[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S139-S141]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mr. NELSON:
  S. 2292. A bill to amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to 
prohibit oil and gas preleasing, leasing, and related activities in 
certain areas of the Outer Continental Shelf off the coast of Florida, 
and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I must say, I have seen political games 
being played with trying to drill off of the coast of Florida. Not only 
am I appalled--I have recoiled at this political game--but 
unfortunately I am not surprised because of what we have seen happen in 
the last 15 hours.
  It all started late last week when the Department of the Interior 
released a new 5-year drilling plan. It virtually had all of the 
coastal waters--the Outer Continental Shelf of the entire United 
States--included in this plan, including that area of Florida that is 
off limits to drilling in law--a law that Republican Senator Mel 
Martinez and I passed back in 2006 that keeps drilling off of the gulf 
coast of Florida until the year 2022.
  This new proposal would open up nearly all of the Federal waters to 
drilling, including all of the coastal waters of Florida, both the west 
coast--gulf coast--and the east coast--the Atlantic--and also the 
Straits of Florida, those waters that come around the Florida Keys, 
which is the Gulf Stream that comes right up the southeast coast of 
Florida. The Gulf Stream then goes out across the Atlantic, past 
Bermuda, and ends up in Northern Europe.
  Well, our colleagues have heard this Senator many times come and talk 
about how keeping oil rigs away from Florida's coast is an issue that 
is important to our State because of our tourism economy but also 
because of the military missions on the west coast--the gulf--as well 
as the Atlantic.
  As a Floridian, this Senator has been fighting this fight ever since 
the mid-1980s when Secretary of the Interior James Watt intended to 
drill off the east coast of Florida where we were launching our space 
shuttle, dropping the solid rocket boosters, and where we were 
launching our military rockets, taking our clandestine satellites into 
orbit and dropping the first stages. That is how I beat it back in the 
1980s, but lo and behold, here we are again in the same place.
  We know you can't allow drilling in the Straits of Florida right off 
the Florida Keys because an oilspill there would be in the Gulf Stream, 
and that Gulf Stream hugs the coast of southeast Florida. Can you 
imagine what it would do to the beaches of the Florida Keys, Miami 
Beach, and all up the Gold Coast of Florida, all the way to Palm Beach, 
all the way north to Fort Pierce, where then the Gulf Stream heads 
farther in a northeasterly direction out into the Atlantic?
  Well, let me show you what is happening in the gulf coast. All of 
this in yellow is what is off limits in the Gulf of Mexico as a result 
of the 2006 law.

[[Page S140]]

