Restarting American Offshore Leasing Act Now
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
One year ago today, we were 2 weeks into the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We were 2 weeks into what would ultimately become the worst environmental disaster in our Nation's history, with more than 4 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf. And since that disaster, we have learned many things about the safety of offshore drilling.
We learned that the blowout preventer that the oil industry touted as fail-safe could in fact be sure to fail if an actual blowout was under way. We learned that the only technology the oil industry had been relying upon in the event of a spill was a Xerox machine. The spill response plans for major companies were so similar that they contained plans to evacuate walruses from the Gulf of Mexico even though the walruses had not called the Gulf home in more than 3 million years. And they were such dead ringers for each other that they contained the same name and phone number of the same long-deceased expert.
We learned that the oil companies had neither the resources nor the ability to stop a deepwater blowout. BP spill response included an attempt to shoot golf balls and bits of rubber into the well. When we were told that the industry was relying on the most sophisticated technologies, we assumed that they meant technologies developed by MIT and not the PGA.
And we learned from an independent BP spill commission that the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster were ``systemic'' to the entire oil and gas industry.
And yet here we are debating legislation that would do nothing to improve the safety of offshore drilling and could actually make drilling less safe. The legislation before us represents a return to the pre-spill mentality of speed over safety.
H.R. 1230 would force the Interior Department to rush to hold new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico by ``deeming'' the shoddy environmental analysis conducted by the Bush administration's Mineral Management Service before the BP spill as sufficient for future lease sales in the Gulf.
Just looking at some of the conclusions contained within the Bush administration's 2007 environmental analysis exposes the absurdity of deeming this work as sufficient for new leasing in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
In its 2007 multisale Environmental Impact Statement completed in April of 2007, the Interior Department determined, ``The most likely size of an offshore spill greater than or equal to 1,000 barrels that is predicted to occur is 4,600 barrels'' of oil. The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster led to more than 4 million barrels spilling into the Gulf. That is 1,000 times the size of the largest spill this analysis concluded was likely to occur.
In 2007, MMS analysis concluded that the total volume of oil that would be spilled from all spills in the central and western Gulf over the next 40 years would be roughly 47,000 barrels of oil. That is less than what was spilled in the Deepwater Horizon in 1 day.
MMS concluded that, in 2007, a worst-case scenario, only 19 to 31 miles of Gulf coastline would be impacted by a spill. The Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in oil reaching over 950 miles of Gulf coastline.
And MMS determined that a deepwater blow-off would not present a cleanup problem because the oil would rise in the water column, surfacing almost directly over the source location, but in fact the oil spewing from the ocean floor remained in enormous subsurface plumes that spread across the Gulf.
The Obama administration is already moving forward to hold these lease sales in the Gulf later this year and early next year, and they are going to be more responsible. Even the Congressional Budget Office analysis of H.R. 1230 concludes, ``CBO estimates that implementing the bill would have no significant impact on proceeds from lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico because the proposed schedule is similar to the plan included in the DOI's budget for 2011.''
So, really, all the majority is accomplishing with this legislation is ensuring that we don't do any new environmental review of the impacts of these lease sales. Instead of actually reviewing the lessons of the BP spill, the majority wants to lessen the environmental review.
In addition, this legislation would force the Department to move forward with a lease off of the coast of Virginia within one year. Well, I have very bad news for the majority. The overwhelming majority of the area that would comprise this lease sale would infringe on critical training areas for the U.S. Navy. The Department of Defense concluded that 78 percent of the area offered in the Virginia lease sale would occur where military operations would be impeded by drilling structures and related activities. Moreover,
much of the remaining area is comprised of a major shipping channel.
This bill is really a solution in search of a problem. The bottom line is that oil production is at its highest level in nearly a decade and natural gas production is at record levels. We should instead be debating legislation that would protect the lives and the livelihoods of the people in the Gulf and that could actually help consumers at the pump this summer.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself 3 minutes.
This is the wrong debate to be having here today. The Republicans are debating more drilling without more safety even though the BP spill commission that examined what went wrong last year concluded that there was a ``systemic'' failure in our country to deal with the safety issues that confront the offshore drilling industry. In fact, they concluded that there are four times greater fatalities in drilling for oil off the shores of the United States than there are in Europe--four times more fatalities. We should be number one in drilling but we should be number one in safety as well.
