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

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues today, the esteemed Senator from West Virginia and the senior Senator from Texas, to talk about the importance of producing more energy in America, which means that we have got to find a way to press back against the Biden administration's harmful policies that have caused energy prices to increase and have fueled inflation across our entire economy.

Gas prices, today, are $3.46 nationally. That is the average--$3.46 nationally. It has gone up 45 percent since President Biden took office. It is almost a 50-percent increase. That means everyone out there, every day, is paying 50 percent more at the pump. And it is not just that. It is the impact on inflation. There is an energy component in every good and every service that people buy. With a 50-percent increase in the price of gas at the pump, think about what that means. That is a 50-percent increase in energy cost in terms of inflation, which is hitting Americans so hard right now. Residential electricity prices spiked 25 percent during the same period. With natural gas, the price is up more than 50 percent--more than 50 percent.

What is causing this? Clearly, it is the Biden administration's policies. They spent the last 2 years restricting and curtailing U.S. energy production in pursuit of this Green New Deal, starting with day 1 when President Biden came into office with his canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, and it has continued with the moratorium that he put on Federal oil and gas leases shortly thereafter.

President Biden, the Biden administration, along with Members of Congress, the Democrat Members of Congress, then passed a partisan bill that levied $735 billion in new taxes, including a new tax on natural gas and higher fees and royalty rates on Federal energy production.

So they not only put a moratorium in place on oil and gas production on Federal lands but then later came back and said, OK, they will start allowing some production, but only 20 percent of those Federal lands are available, and the Biden administration increased the royalty rates by 50 percent. When you restrict supply and raise the cost, of course that is going to raise the price of energy in this country, and it is going to reduce the supply.

Now the Biden administration is doubling down with an onslaught of regulatory overreach specifically designed to make American energy production more expensive. This includes the waters of the United States regulation. The waters of the United States rule absolutely impacts everybody across this country. It is a fundamental property rights issue. Again, it affects not only our production of energy but ag products and everything else.

It makes no sense that while energy prices are high, instead of embracing America's energy producers, President Biden has drained our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level in 40 years while going to the Middle East and places like Venezuela for our energy. Think about it. Think about their record on environmental stewardship. Think about their record on human rights. Instead of producing more energy here at home, they are going to places like Venezuela and allowing them to export their energy to the United States.

The Biden administration should not turn to places like Iran and Venezuela for more oil--countries with little to no environmental standards--when we have the capability to ramp up production here in this country.

In 2019, the United States produced 13 million barrels of oil per day, including 1.5 million barrels per day from my State, North Dakota.

U.S. oil production remains down at about 12.1 million barrels per day, so that is 1 million barrels a day less than when the administration came into office--1 million barrels a day. For example, in our State, we are producing a little over 1 million barrels a day when we were at 1.5 million barrels a day at the beginning of the Biden administration.

Increasing the supply and lowering the cost of energy is key to attacking inflation. As I said earlier, the cost of energy is built into every other good and service consumed across this country. To this end, I have introduced some legislation to expand our domestic energy production and enhance the energy security of the United States and our allies.

The North American Energy Act brings certainty to the permitting process for important cross-border energy pipeline and electric transmission line projects and prevents the President from taking unilateral action to cancel vital energy projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline.

The Promoting Interagency Coordination for Review of Natural Gas Projects Act streamlines the review process for interstate natural gas pipelines and LNG projects, helping to more efficiently deliver natural gas to areas that need it the most.

More pipelines are needed to deliver natural gas to areas, including New England.

I say to the Presiding Officer, in your State, we need pipelines up there. There are still people up there who use fuel oil rather than natural gas because we don't have the pipeline capacity up there to bring it to them. That obviously increases their costs. Again, going back to environmental standards, it is clearly advantageous if they were to utilize natural gas.

The Bureau of Land Management Mineral Spacing Act is the third act I would mention that I have put forth that improves the permitting process in States like North Dakota and others where you have split mineral estates, where the Federal Government has no surface acreage, but the minerals underneath the land is in some cases owned by the Federal Government, in some cases owned by private individuals and others, and they are held up from producing those minerals because of the Federal ownership even when the Federal Government doesn't own any of the surface acres.

Removing this duplicative requirement for a Federal drilling permit in these cases would empower private mineral holders to develop their resources and produce more energy, while enabling the Federal Agencies, like BLM, to actually better utilize their resources.

These three commonsense permitting reforms are included in H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Cost Act, which is currently being considered on the House floor, H.R. 1.

It is time for us to go to work on a bipartisan basis in this Chamber, take the handcuffs off our energy producers, and produce more energy here at home for American consumers in this country.

The United States is fortunate to have abundant and affordable reserves in coal, oil, and gas. These resources are one of our Nation's greatest strengths. It is an incredible asset.

Nobody has better environmental stewardship than our country in producing energy. Thanks to the shale revolution, the United States became the world's largest oil and gas producer, and we have been able to do it while simultaneously reducing emissions. The carbon capture technologies we are advancing are actually reducing emissions.

Once again, by encouraging domestic production by streamlining energy project approvals to get energy to market, we can unleash America's full energy potential to increase supply and bring down costs for hard- working families.

I now will yield the floor to my colleague from the Lone Star State, who can speak on these issues as well.

We are absolutely committed to producing more energy for hard-working Americans to bring down inflation and also because it is such a vital component of our national security. Energy security is national security.

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