Pilot Project Offices of Federal Permit Streamlining Pilot Project

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAMER. Thanks to my colleague from Utah.

I also want to thank the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Hastings, and the ranking member, Mr. Markey, and especially thank the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, Mr. Lamborn, and the ranking member, Mr. Holt. We worked together on this, and I'm very proud of the outcome. It's a rather benign bill that has rather major ramifications, I believe.

I also want to thank the leadership at the Bureau of Land Management for not only doing an excellent job in managing the Federal lands in North Dakota, but their support of this bill and their guidance, frankly, in helping to craft it in a way that meets the objectives.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a Federal permit streamlining pilot project to improve the processing of oil and gas applications for drilling on Federal lands. The Montana BLM office in Miles City was included in the pilot project, but what was not known to the drafters of the legislation then was that North and South Dakota are under the direct jurisdiction of that regional office in Miles City. So, without the word ``Dakotas'' in the Energy Policy Act, North Dakota was excluded from this pilot project.

That, in normal times, may not be all that important. But as it turns out, North Dakota really is the heart of the largest oil play and the most exciting oil play going on on the continent.

So the streamlining process itself, I think, deserves some explanation, because I think what I want to do is to calm the fears of anybody that might think we're looking at cutting corners or expediting regulatory process that deserves the rigor that it is receiving.

What the streamlining process does is not cut corners, but rather, it streamlines by co-locating all of the various federal agencies that have jurisdiction, like the EPA, like the Bureau of Land Management, perhaps the USDA and USGS. And by co-locating them, you actually not only enjoy the efficiency of everybody working together in the same place, but you actually get some synergy as well, because you have the experts in the same room on the same plot of land at the same time.

This is a bill, as I said, that doesn't cut corners and streamlines, but it also has broad ramifications because I think that North Dakota is the perfect laboratory for a pilot project like this. The reason I say that is because there's high demand for processing and a lot of applications for drilling on very few acres.

North Dakota is blessed to largely be private and State land, not much Federal land. But there are about 2 million Federal acres that BLM has direct oversight of; that is to say, we have 2 million mineral acres, and there are over 700 permits or applications for permits to drill on that small plot of land.

In North Dakota, the average number of days for getting a permit processed by the State regulatory body is about 20 days. For the Federal lands, it's anywhere from 225 to 300 or more days. That's too much. I certainly don't advocate, nor do I think anybody else could advocate, streamlining this to the point of where it only takes 10 or 20 days to issue a permit on Federal lands. Clearly, there are 325 million owners of those Federal lands. It requires a more robust environmental protection regime. But we can do better than that, and I think we ought to do better than that.

I think the North Dakota experiment is one that people will look back on and say, that's the way to do it, that's the right way to do it. We in North Dakota care a great deal about our land, about our water, and about our air, and we look forward to working closely with the Federal officials who have an equal care in making this work.

I might also just add that this similar bill was passed last year in the Senate. It did not get a hearing in the House. The same, a companion bill, has been introduced again in the Senate this year by Senator Hoeven and cosponsored by Senator Heitkamp. It has bipartisan support in the Senate. It has passed the committee over there. It has not gotten to the floor yet.

So, again, I appreciate the leadership that the chair and ranking members have provided on this and urge my colleagues to pass this important bill.

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