Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Relating to ``Protection of Marine Archaeological

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I have a resolution under the--we call it a CRA, to rescind one of President Biden's regulations.

In 1938, we drilled the first well in the ``Gulf of America,'' which some people still call the Gulf of Mexico.

Since then, 87 years have passed, and we have drilled about 6,000 wells in the gulf. We have laid hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines.

The oil and gas companies who did this have surveyed, they have x rayed every square inch of the seabed in the gulf. They have surveyed, they have x rayed 311,652 square nautical miles in the gulf. Put Texas and California together, that is the geographical area that has been surveyed by the oil and gas industry.

Why did they do that? For safety reasons. So before they put a platform in the gulf, they knew where they were putting it. And, No. 2, to preserve history, because we have--or had a lot of shipwrecks in the gulf, from which we can learn about the past.

In fact, as a result of this effort by the oil and gas industry to x ray the entire gulf, we have discovered 4,000 shipwrecks.

In the waning days of the Biden administration, September of 2024, the Department of the Interior, under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management--we call it BOEM--promulgated a midnight regulation. This is what the regulation said: You have to survey it again. Even though the entire gulf has been surveyed, you have to do it again, oil and gas industry. If you want to drill a well, or if you want to lay some pipeline, you have got to x ray it again. Why? Because the government says so.

This is going to add anywhere from--I don't know--$20,000 up to, potentially, $1 million to the cost of drilling a well, to x ray after an x ray has already been done. That, of course, is going to increase the cost of the well, which is going to increase the cost of the oil and gas from the well, which is going to be passed on to the consumer, which is going to raise the price of energy, which is going to contribute to inflation in America.

You want to know why we had such outrageous inflation under President Biden? Because of regulations like this. And there are hundreds more that increased prices needlessly. That is why under President Biden, the average person's electricity bill in America went up 20 percent under President Biden.

We don't need this regulation. I do not know--well, let me put it another way. I am not saying that the person at the Department of the Interior who came up with this idea is the dumbest person in the world. I am not saying that. But I am saying that the person at BOEM who came up with this idea better worry that the dumbest person in the world doesn't die because he is in the running.

My CRA would kill this rule dead as Woodrow Wilson, and I hope my colleagues will vote for it.

I yield back all time on Calendar No. 15, S.J. Res. 11.
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