There is an obvious reason for all of this--because this line is known 
as the Military Mission Line. Everything east of here is the largest 
testing and training area in the world for the U.S. military. That is 
why we put this off limits to oil activity.
  Oh, by the way, the testing and training mission for the entire 
Department of Defense is located right here at Eglin Air Force Base, 
which is where they brought all the pilot training for many nations for 
the F-35, the new super stealth jet fighter.
  Guess what is going on down here in Panama City at Tyndall Air Force 
Base. That is where we have all the pilot training for our F-22, 
another one of our stealth fighters.
  Down here in Key West, we have the Key West Naval Air Station. They 
bring in the squadrons of F-18s for the Navy at Boca Chica, which is 
where the airbase is, and within 2 minutes of lifting off the runway, 
they are over restricted airspace to do their testing and training.
  By the way, what about the rest of the Navy? They bring their 
amphibious ships in here, going onto the beaches up there by Eglin Air 
Force Base. And all of the activity is not just on the surface; the 
testing and training mission is also subsurface because that is part of 
the Navy's mission as well.
  There is ample opportunity to test because from here to here is 300 
miles. From here to here is about 300 miles. So there is plenty of room 
to do this testing. This is the largest testing and training area in 
the world.
  But painfully, over time, we have found another reason, and that was 
over here off of Louisiana. A little over a decade ago, there was an 
oilspill. It wasn't any little oilspill; it was the Deepwater Horizon, 
the BP well that spewed at the surface. At the bottom of the ocean, 
which was a mile below the surface, it spewed out 5 million barrels of 
oil before they got it stopped. That was a rig that did not work. There 
was supposed to be what is called a blowout preventer that was to go in 
and clamp off the well, and there was a blowout. It was defective. It 
didn't close off that well at the wellhead 5,000 feet below the surface 
of the gulf. As a result, 5 million barrels of oil spilled.
  What happened to Florida's economy, not even to speak of all the 
fishing over in Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi? I will tell you 
what happened to Florida's economy. Oil came as far east as Pensacola 
Beach. Photographs of oil completely covering the sugary white sands of 
Pensacola Beach went around the world. So what did people do? For an 
entire tourist season, they didn't come to any of the beaches of the 
gulf coast because they thought there was oil on the beach.
  Painfully, that experience--not even to speak of what has been done 
to our environment and how much oil is still sloshing around down there 
on the bottom of the gulf--painfully, that experience got in the minds 
of the businesses all up and down the gulf coast of Florida.
  By the way, over on the east coast--had that oil ever gotten into a 
current called the Loop Current that comes down and becomes the Gulf 
Stream, that oil would have ruined the tourism industry all along 
Florida's southeast coast, from the Keys to Miami Beach, and all the 
way up to Fort Pierce, FL.
  Floridians feel fairly strongly about this. That is why we were 
fortunate, over a decade ago, in a bipartisan way, to pass a law to 
keep all of that area I just showed you off limits. We knew what would 
happen to our tourism--what people subsequently found out with the 
Deepwater Horizon oilspill--and we knew what would happen to threaten 
our national security by hampering our ability to do our training and 
testing.
  So, voila, all of a sudden, the Trump administration announces last 
week that it is going to drill off all of Florida. I have sponsored 
legislation in the past. I have introduced bills to expand the 
moratorium on the gulf coast. I have sponsored other legislation to 
protect Florida. And today I am introducing another bill that would be 
a permanent ban on drilling off of Florida's coast for exactly the 
reasons I have just said.
  Last week, when the Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Zinke, 
announced that they were opening up nearly all Federal waters, 
including all of those around Florida, we, of course, went into 
fighting mode again. We will fight this, and it will be defeated. It 
turns out that was just a political stunt because late yesterday--1 day 
after officially publishing the plan in the Federal Register--Secretary 
Zinke flew to Florida, met with the Governor of Florida for 20 minutes 
at the Tallahassee Airport, and suddenly announced that he had now 
decided to take Florida ``off the table.'' That sounds like a political 
stunt.
  While many in Florida have seen right through this shameless 
political stunt, it has opened up a long list of other questions that I 
have now asked Secretary Zinke to answer in a letter I sent today.
  What exactly does ``off the table'' mean? Is it the whole Eastern 
Gulf? Half of it? Is it 125 miles off the coast? Does it mean both 
coasts of Florida? Does it mean just one? What about the Straits of 
Florida, Secretary Zinke?
  What about the seismic surveys? You all have said you are proceeding 
with that. Are those off the table too? If you are going to take 
Florida waters ``off the table'' in this little political stunt that 
was done 1 day after the Federal Register published this proposed rule, 
does that mean you are going to eliminate the seismic surveys? There is 
no reason to expose marine life and endangered species to the harmful 
impacts of seismic surveys if there aren't any actual plans to drill in 
the area. So, Mr. Secretary, are you taking those off the table?
  What about your statement--it also included another caveat, Mr. 
Secretary. You said you were ``removing Florida from consideration for 
any new oil and gas platforms.'' Well, all of us know that platforms 
are different from wellheads. So tell me, Mr. Secretary, does that mean 
there will still be drilling off the coast of Florida, but the 
platforms themselves might be located just to the west of the Military 
Mission Line, and the wellhead is going to be underneath and far from 
that prohibited line? Mr. Secretary, does your change of heart mean 
that the administration now supports the bipartisan efforts of the 
Florida delegation to extend the moratorium on drilling in the Eastern 
Gulf? That is the bill that I am introducing today, and it has been 
introduced by Congressman Castor in the House of Representatives.

  For every day that goes by without answers to these essential 
questions, the Secretary needs to add that much more time to the public 
comment period.
  The Secretary's promise last night at the Tallahassee Airport, one 
day after publishing in the Federal Register that Florida is off 
limits--right now those are just empty words because the only real 
thing out there that exists is the law that prevents drilling off the 
gulf coast of Florida for the next 5 years.
  The Secretary has proposed a 5-year plan to drill the rest of Florida 
and to start drilling in 2023 off the gulf coast of Florida.
  There is also a law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, 
which spells out a very specific process for developing lease sales in 
Federal waters. With all of this rush, and now saying that Florida is 
``off the table,'' I fear this announcement of Secretary Zinke's is 
going to discourage Floridians from commenting on the proposal that was 
published just this Monday--the one that opened up Florida's entire 
coastline to drilling--because Floridians have been given false 
assurances that they are all in the clear. That brings us back to this 
political stunt: Design a plan for the entire United States, publish it 
on Monday, and take it back on Tuesday for Florida for political 
reasons.
  Floridians should be aware and they should make their objections 
known because if they don't, then the administration will try to say 
that they never heard objections from Floridians. It goes on and on--
more political games.
  Floridians aren't the only ones who need to know what this means. 
What about all the other States that have been affected? Did you hear 
that there is an uproar among the Governors of other coastal States 
that are in this drilling plan of the administration? They asked: Why, 
one day later, would you go to Florida and say ``We are eliminating 
it,'' but, Secretary Zinke, you didn't exempt my State--all the way 
from Maine in the North, all the way to Florida on the Atlantic coast,

[[Page S141]]

all the other Gulf States, and then to the west coast of the United 
States, California all the way up to the State of Washington? It is 
more games.
  People in Maryland, people in Massachusetts, people in the Carolinas 
are really upset. They ask: Why don't you eliminate the drilling that 
you are proposing off my State? What about out in California and Oregon 
and the State of Washington?
  The administration and Secretary Zinke shouldn't be playing politics 
with an issue that is so important to all of our futures, especially so 
to Florida's future.

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