[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6998-6999]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GULF COAST OILSPILL

  Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I come to the floor of the Senate to 
talk about not only the environmental but economic disaster that has 
happened in the Gulf of Mexico.
  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to fly over the scene of the spill 
from the Deepwater Horizon rig along with my colleagues Senator 
Sessions, Senator Shelby, and Congressman Jeff Miller who represents 
Florida's First Congressional District.
  What we saw was pretty startling. As we flew out over the ocean, we 
saw the beginning of a spill. At first, it looked like a sheen, 
something one might see with gasoline laying on a concrete floor at a 
gas station. But as we got closer to where the Deepwater Horizon oil 
platform was located before, where it fell into the water, we began to 
see these great bands of orange, rust-colored oil that streaked across 
the Gulf of Mexico. We began to see small clumps of what looked like 
tar.
  As we got closer to the scene of the incident, those small clumps 
turned into what I would describe as large pads of tar that floated to 
the surface.
  We saw the new rigs that are being set up to start the drilling to do 
escape drilling to allow for the pressure to be taken off the spill 
where it is located now. We saw some of the cleanup vessels. There were 
about 10 vessels out there. We understand there are close to 100 
involved in the total containment of this spill.
  What is concerning to me--and I know is concerning to many Members of 
Congress--is what could happen, what might happen next. There are a lot 
of folks working very hard in the Coast Guard and the government. We 
met with Captain Pullen at the Mobile training facility for the Coast 
Guard, who briefed us on what is going on so far.
  If we do not get this wellhead to stop leaking oil into the ocean, 
estimated at 5,000 barrels a day--we don't know how much is leaking. It 
could be less than that; it could be a lot more. If we do not stop the 
wellhead from leaking, we are going to have a lot bigger problem. This 
area has grown every day since April 21 when we had this disaster. It 
is measured by the size of States. First, it was Rhode Island, then it 
was Delaware. It is growing bigger and bigger.
  When the storms subside, as they are doing now, that sheen is going 
to spread out even further. It certainly is going to likely impact my 
State of Florida and our beaches and our commercial fishermen and our 
recreational fishermen. There is cause for great concern.
  The reason I come to the floor today is to make this point. There are 
those who are casting blame on British Petroleum. There are those who 
are casting blame on the government. There will be time for that. 
Whether the government has done a proper job of getting on this problem 
from day one, as we are hearing; whether British Petroleum properly 
worked along with the folks who ran this rig, the Transocean folks; 
whether they made mistakes--certainly, mistakes were made--there will 
be time for us to evaluate that. What we must do now is spend all of 
our energy and efforts stopping the leak from this well because if we 
don't, we may see an oilspill that is the entire expansion of the Gulf 
of Mexico. We may see oil that not only hurts the gulf coast of 
Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, but we potentially 
could see this oil go around the southern part of Florida, into the 
Everglades, into Florida Bay, into the Thousand Islands area--not to 
mention the coast on the western side of Florida, come up on the 
Atlantic side and get in the Gulf of Mexico and come all the way up the 
coast.
  I am here to urge that all my colleagues support the administration 
and BP and everyone else who is working on this to stop the leak we 
have now. To me, it is the most important thing.
  There were obviously issues of negligence that caused this disaster 
to happen in the first place. The questions of whether the Federal 
Government did everything it should have done in the beginning days 
when this happened will have to be answered, and folks are going to 
have to come before our committees to answer those questions. But right 
now, we have to stop this leak and we have to have an increased sense 
of urgency of stopping that leak and containing the oil.
  We are putting this dispersant in now at the site of the wellhead. 
That is apparently having some good effect. BP has also been able--as 
we learned yesterday from Captain Pullen at the Mobile station--to 
close one of the hydraulic fail-safe valves. We know it wasn't fail-
safe, but at least some of that has been closed, which is stopping, we 
hope, in some way the amount of oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. 
There is a crisis now, but the crisis to come could be far worse if we 
do not stop the leak from the wellhead.


               Dangerous Ties Between Venezuela and Iran

  Mr. President, over the last 6 months, we have seen two more attempts 
that we know of against the United States from terrorist attacks--most 
recently at Times Square. Thanks to the vigilance of some New Yorkers 
and the fine work of the New York Police Department, a bombing was 
stopped. We also remember that on Christmas day, when Abdulmutallab 
tried to blow up a plane over the skies of America, thankfully, that 
bomb did not explode. These are very dangerous times.
  I continue to come to the floor to say that we not only need to pay 
attention to the east, where this danger is stemming from, but we also 
have to pay attention to the south. We have to continue to pay 
attention to Venezuela and the dangerous ties between Venezuela and 
Iran. I have come to the floor to speak about the fact that Hezbollah 
and Hamas are now in Iran. We know a Spanish judge has accused 
Venezuelan authorities of conspiring with the ETA, a radical group in 
Spain, to assassinate the President of Colombia. We know Venezuela is 
collaborating with the FARC, the narcoterrorist group, which is 
bringing in drugs and destabilizing all of Central America all the way 
up into Mexico. We know of this dangerous situation. We know there are 
flights now between Venezuela and Iran through Syria that don't go 
through the normal customs procedures, where folks get off the plane in 
Venezuela and who knows where they go. We also know now that Iran has 
sent shock troops to Venezuela. We have also heard of a foiled attempt 
from a company called VenIran--presumably Venezuela-Iran--to ship 
alleged tractor parts to Venezuela that turned out to be explosive 
materials.
  I come to the floor today to update this continuing story and to 
begin to bring, hopefully, the focus of this Congress and this 
administration on the gathering storm that is Venezuela and its 
contacts with Iran. It is not only that there are now shock troops from 
Iran in Venezuela, but we see the Chinese Government giving $20 billion 
to Venezuela for derivative--future--potential to purchase oil, 
apparently. So lots of questions need to be asked, and we need answers 
from this administration about a focus on Venezuela. Hugo Chavez is a 
dangerous man, and the continued attempts by the Venezuelan regime to 
work with Cuba to spread disharmony throughout the region, to try to 
bring other Latin American countries along with his strong-man tactics, 
are cause for concern.

[[Page 6999]]

  I will conclude with this, Mr. President. Two weekends ago, I had the 
opportunity to go to the Joint Interagency Task Force in Key West, FL, 
where tremendous work is done by the Coast Guard, the Navy, the FBI, 
DEA, and all sorts of other agencies to interdict drug trafficking from 
South America, Central America, into the United States. We know 
Venezuela is allowing flights to go over its country from Colombia to 
bring those drugs into Central America. We know how violence comes from 
those drugs, and we are seeing the destabilization of Mexico because of 
it. We also know there are semisubmersible craft--minisubmarines, if 
you will--that ride just below the water that are being used by drug 
traffickers out of Colombia, with the support of Venezuela, to bring 
large amounts of cocaine into the United States. Those same craft could 
be used to deliver a weapon of terror.
  This administration and the world have to focus not just on Iran but 
on the dangerous ties between Iran and Venezuela.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor. I see my friend and 
colleague from Tennessee is here to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Tennessee is recognized.

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