[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2324-2328]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            DOMESTIC ENERGY

  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I think it is obvious all around our 
country that Americans are struggling right now with gasoline prices. 
The average American family spent more than $4,000 on gasoline last 
year, and it will be more this year, with the additional devastating 
price increases we are seeing now that will wreak havoc on our economy.
  The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has gone up every 
single day for the last 3 weeks. In many parts of our country, prices 
at the pump are around $4 a gallon. But instead of encouraging an 
``all-of-the-above'' approach, which the administration has said it is 
doing, the administration, instead, has been frustrating every domestic 
source of energy production

[[Page 2325]]

that does not conform to a narrow view of alternative fuels.
  The President is opposed to increased drilling in the Arctic National 
Wildlife Reserve and opening additional areas of the Outer Continental 
Shelf off the Alaskan coast.
  The people of Alaska have voted to support the ANWR drilling because 
they know ANWR is an area that is the size, approximately, of the State 
of South Carolina, and the part that would be drilled is approximately 
the size of Washington National Airport. So they know this would be 
good jobs for Alaska, and it would not harm the environment at all 
because the drilling area is so very small in this vast wildlife 
reserve.
  The President has also restricted drilling on Federal lands, opposes 
the development of shale gas and coal, and will not open additional 
areas of the Outer Continental Shelf in the lower 48 States. Even 
though some State legislatures, such as Virginia, have said they would 
like to do it, the President has shut that down.
  The President opposes further drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and 
nuclear energy is also now on the list, I guess, of moratoria. He has 
rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline.
  What the President does favor is the Saudis increasing oil production 
and increased use of solar, wind, and algae at home.
  Does that substitute for an energy policy? Is that something 
Americans can count on to increase the supply of energy in our country?
  Last week, the President said: We cannot drill our way to lower gas 
prices. This statement is inaccurate. Increased domestic production 
will go a long way toward stabilizing gas prices. Why does this 
President want to turn his back on critical sources of domestic energy 
which seems incomprehensible to anyone looking at this issue?
  So I have colleagues on the Senate floor who come from different 
States--States where unemployment is high and people are looking for 
jobs and looking for alternatives.
  I would like to turn to the Senator from the great State of Missouri, 
Mr. Blunt, and ask the Senator from Missouri if he has a view. Is he 
hearing from his constituents in Missouri?
  Mr. BLUNT. Well, I do. I think I will quickly yield to my good friend 
from Ohio and then speak again.
  Actually, I just met with disabled veterans who are here in town 
today. I told them I was going to be talking about energy, and they 
said the long-term effort of the Veterans' Administration to get 
veterans to their health care appointments is dramatically impacted by 
these high gas prices--just like for veterans and retirees of all kinds 
with the number of dollars going into their gas tanks.
  As they see the price of that tank of gas go up $10, maybe they 
decide: I am going to have to quit because that is all the money I have 
with me or I am going to fill up the tank and see it go to $40, $50, 
$60.
  As families look at that, as retirees look at that, as veterans look 
at that, they have got to be thinking as that gas tank number changes, 
something else they were going to do that week is something they are 
not going to be able to do. This has dramatic impact on families; it 
has dramatic impact on the way we live; it has dramatic impact on the 
confidence people have in our economy.
  If you look at any charts of gas prices going up, you see consumer 
confidence going down. It happens in States such as the Senator's or in 
States in the middle of the country such as Missouri or Senator 
Portman's State of Ohio. I know we have all been home. I am sure you 
cannot have been home and not have heard a lot about gas prices.
  Mr. PORTMAN. The Senator is absolutely right. I say to my colleagues 
from Texas and Missouri, they are right on in terms of the impact on 
Ohio families. I was home last week. In fact, I drove from Ohio to 
Washington last night. I had to fill up a couple of times on the way, 
and the price was over $3.70 a gallon. According to AAA, the average 
price now is over $2.70 a gallon.
  This is impacting families. I have met with people who were in the 
trucking business and small operators who are trying to make ends meet. 
They are saying: Rob, I do not know how this is going to work because 
our gas prices keep going up at a time when our expenses are going up 
as well. They are getting squeezed out. Of course, higher prices for 
gas affect all of us as families, they affect everything we buy, 
because that cost is embedded there. So this is hurting our economy in 
very fundamental ways.
