 2012]
EPA Official Not Only Touted `Crucifying' Oil Companies, He Tried It
Confirming what many in the industry long suspected, a
video surfaced Wednesday in which Al Armendariz, an official
at the Environmental Protection Agency, promotes the idea of
crucifying oil companies. Armendariz heads up the EPA's
region 6 office, which is based in Dallas and responsible for
oversight of Texas and surrounding states. The former
professor at Southern Methodist University was appointed by
President Obama in November 2009.
In a talk to colleagues about methods of EPA enforcement,
Armendariz can be seen saying, ``The Romans used to conquer
little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little
Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they
saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town
was really easy to manage for the next few years.''
Range was among the first to discover the potential of the
Marcellus Shale gas field of Pennsylvania--the biggest gas
field in America and one of the biggest in the world.
Armendariz's office declared in an emergency order that
Range's drilling activity had contaminated groundwater in
Parker County, Texas. Armendariz's office insisted that
Range's hydraulic fracking activity had caused the pollution
and ordered Range to remediate the water. The EPA's case
against Range was catnip for the environmental fracktivists
who insist with religious zealotry that fracking is evil.
Range insisted from the beginning that there was no substance
to the allegations.
The Armendariz video (which appears to have been taken off
YouTube late last night) was shot around the same time he was
preparing the action against Range. Here's the highlights of
what he said.
The Romans used to conquer little villages in the
Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town
somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they
would crucify them. And then you know that town was really
easy to manage for the next few years.
And so you make examples out of people who are in this case
not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant
with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you
make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect
there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don't
want to play that game, and they decide at that point that
it's time to clean up.
And, that won't happen unless you have somebody out there
making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an
industry, you find people violating the law, you go
aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective
enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very
quickly.
That's what these companies respond to is both their public
image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial
pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry
to clean up very quickly.
The former professor at Southern Methodist University is a
diehard environmentalist, having grown up in El Paso near a
copper smelter that reportedly belched arsenic-laced clouds
into the air. (Here's a profile of him in the Dallas
Observer.) Texas Monthly called him one of the 25 most
powerful Texans, while the Houston Chronicle said he's ``the
most feared environmentalist in the state.''
Never mind that he couldn't prove jack against Range. For a
year and a half EPA bickered over the issue, both with Range
and with the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil
and gas drilling and did its own scientific study of Range's
wells and found no evidence that they polluted anything. In
recent months a federal judge slapped the EPA, decreeing that
the agency was required to actually do some scientific
investigation of wells before penalizing the companies that
drilled them. Finally in March the EPA withdrew its emergency
order and a federal court dismissed the EPA's case.
David Porter, a commissioner on the Texas Railroad
Commission, wasn't impressed. ``Today the EPA finally made a
decision based on science and fact versus playing politics
with the Texas economy. The EPA's withdrawal of the emergency
order against Range Resources upholds the Railroad Commission
Final Order that I signed concluding that Range is not
responsible for any water contamination in Parker County. Al
Armendariz and the EPA's Region Six office are guilty of fear
mongering, gross negligence and severe mishandling of this
case. I hope to see drastic changes made in the way the
regional office conducts business in the future--starting
with the termination of Al Armendariz.''
After an outcry emerged over the video on Wednesday,
Armendariz apologized for his statements Wednesday night,
reportedly saying: ``I apologize to those I have offended and
regret my poor choice of words. It was an offensive and
inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential
violations of our nation's environmental laws. I am and have
always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of
those laws.''
He ought to resign as well. His comments in the video are
proof that facts and science don't matter to him, that he's
already made up his mind that the industry he has regulatory
power over is evil. When you lose faith in the impartiality
of regulators every action they take is tainted. He's the boy
who cried wolf.
I want to continue my comments about America's energy by talking a
little bit about gasoline and gasoline prices.
I ask Members, people back in Texas, in southeast Texas where I live,
how rising gasoline prices have affected them personally, and I want to
give the House the benefit of some of those statements made by American
people about the high cost of gasoline and maybe some things that we
can do about the high cost of gasoline.
Here's what they've said, and I'll take them one at a time.
One individual from southeast Texas says:
I spend more money on gasoline than I do on groceries.
Another:
Living in Texas requires driving greater distances to get
anything. We have no choice but to purchase gas, and it
definitely cuts into our food budget.
