[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[HOU]
[Page 11971]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   YOU CAN'T GET OIL FROM A DRY HOLE

  (Mr. WESTMORELAND asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Madam Speaker, more smoke and mirrors that we are 
hearing this morning from the majority party about, oh, there is plenty 
of land to drill in, the big oil companies just aren't drilling. Let me 
just straighten that out just a little bit. Ninety-seven percent of the 
Federal offshore drilling sites are off-limits. Ninety-four percent of 
the federally owned onshore areas are off-limits. Fifty-two percent of 
the area that oil companies drilled in between 2002 and 2007 were dry 
holes. We need to allow these oil companies to drill in areas where 
there actually is oil.
  I don't know the economics that the majority party has, but if there 
is no oil, why would you drill there? That does not make sense. If the 
government would sell companies leases that have oil in them instead of 
selling them places that turn out to be dry holes, then we would have 
more oil produced in this country. We imported over 600 million gallons 
of gasoline last year. We need to add to our refinery capabilities, 
also.

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