Offshore Production and Safety Act of 2011 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of S. 953. Today I wish again to speak about gas prices in our country and the pressing need to increase domestic supply. In a nutshell, the way you reduce prices at the pump for American consumers is by increasing supply, particularly domestic supply. More supply will not only help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump for American consumers, but it will also help create good American jobs for our workers across the country.
It is important to remember that government does not create jobs, but government can create the environment, the legal, tax, and regulatory environment that will stimulate private investment, and that private investment will stimulate the deployment of new technologies, new companies, and, of course, create jobs to help grow and sustain our economy.
I want to start out by giving you some examples close to my home in the great State of North Dakota. In North Dakota, we launched a comprehensive energy plan about 10 years ago. At that time oil companies had either left the Williston Basin, which is the energy patch in our State, or they were leaving. You might ask: Well, why was that? First, it was because they were getting better returns elsewhere. The technology was lacking to produce oil and gas economically from new formations in our State. Companies were going to other places in the world where they could extract that oil more cost effectively.
Second, the data on confirmed reserves was also lacking, and the technology to produce oil from shale was not sufficiently developed.
Third, our workforce was aging.
And, fourth, transportation constraints limited production. In other words, there were better places for those companies to go, better places than our State, to invest their dollars, to get a return for shareholders.
To turn that around, we worked very hard to build a climate for investment and growth. I wish to tell you about some of what we worked to put in place. First, we put tax incentives in place that made it worthwhile to invest. Second, we established an oil and gas research fund. Third, we initiated studies of the Bakken formation, not only through the North Dakota Geological Survey, but also through the U.S. Geological Survey. We asked for updates to those studies now as well.
We improved infrastructure, including four-laning some of our major highways. We established a pipeline authority to expand transportation capacity, to move product out of the Williston Basin to market, and we also established a center of excellence for petroleum safety and technology at Williston State College, to train workers in oil production and recovery methods.
Up until that time, we had to send our workers to States such as Colorado or Wyoming or maybe Oklahoma for that education and training in oil field technologies, and sometimes they did not always come back to our State. So we established that training there at home.
As a result of our advanced business environment, we drew investment capital technology and ingenuity to the Williston Basin, and those efforts unlocked the potential not only of the Bakken formation but also the Three Forms formation.
This year, North Dakota will produce more than 120 million barrels of oil, the fourth most amongst all 50 States. We passed other States now such as Oklahoma and Louisiana, and our production continues to grow. What is more, the private investment that funded and deployed those new technologies to produce more oil most cost effectively and more dependably also funded the development and deployment of new technologies that helped us produce that oil and gas in more environmentally sound ways.
New technologies such as directional drilling, and the way we do hydraulic fracking, enabled companies to recover as much or more oil from one well bore than they had formerly recovered from up to a dozen well bores. That means more domestic production, less environmental impact, and better results for the American people.
Bear in mind that most of these measures I am talking about, most of these measures we implemented to enhance our business climate, were not about government spending. They were about creating an environment that attracted private investment.
Increased economic growth not only generated revenues for our State and broadened our economic base but also actually enabled us to reduce taxes for our citizens. It also has a national impact. Increased North Dakota oil production is also helping to reduce our dependence on foreign imports, and increase the domestic supply of oil in this country.
As I mentioned in my remarks last week, between 1985 and 2005, domestic oil production in this country was going down--it was shrinking--and foreign imports were growing. In 2005, we were importing 12.4 billion barrels of oil a day into this country, 60 percent of what we consumed.
By 2010, however, our imports had fallen to 9.4 million barrels a day, a reduction of about 3 million barrels a day over 2005. So over the last 5 years, we have actually reduced our daily imports of oil into this country by 3 million barrels a day.
Our dependence on foreign oil has been reduced from 60 percent down to about 49 percent. So what changed? Well, in part, we are using less. But the fact is, we have increased domestic production. We have increased our domestic supply. Increased supplies from onshore production in the lower 48 States such as North Dakota, also from natural gas liquids throughout the country, and from offshore drilling, have all raised domestic output by 1.5 million barrels a day in this country.
That is what today's vote on S. 953 is all about. The bill before us, which was introduced by Senator McConnell--and I am pleased to be one of his cosponsors, is about more offshore domestic production, more offshore domestic production from off our coasts, and, hence, more domestic supply.
Like our approach in North Dakota, onshore production, S. 953, the Offshore Production and Safety Act will encourage more domestic production with better environmental stewardship. It will open areas in the Gulf of Mexico, in Alaska's Outer Continental Shelf, and parts of coastal Virginia to new exploration and production. At the same time, it will help to expedite the approval or denial of growing permits to a reasonable period of time--in this case 60 days--thereby allowing projects to move forward in a timely fashion.
But it does not just speed up the clock. This bill is also about safety. It requires companies drilling offshore to have safety plans that must be certified by the Secretary of Interior. To further improve safety, it also requires ongoing preview and research into spill prevention procedures and methods.
This legislation, the Offshore Production and Safety Act, is the kind of energy policy that will help to attract investment and increase production in this country. That means not only more supply to help bring down the cost of gasoline at the pump for American families, but it also means more jobs for American workers. It is a good piece of legislation and we ought to pass it.
Although it is a step in the right direction, no single piece of legislation will do it all. Congress has not passed a comprehensive energy policy in years. But, frankly, we can no longer wait for that single sweeping master plan that will do it all at once.
Again referring to my home State, we built Empower North Dakota over a decade piece by piece, and saw firsthand the power of energy development in our State. The bill before us today is one piece, a piece that can become part of a comprehensive national energy plan.
To build a comprehensive plan we need other legislation as well, other legislation such as the Boutique Fuel Reduction Act of 2011, which would simplify our Nation's fuel standards and make more fuel available to American consumers. My esteemed colleague, Senator Roy Blunt from Missouri, was on the floor a few minutes ago talking about that piece of legislation, and also legislation such as the Regulatory Responsibility for our Economy Act, which would actually work with a directive from President Obama to review and remove outmoded or excessively burdensome rules that may be impeding economic development and job growth across our country.
We need to work in a bipartisan way, because high gas prices, high unemployment, and low economic growth are not a Republican or a Democratic issue, they are an American issue. That is why we also need legislation such as the EPA Fair Play Act, which will prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from rescinding previously approved 404 permits. I am pleased to be cosponsoring that legislation with my colleague, Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia. Collectively, all of these pieces of legislation and more are the bricks and mortar out of which we can build a comprehensive national energy policy. But we need to get going, and we need to get going today. Let's get going with S. 953, and let's build a brighter energy future for ourselves and for future generations.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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