Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey very much, and I thank him for his leadership on these issues. We're partners in this effort to try to move toward a new energy direction.
So last week we had a debate on the issue of whether or not the $4 billion
that the oil industry gets in tax breaks per year from the American consumer should be taken away at this time when ExxonMobil reported $10 billion worth of profits in the first quarter, that is just January, February and March. Shell reported $8.8 billion; BP, $7.1 billion; Chevron, $6.2 billion; ConocoPhillips, $3 billion. That's in the first 3 months of this year.
But you know what the argument is, from the Republican side, is that they would be punished if the consumer, if the taxpayer didn't also give them an additional $4 billion in tax breaks.
So let's just look at this chart. This is how much they made as people are pulling up to the pump paying $3.80, $4, $4.20 all across America. Now, you know what the oil companies could do? They could say, You know what? I think we made too much. I think what we should do in the first quarter is just lower the price at the pump so we don't make so much. Maybe we don't have to have the consumer paying $4 a gallon. Maybe we, ExxonMobil, maybe we could have made 9.7. Maybe Shell could have made 7.8, maybe BP could have made only $6.1 billion, maybe Chevron could have made only $5.2 billion. In other words, maybe they each could have made $1 billion less, and that would be $4 billion in the first quarter.
But, no. They decide that if the war in Libya is going to take 1.2 million barrels of oil off the market, if the Saudi Arabians are going to take 800,000 barrels of oil off the market, that that's a free market. And so if the price goes up to skyrocketing heights, we have a right to take all that extra money out of the consumers' pockets. That's the free market. The war in Libya is a free market. Saudi Arabia taking 800,000 barrels off the market, that's a free market.
Now, the American consumer, they look at it and they say that's not a free market. The American taxpayers, they look at it and they say that's not the free market. We're sending over more bombers. We're sending over more troops. We're adding more to the defense budget of the country. Why would we do that? What does that have to do with the free market? What does this increase in defense expenditures and the number of young men and women that we send over to the Middle East to protect this cordon of oil tankers coming into the United States have to do with the free market?
But nonetheless, that's the argument of the Republicans and, by the way, of ExxonMobil and Shell and BP. They deserve these profits, they say, just for 3 months.
By the way, you can multiply each one of these numbers by at least four, at least the next three quarters of 2011 as well, and project ExxonMobil making $40 billion this year and Shell 34 or $35 billion, et cetera, et cetera.
But the Republicans say they still need the extra $4 billion from the taxpayer pocket. So they dip into one pocket, the consuming pocket, and they tip the consumer upside down, and they take all this money out of their pockets. And you don't see any restraint on the part of the oil companies taking advantage of the war in Libya. And then they want to dip into the other pocket of the consumer, the consumer as a taxpayer, and then they say you can't take away those tax breaks either.
So that's a very interesting position to have to defend at this point in time, especially since they're saying that they want to cut back on the benefits for Grandma on Medicare. They want to cut back the budget by 70 percent on wind and solar, on geothermal and biomass. They want to cut back the budget to help Grandma stay in a nursing home with Alzheimer's.
But one thing you should never touch, and that's the $4 billion for ExxonMobil, Shell and BP from the taxpayers, even as they're reporting the largest profits in the history of the world that any corporation's made.
And now, today, they have the temerity to come out here on the floor and they're looking for more. What this first bill that we're about to consider does is it legislates possible intimidation of Federal safety reviewers and puts a time clock on looking at the most controversial leases.
Now, mind you, just 1 year ago in the Gulf of Mexico we were looking with amazement at the worst single environmental disaster in American history, and that is BP with no idea about how they were going to stop 4 million barrels of oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. They had no idea how to stop it. And the American people, the world was tuned into the spill cam, almost, you know, fixated on this complete lack of safety, complete lack of preparation to protect the life and the livelihoods of the people who live around the Gulf of Mexico.
