The Western Caucus

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for yielding. I appreciate his leadership of the Western Caucus and look forward to this robust discussion tonight.

The West is rich in natural resources. And natural resources, their good stewardship and using them for the benefit of our country is what the West does best.

This administration is turning its back on the stewardship that is available in the West as we produce our natural resources and, instead, is taking away the jobs, the environmental progress, and replacing it with further dependence on foreign energy from places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

We can produce our own energy in this country. Between the resources of Canada and the United States, we can produce enough energy for us to meet our foreseeable needs. But that requires us to use the technologies and the jobs associated with those technologies that will create tens of thousands of jobs, in fact, hundreds of thousands of jobs. Instead, we are actually going in exactly the opposite direction. Let me give you an example.

Fracking technology is advancing dramatically the ability of America to recover its rich natural gas resources, and it allows us to do so by casing a well with perforations. There is an explosion that cracks the tight sands or the rock. Then fluids are forced into these gaps in the rock, keeping the seams open, allowing this gas or oil to percolate back up the well casing and be produced, allowing Americans to use American-grown energy. But the attack on fracking technology is based not on science but on the idea that fracking could damage drinking water.

None of us want to see our precious drinking water polluted by contaminants that some people believe are being used in fracking fluids.

The States know their own geology better than anyone in Washington could and the very diverse geology that is different from State to State. You are going to be hearing later this evening from G.T. THOMPSON, a Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus shale formation is being produced. I am going to talk about the use of fracking technology in my State, where the geology is very different from the Marcellus shale, but where it can be used in a responsible manner to produce American oil and gas with American jobs.

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, recognizing the concern that our drinking water could be imperiled, set about and created a set of rules and regulations to disclose the contents of fracking fluids and the processes that are being used by companies that are fracking wells in the State of Wyoming. Those rules are being used to provide people with the information that is needed to assure them that fracking fluids are not contaminating our water.

Furthermore, there have been repeated stories, using an example from Wyoming, in Pavillion, Wyoming, of an area that some argue was fracked to the detriment of local water wells. Well, we are learning more and more about those water wells. And what we are finding is, out of over 100 water wells in the area, only about one-fifth of them are permitted, and some of them are not even cased. Well, this allows for the natural percolation of gas into water that has nothing to do with fracking.

If we look at the science and apply it correctly, using good stewardship principles, we can produce oil and gas and have good drinking water.

[Time: 18:50]

I even have a photograph from someone in my home State, Mr. Speaker, that has a flame coming out of a pond. The flame is a consequence of a natural methane seep coming out of the water that has been on fire as long as this gentleman can remember. These are natural phenomena.

We need to make sure that we are assuring people in this country that drinking water will be safe at the same time we recover these resources. Those very assurances require scientists, they require environmental companies, they require fracking experts; more jobs, more oil and gas, more diverse energy for the American economy.

Of course, clean burning natural gas provides us also an extension of the air quality that we value so well. These are American jobs that can be saved, nurtured and grown, and used successfully all over the United States, on and off shore.

Mr. Speaker, you just acknowledged a project in the Beaufort Sea, which is off of the coast of Barrow, Alaska, 87 miles. Shell has put $4 billion, as you pointed out, into preparing to produce that resource, and still does not have a permit to produce it. At some point, those investments begin to devalue their sunken costs in a way that may make companies like Shell look elsewhere. That takes jobs away from America and into countries where we are competing for jobs, and in places that sometimes are not our best friends when it comes to foreign policy and human rights.

So, Mr. Speaker, let's produce oil and gas with American jobs, with good pay, with good benefits, and with the residual goal of having an all-of-the-above energy policy that benefits the West and the country as a whole.

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