[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 91 (Monday, June 24, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5013-S5015]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DOMESTIC OIL PRODUCTION

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader making 
this arrangement. I was wanting to get a little more time than that. 
However, let me just mention two bills that I plan one to reintroduce, 
another to introduce, which I think are timely tonight because of 
something that is going to happen tomorrow.
  Tomorrow I am going to reintroduce a bill making it clear that States 
are sole regulators of the hydraulic fracturing process, and there is a 
reason for bringing this up in the next bill.
  I am pleased to be joined by Senators Vitter, Portman, Roberts, Enzi, 
Sessions, Coburn, Crapo, Risch, Scott, Cruz, Hatch, Johnson, and Lee.
  Since 2008, domestic oil production has increased by 40 percent. This 
has never happened before. That is just in the last 4 years. Because of 
the new applications for such processes as horizontal drilling and 
hydraulic fracturing, we have been able to do this. But the most 
interesting thing is that with a 40-percent increase, 100 percent of 
that has been in State or in private land.
  That is critical, because we keep hearing from this administration 
that they somehow want to take credit for the fact that we have had an 
increase in that period of time, when the fact is that has all been 
done on private land or on State land. None of it has been done on 
Federal land.
  In fact, the Congressional Research Service came out earlier this 
year:

       All of the increase from FY2007 to FY2012 took place on 
     non-federal lands, and the federal share of total U.S. crude 
     oil production fell by about seven percentage points.

  That means that while we increased 40 percent, that which was on 
Federal land decreased by 7 percent. It just goes to show the real 
consequences of the administration's all-out war on fossil fuels. The 
President has made it so difficult for anyone to lease Federal land or 
obtain drilling permits that many producers have simply stopped working 
on Federal lands altogether. For those who remain, the process is 
dysfunctional and unfriendly.
  For instance, it takes an average of 207 days to get a drilling 
permit on Federal lands. By contrast, in my State of Oklahoma it only 
takes 10 hours, and 83 percent of the Federal lands are off-limits.
  I think we need to understand all the benefits that could be out 
there are in spite of this administration and the policies of this 
administration. We shouldn't be fooled. The President may claim he 
likes natural gas, but he is actually taking every step he can to 
impose more burdensome regulations on industries so he can shut them 
down in favor of his beloved renewables. This war against hydraulic 
fracturing is part of that effort.
  I can remember when we had something that took place a few months ago 
called date night. A lot of the Democrats, on national TV at a joint 
session of the legislature, didn't like the idea when something came up 
that was not popular with the people at home and happened to be popular 
with Democrats, so they had date night, so individuals would be 
scattered out and they wouldn't have all the Republicans on one side 
and all the Democrats on one side.
  I thought it was kind of interesting because, I won't mention her 
name, but one of my very good friends who happens to be a liberal 
Democrat, when the President stood up and made the statement, he said:

       Now there is an abundance of good, clean, natural gas that 
     we can have for the future.

  I nudged her and I said:

       Are you listening to this?

  And she said back to me:

       Wait a minute, you are going to hear something else.

  He came out, and this is what he said right after that:

       [we will be] requiring all companies that drill for gas on 
     public lands to disclose the chemicals they use. Because 
     America will develop this resource without putting the health 
     and safety of our citizens at risk.

  Which are other words for: However, we are not going to be doing 
hydraulic fracturing. This is kind of interesting because we cannot 
have natural gas production without having hydraulic fracturing.
  In response to this charge by the President, the Department of the 
Interior recently proposed new regulations that would apply to any 
hydraulic fracturing that occurs on Federal lands. These new 
regulations cover everything from chemical disclosure to water use and 
cement bonding requirements. They add a massive new layer of regulatory 
compliance to any operator looking to develop reserves on Federal lands 
at a cost of as much as $250,000 per well. It costs that much more with 
no environmental benefits.
  You might ask: Why no environmental benefits? It is because Lisa 
Jackson, who is Barack Obama's Director of EPA, stated on the record:

       In no case have we made a definitive determination that the 
     fracking process has caused chemicals to enter ground water.

  In other words, in the last 60 years--and I can attest to the last 60 
years because the first hydraulic fracturing took place in Duncan, OK, 
in my State, in 1949. Since then, over 1 million wells have been 
fracked without any ground water contamination.
  So why would the President want to take the authority away from the 
States if they have such an excellent track record? It is because of 
his war on fossil fuels.
  To combat this I am introducing the Fracturing Regulations Are 
Effective in State Hands Act.
  The bill I am talking about simply makes it clear that States are the 
sole regulators of hydraulic fracturing, as they have been for the last 
60 years. It includes Federal lands located within the borders of a 
State, so my bill would render the President's new regulations moot and 
ineffective and keep States in the driver's seat, effectively 
regulating the process.
  I urge my colleagues to support this. This is something that would be 
a major effort. If you stop and think about the people talking about 
the bad economy and all that, you just go to the oil States and see 
what has happened. We could be enjoying this prosperity all throughout 
the country. We

