Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on March 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 15 years ago, an environmental group called the Clean Sky Coalition launched an ad campaign targeting coal. The ads featured faces covered in soot, with the headline: ``Face it, Coal is Filthy.''

Of the many controversial ad campaigns we have seen over the years, this doesn't seem particularly noteworthy, but these ads at the time sparked so much outrage that they were eventually pulled.

You might wonder why. An environmental group attacking coal is hardly front-page news. Why was this ad campaign different? This wasn't a matter of what was being said; it was a matter of who was saying it and why.

It quickly came to life that the group behind the ad was only about 2 weeks old, and the entire ``pro-environment'' effort was sponsored by a natural gas company seeking market share over coal.

As they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows--in this case, environmentalists and natural gas companies were both anti-coal, though, for very different reasons.

Knowing that the American people wouldn't respond to the argument that coal is bad because it means less business for the gas companies, this particular company found a deceptive and manipulative way to help shape public opinion.

Today, we are seeing a similar push but with much greater reach and far higher stakes. Just as one company used the guise of environmentalism to attack its competition, Russia today is using the same tactic to boost its own profits and enhance its power.

The Office of Director of National Intelligence released a report in 2017 outlining some of Russia's disinformation campaign, on everything from U.S. elections to U.S. energy policy.

Of course, one of the Kremlin's favorite tools is its intentional propaganda outlet known as RT, formally known as Russia Today.

According to the report, RT ran anti-fracking programming in the United States that highlighted environmental and public health concerns. That is right. The propaganda arm of the Russian Federation, RT, was running anti-fracking programming in the United States. And you might ask yourself: For what purpose?

Well, the Director of National Intelligence report in 2017 said: This is likely reflective of the Russian Government's concern about the impact of fracking, which is a device to release natural gas from shale. The report said this is likely reflective of the Russian Government's concern about the impact of fracking in U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom's profitability--Gazprom, of course, being the Russian Federation's energy company.

In short, all of this propaganda on Russia today and the opposition to fracking that they were encouraging would be good for the sale of Russian gas as opposed to natural gas produced here in the United States.

Russia can't seem to dominate the global energy market on its own, so it tries to take down the competition. It is not just a matter of dollars and cents; it is a matter of geopolitical power. This isn't a farfetched conspiracy theory that was crafted to combat the Green New Deal. As I said, it comes from an unclassified report from the Director of National Intelligence Office 5 years ago--2017.

Knowledge of this practice likely predates that report by a number of years. Reporting indicates that even Hillary Clinton spoke about those malign activities in a 2014 speech. She warned about what she called ``phony environmental groups'' that were funded by the Russians.

Russia is no stranger--in fact, they are expert at disinformation campaigns, and it doesn't abide by the same moral and ethical codes as the rest of the world.

The past several days have shone a light on how far Putin is willing to go to increase his own power. I am not suggesting that all environmental groups are funded by the Russian Government--not in the slightest--but we need to be clear-eyed about Russia's efforts to shape U.S. policies and European policies for their own benefit. We need to be hyperaware of the ways decisions made in Washington could benefit Moscow and empower Putin to the detriment of our allies in NATO and in Europe.

Unfortunately, the energy cards in Europe are currently stacked in Russia's favor. From day one, the Biden administration has taken hostile actions toward American energy suppliers and sent even more business to Russia.

Only hours after the President was sworn in on January 20, 2021, he canceled the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline and halted all new energy leasing and permitting on public lands and waters. His administration effectively discouraged investments in new production, and now the United States is producing less oil and less natural gas. Production is, in fact, down about 1.2 million barrels a day in the United States, and that has to be made up somewhere because the world continues to consume energy. It needs energy in order to survive and to thrive. Where does it get that energy when the United States does not produce it? Well, you guessed it--it gets it from Russia, and it gets it from OPEC, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Sadly, the buck doesn't stop there. In light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration hasn't taken any effective action against Putin's energy weapon. Even though the administration has imposed sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs, the country's lucrative oil and gas industry remains untouched. This is their primary financial asset.

