License to Drill Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. STAUBER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 7831, the License to Drill Act; H.R. 1687, the CLEAN Act; and H.R. 5631, the Geothermal Energy Advancement Act, three good, bipartisan bills that were put forth by my colleagues on the Natural Resources Committee.

Now more than ever, the United States needs to be bringing more energy online to drive our 21st century economy.

These bills will help guarantee we have durable, proenergy policy no matter who is in the White House. These pieces of legislation will provide much-needed certainty for domestic energy producers, ensuring leaseholders will be able to responsibly produce on Federal lands, including onshore oil and gas and geothermal energy development.

Representative Kennedy's bill will reauthorize the BLM's authority to collect permit processing fees for oil and gas drilling permits and direct these fees toward processing the permits. This will help ensure that producers will actually have the ability to produce oil and gas on Federal lands, rather than sit in limbo for months or even years on end waiting for paperwork to be processed.

Representative Fulcher's bill will require BLM to hold annual lease sales for geothermal development on Federal lands. It also imposes deadlines for the BLM to process geothermal drilling permits, which again, will ensure these energy producers will actually be able to produce on the Federal leases they are issued.

Representative Hurd's bipartisan package of geothermal bills will build on this by enacting a series of reforms that will streamline the permitting of and collection of Federal royalties for geothermal projects on Federal lands.

Ultimately, all three of these bills will bring more energy online faster, increase our strategic national security by lessening our dependence on foreign adversarial nations, and most importantly, lower costs for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues on the Natural Resources Committee for their work on these bills, and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this package of good, bipartisan legislation.

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