You see, Madam Speaker, west of the Mississippi there are vast
places, as the Speaker knows, where people roam and live in the rural
areas, and it takes them a long time to get from point A to point B,
especially when they're going to work sometimes, whether they work on
the ranch or whether they work in small towns in America.
So, because of that greater distance, a lot of Americans don't
realize that the only mode of transportation for some Americans is to
drive a vehicle. That's how they get to work. They don't drive subways.
They don't ride bicycles. They don't have the opportunity to walk to
work because they live in the vastness of the West.
I'll continue:
Seventy percent of all business requires people to have
discretionary income that's being siphoned off by higher gas,
taxes, fees, and it's only getting worse because of high
gasoline prices.
Another says:
As a retiree, high gasoline prices affects everything I do.
Travel, possible vacation plans are no longer being discussed
in our family. Anything I do is planned well so as to cut
down on how much I drive. What I buy, because it is priced so
high in the stores. The price in stores has tripled because
stores are having to pay higher fuel prices to get their
products to market.
Another one says:
I drive for a living, and it hurts.
Another Texan has written me and said:
I drive 175 miles round trip to work every day. I work for
the Corps of Engineers, and the government doesn't give me
one red cent for gasoline. It costs me $900 a month for
gasoline that I used to could use somewhere else.
Amazing number: $900. In some cases, that's how much people pay on
the rent on their house or an apartment. Yet we have one American doing
his job working for the people of this country spending that much money
just on gasoline.
Another individual wrote me and he said:
I can't afford to commute. But by my long hours as a
businessowner, it makes it impossible to take mass transit or
a carpool. So I have no alternative since I have no carpool,
no mass transit, but I have to drive to get to work because
I'm a businessowner, and the gasoline is driving me out of
business.
Another one has said:
I drive 75 miles a day round trip for work, plus I pay $7
in tolls. Yeah, it's hurting. I love my job, but it's getting
to the point that what money I make is going straight back
into the gas tank.
Another citizen has said:
I drive a 2000 Ford F 150 as my work vehicle. It's draining
my wallet, but I need a full-size truck for my job.
Once again, in the West, a lot of folks drive pickup trucks. They
don't only just drive them to work. That is their work vehicle. They
use that in their job. It is their office. They don't have the luxury
as some do to work in tall
[[Page H2195]]
skyscrapers and an office, as we consider an office. Their truck is
their vehicle, and the F 150 is the standard-operating vehicle, at
least in Texas and other parts of the country. By the way, it's the
number one selling vehicle in the United States.
But Americans need to understand, and the government needs to
understand, that's what Americans drive. That is their work vehicle in
many cases. High gasoline prices affect their quality of life, and
maybe we, as a body, ought to do something about gasoline that is now
$4 a gallon.
Another citizen told me:
Last month I spent $600 on gas for my truck versus just
$300 a few years ago. Customers don't understand that the
materials are going up due to the rising costs and the
suppliers are raising the price to recoup the loss due to
fuel prices skyrocketing.
What we pay at the grocery store or at any store where we do
business, for a product, part of the cost of that product is getting it
to market so Americans can buy it. It's costing more to get goods and
services to market because of gasoline prices, and, of course, gasoline
prices affect the price of goods, and therefore that is passed on to
the consumer, to people in America who live here.
Another one says:
Where do I begin? I hated it, but I had to go from a
4Runner to a Corolla to handle my commute to work every day.
Another one said:
Since 2010, my food bill has gone from $95 a week for a
full cart to $130 per week for half a cart of groceries. We
are making more but keeping less. High gasoline prices affect
my quality of life.
Another one says:
I have spent less on food so I could fill up three times a
week at approximately $75 to $80 a tank.
Another citizen wrote me his concerns:
I had to find another job closer to home because it's
getting ridiculous, the cost of gasoline.
An individual who uses his truck in his business said this:
I drive a hot-shot delivery truck, and I have to pay my own
fuel. We do get a fuel surcharge, but it does not even come
close to paying for the fuel. I spend $200 to $250 a week on
fuel over what the surcharge pays me, and it's killing me.
That's what Americans are saying about gasoline prices. These are
people who work every day, support their families. Yet gasoline affects
them in personal ways.
