Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as the Presiding Officer knows, we are busy working to complete action on the Energy Policy Modernization Act. I want to start by saying some good words about the leadership of Senator Murkowski, the chairman of the energy committee, and her ranking member, Senator Cantwell, who have gotten us to this point. Unless we drop the ball in the next couple of days, we ought to be able to wrap up our debate and deliberation on this very important bill that will help our country move forward with energy policies that reflect the times we are living in.

I also think we ought to reflect on what those times are because it was just a few short years ago when all of the pundits and experts were predicting peak oil. In other words, all the oil that could be discovered, they said, had been discovered and we would then be in a period of decline from that point forward. In the United States we also found ourselves in the main dependent upon imported oil from the Middle East. As you know, both of those have turned around. In other words, because of the innovation and good old all-American know-how, we are now exporting more energy.

To Senator Murkowski's credit, she led the effort to lift the ban on exporting crude oil, so now American-produced energy can be made available on world markets. Just as significantly, we can make sure our friends and allies around the world aren't captive to people like Vladimir Putin, who uses energy as a weapon and threatens to cut off the energy supply, particularly of those countries in its orbit in the Baltics unless they are willing to go along with his heavy-handed tactics.

This is a very good story. This legislation will update our energy policies with that reality in mind and enable our country to continue to grow its role as a leading global energy power. I pause here to say that this is not just from people who come from an energy State as I do, such as from Texas or Alaska or North Dakota. The energy story is the story of world history in so many ways.

One of my favorite books is written by Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. One of the books he has written is called ``The Prize,'' which tracks the history of the globe and in an incredible sort of way, but he makes the point that so much of our history has been determined by the need for and attempt to gain access to reliable energy supplies and how important that is not only to our military to be able to fight and win our Nation's wars but to our economy, to the businesses that need access to reasonably priced energy and to consumers, obviously.

We are seeing the benefit now, those of us who filled our gas tank recently, of inexpensive gasoline prices because the price of oil has come down because of increased world supply. There comes a point where it is challenging to the industry, but they have been through ups and downs in the past, and I am sure they will make the appropriate adjustments.

In this legislation, in addition to addressing and modernizing our energy policies, we are doing things such as modernizing the electric grid. That is what keeps the lights on at night and keeps our thermostats working when it is cold and we have snowstorms like we had in Washington recently.

This bill will make our electricity supply more reliable and more economical in the long run. Just like we did with crude oil, this bill will help expedite the approval process for liquefied natural gas exports. It is amazing to me to think that a few short years ago we were building import terminals that would actually receive natural gas being exported from other countries to being brought to the United States to help us with our energy needs. Now those have been retrofitted and reversed so these export terminals are now exporting American energy to markets around the world.

I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about some amendments that I have offered to the underlying bill. Again, I must compliment the bill managers for working with various Senators to try to work in, either through a voice vote or by some acceptance of amendments, provisions which are designed to improve this legislation. My amendments that I want to mention now are designed to address Texas's needs and the American people's needs from preventing overreach by the administration, particularly when it comes to your energy production and supply.

One amendment I have offered specifically targets an upcoming rule offered by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, known as BSEE. BSEE is an organization that most people are completely unaware of, but it is set to hand down a rule referred to as the so-called well control rule that deals with highly technical and complex safety producers for offshore wells.

Certainly, since the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, we have become all too aware of the dangers of uncontrolled blowout of offshore drilling, but there has been a lot of very important study, work, and education that has been acquired since that time. The industry has done a lot to make itself safer.

You can imagine, if you are a publicly traded company or if you are not a publicly traded company, you sure don't want to be in the middle of another crisis like we saw with the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico for all sorts of reasons: People lost their lives, cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and of course the environmental impact along the gulf coast, including States like Texas. In typical bureaucratic fashion, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, BSEE, has refused to engage in discussions that might help clear up some confusion among stakeholders. They have been unwilling to take the time to fully vet the negative impact on their proposed rules and to talk to the people who know the most about it, and that would be the people who would be most affected by the rule.

My amendment would require BSEE to resubmit the rule but first by taking additional comments from stakeholders, and it would require the rulemaking organization to have additional workshops with industry experts so everybody can understand what they are trying to accomplish and to do it more efficiently and better.

So often the very people who have the most expertise are in the industry the government tries to regulate. I know there is a natural reluctance to try to consult with and learn from the regulated industry, but the fact is, often--and it is true in this case--it is that industry that understands the process and both the risks and what protective measures need to be taken in order to accomplish the objective. So rather than just issuing a rule that is complex and highly technical without consulting the stakeholders who are sitting down and having a reasonable conversation trying to figure out what you are trying to accomplish, have you thought of this, have you thought of doing it differently or a better way, that doesn't happen. Unfortunately, that is where we are with BSEE.

In addition, I have submitted an amendment that protects property owners along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River, which borders the States of Texas and Oklahoma. This has to do with another bureaucracy called the Bureau of Land Management. A few years ago, the Bureau of Land Management claimed to actually own tens of thousands of acres along the Red River. As you can imagine, that came as quite a shock to the people who thought they owned that property, and now many of them are stuck today fighting the U.S. Government--their government--in court to reclaim the property that is rightfully theirs.

My amendment would help protect these landowners from this massive land grab. It would require a legitimate survey of the land in question to be conducted and approved by the authorities. It seems so commonsensical, but unfortunately common sense isn't all that common when you see the bureaucracy at work. With this amendment, these landowners would finally get a reasonably efficient means of resolution to this frustrating abuse of Federal Government power.

Another amendment I have submitted would address how States, counties, and other affected parties enter into a conversation about the Endangered Species Act. Too often States and local communities, not to mention private property owners, are left in the dark while interest groups they don't know much about conduct closed-door discussions with Federal authorities about potential listing of endangered species.

My amendment will give all of the stakeholders the opportunity to have a seat at the table and to have a conversation--it doesn't seem like a lot to ask--so both the regulators and the regulated can talk about the real impact those regulations will have on their daily lives and better inform the regulatory process.

These amendments get to different specific problems, but the common theme uniting them is a desire to try to lessen the interference by the government in our everyday lives. By pushing back against overbearing, costly regulations that don't actually accomplish the goal that even the regulators say they want to accomplish and ensuring that State and local communities and stakeholders play a role in this conversation which should be part of the regulatory process, the American people would be better served by this legislation.

As we continue these discussions on this bill, I hope my colleagues will consider these amendments and others like them to help get the government out of the way or to help correct the bureaucracy when it is misguided and misinformed about how to actually accomplish consensus goals.

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