[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10336-10337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 MORATORIUM ON OFFSHORE DRILLING IS THE SECOND DISASTER IN THE GULF OF 
                                 MEXICO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the moratorium on deepwater offshore 
drilling will prevent drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for the next 6 
months or longer.
  Why do we have the moratorium? What is the purpose?
  When we have a plane crash, as disastrous as that might be, we don't 
close down the entire airline industry for 6 months--that wouldn't make 
sense--but now we want to close down the drilling offshore for 6 
months.
  What is the reason?
  The 6-month moratorium on drilling will be another economic 
catastrophe for the United States. Six months is a long time in the 
drilling business. These wells can't start and stop overnight, and 
neither can the support industries.
  Mr. Speaker, this chart right here shows the coasts of Texas and 
Louisiana, and on this chart, out in the Gulf of Mexico, there are 
about 4,000 offshore rigs. These 4,000 rigs will not be allowed to 
drill, based upon the administration's moratorium, for the next 6 
months. All of these yellow dots represent a drilling rig that is 
offshore, and they go about 75 to 150 miles off the Texas-Louisiana 
coast, not counting those off of Mississippi and Alabama.
  Some companies are already moving workers to Brazil and to the Middle 
East because of this absurdity of a moratorium. Texas and Louisiana 
will lose an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 jobs just in this industry, not 
counting all the related industries that are onshore. The people who 
supply those rigs--the food, the transportation, communications, goods 
and services--all of those jobs will be gone if these rigs are not 
allowed to drill. The longer the uncertainty continues here in America, 
the worse it will get, and there is no guarantee these jobs will ever 
come back. That is not only a threat to our economy. It is a threat to 
national security.
  That means the United States will now import more oil from countries 
that don't like us--like the Middle East and Venezuela. Now China and 
Russia, two of our buddies, are going to drill off the coast of Cuba 
with Venezuela and Vietnam.
  Isn't that a lovely experience?
  The loss of our domestic source of oil in the Gulf of Mexico will 
make us further dependent on foreign oil and will increase energy costs 
to all Americans, and that will also increase tanker traffic bringing 
that oil into the Gulf of Mexico. There have been 16 large 
international oil spills of over 30 million gallons, and only three of 
those have been from offshore drilling rigs. The rest have been from 
oil tankers bringing oil from one place to another. So we need to put a 
proactive plan in

[[Page 10337]]

place so we can better deal with accidents in the Gulf of Mexico.
  It took 9 days for the administration to make remarks about the 
impact of the Deepwater explosion and for DHS to declare the spill of 
national significance. There was no clear chain of command for who was 
in control of the disaster. There doesn't seem to be any plan. There 
should have been a plan in place immediately to respond. That's the 
government's responsibility. Some say it was the Coast Guard's. Others 
say it was the EPA's. It is still somewhat of a mystery as to who was 
supposed to be in charge and who was supposed to be in control of the 
cleanup and of the containment when the explosion occurred.
  It took 37 days to attempt the top-kill procedure. Why so long? We 
don't know the answer yet. The majority of the pollution is a result of 
the delay, not of the explosion. I repeat: The majority of the 
pollution is the result of the delay and not of the explosion itself.

                              {time}  1815

  Now government is overreacting to the aftermath and making the 
economic impact worse by prohibiting the drilling of these other 4,000 
wells. The moratorium could end up being a worse economic problem than 
the accident itself. It's the second disaster now in the Gulf of 
Mexico.
  The EPA was created in 1970 to address industrial pollution, and they 
have somewhat of a history of overreacting and overregulating. And the 
bottom line is they are driving and have driven American manufacturing 
jobs to other countries. We cannot allow this to happen again with 
offshore drilling.
  As much as we need to use all alternative sources of energy, right 
now our economy runs on fossil fuels, and that's not going to really 
change anytime soon. So we either have to import more oil or we have to 
allow these rigs to drill.
  America doesn't yet run on windmills and moonbeams. We need a plan 
for future disasters, to include who is in charge of stopping the leak, 
who is in charge of containment of the oil spill, and who is in charge 
of the cleanup. As of today, there does not seem to be a comprehensive 
plan to implement.
  And that's just the way it is.

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