  Record levels for this time of year. This is not just a seasonal 
issue. This is a longer term failure of an energy policy by the Obama 
administration. That is something we all need to focus on, not to just 
be critical of bad policies which have gotten us here, but how do we 
get out of it? What do we do? That is what I wish to talk about for a 
minute today.
  Let me give you a couple of interesting numbers. The price of gas has 
increased by 94 percent in the last 3\1/2\ years, during the Obama 
administration. So you are talking about almost a 100-hundred percent 
increase in the cost of gasoline.
  There was an all-time high last year of $2.53 a gallon, and again 
over $3.70 this year already. By the way, last year the average amount 
spent by a family in America for gasoline at the pump--over $4,000. So 
this is a big part of people's budgets. We have been hit hard. At a 
time when millions of Americans are struggling amid a continuing weak 
economy, it is particularly tough because budgets are already stretched 
thin.
  We need to produce more, in my view. If you produce more, you are 
going to see prices come down. It is sort of the basic law of supply 
and demand. So right now we have demand around the world maybe picking 
up a little bit, and yet we are not producing as much as we should be. 
And, frankly, we are producing less than we have.
  Let me give you some interesting numbers here that actually surprised 
me in terms of what the President is saying versus the facts. The 
President says we are producing more than we have in the past. The 
production of natural gas on public lands and waters went down 11 
percent last year; decline in oil production, 14 percent. In the Gulf 
of Mexico, there was a 17-percent drop from 618 million barrels in 2010 
to 514 in 2011.
  The Senator from Texas talked about this. We are not seeing an 
increase; we are seeing a decrease. This is at a time when all of us, I 
hope, realize that we have to be focused on producing more here at 
home, one, so we can get prices down, and, two, so we can get less 
dependent on these dangerous and volatile parts of the world. If we do 
not do that, we are going to be subject to what happens in Libya or 
Iran and see gas prices spike up as we are seeing now. We have got to 
produce more and we have got to produce it here at home to get away 
from the OPEC cartel. Washington wastes time by not acting now to 
immediately expand that production.
  The White House says you cannot immediately expand production because 
it takes some time. Well, all the more reason to get started with it, 
as the Senator from Texas has said. If we had started a few years ago, 
we would be in much better shape. But also the price of gasoline 
reflects what people think it is going to be in the future. So even if 
we made a commitment today to get busy on more domestic production, oil 
and natural gas, it would affect the price because it would affect what 
folks are thinking about what the future prices are going to be.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Would the Senator from Ohio yield.
  I think the Senator from Ohio is making such a good point, because 
here the President is saying producing more will not lower prices. Does 
that seem like the fundamental supply-and-demand explanation that most 
economists have adopted in our country, that if you supply more the 
price will go down? Does not that seem like a non sequitur?
  Mr. PORTMAN. It does. I think most people get it. Because even if you 
do not have a degree in economics, and I do not, we understand the law 
of supply

[[Page 2326]]

and demand works. So if you are going to cut the supply, as has 
happened, you are going to see prices go up.
  Let me give you an example. In 2010, the President cancelled leases 
in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mid-Atlantic. In 2011, he put forward a 
5-year lease plan that reinstitutes a moratorium in the Atlantic, 
Pacific, halves the number of lease sales in the old plan. So, again, 
if supply is going down, you are likely to see prices go up. That is 
exactly what has happened. He slowed down permits for deepwater and 
shallow water drilling in the gulf. He is now set to impose severe new 
regulations on oil refiners. That is going to further raise prices.
  Speaking of oil refineries, that is a big part of the cost of 
gasoline. About 11 percent of the cost, according to the American 
Petroleum Institute, of the price of gasoline comes from refining. By 
putting more and more regulations and costs on refining, you are going 
to have an impact on prices as well that is negative and hurting our 
families.
  The EPA, the cap-and-trade regime, did not get through the Congress. 
So they are moving ahead through regulations, causing a lot of 
uncertainty, a lack of construction of refineries. The first new 
refinery in a generation, in fact, has been delayed because of it.
  This actually brings us to the second problem, I say to my colleagues 
from Missouri and Texas. This is not just about gas prices, as 
important as that is; it is about jobs. Because by stopping the 
construction of a refinery, we are putting new regulations on not 
allowing the kind of drilling we want to do in the State of Ohio to 
bring jobs, and you are hurting the very jobs Americans need to be able 
to pay their gas bill. These are good-paying jobs. They tend to be jobs 
that pay well, have good benefits. So a progrowth energy strategy does 
not just result in a more secure energy source, more reliable energy, 
it also results in more jobs, which we need desperately.
