[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 19350]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                PROHIBITING OFFSHORE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

  (Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, in 2008, the President and 
the House of Representatives lifted the 24-year-old moratorium on 
offshore oil and gas production on most of our Atlantic and Pacific 
coasts. Back in March, President Obama pushed for offshore oil drilling 
in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast through 2017. Then 
in April, the BP oil spill happened. That disaster is certainly a 
cautionary tale.
  Yet, in the first week in December, Secretary of the Interior Ken 
Salazar, without an act of Congress or a Presidential executive order, 
single-handedly prohibited offshore energy development from 2012 to 
2017--a 5-year plan for offshore leasing. In reality, this change means 
no new production can even begin until 2022, if then.
  That is not the way to reduce our rising dependence on foreign oil or 
to solve our unemployment problem or our lack of economic growth. We 
must learn our lessons from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and proceed 
with care--but we must proceed.
  President Obama, through Secretary Salazar and strangulation by 
regulation, has set back our country's path to energy security by at 
least 12 years, which is certain to produce higher energy prices and to 
and increase our dependence on foreign imports--hardly sound energy 
policy.

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