I remember our friend John McCain, when he was still alive, used to joke that Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country, making the obvious point in a humorous way.

Russia continues to use these oil sales and natural gas sales and the captive markets that it has in Europe and in other places around the world in order to finance its war against innocent Ukrainians. There is no question but that the revenue from these exports--and we have seen the price of oil since Putin invaded Ukraine again--the price of a barrel of oil go up to $115 a barrel. And there is no question that he is using the revenue derived from the sale of that $115 barrel oil to kill innocent Ukrainians and to violate their sovereignty and to commit war crimes. We simply cannot continue to supply Russia with the blood money it needs to carry out its nefarious actions.

I am proud to cosponsor legislation that was introduced by our friend from Kansas, Senator Marshall, to ban the purchase of Russian oil in the United States. We have the great fortune of living in a resource- rich country, and there is no reason we should be importing Russian oil, now more than ever.

The President said he does not want to target Russian oil and gas because of the impact it will have on prices here at home. Well, we already know that because of inflation--because of shoveling money out of Washington, DC, out into the great American economy, inflation has already caused prices at the pump and prices in the grocery stores to rise. Given the fact that gas prices have already risen 40 percent since President Biden took office, I understand his concerns, but that doesn't mean Russia should get a free pass.

Rather than identify ways to offset global demand for Russian energy, President Biden is inadvertently playing into Putin's hand. He is not calling for any more American-made oil and gas; he is calling for less.

Tuesday evening, President Biden said he wants to double America's clean energy production, including sources like wind and solar. I want to be clear, I support an ``all of the above'' energy policy. As I have said time and time again, Texas produces more energy from wind than any other State in the country, and it is an important part of our energy mix.

Every day, though, Texas is also making serious strides in energy innovation. This is the way to solve the problem; it is to innovate-- not to regulate, not to tax, not to punish, but to innovate. We need to continue to find ways to innovate cleaner sorts of energy as we eventually transition, as we must at some point in the future--maybe decades from now--from petroleum-based products to some other source of energy.

I believe we need to continue to encourage innovation and diversification of our energy sources, but the fact remains today that renewables are not close to being able to supply the energy needs that our country demands. As it stands today, renewables--solar, wind-- comprise less than 20 percent of our electricity generation. We know the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and when Mother Nature fails to deliver an adequate supply of energy, we need some other source of that energy, which means American-produced natural gas and oil.

If the President continues to wage a war on American oil and gas companies, we won't be able to protect ourselves or our allies.

One of the great things about the shale gas revolution is our ability to ship energy overseas to our friends and allies around the world. Unfortunately, the infrastructure has not kept up with the demand, leaving our friends and allies dependent on Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation for their only choice. We need to provide them more choices, and that means produce more here in America of clean-burning natural gas and then exporting that LNG to our friends and allies around the world so they aren't subject to Putin's extortion and demands.

Our top priority needs to be, when it comes to energy, to pursue independence. If we are able to bolster renewables, invest in carbon capture technologies, and take other steps along the way to reduce emissions, that is a great goal for us to pursue. But our No. 1 priority here, today, and now should be for the United States and our allies to be energy secure. Right now, Europe is not energy secure; it is energy insecure because of the intentional acts of Vladimir Putin to make Russia the sole source of energy needs for countries in Europe and the policies restricting the development of our American-made energy here in the United States.

Just a few years ago, we were almost there when it came to energy security. In 2019, the United States became a net total energy exporter for the first time since 1952--a net total energy exporter. The last time we did that, it was 1952, and we maintained that status through the year 2020. But President Biden has, for reasons that are inscrutable to me, turned back the clock, taking us from an era of energy independence back to the oil crisis of the 1970s.

For decades, leaders in our country fought to reduce our reliance on foreign oil in anticipation of a global crisis exactly like the one we are facing now. We can't erase all of this progress we have made at the exact moment when we need that progress and that production the most.

Russia will always use energy as a weapon to tear down and intimidate its adversaries. The United States, conversely, must use it as a tool to lift up our allies and improve global energy security.

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