Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, in the underlying bill, the majority has underfunded the Interior Department agency charged with issuing new drilling permits and ensuring that offshore drilling is safe. The underlying bill would underfund the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement--BOEMRE is what it's called--by nearly $35 million. This is the agency that is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that we drill safely off the coastline of the United States.

At our very recent hearing, the director of that agency, Michael Bromwich, said that underfunding this agency, as the majority, the Republicans, have done in this bill, would slow down new offshore drilling permits and make offshore drilling less safe. That is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, the rule the majority adopted has protected the underlying provision limiting the inspection fees paid by the oil and gas industry from a point of order, and now the Republicans will not allow the House to work its will on the amendment that I have drafted with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) and the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Capps).

Our amendment would have fully funded this safety agency by increasing the inspection fees on the oil and gas industry. The top five oil and gas companies made $35 billion in profits just in the first 3 months of this year. This week, they will likely report similar profits for the second quarter. In fact, earlier today, BP reported quarterly profits of $5.6 billion. That's just for the last 3 months.

Yet the industry as a whole pays just $10 million a year in inspection fees for offshore drilling, and the Republicans are putting it offshore today from any consideration by the Members of this body.

So our amendment would have, if the Republicans had allowed us, implemented a key recommendation from the independent BP spill commission. The BP commission recommended increasing the $10 million per year that the oil and gas industry currently pays in inspection fees significantly, and that is what our amendment would have done.

And for my friends on both sides of the aisle who are concerned about reducing Federal spending, the increased funding for the safety agency from our amendment would have come from the oil and gas industry and not from taxpayers, but the majority won't even allow a vote on this amendment.

The oil and gas industry supports increased funding for BOEMRE. Just last November, the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said, "We fully support Congress providing additional resources for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. This agency needs the additional inspectors and the increased staff and training resources to allow more efficient review and approval of oil and natural gas permit applications and processing of environmental reviews.''

But what have the Republicans done in this bill? They have underfunded this agency. The oil industry agrees that there needs to be more funding to process permits and conduct inspections. The only question is whether a portion of that funding is going to come from a small increase in inspection fees, as the independent BP commission has recommended, or whether American taxpayers will have to pick up the entire tab. We are saying that they should pay the fee, the American Petroleum Institute should pay the fee. The oil industry should have to pick up the tab. And right now we do not have an ability to debate that on the House floor.

When people go to get their cars inspected to ensure they are safe and not a threat to the environment, they pay a small fee. But the oil and gas industry, which is recording the largest profits in the history of the world, doesn't have to pay a fee to get some of their rigs inspected to ensure that we don't have another Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The American people want these rigs inspected to make sure they are safe, not allow oil companies to be safe from paying more inspection fees. But when we are trying to cut the deficit, the Republican majority is giving another gift to the oil industry, straining our oil safety agency. More than 1 year after the BP spill, it is still business as usual.

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