Lifting Ban on Oil Exports
Floor Speech
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Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this commonsense bill, which has been a long time in coming.
I want to thank Mr. Conaway for his leadership in bringing it to the floor tomorrow, and the process the committee used, which was a series of hearings through the process, supported by our chairman, supported by members on both sides of the aisle.
I want to thank Joe Barton and Mr. Cuellar of Texas for their leadership in recruiting cosponsors, a large bipartisan group of cosponsors, to bring this longstanding bill to the floor and the positive efforts it will have on our economy.
I would like to say to my friend, Mr. Sessions--and I invite him to come to Little Rock--that I filled up last week for $1.82. So, perhaps Arkansas is a more competitive gas pricing market than even Texas. That may be the biggest economic news of the day here on the floor.
We have touched on the importance of American jobs. All of our American jobs in the oil patch right now are suffering due to low prices and low development budgets. I don't have any doubt that when reserves are revalued September 30 for our publicly traded companies, their oil and gas exploration lines of credit will be down because of pricing in the U.S.; and, therefore, this is a boost for the economic opportunity for jobs in the United States in development.
I want to touch on the national security aspects of this bill that I think are so important, Mr. Speaker. Early in the year, this House passed ways to improve liquefied natural gas to be developed and shipped overseas to international markets. We have an abundant amount of natural gas in this country. We are now the world's leading producer, and we have the opportunity to provide natural gas in liquefied form around the world to our allies in Asia and Europe. Likewise, eliminating the ban on crude oil, long outgrown by North American production and our economic success, will allow us to now, from a national security point of view, to have liquefied natural gas and crude oil as export potential and as economic job potential for the U.S.
But more importantly, to our NATO allies and to our Asian allies, we offer them North American gas and crude oil as an alternative to the Mid East and, most importantly, Europe to Russia. For too long, our allies in Europe have been held hostage by the politics of the Mid East or the politics of Russia. This allows us to be a much better not only economic partner, but national security partner with our allies in Europe and our allies in Asia.
I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to come to the floor and speak in strong support of this bill to remove the export ban on crude oil in the United States. I urge my fellow Members, both Democrat and Republican, to provide a good, strong, bipartisan vote and send that message to the United States Senate to join us in passing this lifting of the ban, and to send a message to White House, Mr. Chairman, that a veto message here is not appropriate.
I invite the President and the OMB and the Department of Energy to reconsider that, in fact, this is a national security benefit to the United States and a jobs and economic benefit to the United States, and it is not the kind of thing that our President should issue a veto threat on.
Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his comments and opinions on this issue. I hope his support draws Members of the other side of the aisle to our arguments and to make this happen.
The gentleman mentioned the price he paid in Arkansas recently. I dare say, there is not another commodity in America that we don't check the price on more often than gasoline. You may not buy gas every day, but every time you drive by a gasoline station, you check the price because it is right there for everybody to see. We don't put the price of bread and milk up like that, but we do put the price of gasoline up.
I have got a district that has 29 counties and is 300 miles wide and 200-plus miles north to south. We do a lot of driving. My district director and I are always looking for that better gasoline price deal in the district as we are moving around, because hardwired into most all of us that drive very much is to check those prices.
This increased production in the United States will also help protect consumers from price shocks. I mentioned that in 1974, the price of crude oil went from $3 a barrel to $12 a barrel, a fourfold increase. The more production you have from a stable environment like the United States, the less whipsaw you will get in the market from disruptions in supplies from places and part of the world where it is not quite as stable, such as the Middle East and others.
So, this increased U.S. production will also help protect American consumers from being whipsawed by dramatic increases in the price of crude oil because we have got that supply.
I now yield to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), who is from another State benefitting from the shale play and someone that is probably more familiar with the Bakken Shale than anybody else.
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