Another individual wrote me about his religion is being affected, his
religious commitment is being affected by the cost of gasoline. Here's
what he says:
Because the church my family and I attend is 30 minutes
away, we've chosen to attend Wednesday night church services
closer to home. Also, we've had to give up two church service
meetings during the week. It's upsetting for my fellow
members to ask me on Sundays if I've left the church. It's
also harder to maintain those close ties not seeing fellow
members but once a week, and it's all due to high gasoline
prices.
Another southeast Texan writes this comment to me:
We certainly have less ``disposable income,'' as the phrase
goes, and that means less money to spend in various
businesses in our city because of the high cost it costs my
family to buy gasoline.
Another one says this:
I've cut out everything extra, dine out less, fewer trips,
stay at home for entertainment, prices of food have tripled,
and I stretch leftovers as far as possible because of gas
prices.
Another citizen and neighbor says:
I only drive where I have to. I shop at Kroger to get extra
cents off of gas.
The Kroger grocery store gives people the deduction if they buy
gasoline from Kroger, and they have the little Kroger card:
We just stay at home more than ever.
And a fisherman says this:
I am a commercial fisherman. Gas prices hurt at the pump
and it has in turn driven up the prices for supplies. It's
even driven up the price and cost of bait.
Another one lastly makes this comment:
It's just hard to make it these days.
So gasoline prices, which we're not talking a whole lot about now,
some Americans have just accepted it as the new normal. I refuse to do
that. I refuse to accept high gasoline prices.
{time} 1920
I'm old enough to remember when gasoline cost--I don't want to shock
the Speaker, because you're a whole lot younger than I am. I remember
when I could fill up my Chevy II Super Sport in the early seventies for
26 cents a gallon. I know that shocks you, but gasoline prices have
gone up. Of course in my generation, as Mr. Burton from Indiana knows,
when gasoline hit 30 cents a gallon, we all were shocked about it. Now
we're paying $4 a gallon.
We don't have to accept that. The reason we don't have to accept it
is because sitting over here are America's natural resources, our God-
given natural resources, just waiting to be developed. But as I
mentioned earlier, we've got these bureaucrats down the street in their
marble palaces called the EPA, and they regulate more than just light
bulbs. They're regulating the oil and gas industry out of business, and
I think it's a personal vendetta that they have for some reason.
There are things we should do, things we can do, and it's important
that we discuss those. And we'll continue to discuss those tonight with
my colleagues.
I do want to yield to my friend and colleague, Mr. Burton from
Indiana, for as much time as he wishes to consume.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. First of all, I want to thank my good friend
Congressman Poe of Texas for putting a face on the problem of high
energy prices and high gasoline prices.
I listened to all of the things that you were reading there from your
constituents about not being able to go to work or buying huge amounts
of gas two or three times a week, and it just breaks your heart. You
know, I went to the store the other night and I bought two oranges.
They were on sale at a dollar a piece. Two oranges for a dollar a
piece. The reason for that is not just because they're growing them and
it's costing more; it's because the transportation by diesel trucks and
gasoline-powered trucks has gone up so much that they have to pass that
onto the consumers with higher prices. If you talk to any man or woman
who goes to the store, they'll tell you that they're feeling it when
they buy their groceries, as well as at the gas pump.
I'd like to tell you a little story real quickly. You'll find this
humorous because you talked about gasoline being 20-some cents when you
were a little bit younger. I presume it was a little bit younger.
We were on a trip with some friends of ours, and we went to an island
down off the coast of Florida in the Caribbean. This friend of mine and
I, we rented two little motor scooters to go out to the corner of the
island. Gasoline on the island was very high; it was 50 cents a gallon.
He says, I'm not paying 50 cents a gallon for gasoline. So we took what
we had in the cycles and we rode out there, and he ran out the
gasoline. We had to get a coffee can and turn one cycle upside down to
get enough gas in his cycle to get back. Well, we couldn't get my cycle
turned back on. So he tried to pull me and my motorcycle, with my wife
on the back, with a string back to the hotel room where we were
staying, and we couldn't do it. It about broke my finger off.
So they left me at a Portuguese gasoline station where nobody spoke
English, and they didn't understand a thing I was saying. My face was
burned to a pulp from the sun, and I ended up not getting back until
late that night with an almost third-degree burn because he wouldn't
pay 50 cents for a gallon of gas. Imagine what he would think today at
having to pay $4 for a gallon of gas. The poor guy would just die.