  The President seems to be saying he is going to reverse course. In 
his State of the Union Address, he says he is for an all-of-the-above 
strategy. By the way, a week after that, do you know what he did? He 
rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, which--talk about all of the above--
we certainly should be from our strong ally to the North getting oil we 
need for our refineries to get the cost down.
  By the way, that pipeline also picks up American oil. I bet you that 
our colleague from North Dakota is going to talk about that in a little 
while, because he has been Governor of North Dakota and understands the 
importance of the Keystone XL Pipeline. So whether it is the offshore 
drilling we talked about, moving ahead with drilling onshore, and 
exploration that can help create jobs and energy security, whether it 
is the Keystone XL Pipeline, whether, as I talked about in terms of the 
regulations on our refineries, there are things we can do and should do 
and do immediately, if we do these things to have more domestic energy 
production, yes, we will begin to see these prices go down and 
stabilize.
  I come from Ohio. As the Senator from Missouri said, we have a 
tradition of producing oil and gas. It goes back to the turn of the 
century, the last century. Then we kind of got away from it for a while 
and people in Texas started producing a lot more oil and gas. We are 
back in the business, thanks to these shale finds. The Marcellus 
shale--it is the Utica shale, it is natural gas. But it is also oil and 
what they call wet gas, which is very valuable.
  I will tell you, having spent a lot of time in eastern Ohio over the 
last several days, people are excited about this. It is bringing back 
good-paying jobs, allowing people to stay in these communities and be 
able to raise their families with not just a living wage but real hope 
for the future.
  It also will have an effect on our gas prices. We have an 
opportunity, before things get worse, to come up with a different 
solution, a sensible national energy policy that stops our dangerous 
dependence on foreign oil and leads to more domestic production and 
therefore prices we can afford at the pump.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I want to say to the Senator from Ohio that I am very 
pleased Ohio is getting back into the drilling business. That is 
creating jobs in a State that I know has had high unemployment. It is 
so clearly in America's best interests to have our people working.
  And, of course, the Keystone Pipeline, which our colleague from North 
Dakota is going to talk about in a few minutes, is the perfect place to 
create jobs; instant jobs with not one dime of taxpayer dollars. This 
would be private dollars invested in a pipeline that would bring oil 
from our friends in Canada all the way through the United States to the 
refineries in Texas, which it is estimated would produce 830,000 
barrels of oil into gasoline a day--a day. Think of what that would do 
to the price.
  The Secretary of Energy has actually made the statement that we want 
gasoline prices to increase along the lines of Europe. Oh, really? I 
wish to ask my friend from Missouri, how would the working people in 
his State feel about $8 or $9 per gallon, which is what they pay in 
Europe, as a cost at the pump? What would that do to the economy of 
Missouri? What would that do to the unemployment in Missouri?
  Mr. BLUNT. I was asked the other day when I was home: Does the 
administration have a plan? I said: Well, if you listen to what they 
say, this is their plan, for these gas prices to go up. We are not 
Europe. In spite of what the Secretary of Energy may have said the 
month before he was named as Secretary, that our big problem was our 
gas was not as high as gasoline in Europe, that was, according to him, 
our big problem.
  The President who appointed him said a few weeks before that, at the 
San Francisco Chronicle editorial board: Under my energy policies, 
energy prices will skyrocket. So apparently they are well along on the 
plan.
  As I mentioned a couple of times already, gasoline is twice as high 
as it was in January of 2009. We are not Europe. We are a big country 
that is dependent on transportation. We drive farther to go to work 
than most Europeans do. We transport our goods more than most Europeans 
do. We have this big agricultural economy that feeds a whole lot of the 
world and only works with affordable energy.
  There are two points both Senators have made that I wish to drive 
home. One is that more American energy means more American jobs, and 
not just the jobs to build something such as the Keystone Pipeline but 
also the jobs at the refinery when that 800,000 barrels of oil a day 
gets to our refinery. They are American workers running that refinery.
  If our economy is prosperous, there are more people working in 
manufacturing and transportation and all of the things that we do for a 
living. The shortest path to more American jobs is more American 
energy. We should be working on that, and then the impact on families. 
