Congressional Replacement of President Obama's Energy-Restricting and Job-Limiting Offshore Drilling Plan

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to welcome everyone back to yet another episode of the GOP Wheel of Giveaway game show here. Every week on the floor of the House of Representatives, the majority picks an industry to benefit from giveaways of our public lands.

One month ago, the Republican majority voted to turn over nearly all of our onshore public lands to the oil and gas industry in just a few short years.

Two weeks ago, the majority voted to eviscerate proper environmental review for massive gold and silver and uranium mines on public lands to benefit the mining industry. And here we are on the House floor once again debating a Republican bill from the Natural Resources Committee intended to hand out even more industry giveaways.

Well, it actually gets hard to keep track of which industry is getting the GOP giveaway each week, so let's consult our chart--the GOP Wheel of Giveaways--so that we can make sure that everyone at home can follow along to see whether it will be the oil, the gas, the mining, or the timber industries that will be the big winner in the giveaway of our public lands this week.

Of course, we all know that it won't be the solar or the wind industries benefiting from the Republicans because in the Republican ``oil above all'' game, if you land on renewable energy, you lose a turn. So which industry is getting the giveaway this week? We are back on the ``even more oil'' on the House floor today, even more oil giveaways.

H.R. 6082 would place drill rigs right off our beaches in southern California, off our beaches in Maine, in New Hampshire, in Massachusetts, in Rhode Island, in Connecticut, in New York, in New Jersey--just put the drills right out there, right off the Maryland coast. And by the way, there will be millions of people, of course, out on those beaches saying get those oil rigs off the beaches, off the places where people go and have a good time during the summer, where the fishing industry is.

My amendment will say, and by the way, if you do find any oil and gas out there, at least let's keep the oil and gas here in the United States. Let's not run the risk of spoiling the natural resources of our country--the beaches, the fishing areas--finding natural gas and then ship it to other countries; at least let's keep it here. And the Republicans are going to oppose keeping the natural gas that they would find off these beaches in California and Maine and Massachusetts and New Jersey and send it to other countries.

This is truly the ``even more oil'' Republican Party. Whatever ExxonMobile wants, whatever Shell wants, whatever BP wants, we'll do it, even if we know millions of people will just be protesting right from the very beginning--and by the way, without passing one of the reforms from the BP spill commission to make sure that the drilling occurs in a safe fashion.

They still, in 2 years, have yet to bring out one single safety reform that would implement safeguards to protect against the repetition of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. So the natural gas that's found can go overseas. It will be done in a risky fashion because they refuse to learn the lessons of BP in the Gulf of Mexico, and they've included no new safety measures. That's what ExxonMobil wants, that's what BP wants, so it's out here on the House floor to be voted upon, by the way, over the vigorous objection of this Democrat and Democrats all across the country.

This Congress, the Republican majority, has reported 11 drilling bills out of the Natural Resources Committee. Those 11 bills have been combined and brought to the House floor and this is now the sixth massive passage of giveaways to Big Oil that we have considered. Two of those bills were largely similar to the legislation we are considering today to dramatically expand offshore drilling without putting any new safety measures in place.

All of the previous drilling bills have suffered from the same fate. They were all far too extreme to pass the Senate and not a single one of them has been signed into law. Well, let me let everyone in on a little secret: this bill is also not becoming law. Like the bills before it, it can't pass the Senate, and the administration has already said that the President would veto this bill.

But that reality hasn't stopped the Republican House from passing giveaways to the oil and gas industry over and over again. The reason they keep passing them is the same reason when you go to a movie and you see previews of coming attractions. What they're saying here is we're passing, that is, Republicans are passing, all of this legislation for the oil companies to drill off our beaches for the big oil companies. And if just somehow or other Mitt Romney becomes President and the Republicans take over the Senate, this will become the law of the Nation. So they see this as a preview of coming attractions, and they want the public to know that that will happen.

They want to run this year on this premise, and I think that's great. It's a very honest way of dealing with something that will horrify people who live all along the coastlines in these States that would run the risk of having damage done to their beaches.

When you include all of the bills that have been reported by all of the committees altogether, this Republican House has already cast 139 votes--139 votes--on the House floor this Congress to benefit the oil and gas industry.

