[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2887-2888]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        SECURE ACT INTRODUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, currently, U.S. families 
spend about $1 billion per day on imported oil. We import about 1.6 
billion barrels from politically unstable nations with a corresponding 
instability in prices, which influences our dollars, our economy, and 
sometimes our soldiers having to look at defending these areas.
  We are currently losing 220,000 barrels per day in domestic 
production because of the administration's moratorium on Gulf of Mexico 
oil rigs. This also means the government is losing almost $1.4 billion 
in revenue that we so sorely need. Keep in mind that each one cent 
increase in the price of gasoline costs American families $1 billion 
per year. That's money that is not going into our economy. Because 60 
percent of our oil comes from foreign countries, it is money that is 
going into other economies.
  Now, while this moratorium is taking place, at least 12 rigs have 
already departed from the gulf, some not to return, as they move these 
rigs to operate in other countries, which can cost $1 million a day. 
Four more are considering leaving. That's 6,000 jobs in jeopardy. 
Currently, more than 30 drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are idle; 
and even though the administration is now allowing just one of those 
rigs to move forward with exploration, all other exploration is still 
off limits with something of a permitorium, as they're looking at their 
permits all over again.
  That is why yesterday I introduced the Safe Exploration Coming from 
Underwater Reserves of Energy Act, or the SECURE Act. This bill allows 
all of those Gulf of Mexico drilling permits to move safely forward, 
those which have already been approved by regulators. Keep in mind, all 
of these have been reviewed thoroughly. It takes a lot of time to do 
that, and they all follow strict regulations. There are no shortcuts on 
safety, and there is no bypassing environmental regulations. Quite 
frankly, I trust our environmental regulations to protect the 
environment more so than those of other countries.
  What we have from the lost production of the domestic oil industry 
means we are increasingly dependent on those unstable foreign regimes 
to meet our needs, which puts our economy at risk should another spike 
in oil prices occur like the one we have now. Add to this and punctuate 
this with the recent unrest in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and 
whatever country may come next, which helps point out a lot of our 
vulnerability: the vulnerability of what happens if the Suez Canal is 
closed down even for a short period of time; the vulnerability that 
comes if Libyan oil production declines; the vulnerability that comes 
with Iran and its use of oil revenue to put pressure on other nations 
to support their efforts to develop nuclear weapons, their threats to 
Israel and their threats to dominate the Mideast.
  The cost of an arms race in the Mideast and an arms race in the world 
with new nuclear weapons far surpasses anything we can imagine--as are 
the revenues we can get from oil.
  So I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, the SECURE 
Act, so we can secure our own energy future, so we can lower gas 
prices, so we can create thousands of jobs right here at home: from 
drilling on these rigs, from developing the pipe, from building the 
rigs, from so many other supply chains of what we have in this Nation 
to do this, and above all, so we keep our domestic oil at home rather 
than pay for our own dollars to go to other nations.
  We can drill for our oil and our own jobs, and we can boost our own 
economy; or we can continue to be dependent on unstable nations, rising 
prices and, sadly, paying for both sides of the war on terror. It is a 
sobering thought for Americans to think that every time they go to put 
gasoline in their tanks they're funding both sides of the war on 
terror.
  That alone should be enough to make us change our approach. That 
alone should be enough to say let's use our oil and our resources 
instead of propping up the economies of other nations.

[[Page 2888]]

That alone should be something that motivates us to make sure we are 
working on these issues. Hopefully, that means we can melt this 
moratorium on our own domestic oil production.
  The choice is ours. I hope all of my colleagues will choose to 
support jobs of the United States of America as opposed to supporting 
those dollars that are just going to other countries.

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