You know, as families see what is happening at the gas pump, as I said 
earlier, they give up on other things they would hope to do.
  The President said at the State of the Union that he was for an all-
of-the-above strategy. Apparently the regulators do not know about 
this. The regulators the President has appointed seem to have no clue 
that the all-of-the-above strategy of coal, of natural gas, of oil, 
needs to be part of what we are doing as we invest in the future.
  Nobody is opposed to looking for what comes next after fossil fuel. 
The concern is we are not there. Even if we knew we were going there, 
we would not get there for a long time. Even if we knew what would 
power our cars 30 years from now, most cars 20 or 25 years from now 
will still be pulling up to a gas pump. Most trucks will still be 
pulling up to a gas pump.
  Frankly, the economy could not absorb it any other way. And we do not 
know yet what is the likely next thing. I am for seeing us invest in 
that. I am for conservation so we use our energy more wisely. But let 
me say, the poorest people are the last ones who get the new high-
mileage vehicles or the energy-efficient refrigerator or the new 
windows. Retired Americans, Americans struggling to get by, are going 
to be the last people to benefit, in most cases, from those ideas.

[[Page 2327]]

  Let's conserve our way out of this or let's price our way out of 
this. More American energy is good for us. Energy from our friend and 
next-door neighbor is the next best thing to energy we produce 
ourselves. We ought to do all we can to produce all the competitive 
energy we can on our own. We then ought to do all we can to encourage 
our closest trading partner, our most equitable trading partner. When 
we send them a dollar, they send us almost a dollar back every single 
time. Regarding energy security, the odds that we are going to have a 
problem with our Canadian neighbor are a lot less than the odds that 
something will happen in the Middle East that will be a problem for us. 
Because of these new finds in gas shale, oil shale, tar sands, and 
other things, we can now use small platforms to access it that would 
not be disruptive in a significant way; a small drilling platform 
doesn't do that.
  I thank our good friend, Senator Hutchison from Texas, for putting 
this discussion together and for being such a leader on energy issues. 
Senator Hoeven, when he was Governor, saw what could happen in the 
economy of a State when we decide we are going to make the most of our 
natural resources. The economy of North Dakota changed dramatically 
while he was Governor because it became an energy producer and is now 
one of the biggest energy producers in our country. He wants to talk 
about the Keystone Pipeline, and I wish to hear that if the Senator is 
ready. We can go back to the Senator from Texas, and then we will hear 
from Senator Hoeven.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri for 
the point he made about trading with Canada, our ally and closest 
neighbor, our biggest trading partner, as opposed to having Canada ship 
the oil they are now producing in the Alberta sands over to China or 
over someplace else, and sometimes it would be shipped back in or we 
would be taking oil from the Middle East, and all the things that can 
happen when oil is being shipped from the Middle East to America are 
risks we would have to take.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, if I may make a final point. Every other 
country in the world looks at its natural resources, and the first two 
words they think of are ``economic advantage'' or ``economic 
opportunity.'' That is what the Canadians are doing. Only in the United 
States do we have any significant number of leaders who look at our 
natural resources, and the first words they think of are 
``environmental hazard'' and ``what is the worst thing that could 
happen?'' And ``what if that happened every day?''
  The Canadian Prime Minister was in China just in the last month 
talking about selling their oil to the Chinese, who want to buy it. 
That is what the Canadians should be doing. They would prefer to sell 
it to us. We should buy it. But they are not going to decide that if 
our most logical partner doesn't want it, we will just let our economy 
suffer and not do anything with it. Nobody else looks at energy 
resources that way. We should not either, and we should not expect the 
Canadians to do that.
  That pipeline is either going to go south to our refinery or west to 
the coast, where they will ship that oil to Asia. We should not let 
that happen. They don't want it to happen. We should not be upset with 
them if we will not buy it and they decide they are going to benefit 
from their own resources, as they should.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. The Senator makes the exact right point. Of course, 
they should look for markets so their people can be employed. The folly 
is that America would not be the logical place to say, yes, we want it, 
of course. Let me give a statistic, and I will ask the Senator from 
North Dakota his opinion. Frankly, he has been the leader in the Senate 
to try to get the Keystone Pipeline approved by the State Department 
and the White House. He has been the leader. I was amazed just 
yesterday that the White House did a kind of a double backflip with a 
twist. The Wall Street Journal said it best: ``Obama's Keystone 
Jujitsu.'' What the administration did, in a mind-numbing kind of 
logic, was say: We said no after more than 3 years of environmental 
studies that all approved the Keystone Pipeline coming from Canada down 
through Oklahoma and into the refineries in Texas. Instead of approving 
it after more than 3 years of good environmental studies that came out 
positive, the President said no.