Let me just look at this chart. My colleague was talking just a
moment ago--and I wish all of the people in America, if I could talk to
them, could see this chart. It shows that back in the early part of the
Obama administration, gasoline was about $2.68 a gallon, and now in
some parts of the country it is over $4 a gallon. It's killing the
economy, it's killing people who have to go to work, as Congressman Poe
said, and we have the resources to deal with it.
The thing I wanted to talk about real quickly was--and I talked to
Congressman Poe about this--Interior Secretary Salazar, as well as the
head of the EPA and the Energy Department, are having an all-out
assault on Members of Congress who are pointing out that we have energy
in this country that can be tapped to lower the price of
[[Page H2196]]
energy. They're attacking us, saying that we're just raising red
herrings and not dealing with the problems as we should. I want to read
this to you. Mr. Salazar, the head of the Interior Department says:
It's in this imagined energy world where we see this
growing and continued divide in the energy debate in America.
But the divide is not among ordinary Americans; it is between
some people here in Washington, D.C.
I guess they mean you and me, Congressman Poe.
He said:
It's a divide between the real energy world that we work on
every day and the imagined, fairytale world.
And the President of the United States has said on a number of
occasions that we're doing more drilling right now than we ever have
and that the American people are being misled.
In addition to the chart I have on gasoline prices, I brought this
chart down. This chart, Congressman Poe, shows the number of
applications for permits to drill and how they've been affected since
the Obama administration has taken place. So I just want to go through
these facts. If the President were paying attention, and if I were
talking to him--but I know I can't--if I were talking to him, I would
say, Mr. President, these are the facts. And I don't know who's giving
you these facts down there at the White House, but, Mr. President, you
ought to take a look at these facts because they're accurate.
First of all, according to the American Petroleum Institute, the
number of new permits to drill issued by the Bureau of Land Management
is down by 40 percent, from an average of over 6,400 permits in 2007
and 2008 to an average of 3,962 in 2009 to 2010. That's down by almost
40 percent. We're not drilling where we can. They're not issuing the
permits.
During this same period, the number of new wells drilled on Federal
land have declined. The number of oil wells have gone down by 40
percent, and the number of new Federal oil and gas leases issued by the
Bureau of Land Management is down by almost 50 percent. Is it any
wonder we're not going after our resources, we're depending on the
Saudis, the people in South America and Venezuela, many of whom don't
like us very much? As a result, we're paying more and more and more at
the pump.
President Obama says that oil production is at an all-time high
during his administration. However, the fact is oil production on
Federal land fell by 11 percent last year, and oil production on
private and State-owned land--where they couldn't touch it--did go up a
little bit. That's what he's talking about. Where the government has
control over permits, they're not letting us drill.
Federal lands hold an estimated 116 billion barrels of recoverable
oil, enough to produce gasoline for 65 billion cars and fuel oil for
3.2 million households for 60 years. Western oil shale deposits alone
are estimated to contain up to five times the amount of Saudi oil
reserves. Seventy percent of this oil shale is on Federal land, and we
can't get to it because the President and his administration will not
let us.
According to a recent CRS report, there are over 21.6 million acres
of land leased by the Federal Government that are not currently
producing oil or that have not been approved for exploration. Returning
to the levels of 2007 and 2008, when the administration started,
Federal leasing and permitting levels would have projected an increase
of 7 million to 13 million barrels per year of domestic oil production,
but they cut it back.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, an estimated 12,000 to
30,000 American jobs would be created in energy producing Western
States over the next 4 years if we just went back to where we were
drilling in 2007 and 2008. Furthermore, the Keystone XL pipeline, which
the President has stopped dead, would bring to our economy thousands of
new jobs and transport 830,000 barrels of oil to American refineries,
which would be converted into oil and gasoline that would help this
economy and lower gas prices.
With gas prices, as my colleague said, very, very high at over $4 a
gallon--and in some places here in Washington, it was up to $5 a gallon
not too long ago. With gas prices that high and affecting every
American, it's clear that the United States needs to become more energy
independent and signal to the world that the U.S. is open to
production. If we started drilling where we can and exploring where we
can, make no mistake, the people who sell oil to us will lower the
price because they want to be competitive and they don't want to lose
market share.
Whether it's the administration dragging its heels on approving
permits for offshore drilling or drilling on Federal land, not opening
up land for exploration, or not approving the Keystone pipeline, the
Obama administration's policies are failing everyday Americans and
costing millions in potential government revenue and thousands of new
jobs.
