Lifting Ban on Oil Exports

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, your leadership on this has been great.

As I think about what Mr. Hill from Arkansas was saying in expressing his appreciation for regular order and the committee process, this really is probably one of the greatest examples since I have been in Congress of a piece of legislation and a concept that has gone through the process the way it is supposed to go through the process. Because not only did the Energy and Commerce Committee have hearings on H.R. 702, which we are going to vote on tomorrow which lifts the ban, I know you had a bill that similarly lifts the ban. You had hearings in the Agriculture Committee, which I think, by the way, the hearing you had was probably the best hearing on the entire topic. You honed in on that impact on the consumer and the input costs for producing another important product: food.

And we are pretty good in the United States in places like Texas and North Dakota and lots of places in between at growing food--enough food to feed not just Americans, but a hungry world, and enhance our trade balance and enhance our economy in using the peaceful tool of food rather than weapons of war.

I think, similarly, the shale revolution presents the same opportunity that food does, and that is to use the peaceful tools of energy development in place of or to enhance weapons of war.

One doesn't need to be too creative to see that in the world today there is some chaos. When you have Vladimir Putin pushing further into Eastern Europe, when you have him now bombing in Syria, when you have him selling arms to Iran, you have Iran being able to get arms and now being able to sell their oil in the global marketplace, to have this stabilizing impact of U.S. production into the global marketplace, I think it can only benefit everybody. And that is true of not just stabilizing price, as we see the Brent global price much higher than the domestic WTI price. On average, over the last 5 years, that spread has been $11--a spread that is not enjoyed by consumers, but certainly harms economic opportunity and job opportunity in the United States. Your hearing really honed in on that cost to consumers and the benefit to consumers. Also, the hearing in the Foreign Affairs Committee as well.

So we have had three committees of jurisdiction talking about this issue and this bill coming to the floor tomorrow, going through the Rules Committee, and the Rules Committee allowing a number of amendments to be debated and voted on tomorrow. Many amendments were introduced by Democratic Members as well as Republican Members. It has just been a rich experience. There are a number of issues related to it.

Coming from North Dakota, I can tell you firsthand that not that many years ago I was the economic development and finance director in the State of North Dakota at a time when we were just stabilizing out-migration. But part of the reason we were stabilizing it was because we lost so many of our young people. Our small towns were shrinking. While we were diversifying our economy a little bit here and there, the shale revolution that came along with the technology that combined fracking with horizontal drilling dramatically changed our State.

Probably my favorite anecdote of the whole situation--while there are many--is the fact that the little town of Killdeer hadn't had a football team for 20 years because they couldn't field enough young men, and now they have a football team. And that is just illustrative of what has happened in many of our small towns; because in the supply chain in the oil and gas industry, the jobs are not only numerous, they are really good. They pay, on average, 25 percent higher than the national average.

So it really is a grand opportunity that is somewhat being lost--certainly, its potential is being lost--because we are now sort of hemmed in with light sweet crude being produced more than we can use in our refineries in the United States, especially the light sweet crude which our refineries are not set up to take, for the most part, but refineries outside the United States are set up to take, for the most part. In fact, 92 percent of the oil refined outside of the United States is light sweet crude. Only about 25, 30 percent of the refining capacity in the United States is set up to take light sweet crude. So that distinction is important to understand when you see that we are now overproducing for the refinery capacity we have in our country.

I want to address, Mr. Speaker, some comments made earlier this week by Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz, a man I have great respect for--clearly, an intellect. He made some comments in the Senate Commerce Committee that, while technically accurate, I suppose were certainly incomplete. He had said that now is not the time to lift the oil export ban; and he said that according to the EIA, somehow we weren't really hemmed in because we were still importing some oil.

It ignores so many things, not the least of which is that distinction between light sweet and heavy sour that I talked about just moments ago; the fact that our refineries, for the most part, in the United States are set up for the heavy sour that we aren't producing an excess of--and, by the way, about 30 percent of which are owned by vertically integrated companies outside of the United States who have more of an interest in buying their oil than ours. But the world is really where the opportunity exists.

The other thing that he ignores in his statement saying that we are not yet hemmed in, he ignores just the natural order of things, that global markets, global demand being accessible to domestic producers, U.S. producers, will grow the production. You can't expect people to produce more of something than they can sell or than can be used in their limited market. If we have access to the global demand, of course we are going to produce more--that is the whole point--creating more jobs, more entrepreneurial opportunities.

The other thing that bothers me about what Secretary Moniz said about now not being the time is that it ignores so many things. It ignores the fact that we still have a very low workforce participation rate in this country. We need more jobs. We have many people that are either underemployed, unemployed, no longer looking for work, and these are good, high-paying jobs up and down the supply chain.

And lest we forget, they are not just jobs in the oil patch. It is not just in west Texas; it is not just in Houston; it is not just in North Dakota or Oklahoma or New Mexico. These jobs are in every State in the country.

In fact, according to the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance, which did a vast study on this, the third leading recipient of new jobs, if this export ban is lifted, is the State of Illinois. And you might wonder, well, why is it? Well, because Illinois has a lot of manufacturing, especially a lot of large equipment manufacturing. Those manufacturing jobs are great for families. They are great for the economy. They are great for startup business opportunities. So it is every State in the country that benefits. Secretary Moniz certainly dismisses that, or at least ignores it, in his statements.

I want to wrap up with this point. I always like to say that America's national security and America's economic security are tied directly to America's energy security. I touched on it earlier, but there has never been a time certainly in my public service when the world was in a more fragile state, and certainly chaos is reigning.

I talked about Vladimir Putin's push into Eastern Europe, his bombing of Syria, his alliance with Iran.

Iran, by the way, is another major producer of oil, who, as per the Iran nuclear deal, now gets to sell their oil onto the global marketplace. But our President thinks it is a better idea for them than he does for United States producers. He ignores the opportunity that, again, the peaceful development of oil and gas and the production of it and then the marketing of it in the global marketplace, the opportunity that has to spread influence and create peace in places that desperately need it, especially for our allies.

It is interesting. I doubt that the folks that scheduled the floor time for tomorrow's bill had this in mind, because this was more of a process of regular order than it was the calendar; but we are, right now, in the middle of the 42-year recognition of the Yom Kippur War.

The Yom Kippur War was what sort of began, really started, the energy crisis that led to the 1973 embargoes. We are reliving, in many respects, some of the geopolitical aspects of that time and that situation.

Our friends in Israel are not sure whether we are with them or not as a country, whether we are going to be with them on big issues, dependent on Russian oil largely, a Russia that is playing bad in the neighborhood, and uncertainty as to who is going to fill the leadership vacuum in places like Syria, a very important player, 42, 43 years ago.

There is a lot adding up to this being a very, very important vote tomorrow on lifting the export ban on H.R. 702. There are things adding up that we didn't even contemplate at the time that the bill was introduced.

But it is a grand opportunity to secure America's economy, secure America's national security while at the same time spreading our influence of freedom and free enterprise around the world.

So I am looking forward to, hopefully, a lot of bipartisan votes tomorrow, a big vote, so that we can send that over to the United States Senate, who I know has a different standard than we have. But, hopefully, we can show them the way.

I thank the gentleman for yielding so much time to me.

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