  But yesterday, the President said: We will approve and say it is a 
good idea to do the pipeline from Oklahoma down to Texas. That is not 
bad; it is great to have that, but the problem is, if we do the 830,000 
barrels a day that would come from Canada all the way down to the 
refineries in Texas, it would produce 34 million gallons of oil a day, 
or the equivalent of more than 16 million gallons of gasoline.
  I ask the Senator from North Dakota, who could be bypassed with this 
new plan, how is that going to affect the rest of America--not the 
America between Oklahoma and Texas but the rest of America, including 
the State of North Dakota? Why would he think the President would think 
that is a solution?
  I wish to make sure the Senator has up to 10 minutes, so I ask 
unanimous consent for that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield to the Senator from North Dakota for up to 10 
minutes. I ask him, how on Earth does this affect the price of gasoline 
when we could be putting 34 million gallons of oil, or more than 16 
million gallons of gasoline a day into people's tanks? How could the 
President say that would not lower the price?
  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for 
organizing this colloquy with the Senator from Missouri and the Senator 
from Ohio on this very important issue.
  We have our American consumers paying more than $3.70 at the pump 
today. Actually, today the price is $3.72. That is the right question 
because that hits every single American. As the Senator from Texas and 
the other Senators have pointed out, when the administration took 
office, the price of gasoline per gallon was about $1.85. Today, it is 
$3.70. Actually, again, this chart is already old; today the average 
price is $3.72. In some places, it is already well over $4. The 
projection is that by Memorial Day, gasoline will be $4 a gallon and by 
later this summer it could be as much as $5 a gallon.
  Let's put that into perspective for just a minute, following up on 
the question by the Senator from Texas. Recently, the President wanted 
a payroll tax cut, and the Congress passed that payroll tax cut. As the 
President liked to point out, that was about $1,000 a year. The benefit 
of that payroll tax averaged about $1,000 a year for the American 
worker or about $40 a paycheck. People get a paycheck every week, so it 
would be $40 a paycheck for the average working American. That is about 
$20 a week.
  When we are paying between $4 and $5 a gallon for gas at the pump, we 
more than pay that additional $20 we got in that payroll tax, don't we? 
In other words, it costs us more than that. In essence, we have gone 
back because of the high price of gasoline.
  What is the administration doing? As the Senator from Missouri just 
pointed out, the administration has an all-of-the-above strategy. What 
is that? That means we produce more energy from all our resources--oil, 
gas, biofuels, solar, wind, nuclear, and biomass. I agree with that. We 
should produce all our energy resources and have an all-of-the-above 
strategy. The problem is the administration is saying that, but they 
are not doing it. They are saying we should have an all-of-the-above 
strategy, but they are not doing it. Not only are they not doing it, 
they are actually blocking oil and gas development in our country, and 
they are blocking our ability to get oil from our closest ally and 
trading partner, Canada.
  The Keystone XL Pipeline, which they have turned down, is a great 
example of that. That is 830,000 barrels a day that we are not getting 
from Canada, because after 3\1/2\ years of study, the administration 
turned down the project. The Keystone XL Pipeline and

[[Page 2328]]

projects similar to it are very important parts of the solution. We 
still get 30 percent of our crude from the Middle East and Venezuela. 
Oil prices are going up because of instability in the Middle East. That 
creates a risk premium to the price of gasoline, which we could reduce 
substantially by producing more oil and gas here at home and with our 
closest friend and trading partner, Canada.
  Ironically, the President wanted a payroll tax cut to stimulate our 
economy, he said, and to help the American worker. Then he more than 
takes away any benefit from that payroll tax cut by blocking our 
ability to develop oil and gas in this country and to get oil from 
Canada. In my State of North Dakota, not only can we not get our oil to 
market because we cannot put it into the Keystone XL Pipeline and get 
it to refineries, we cannot get the oil from Canada either, and our 
consumers, working Americans, pay the price at the pump. Why would the 
administration do that? Why?
