To Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. This debate is really about some simple fundamental principles. Keystone is a Canadian export line. That is what the oil is going to do. It is going to travel from the dirtiest tar sands fields in Canada through a pipeline like a straw through the United States, down to the Gulf of Mexico, and then be exported out of the United States of America.
How do I know this? I know it because I made the amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives saying this oil stays in America. Do you know who opposed it? The American Petroleum Institute and the Canadian Government. This is the Canadian Keystone export pipeline. We take all the environmental risk and this oil goes out of our country.
Ladies and gentlemen, we still import approximately the same amount of oil in 2014 as we imported in 1975 when we put the ban on exportation of oil on the books. We are still exporting young men and women overseas into the Middle East to protect tankers coming into our country, and we are going to build a pipeline for the Canadians down to the Gulf of Mexico so they can use us as a straw to send it down and then export it out of our country? Where is the American angle on this?
I keep hearing that it is about American security. Do you want to know what this is all about? I will tell you what it is all about. The Canadian companies want to make more money. They want to take the oil from Canada, bring it down through the United States, bring it to the Gulf of Mexico, and then send it to Europe, Latin America, and China. Why? Because they will pay more for this oil than the United States will pay for this oil. They will make billions of extra dollars once they can get it on a ship because the price for world oil is set at a price, which is called Brent, but it is the global price.
Well, in the United States, because of fracking, because of our rise in domestic energy production, and because of our dramatic increase in fuel economy standards, we are producing more oil and consuming less simultaneously, and the price of oil at the gasoline pump for people who use home heating oil as a way of heating their home is going down dramatically.
What does that translate into? Well, every time the price of a barrel of oil goes down just 1 cent at the pump, it is $1 billion into the pockets of the American consumers--$1 billion. So from July of 2008 until today, it has dropped from $4.11 to $2.88 at the pump, and Americans all across America are not afraid to go to a gasoline station right now and fear that they are going to be tipped upside down and have money shaken out of their pockets because they can pay $2.88 and it is dropping.
If we keep the Canadian oil in the United States, that price is going to drop even more because we will have to import even less than we do now from the Middle East. That helps consumers. That helps our economy. That should be the plan, not taking all these environmental risks and not getting the economic benefits.
The lower the price is, the greater the economic activity in our country. Manufacturers start to say: I will build my plant here. The price of energy is much lower. There is much greater economic activity because people have more money in their pockets to buy other American products other than oil, and they buy them in their neighborhoods, they buy them in their communities. That is what this should be all about.
What is this debate not about--I mean decidedly not about? It is not about solar, it is not about wind, and it is not about energy efficiency. It should be. If we are going to debate an energy future for our country, it should not be oil above all; it should be all of the above.
So right now what we are hearing from the other side is that they just might not support the extension of the wind tax break, even as wind has now created 80,000 new jobs in the American economy. They are not talking about extending the solar tax break for another 5 years, which they should be. That has creating 142,000 new jobs in the American economy. And I will tell you why. Because this is an agenda to make sure the oil industry gets what they want on the one hand, and they can starve their competitors on the other--wind, solar, energy efficiency.
Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman had a bill that addressed energy efficiency. It has been dying here on the floor of the Senate for the last 2 years. What is its biggest problem? I will tell you what it is: It creates 190,000 new jobs in energy efficiency which would reduce the need to use fossil fuels to generate the same amount of electricity because the single wisest way to consume energy is to not consume it in the first place so you don't have to take the money out of your pockets. That is energy efficiency. That is working smarter, not harder. Shaheen-Portman, dead. The Republicans killed it. The wind tax break, dead. The solar tax break is not going to be extended.
If we are going to have a debate in our country, if we are going to talk about job creation, if we are going to have something that really deals with the future of our country, let's put solar, wind, energy efficiency, biomass, and geothermal--let's bring them all out here. Let's have a big debate and not just something that has the Canadians use America as a conduit--as a straw--to get their oil out of our country so they can make an extra $5 or $10 or $15 for every barrel they sign. You don't have to go to Harvard Business School to see this business plan on a 3-by-5 card. If you get it out of America, you make $10 to $15 more per barrel. It is simple. There is no thinking required here.
What is in it for us? The dirtiest oil in the world goes through the United States so that Canadian oil companies can make money. It makes no sense, not if America is generating hundreds of thousands of new jobs with wind and solar and the tax breaks in those industries are on the table to be killed. We should be trying to use this as a debate about the big issues. Yes, reducing greenhouse gases, but it is job creation and it is national security. If that oil stayed in America--this Canadian oil--and if wind and solar and biomass and geothermal were given those incentives, we could tell those Arab nations that we don't need their oil any more than we need their sand. That is what we should be talking about out here, that plan. That is not what we are talking about, however. We are talking about something that is very narrow and only creates jobs in the short run. Once the pipeline is built, it takes almost a handful of employees to run that pipeline. Rather than creating the permanent jobs in wind and solar, the permanent jobs in energy efficiency, the permanent jobs in solar panel manufacturing--how do you possibly expect the American people to think this institution is serious if we are not going to be having that kind of a debate?
Ladies and gentlemen, don't kill the production tax credit; don't kill the solar tax breaks in 2 years. Let's have the big discussion about where America is going. Let's do it in a way that has a comprehensive plan which is ultimately put together.
I say to you right now: Do not build this Canadian Keystone ``export'' pipeline. Don't build it until we have the debate, which this country expects. Young people in campuses all across the country expect a debate on wind and solar; they expect a debate on using technology. We are the brain country; we are the technology country. We are the country that can invent our way into this new world--into reducing greenhouse gases and breaking our dependence on imported oil. That is who we are as a nation.
We put a man on the Moon in 8 years. We were challenged, and we did it. We invented new metals and new propulsion systems. We are the can-do Nation. We invent the new technologies that young people want. We are not doing that here today. We are just helping the Canadians take oil and send it right out of our country.
If they would accept an amendment to say this oil stays here in America, that would change the debate a little bit. If they were willing to add wind and solar tax breaks and efficiency incentives, that would change the debate. But they are not going to do that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used his 10 minutes.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask for one additional minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MARKEY. By the way, I just served over in the House in the last 4 years when the Republicans--the tea party--took over the House of Representatives. What did they do on an ongoing basis? Cut incentives for renewables, cut the energy efficiency budget, kept passing bills that stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate pollution and its ability to increase the fuel economy standards, not just for cars but for boats and planes. That is not the direction our country should be going in.
I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill.
I also have to say at the same time that I have the highest respect for Senator Landrieu. She is a passionate and dedicated and articulate force fighting for
her State and fighting for her beliefs. There is no one in this entire institution whom I respect more than her and her passionate belief and the cause she is championing out here on the Senate floor, but at the same time, I respectfully urge a ``no'' vote on the Keystone Pipeline.
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