[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21136-21137]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY POLICY

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I guess I am one of several Senators who 
doesn't know for sure what is going to happen tonight or tomorrow. I do 
know that we have one very contentious issue in the pipeline. Several 
people have been talking about this. I would like to give, perhaps, a 
different, maybe a historic perspective on this issue as we are looking 
at it.
  I think with all the talk and all the demagoging people want us to be 
independent from the Middle East when producing our energy in fact we 
have the recoverable resources in the United States to be totally 
independent--for the North American Continent to be totally independent 
in providing its own energy. We are the only country in the world that 
does not exploit its own resources. We have more recoverable reserves 
in oil, gas, and coal than any other country in the world. Yet it is a 
political problem because there are people who do not want to exploit 
our own resources. They do not want to go offshore. They do not want to 
go there.
  Eighty-four percent of our onshore public land is off-limits, so we 
cannot drill there. It is very disturbing when we see the real reason. 
We have an administration that doesn't want us to exploit our own 
resources. We have a Secretary of Energy who said we are going to have 
to get the price of gasoline in the pumps comparable to Europe, $8 a 
gallon, before people realize we have to go in another direction other 
than fossil fuels. We have an Assistant Secretary of Energy who said we 
have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.
  All this green energy stuff is fine, and someday when the technology 
is there we will be able to do something with it. But it is not there. 
In the meantime, we have to run this machine called America.
  So here the rest of the world is laughing at us, looking at us and 
saying why is it we have a country that does not use its own resources. 
It is pretty mind-boggling to me.
  The first effort of this administration, in order to hide this agenda 
of not wanting to provide our own energy, was to do away with hydraulic 
fracturing. A lot of people don't know what that is.
  Hydraulic fracturing is a technique started in my State of Oklahoma 
in 1948. There has never been a case of groundwater contamination in 
over 1 million of these applications since 1948. Yet the President made 
a speech about

[[Page 21137]]

6 months ago saying we need to use this good, clean natural gas, and it 
is plentiful, cheap, and we have a lot of it, we should use it--but we 
have to do something about hydraulic fracturing.
  The reality is we cannot get into any of these tight formations for 
oil or gas without using hydraulic fracturing. It is a perfectly safe 
process. They are trying to kill fossil fuels by stopping it.
  Just last week the EPA said, like an endangerment finding, that we 
have now said in the State of Wyoming, in this very shallow well up 
there, only 600 feet, that somehow there is some contamination, and it 
was due to hydraulic fracturing. It is not. Hydraulic fracturing is 
done 1 mile, 2 miles down deep. That is one of the efforts.
  The second issue we are addressing tonight--and this is significant. 
It is almost as if, with all the majority they have supporting the 
President with the 2012 elections coming up, I am in shock a lot of my 
colleagues on the left side, on the Democratic side, are following 
President Obama off this plank and going along with these efforts to 
kill fossil fuels. The most recent one is the one we are talking about 
tonight, and that is the pipeline.
  On November 10 the Obama administration State Department announced it 
would delay the Keystone XL Pipeline decision until after the 2012 
elections. This delay came shortly after the head of the Sierra Club, 
the executive director, Michael Brune, tied their political support for 
President Obama's reelection to the Keystone decision--and they went 
along with it. That is what we are facing right now. It is something 
that is very punitive to our whole country, not just in terms of the 
fact that we cannot use our good, cheap energy we develop right here 
but the number of jobs.
  The Keystone XL Pipeline is estimated to add more than 250,000 
permanent jobs for U.S. workers and add more than $100 billion in 
annual total expenditures to the U.S. total economy. During the 
construction phase alone, it would generate more than $585 million in 
State and local taxes.
  I am particularly interested in this. As to my State of Oklahoma, I 
did not bring it with me, but there is a map that shows where this 
pipeline would go in order to get to the tight formations in Alberta. 
You will notice two-thirds of the way down is Cushing, OK. Cushing, OK, 
is kind of the intersection of all the pipelines. Right now it is 
clogged. It is full, and we cannot open it. Oklahoma alone, it is 
expected, if they would open the Keystone Pipeline, would have some 
14,000 new jobs. That is just in my State, in Oklahoma alone.
  The construction of the pipeline is expected to add about $1.2 
billion in new spending in my State of Oklahoma. We have heard Senators 
from Nebraska and North Dakota and South Dakota talk about how it would 
affect their States. Just in my State alone, once operational, it is 
projected that it would add more than $667 million in property taxes.
  Cushing, OK is a very important part of this. It is mind-boggling. 
When I go back to Oklahoma--I hope we go back sometime tomorrow--and 
people ask the question of why is it, since we want cheap oil and gas 
right from the North American Continent--why would they stop a pipeline 
to carry it?
  They do it because politically they do not want that to happen. I 
believe it is important to look at the other aspects. Jim Jones--a lot 
of us knew him when he was a four-star general who served with a lot of 
dignity. He was very successful. He became the National Security 
Adviser to President Obama.
  He said:

       In a tightly contested global economy, where securing 
     energy resources is a national must, we should be able to act 
     with speed and agility. And any threat to this project, by 
     delay or otherwise, would constitute a significant setback.

  He ties this in to national security. He further said the failure to 
move forward with the project will prolong the risk to our economy and 
our energy security and send the wrong message to job creators.
  One of the opponents of the pipeline thinks that stopping the 
construction would prevent Canada from developing its tar sands. We 
have the far left environmentalists who think somehow they can stop 
this activity in Canada when we know what will happen if we continue to 
stop the transportation through the pipeline all the way from Alberta 
down into Texas.
  According to Austan Goolsbee, a former Obama chairman of the White 
House Council of Economic Advisers--keep in mind he is on their side. 
He said:

       It's a bit naive to think the tar sands would not be 
     developed if they don't build that pipeline.

  He went on to say:

       Eventually, it's going to be built. It may go to the 
     Pacific, it may go through Nebraska, but it's going to be 
     built somewhere.

  They go ahead and talk about the fact that they have already approved 
a way of getting it to the west coast of Canada and shipped to China. 
So this is something where there is no justification for stopping it 
other than the political justification. Other than the administration 
looking at the far left environmentalists--it all started in Nebraska--
they said there is one little area that might not want it. So what do 
they do in Nebraska? They got together and changed the routing of it so 
it goes to an area where there is no opposition, and there is still no 
pipeline.
  I think even if we were to have to stay here--and I am the last one 
who wants to stay here for any length of time--a key issue right now is 
getting that open again.
  I will yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that immediately 
following my remarks, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown, be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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