  I think some insight is provided by Ted Turner's letter on the CNN 
Web site. He has a letter on that Web site, and everyone can check it 
out. Mr. Turner cites a number of arguments as to why we should not get 
oil from Canada. First, he says: That oil we get from Canada--we will 
just export it, so it will not reduce gas prices in the United States. 
But in a recent Department of Energy report, dated June 22, 2011, the 
U.S. Department of Energy says just the opposite; that the crude we 
bring in from Canada will be refined in the United States, and it will 
lower gas prices in the United States on the east coast, the gulf 
coast, and in the Midwest--not ``may'' reduce gas prices but ``will'' 
reduce them on the east coast, the gulf coast, and in the Midwest. Mr. 
Turner's letter says the pipeline will leak and, gee, we don't want a 
pipeline that leaks.
  As my second chart shows, this is the second Keystone Pipeline. This 
first Keystone Pipeline has already been built. He says that Keystone 
Pipeline leaked, so we cannot build a second one. The first one had no 
underground leaks. The leaks he refers to were minor leaks at some of 
the joints as they constructed the thing, which is normal and they were 
quickly and readily handled and they were no problem. That is 
functioning today just fine, and there are no underground leaks. So 
that is not accurate either, is it?
  As a matter of fact, let's take a look at this chart. Those are not 
the only two pipelines we have in the United States. There are others. 
We have thousands of oil and gas pipelines across the country. But 
somehow building one more that will bring in 830,000 barrels a day to 
help reduce the price of gas is a problem. Really? That doesn't make 
much sense.
  The other argument he uses is that we are producing that oil in 
Canada in the oil sands, and that is not good because we have to 
excavate to do it. What is the reality with producing oil sands? It 
does have somewhat higher greenhouse gas emissions. How much? About 6 
percent. That is how much more greenhouse gas emission we get. But we 
are moving from excavating to produce that oil and gas to in situ. In 
situ is drilling just like we do for conventional oil. That means the 
same amount of greenhouse gas, the same footprint. Eighty percent is in 
situ. It has the same amount of greenhouse gas. We have deployed new 
technologies and produce more energy and do it with better 
environmental stewardship.So these arguments aren't accurate.
  But the reality is this: Folks like Mr. Turner, rich and famous, I 
guess they can pay $4 for gasoline. They can pay $5 for gasoline or a 
lot more. That isn't a problem for them. The problem is for hard-
working Americans who have to pay that price at the pump every single 
day. So the administration has to decide who they are going to side 
with on this issue. Who are they going to side with on this issue? Are 
they going to continue to side with, I guess rich and powerful 
interests that want to see those gasoline prices go higher, and for 
whom the price of gasoline at the pump really isn't an issue or with 
hard-working Americans for whom this creates real hardship? That is the 
issue we have here with this vote that we will be having on the 
Keystone XL Pipeline.
  The reality is this: We can have North American energy security. We 
can do it. Right now, between Canada and the United States, with some 
help from Mexico, we produce about 70 percent of our crude. The 
Keystone XL project alone would take us up over 75 percent. And with 
other sources, which some of my colleagues have referred to, such as 
shale and the in situ drilling I have talked about, we can easily meet 
our needs. In fact, if we include the work we are doing with natural 
gas, with biofuels, and with energy efficiency, I believe we can truly 
have North American energy security--meaning we can supply the energy 
needs in the United States and North America, with our friends in 
Canada, within 5 to 7 years. But we have to get started. We have to get 
started.
  So let's get started, Mr. President. Let's start by approving the 
Keystone XL Pipeline project. Let's show the world we are serious about 
getting this done. Asking the Saudis for more oil, as some of my 
colleagues have done, doesn't solve the problem. Nor does taking oil 
out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That doesn't solve the problem. 
We solve the problem by truly producing all of the above--not saying it 
but doing it.
  It is ironic the administration praises TransCanada for moving 
forward on building the only portion of this pipeline they can build 
without a Presidential permit. He praises them for moving forward at 
the very time the administration is blocking the project. And while 
they are blocking it, that means not one more drop of oil is coming 
into this country from Canada, not one more drop of oil is coming from 
my State of North Dakota down to the refineries to help reduce the 
price of gasoline at the pump. That is not an all-of-the-above energy 
policy. That is not helping American workers. And that is exactly why 
gasoline is $3.70 a gallon and going higher.
  It is time for Congress to act.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.

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