{time} 1930
So no matter what the administration people are saying, like Mr.
Salazar or the EPA or the Energy Department, the fact is we have enough
energy in this country to move toward energy independence over the next
5 to 10 years. But this administration wants to go to new sources of
energy like windmills and solar panels and geothermal and nuclear. And
all those things are important, but while we're starting to transition
to new sources of energy, we need to use the energy that we have, which
would lower the cost of energy to the average citizen and lower the
price of gasoline so people, as Mr. Poe has said, could get to work and
live a competent, fair, friendly life.
With that, Mr. Poe, thank you so much for giving me this time. I'm a
big admirer of yours.
Mr. POE of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Burton, for your comments. I
appreciate the gentleman from Indiana.
Several comments about what you said are important. The
administration, the government, says drilling is up in the United
States. That is true. But drilling on Federal lands is not up.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Down 11 percent.
Mr. POE of Texas. The drilling is taking place on State-owned
property or private property, but other lands other than Federal lands.
If it wasn't for that, drilling would be down in the United States. If
we go back to the Gulf of Mexico, the same situation we have in the
Gulf of Mexico has been ever since the BP incident.
Permitting is taking too long. It takes a record amount of days,
sometimes months, to issue a permit in the deep water and in the
shallow water. The shallow water guys operate with a very small amount
of capital. They can't stay and wait around for the government to make
a decision on a permit or not, so they aren't able to drill. In the
deep water, those deepwater wells, those rigs, they cost $100,000 a day
whether they're operating or they're sitting there, and that's why some
of them have left the Gulf of Mexico to never return. They've gone down
to South America; they've gone to off the coast of Africa, to drill
where countries are friendlier to the drilling safely off of their
coast.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If I might, we sent $3 billion of American
taxpayers' money to Brazil at a time when we have almost a $16 trillion
national debt, and they're drilling in deepwater areas like we would be
drilling in off the coast of Mexico. But we can't drill there because
of the oil spill and because we can't get permits, so we're sending our
taxpayers' dollars down to Brazil so they can do what we can't.
Mr. POE of Texas. If the gentleman will yield, we're not only sending
money down there to develop their oil industry, when they develop it,
we're going to buy their oil back. So we're paying them twice.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. That's right.
Mr. POE of Texas. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Now, I don't know and I don't really suspect that drilling would be
the only answer for raising or lowering the gasoline prices, but it's
one factor because of supply and demand. It's not the only factor, but
it's one of those. It just seems to me that the United States is the
only major power in the world that has an energy policy that is: We're
not going to drill in the United States for all these reasons, but we
want you to drill in your country your natural resources and we'll buy
them from you. It seems a little bit arrogant on our part as a Nation.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that Sarah Palin, whom
everybody
[[Page H2197]]
in this country knows, she will tell you, and she's told people all
across the country when she speaks, that they have a huge amount of oil
in the ANWR and other parts of Alaska, and because of the radical
environmentalist groups in this country, they can't drill up there.
Now, I've been up there. I was up there with Don Young. We saw the
oil pipeline. If you look at the ANWR, there's nothing up there. You're
not going to hurt any of the animals. There's a lot of bugs. There's a
lot of vermin up there. But you're not going to hurt the animals by
drilling up there, and it's certainly not going to hurt the
environment. But it would help if we could bring that oil--millions of
barrels of oil--down to the lower 48 States. It would have a tremendous
impact, in my opinion, as well as you've said, off the Gulf of Mexico
and off the Continental Shelf. We could really move toward energy
independence over a period of the next 5 to 10 years. Like you said, it
wouldn't happen immediately, but it would be a giant step in the right
direction.
Mr. POE of Texas. If the gentleman will yield, as you mentioned about
ANWR in Alaska, years ago we came up with this idea of a pipeline from
Alaska bringing crude oil into the United States, and the same people
that opposed that pipeline still exist today and are opposing the
Keystone Pipeline. It took years for the vetting of the environmental
lobby to finally be put to rest. They were concerned about the caribou.
Of course, I think the caribou are doing quite well now. Finally,
Congress decided not to wait on that administration and go ahead and
make an approval. But Congress went ahead and approved the Alaska
pipeline on its own, which became law in spite of the administration.