[[Page S5014]]

used to think of the oil and gas production as being primarily in the 
western part of the United States.
  However, that is not the case anymore. The Marcellus shale--talking 
about Pennsylvania, New York, and other States--could have great 
benefits by opening that area. To do that we want to continue the State 
regulation of hydraulic fracturing as it has been in the past.
  I have another bill I am going to be introducing, and I think it is 
important. It closely relates to this and the speech the President is 
going to make tomorrow.
  First of all, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution says:

       The powers not delegated to the United States by the 
     Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are 
     reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

  That is something we all know. We learned this many years ago when we 
were in school. Today the Framers would be shocked to know the 
government's annual budget is near $4 trillion a year, with consistent 
$1 trillion deficits under the Obama administration.
  They would also be astonished to know that the Federal Government is 
involving itself in nearly every facet of American life, ranging from 
the absurd, such as protecting the small burrowing beetle in eastern 
Oklahoma, to the offensive, such as mandating that private companies 
provide contraceptives to employees despite objections of conscience.
  I was reading a book written by a friend of mine, who is deceased 
now, Bill Bright. His book has a daily message. The one for today, 
which happens to be day 175, the 24th of June, is kind of interesting. 
It was written by Malcolm Muggeridge. He went back and talked about 
what we are--keep in mind this is 40 years ago. He talked about putting 
the frogs in cold water and then slowly heating it up, and of course 
they end up dying in the water. However, if you put them in, and it 
happened all at once, they would not notice. I think that is what he is 
talking about. Yet he said this is not happening today, but it could 
happen. If he were around today, I wonder what he would say. This is 
not the way it was supposed to be. The 10th Amendment was supposed to 
be robust.
  James Madison, in Federalist 39, wrote:

       In this relation then the proposed Government cannot be 
     deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to 
     certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several 
     States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other 
     objects.

  He continues to say:

       The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the 
     federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to 
     remain in the State governments are numerous and infinite. 
     The former will be exercised principally on external objects, 
     as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce . . . The 
     powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the 
     objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the 
     lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the 
     internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

  We talk about the Constitution a lot. Yet people seem to forget the 
very important parts of the Constitution. Given this, it should come as 
no surprise that for the first 100 years of our history, as States were 
added to the Union, the Federal Government sold off vast quantities of 
its land. If the Federal Government were to be limited, then why would 
they need to own a lot of land? In fact, we can see in this chart the 
Federal revenues from the land sales were a significant component in 
the total revenues until just before the Civil War, and then it dropped 
off.
  Today the Federal Government owns over 600 million acres of land, and 
this chart shows how much of the country it actually is. It is 
astonishing. If we look at this chart, it shows most of it being in the 
western part of the United States, but it is all over the country.
  This land is endowed with substantial natural resources. As we can 
see in this chart, a substantial amount of oil and gas is located in 
the tight shale formations on these Federal lands. These are Federal 
lands, and it shows the great potential out there which has recently 
proven to be highly productive because of the advances in technologies 
such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
  As a result of these discoveries, oil and natural gas production has 
boomed across the country. In the last 5 years, oil production has 
increased by over 7 million barrels a day, which is 40 percent higher. 
As I said when presenting the bill right before this one, all of that 
was done in the private sector and in the State. While that increased 
by 40 percent, the Federal lands decreased by 7 percent. As the 
Congressional Research Service confirmed in the last report, it said 
all the increase in U.S. production from 2007 to 2012 took place on 
non-Federal lands.
  President Obama is the reason this land is locked up. He has made it 
impossible for new oil and gas production to occur on Federal lands, 
and in addition to working to shut down development in areas such as 
western Oklahoma by proposing to list the lesser prairie chicken as an 
endangered species, he made the process of drilling on Federal land so 
difficult that it takes 300 days to get a drilling permit from the 
Federal Government while it only takes 10 hours to get one from 
Oklahoma. Further, 83 percent of the land is off limits to oil and gas 
production.
  Today we are within striking distance of achieving energy 
independence. Due to this, we must be able to get to the resources on 
Federal lands because they are enormous. For instance, ANWR in Alaska 
holds 16 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The Rocky Mountain West 
holds 1.8 trillion barrels of oil equivalent. If we expanded oil and 
gas production to its potential in all Federal areas, the impact would 
be astounding.
  The Institute for Energy Research recently issued a report based on 
the most recent government data about these off-limits lands and showed 
that if we enacted policies that allowed aggressive development of 
these Federal lands, the process would generate $14.4 trillion in 
economic activity, create 2.5 million jobs, and reduce the deficit by 
$2.7 trillion.
  Had we stuck to the principles of our Founders as articulated in the 
Federalist Papers and ratified in the 10th Amendment, we would not be 
having this conversation because the States would already be in 
control. So what we are trying to do is make sure the States can go 
back and control and do something that has been successful. What we 
need to do is get back to the basics, which I am introducing in the 
Federal Land Freedom Act today. I want to thank Senator Vitter, and all 
the other Senators who are cosponsors of the previous bills are also 
cosponsors of this bill.
  This bill would reestablish the principles of Federalism when it 
comes to the energy policy of our Federal lands. The bill gives States 
the right to develop all forms of energy resources, including 
renewables, located on Federal lands located within their borders. To 
get the authority, all a State would need to do is figure out how it 
would release, permit, and regulate energy activities on its Federal 
lands.
  Upon a State's declaration to the Federal Government that this 
program has been created, the energy development rights would 
automatically transfer to the State. The Federal Government would 
retain ownership of the land and its resources. The royalty share would 
remain unchanged. It would be a split, 50-50, between the State and the 
Federal Government as enumerated in the Minerals Leasing Act.
  The Energy Information Administration on Friday said the United 
States could become a net oil exporter by 2040.
  This bill could make it happen much faster than that. There is a guy 
named Harold Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources, arguably one of 
the most successful operators--maybe the most successful--in the 
country. I called him up because people in the administration keep 
saying if we are able to drill on public lands, it would take 10 years 
before this would reach the economy. They are talking about the high 
price of heating a home or cooling a home or the price of gasoline.
  So I said I am going to go on a national show, and they are going to 
ask me the question of about 10 years, because I know that is not true. 
So I told Mr. Hamm that I would like to quote him as an authority, and 
so he should be honest with his answer because I am going to use his 
name on national TV. If we had everything set and we are going to go 
ahead and start drilling now, how long would it take the first barrel 
of oil out of the ground to reach the market? Without hesitating he 
said