What the Republicans are doing here today is they are saying that they believe in ``all of the above.'' But the truth is that with this bill they are saying once again it is really an agenda of ``oil above all.'' They have nothing out here on renewable energy resources--wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, plug-in hybrids, all-electric vehicles. None of that is part of their debate. They just go back to the same old agenda of oil above all.
And do we need to give more to the oil industry? We have $10 billion in profits for ExxonMobil in January, February, and March--$10 billion they made. Shell, $8 billion; BP, $7 billion; Chevron, $6 billion; ConocoPhillips, $3 billion. Shouldn't we talk a little bit about safety as we're talking about new drilling off of our shorelines? But no, that's not the Republican agenda.
Should we be talking about taking away the tax breaks from the oil industry, the $40 billion which the American taxpayer gives to the oil industry? Do we really need to have the oil industry in the consumers' pocket at the gas pump and then in their other pocket as taxpayers to give even more money to ExxonMobil? That's what the Republicans should bring out here for a debate. They do not do that.
The New York Mercantile Exchange, that's where they trade for oil futures. Computerized Program Trading is now 45 percent of the oil futures trading on the commodities-futures trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
What do the Republicans do to deal with the fact that it has turned into a crude oil casino where gambling is going on as the speculators of our country and the world look at Saudi Arabia, look at Libya, as the price of oil skyrockets, as Goldman Sachs concludes that $20 a barrel in the increase of the price of oil just comes from the speculation, from the gambling that's going on in the NYMEX? You might as well put ``Las Vegas'' over the New York Mercantile Exchange. It is a crude oil casino, ladies and gentlemen. What do the Republicans do? They have slashed the budget for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, who are the cops on the beat. They're saying we need fewer cops to police these speculators. They slash the wind and solar budget by 70 percent in their budget that just passed last month.
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Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.
This is their agenda. Nothing on safety; nothing on wind and solar; nothing on corralling the speculators. And what do they say? What they say is they're going to in fact go into the Medicare budget of Grandma and Grandpa and cut their programs and then put an oil rig on top of Medicare to suck out the money like a pipeline out of the pockets of Grandma and Grandpa and put it into the profits of the oil industry with more tax breaks for them, even as they report the greatest profits in the history of any companies in the history of the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, vote ``no'' on this legislation.
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Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself the balance of my time.
So here's where we are. Republicans take over, Republicans say they're ready to put together a plan for our country. It's 1 year after the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in our Nation's history.
Last year, the Republicans blocked passage of any safety legislation that would learn the lessons of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP spill commission has come back. They now say that fatalities on U.S. rigs are four times higher than those on European rigs. We should be number one in drilling, and we should be number one in safety. The Republicans refuse to deal with the endemic, systemic problems with safety that have been identified in the American oil industry.
The oil industry is now garnering the largest profits any corporations in the world have ever been able to enjoy, but the Republicans refuse to bring out here legislation which will take away their tax breaks. Oil companies don't need to have tax breaks to do something they are doing anyway. It's like subsidizing a fish to swim or a bird to fly. We don't have to give them taxpayers' money. The Ryan budget slashes benefits for grandma and grandpa, then takes that money and gives it away in tax breaks to millionaires and to the oil industry. Do we really need to tell grandma we're cutting back on her medicare benefits and then taking that money and giving it in oil breaks to the biggest companies in our country? They don't need tax breaks.
And finally, what we should be talking about is the deployment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was used by both President Bushes. It was used by President Clinton. It does work. The New York Mercantile Exchange is where oil futures are traded. It is a casino of crude oil right now. On one day back just 2 months ago, 45 percent of all of the oil futures trades were computer-generated trades. Those trades were twice the value of all of the oil consumed in the world on a single day. That's what we need to do, to deal with those speculators. And the way to do it is what we have done in the past, deploy the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, deploy it now. Send the fear of losing fortunes into the hearts of those speculators, and you will see the price of oil drop like a rock. That's what we need to do. That's what the consumers need as they are heading into the Memorial Day weekend. That's what people all across our country are wondering--what is going to happen to our economy?
Ten of the last 11 recessions in our country are tied to the rise in the price of oil. That is 10 of the last 11 recessions, ladies and gentlemen. What we saw in 1990 was, President Bush won the war in Iraq in '90 and '91, but because he never deployed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until it was too late, a mini-recession went through our economy, and President Clinton was able to defeat him. Let's learn this lesson of the link between the rise in the price of oil and recessions that are created in our economy. Deploy the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Ignore this agenda of the Republican Party.
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