We are going to pass 90 hours of debate on the floor on oil and gas legislation this Congress just today. What a streak. When most people think of the great records of American history, they might think of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, or Cal Ripkin's 2,362 consecutive games, or maybe Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a basketball game, or Ted Williams hitting .406 in 1941.

But when all is said and done, the record of this Republican Congress voting to benefit Big Oil might be just as untouchable a record. With already 139 votes and nearly 90 hours of debate on these giveaways to the oil industry on the House floor, this is a once-in-a-generation performance by this Republican Congress. It may stand as a record that can never be broken by any other Congress in terms of the number of giveaways to the oil and gas industry.

Whether it's voting 33 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or voting again and again for more and more drilling, under the GOP, this isn't the House of Representatives, it's the House of Repetition. President Truman dubbed the 80th Congress the ``do nothing'' Congress. Well, this is apparently the ``do the same thing over and over and over again'' Congress.

The Republican majority has already cast 139 votes to aid the oil and gas industry. How many votes have they cast to benefit the wind and the solar industry? Ah, there's a good question. Well, the answer is zero--139 for oil and gas, zero for the wind and solar industry. Is that all you really need to know about what's going on here in Congress?

Can you imagine the millennials out there listening to this debate saying zero for wind and solar? Zero for the future? Zero for making our country more of the clean energy leader of the world, of reducing greenhouse gases, of creating jobs in these industries? Zero for wind and solar?

The wind tax breaks, by the way, are expiring this year. Do not expect that to come out on the House floor as a vote that the Republicans say we must extend. But tax breaks for oil companies, extra drilling privileges off our beaches for the oil and gas companies? Oh, yeah, plenty of votes for that.

While we have been spending 90 hours debating legislation to help Big Oil, recently the majority wouldn't even allow a debate on the floor on an amendment to create a renewable electricity standard for our Nation because the Republican energy policy isn't ``all of the above.'' It is ``oil above all.'' And
that's what we're going to be debating for the rest of the day out here on the House floor--sad to say for the future of renewable energy for our country.

At this point, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

This is a very simple debate to understand. The Republicans want to authorize drilling for oil and gas off of the coastlines of southern California, Maine and New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey. Those States do not want that. They long ago decided the risks were too great for their beaches and for their fishing industries. They do not want it.

But it also is in the context of this Republican aversion, this Republican opposition to wind and solar and other renewables receiving the same attention as oil and natural gas does. And the important thing about wind and solar is that they would be domestically produced 100 percent. The same is true, by the way, you would think, for natural gas. Let's just say they find some off the coast of Massachusetts or off the coast of New Jersey; that would be great. But what the Republicans refuse to agree to is that that natural gas, after we've drilled off of our beaches, cannot be exported to other countries. And the reason that's important is we could use that natural gas and substitute it for the oil that we import from the Persian Gulf, but they won't agree to do that.

So the one thing that definitely has to be produced here is wind and solar because it has to be domestic. Natural gas, though, you can put it in a ship and you can send it around the world. You can freeze it like liquefied natural gas. And they won't agree not to do that as part of this package of running the risk of fouling the beaches of the east coast and the west coast.

There is just something fundamentally wrong with this; nothing for wind and solar, everything for the oil industry, including their discretion to then take the oil and gas that's discovered off our beaches and selling it overseas.

So this is just wrong on so many levels in terms of what we should be doing to protect our own country, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is very, very simple. It ensures that the natural gas produced under the leases issued under this legislation is sold in America. We're talking about the public lands of the United States, the taxpayer-owned lands of the United States. These are the American people's lands off of Massachusetts, off of New York, off of New Jersey, off of California that are being leased under this bill. The very least we should be able to tell the American people is that they are actually going to see a benefit from any oil or gas produced from these lands.

We should be able to tell Americans that we are keeping the natural gas produced on their public lands here in America to keep prices low for Americans here in the United States, and we're going to find ways of putting that natural gas into trucks, into buses, into cars so that we can stop importing oil from dangerous parts of the world.

We should be able to tell Americans that we're keeping the natural gas here so that we can create more American jobs in manufacturing plastics, fertilizer, chemicals, and steel; and that we tell those countries in the Middle East we don't need your oil any more than we need your sand because we have natural gas here in America. That's all that my amendment would do, send a strong signal to the OPEC nations.

