To Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Madam President. I assure my colleagues from Iowa, California, my colleagues from around the country, that as a Senator from an oil- and gas-producing State, a State where we have fossil fuels in abundance, that I, too, am focused on that next generation of energy security.

I want to do what we can to develop those renewables, whether it is geothermal, whether it is our amazing hydro capacity, whether it is what we have with our oceans or our tides, our winds, and our Sun.

I also recognize very cleanly that when we are talking about energy and energy security, we also need to think about the geopolitics and our national security when it comes to energy use and our vulnerability.

There is a lot of discussion on this floor right now about the Keystone XL Pipeline and the number of jobs it will bring.

I think we recognize that when we build something, there is that flurry of activity. There are those jobs that are very real, very good, very promising but can stretching jobs--jobs come and they go. What do we have left after they have completed Keystone XL Pipeline?

What we have is in a very real sense an energy lifeline, a lifeline that connects our friend and neighbor, Canada, to the north, to our opportunities for refining capacity in the Gulf of Mexico, our opportunities within this country to be more energy secure, to be less energy dependent.

I wanted to take just a few minutes this afternoon to not necessarily talk about the jobs perspective of the Keystone XL Pipeline, as passionate as I feel about that, but I wanted to focus on just a couple of points. One is the artificial chokepoints that are created in North America if we do not move forward with the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Earlier this month, the Energy Information Administration, EIA, published a report on world transit chokepoints for the global oil and gas trade.

There are about 90 million barrels a day of oil on that world market. Of that, 56.5 million barrels, about 63 percent, is transported by ship. It is moving around on our oceans.

This maritime trade that we see is dependent on a few chokepoints. We have heard of some of them--obviously, the Strait of Hormuz, 17 million barrels a day go through the Strait of Hormuz. We have the Strait of Malacca, where there are 15.2 million barrels a day. We also have the Suez Canal and the Sumed Pipeline, and the Bab el-Mandab between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

Effectively what we have are these very tight chokepoints where this flow of oil that comes around the world, around the globe, moves through.

Meanwhile, the Keystone XL would have the capacity of about 830,000 barrels per day. These are barrels that are secure, both economically and strategically, from a reliable friend and ally.

When we talk about the pros and cons of approving this pipeline, I think it is important that we think beyond just the benefit to our country, the benefit that Canada will have as a trading opportunity, but think about it from a national security perspective, from a global security perspective. By not approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, the President is creating an artificial chokepoint here. Other pipelines are full. We know the rail capacity is under severe constraint.

So think about it. We already have enough chokepoints out there in some of the most volatile points of the world. So factor this into the discussion that we have at hand.

The other point I would like to make is the integration of Keystone as a source of supply when we are talking about North American energy independence. We talk about that a lot on the energy committee. It is important when we talk about integration to understand how this piece from Canada fits into the source of supply for the Americas.

Again, EIA back in January published a report. This was on liquid fuels in the Americas. North and South America hold about 536 billion barrels of proved oil reserves. Back in 2012 the crude production was 19 million barrels a day. In North America, Mexico, Canada, and the United States, this is the lion's share of the Western Hemispheric production that we have right here.

So integrating our markets between the U.S. and the Canadian side just makes sense. In fact, it is the economic reality that is already on the ground. Last week I came to the floor talking about Keystone XL. I said: Why? Why is it such an issue, such a dilemma when we have 19 existing cross-border oil pipelines between Canada, Mexico, and the United States? They have been operating. They have been providing a resource to the benefit of both nations for years, for decades. Now we are twisted in knots, arguing for 5 years about whether or not the Keystone XL should proceed. I think we are going to look back on this a generation from now and we are going to wonder why and how we blocked this historic integration of our energy markets.

Then, the last thing I want to raise here is how the U.S. refineries--particularly those in the Gulf--are truly best prepared for the Canadian crude and thus bringing great benefits to Americans as a result of the pipeline. We have the total refinery or distillation capacity here in the Americas of about 27.7 million barrels per day. This was last year's number. Roughly one-third of the world's refining capacity is here in the Americas. In North America nearly onethird of that capacity, 17.8 million barrels per day, are here in the United States. Specifically, for heavy crude, we have over half of the world's choking capacity here in this country.

The largest refineries in the Americas are down in the gulf coast as well as in Venezuela. There are others on the west coast, in the Midwest, and some on the east coast. But if you look at the map of where the refineries are--in the Americas and really globally--it is obvious the destination for the Canadian oil is in the gulf coast area.

This is a debate on Keystone XL that has generated a lot of emotion and a lot of discussion about how, if you are opposed to it, what we need to do is cut off this Canadian supply and somehow or other we will be at a new phase in our energy production and consumption. Our reality is the Canadians will continue to produce. The good news, I think for all of us, is that the Canadians are utilizing technologies and innovation in the industry that have come a remarkably long way in how they access the crude in Alberta and how they are able to process it in a way that truly is better for the environment.

So for those who are concerned that we must stop this pipeline dead in its tracks now, and if we do so, we will be a nation that has moved on beyond oil, I think that belies our reality.

I am one who wants to make sure we are pushing ourselves always to utilize our smarts and our technology to do better as we access our resources and do so in an environmentally responsible way. But I also want to make sure that as a nation we have energy policies which are directed toward resources that are affordable, abundant, clean, diverse, and secure. The security aspect of it is something I do not want my colleagues to forget.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source