[[Page S5015]]

70 days. Then he went through and explained each step in the process 
from drilling to hydraulic fracturing to transportation and all of 
this. He said it would take 70 days.
  That was just a few months ago, and no one has challenged this since 
then. Energy independence today--this is a reality we could be living 
in, and it would dramatically improve our economy.
  Unemployment continues to hover around 8 percent nationwide, but in 
States such as Oklahoma and North Dakota we are at full employment. 
Why? Because of energy development. With greater development of Federal 
energy resources, we would see a dramatic improvement in our economy, 
and there is simply no reason not to do it. The States have clearly 
demonstrated they are capable of handling oil and gas development 
processes and regulations. They have been doing it for 100 years on 
State and private lands. Why shouldn't they be able to do it on Federal 
lands as well? I think the 10th Amendment trusts the States and the 
Senate should do the same.
  I bring this up now because tomorrow there is going to be a speech. 
President Obama is going to give a speech on--I would say global 
warming, but they don't call it that anymore since the globe isn't 
warming. It is a climate speech on the unilateral first steps to 
regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act--now we are talking 
about powerplants--new and existing plants; energy efficiency of 
appliances. He will be talking about that. He will talk about renewable 
energy production on Federal lands, but he will not be talking about 
the cost of these regulations.
  We all remember what he has already done. Utility MACT set new limits 
on mercury, coal, and oil-fired powerplants at a $100 billion cost and 
1.65 million jobs lost. MACT means maximum achievable control 
technology. What this administration has been trying to do is mandate 
emissions that are below the technology to get there. Boiler MACT set 
strict new limits on emissions of hazardous air pollutants from 
industrial and commercial boilers costing $63.3 billion and 800,000 
jobs.
  The same thing is going on now with what he is not talking about but 
what he is planning on doing. Ozone, for example. He is going to be 
promoting--from the information we have now, it would put 2,800 
counties out of attainment, including every county in my State of 
Oklahoma. It could result in 7 million jobs and hundreds of billions in 
costs, and it could shut down oil and gas production in western 
Oklahoma.
  Greenhouse gas for refineries, first ever greenhouse gas limits on 
refineries; second largest emitter after powerplants. What we are 
talking about is, he is going to be able to go through and continue in 
his effort, in his war on fossil fuels, and he is going to attempt to 
do it through the regulations. Let's keep in mind, he tried--they have 
been trying, I should say, since 12 years ago with the Kyoto treaty to 
regulate through legislation, all the way up to the most recent bill 
which was the bill that was defeated last year--the Waxman-Markey 
bill--and that would have regulated emitters of those who emit 25,000 
tons or more.
  Now, that was bad. That would have cost about $400 billion a year. 
However, if he is successful--he being the President--in doing this 
through regulations what he couldn't do through legislation, it would 
be under the Clean Air Act, and it wouldn't be regulating those who 
emit 25,000 tons or more. It would be 250 tons or more. It would affect 
every school, every hospital, every apartment building.
  I would like to have people aware of that as the President makes his 
speech tomorrow. I know he has an obligation. I know that prior to the 
last election he would not come out with these regulations because he 
knew that would be damaging to his reelection efforts. However, now he 
has that commitment to the far-left community who would like to shut 
down the U.S. and the energy that keeps it running.
  So let's be attentive to what he says tomorrow, and I will be anxious 
to respond to his speech at that time. In the meantime, we do know for 
a fact that we have the ability to be totally independent from any 
other country or anyone else in providing our own energy to run this 
machine called America.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

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