Current law does not allow for the exportation of our crude oil, and it shouldn't allow for the exportation of our natural gas either. My amendment would ensure that no waivers can be granted, no permits can be issued to export natural gas produced from the public land of the United States to other countries when we're still importing oil from OPEC. How much sense does that make that we find natural gas and start to sell it to other countries, even as OPEC continues to tip us upside down and shake money out of our pockets at the pump?

So I'm going to reserve the balance of my time at this point and continue my argument in a few minutes.

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The Department of Energy right now has applications from 15 companies to export 28 percent of our current natural gas consumption in the United States.

Let me be very clear: exporting our natural gas will increase American energy prices. No economist or energy analyst disagrees. Why would we find natural gas here and then start selling it around the world? It would increase the price here. In fact, exporting far less than what is currently being proposed could send domestic natural gas prices skyrocketing by 54 percent.

Let me just let everyone out there know right now, we are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We are, right now, the lowest natural gas price in the world. In the United States, it's only $2.40, $2.50 in Mcf. In Japan, in Korea, in China, it's seven times higher. In Europe, it's four times higher. So if you're a manufacturer, if you're a company thinking about moving your trucking or your bus fleet to natural gas as opposed to oil and you're in these other countries, it's difficult for you to do it.

It's time for the United States to figure out how to do this. We have this incredible bonanza. Now they're proposing to drill off the coastline of Massachusetts, off New York, off southern California to find more natural gas. And what are they saying? Let's export it. Well, you're going to export the cheapest natural gas in the world.

Do you know what T. Boone Pickens says about this? ``If we do it, if we export natural gas, we're truly going to go down as America's dumbest generation. It's bad public policy to export natural gas.''

This is T. Boone Pickens. This is Ed Markey. This is a coalition that spans the entire spectrum of political thought, but we do agree on this one thing. Why would we take our most precious natural resource and sell it to other countries, when it gives us a massive competitive advantage?

So I'm going to reserve the balance of my time to conclude debate, but this is a nonsensical policy.

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Mr. MARKEY. Fifteen seconds.

We drill for natural gas off of our beaches, our pristine beaches and we find it, we take the risk, those States take their risk, that natural gas should stay here in America. ExxonMobil shouldn't be able to pack it up and sell it to China, sell it to South America. That natural gas should stay here in America if it's found off of our beaches. That's what the Markey amendment calls for.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, the independent blue ribbon BP Spill Commission--and this is their comprehensive compendium of what went wrong and what needs to be done in order to correct what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in the history of our country--concluded that there were systemic problems that occurred in the entire industry.

The Commission recommended sweeping reforms to improve the safety of offshore drilling. Yet, this Congress has still not enacted a single legislative reform and, as a result, the BP Spill Commission recently gave Congress a D, this Republican Congress, on its legislative response, and only refrained from handing out an F because it said it didn't want to insult the institution.

My amendment would simply ensure that we put into the statute specific minimal safety requirements for blowout preventers, cementing, and the casing of offshore wells. My amendment would ensure that if we are going to expand drilling off of States like Massachusetts and New York and New Jersey and Maryland and California, that we put additional safety requirements on the books to ensure that a Romney administration or any other future administration cannot simply roll back the Interior Department reforms.

We don't want a Louisiana mess off of the coast of Massachusetts, off of the coast of southern California. We want the safety reforms that the BP Spill Commission recommended be put in place so there is no recurrence.

The Republicans are saying they want to drill off of the coast of these States that don't want the drilling. The least that they should do is build in the safety reforms.

And just today, the Chemical Safety Board released its report on the disaster. The Chemical Safety Board reached many of the same conclusions as the BP Spill Commission. The government's joint investigative team and the National Academy of Engineering said that this disaster was not inevitable, that it was preventable.

This majority has said they wanted to wait until all the facts were in before taking action on safety legislation. Well, the time has now come. We now have two blue ribbon reports, each reaching the same conclusions. It is long past time for the Congress to take the lessons of the BP spill and turn them into laws, so that we never have a disaster like this again.

I'm afraid of what the majority is contemplating here, which is authorizing the drilling off the coasts of the East and the West in our country without building in the safety reforms. If ever there is a recipe for disaster, ruining the fishing, ruining the tourism business for these States that don't want the drilling in the first place because their economies are not based upon the same premise as the Louisiana and Texas economy, then this is that recipe. This is what we're voting on here today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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