So what's the response of the Republican Party 1 year later? Is it to pass a safety bill? Is it to implement the recommendations of the BP Spill Commission, this blue ribbon panel of experts that identified that there are systemic failures in the safety precautions built into drilling in the United States? Is it to deal with the fact that they identified that there are four times higher fatalities on American rigs as there are on European rigs drilling off the shores of Europe?
No. All that legislation is stopped dead in its tracks. What they argue is we have got to give, you know, kind of a shot clock. You know how in the NBA, when you're watching TV and you only have 24 seconds to shoot a basketball, and so that creates a real intensity or else you lose the ball? Well, that's kind of what they want to say now to the Department of the Interior. We're putting you on a shot clock. You have 60 days. You have 60 days to decide: Is that drilling rig safe? Have the precautions been put in place to ensure that a catastrophic accident can't happen?
And if you don't make a decision in 60 days, Department of the Interior, on a rig that's out there at 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 feet and off the shore miles and miles and you can't figure it out, Department of the Interior--now, mind you, this is the same company that couldn't figure it out a year ago, and they're amongst the wealthiest companies in the world. But if you, the Department of the Interior, if you can't figure out what we can do, we the company can do in 60 days, we get to have the lease and we get to go ahead.
It is kind of like the NBA, except the consequences aren't that your home team loses; it's that your home team loses its job, your home team loses its environment because another catastrophic accident has occurred. That's what they do with this bill. They put a shot clock on it.
So I think if the American people are looking at the absurdity of this situation with these companies, look at the companies that are lobbying for this: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. These are the companies that 1 year ago said that they could evacuate walruses from the Gulf of Mexico. They had an emergency response plan in the event of a spill. Well, the problem was, of course, that they each had put it in writing; they had each put it in as an application to the Department of the Interior to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. But walruses, as every sixth grade child knows, have not lived in the Gulf of Mexico for 3 million years. So these are the companies that we are now supposed to trust.
Put it on a shot clock, they say. Just let the Department of the Interior try to figure out everything that we are planning for Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas.
And, by the way, the way the gulf stream works is pulling a lot of that pollution, if it's bad, in God knows how many directions, and the fish that get exposed to it put into the food chain with endocrine disrupters, cancer-causing agents, potentially harming families. But 60 days is all you have got.
It's kind of like the NBA, when we think that's how oil drilling should be, too, because we trust these companies. They are obviously the most safety conscious companies that this world has ever known, because we can see how really responsible they are in dealing with consumers.
They had a chance not to charge $4 a gallon because we are having a war in Libya and the Saudi Arabians took 800 barrels off the market, believe it or not, our friends the Saudis, over the last 6 weeks. But now we are just going to pretend that they are really good and responsible companies, and for them, so they can get all the leases that they want, they are on a shot clock--60 days.
Good luck to the Department of the Interior. Good luck to the environment. Good luck to the consumer.
Good luck to the taxpayers if another accident occurs.
So, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have an incredible debate here on this issue, because these are the same people that just passed the budget that cut the wind and solar budget by 70 percent.
You know, if you are a kid in America and it is 2011 and you are looking at this debate, you're saying to yourself: They cut the solar and wind budget in 2011 by 70 percent, and they are giving the oil companies unlimited profits, unlimited tax breaks, and unlimited access after 60 days to wherever they want to drill off of the coastline? Now, that's an upside-down agenda.
And you have already heard some of the denigrating comments about wind and solar, which does reflect, I hate to say it, a deep-seated attitude about these renewable energy resources. But, you know, politics.
And I think America is all about the future, and the future is about wind. It's about solar. It's about moving to all electric vehicles. It's about the agenda that they just pretty much defunded in their budget that they had the votes here on the House floor.
So I would urge that we would defeat this piece of legislation.
And their legislation, they say it's all of the above, but do you want to know what it is? It's oil above all. That is really what it is all about. Give the oil companies everything they want, and slash the budget for renewables. Slash the budget for all the other new technologies that we need to enhance our future.
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