It didn't wait for its approval. And now we know the rest of the
story--it's a success 25 years later. And that's what Congress needs to
do with the Keystone Pipeline.
No one has ever accused Canada of being environmentally insensitive.
Their regulations are as tough as the EPA's--or even stronger. But yet
they've developed a way that they can bring crude oil through a
pipeline down to southeast Texas--Port Arthur, my district--in a safe,
environmental way, and also one of the newest and finest pipelines. But
the administration says, Not so fast. And it's unfortunate because the
jobs will stay in America. Create that pipeline. Canada is not a Middle
Eastern dictatorship. They're kind of a normal country.
We should approve that as soon as possible. I understand the concern
in Nebraska. I'm glad to see the folks in Nebraska are working with
TransCanada to reroute that 60 miles so there are no environmental
issues and get this pipeline approved and start shipping that crude oil
down to southeast Texas so we can use it in the United States.
It would seem to me that the United States should maybe think about
this type of energy policy: we should drill safely in the United States
for oil and natural gas. And I say ``safely'' because that is
important. But we should also partner with the countries next to us--
the Canadians to the north, who have natural resources, and the
Mexicans to the south, who have an abundance of natural resources--and
the three of us work together on a North American OPEC-type philosophy
and be energy independent. Not just energy independent, but it will
help out our national security.
And if we do that, if we work with Canada, Mexico, drill in the
United States, where it's safe, we can make the Middle East irrelevant.
We can make that little fellow from the desert, Ahmadinejad, and his
threats about closing the Strait of Hormuz, we can make him irrelevant.
We don't care what he does. We don't need to continue to send our money
to other nations over there that don't like us. So maybe that's
something we need to do in the United States.
Lastly, and then I'll yield to the gentleman, because of American
technology, because of those folks that know how to drill safely for
oil and natural gas, the United States now suddenly is becoming an
abundant Nation with natural gas. And we could, if we developed it the
way that we can, the United States--primarily Texas, but other States--
we could become the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We could export
natural gas, we have so much of it, and bring that money into the
United States, rather than constantly sending money throughout the
world, all because we don't take care of what we have and use what we
have.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, T. Boone Pickens said--and everybody
knows he's one of the big advocates of natural gas, which is a very
clean-burning fuel. He said, if we would convert the tractor-trailer
units that bring commerce to all of us, we could lower the cost for all
those tractor-trailer units, as far as energy consumption is concerned,
by 50 percent--cut it in two--and that would have a dramatic impact on
things that are transported by tractor-trailer units.
I would just like to say that the President, when he took office--and
I'll conclude with this, because you've done such a good job tonight.
You've covered it very well. When the President took office, he said
that his energy policies would, of necessity, cause energy costs to
skyrocket. Well, as Ronald Reagan would say, ``Well, he did, and energy
prices have skyrocketed,'' and we've got to do something about it.
The American people don't want to pay $4 or $5 a gallon for gasoline.
They can't live that way. It's causing a deterioration in their
standard of living.
So if I were talking to the President--and I know I can't, Madam
Speaker. But if I were talking to him, I would say, Mr. President, why
don't you get with the program. The American people really need your
help. And if you don't pay attention to them regarding the energy
policies, it's my humble opinion that there may be a big change in
administrations next year. So for political survivability alone, you
ought to take another look at what you're doing.
And with that, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding to me.
{time} 1940
Mr. POE of Texas. I thank the gentleman for his participation.
Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the United States can make some
decisions and solve some of our own problems. We can start with finding
people in the EPA that do not have their own personal vendetta against
the oil and gas industry, replace those individuals like Armendariz and
get some fair and balanced bureaucrats to make sure we have a clean
environment to work with our energy companies rather than against them,
and stop the war against the energy companies in the U.S.
We can work and bring down the price of energy in the United States.
One way, not the only way, is to make sure that we have a supply. A
greater supply, as we all know, of anything, does help reduce the cost
of energy, so that people in southeast Texas who have a hard time
getting to work and who are paying more for products that they have to
buy, just like Americans throughout our Nation are having tough times
because of high gasoline prices, we owe it to them to do that, to take
care of ourselves and to work with Canada and to work with Mexico so
that the three countries can be a strong ally, not just politically,
but that we can be strong allies with our energy economy.
With that, I'll yield back to the Chair.
And that's just the way it is.
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