[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18035-18037]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, but I have to say this last weekend, as 
I was going through all the different news and the many things that we 
track, I

[[Page 18036]]

was quite surprised last Friday afternoon at the way the President 
addressed something that this Nation has discussed for 7 years--a 
pipeline permit, a permit called the Keystone XL Pipeline.
  It is not a revolutionary thing. Quite frankly, I wish to show you 
something. These are all the pipelines that currently exist in the 
United States.
  Right now, there are 19 international crossings of pipelines already 
coming into the United States, either from Canada into the northern 
part of the United States or from Mexico and from the South. There are 
already 19 of them. This would just be a 20th pipeline. There is 
nothing different about that.
  There are 60,000 miles of crude oil pipelines in the United States 
right now. There are about 63,000 miles of refined product pipelines. 
If you want to go to natural gas, there are about 300,000 miles of 
natural gas pipelines already in the United States. Yet this pipeline 
is treated like some radical and new invention--as if we have never 
considered a pipeline before. But what surprised me so much wasn't the 
2,600-plus days that this pipeline request sat on the President's desk. 
What surprised me was his reason for actually deciding not to do then 
the permits. That was the surprising part.
  Quite frankly, last Friday afternoon as I heard the reasons, I went 
back, read the transcript, and these were the three reasons the 
President gave. He said: No. 1, ``the pipeline wouldn't make a 
meaningful long-term contribution to our economy,'' and he encouraged 
us to pass a highway bill instead because it would provide more jobs. I 
don't remember ever discussing and saying: This pipeline is going to 
provide as many jobs as highways. That has never been discussed on this 
floor. It is apples and oranges. A highway bill is public funding. It 
is the taxpayers that actually fund transportation, and we should do 
highways in transportation.
  This is a private project that was never intended to have as many 
jobs as a highway. It is a pipeline. So he said it is not going to 
provide enough jobs, and so he is not going to permit it.
  The second reason he gave is this: ``The pipeline would not lower gas 
prices for American consumers.'' He said gasoline prices are already 
low, and so we don't need this pipeline--as if gasoline prices don't 
rise and fall and we shouldn't plan forward for the future.
  Do you want to know why gasoline prices are low right now? It is 
because over the decades, Americans have done this, and we have an 
efficient system of moving energy. By the way, the pipeline is the 
safest and least expensive way to move energy around our country. So 
what the President is saying is this: What we have is enough. I don't 
want to plan for the future anymore. I don't want to look for what is 
going to help our children. Our prices are low enough. I don't care 
what our children pay in the future days.
  Well, that is absurd. But, quite frankly, the third one is the one 
that was the most jarring to me, so I want to be able to say this 
statement to you. This is reason No. 3 the President gave: ``Shipping 
crude oil into our country from unstable countries would not increase 
America's energy security.'' Let me read that to you again because I 
was so stunned by it. This is exactly from the President's speech off 
of the White House site. This is what the President said off this 
statement. He will not permit the Keystone Pipeline coming from Canada 
into the United States. He said shipping dirtier crude oil into our 
country would not increase America's energy security. He said:

       What has increased America's energy security is our 
     strategy over the past several years to reduce our reliance 
     on dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world.

  Now, as I heard the President say that, I was a little taken aback 
because I don't remember any other President referring to Canada as an 
unstable part of the world from which we don't want to get our energy--
an unstable country, and saying Canada was that country.
  So I kept reading it and rereading it, thinking maybe he was implying 
something else, but the problem with that is he either means that 
Canada is an unstable country and we don't want to be reliant on them 
to get energy or he is saying the Middle East and other countries are 
unstable and we don't want to rely on them, so maybe we should buy from 
Canada instead. Either way it makes absolutely no sense.
  But in its context--as I read it and read it and read it--the 
President stated that we don't need to have a Keystone Pipeline because 
Canada is unstable and we don't want to buy from unstable countries.
  I would tell you that since the War of 1812 we have gotten along with 
Canada pretty well. We seem to have settled our differences about 1815, 
and they have been a very stable trading partner for us. It seems 
nonsensical to hear the President say: Because it doesn't produce 
enough jobs, I am not going to permit it. Because it won't affect the 
price of gasoline today, I won't permit it. And because Canada is 
unstable as a trading partner, I am not going to permit it.
  The President can choose to do whatever he chooses to do, but answers 
like this make no sense to the American people and they make no sense 
to energy country when we understand full well the actual facts on the 
ground.
  In recent days, we have actually started an energy swap with Mexico. 
Many people may not even know that. You see, all oil is not the same. 
Heavier crude oil is preferred by many of our refineries in the United 
States. Quite frankly, our refineries are capable of separating out 
more of the different minerals and such that are within heavy crude or 
what is often called sour crude. Our refineries prefer the heavier 
crude, much like what Canada produces and many parts of the United 
States and Mexico produces. Many of the refineries in Mexico actually 
prefer the light sweet crude. We actually have more light sweet crude 
in America than we can use and what our refineries would prefer to 
have.
  So in the past couple of months, Mexico and the United States have 
worked a swap from pipelines, where they are picking up about 75,000 
barrels of light sweet and swapping us 75,000 barrels of heavier crude 
because they have a commodity we want and we have a commodity they 
want. That is how we could solve some of our energy issues, to actually 
look for what is the most efficient, whether it is purchasing it from a 
pipeline from Canada, which makes great economic sense to us, or 
exporting our oil anywhere else around the world, whether to Mexico or 
any other country.
  This body knows full well the United States cannot sell our oil on 
the world market because we have a statute in place that would have us 
believe we are running out of oil rather than having a tremendous 
amount, which is factually true, and we have particular types of oil 
that like sweet crude many refineries around the world want. We 
actually have more of it than we can use. We should sell that. We 
should put that on the open market. It is cleaner, it is easier to 
refine, and it is a way to be able to stabilize jobs in the United 
States.
  I have been in front of this body time after time with a simple 
statement: We can sell unleaded around the world, we can sell diesel 
around the world, we can sell coal around the world, and we can sell 
natural gas around the world, but for whatever reason we can't sell 
crude oil around the world. That makes absolutely no sense and we 
should fix it.
  Tens of thousands of Americans have lost their jobs because this body 
has not acted on something as simple as being able to sell a product 
the world wants and we have on the world market. It is fixable. It is 
not about environmental disaster. The world is going to use oil. Even 
the administration and quite frankly even the President in his own 
speech made this statement last week: The truth is the United States 
will continue to rely on oil and gas. And so will the world. Until some 
other solution is out there, which no one sees currently on the 
horizon, we are going to continue to use oil and gas. Why don't we do 
it the cleanest way possible and why don't we provide American jobs 
while we are doing it?

[[Page 18037]]

  It is fixable. It shouldn't be divisive. It is about putting 
Americans back to work and about helping our economy.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The Senator from Massachusetts.

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