Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it is good to be here on the Senate floor talking about where we are in the process to hopefully finally move toward approval of a permit to allow for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

It has been interesting--the past couple speakers this morning have all mentioned that they don't understand why the first order of business in this new Congress should be this measure, that there are a lot of issues out there. And there certainly are. There will always be issues in the Senate. This is what we do. These are all weighty issues. But I would remind my colleagues that one of the reasons we are moving early to the Keystone XL Pipeline legislation is because in many ways this is a bit of unfinished business.

It was just 6 weeks or so ago that we had this measure before us on the floor of the Senate. It was before this body for debate--a good debate--led by our former colleague from Louisiana who was absolutely passionate--absolutely passionate--in her defense of why this was timely, important, critical that this measure be approved. We had that debate, and unfortunately in the final vote we were shy one vote and so we did not see passage. It was a measure that was in front of us because it was timely and also because of the work this body had done to advance it. The energy committee had hearings, process, and we had a bill in front of us.

It is the first week of this session, and we have a lot of measures that we will be taking up that are extremely important, but they are perhaps not as primed, if you will, for action on the Senate floor because that legislation hasn't been drafted. The committees have not met to work through some of the legislation that will be before us.

So why not move to advance the Keystone XL Pipeline, a measure that will provide for good-paying jobs in this country; a measure that will work to enhance that relationship with our closest friend and ally to the north, Canada; a measure that will help us from an energy security perspective when we are able to displace oil coming in from places such as Venezuela with oil coming in from Canada. That is a relationship that this Senator would much rather enhance and further.

So for a host of different reasons we are on this measure in the second week of this new Congress. I am pleased we are at this place where when we reached unanimous consent earlier to proceed to consideration of amendments on this bipartisan bill. It has been interesting. As I have talked to not only colleagues but reporters out in the hallways--just people having conversations--and there was a fair amount of skepticism that if Republicans were to regain the majority, would we return the Senate to what we know as regular order, where there is a processing of amendments and a regular committee process, but that is what we are doing, folks. Those who are observing what is going on, beginning today, are seeing something that hasn't been seen around here in a number of years. It was unfortunate that we hadn't had that process, but it is never too late to do the right thing. It is never too late to get back to a deliberative process that allows for the open exchange and consideration of ideas on the floor.

When we talk about an open amendment process, clearly it is not just open for amendments for those of us on this side of the aisle. It is an open amendment process for the full Senate so Members on both sides can offer their ideas and work to get votes on them. The majority leader has said several times that this process is going to be open, but it is not going to be open-ended. We are not going to be on this measure for a full year or even a full month, but we will be taking the time to do the deliberation that I think is important. I think you have already got some people saying: Oh, we are spending enough time on it. It is a mixed message with those saying it is not timely, we shouldn't be taking it up, and then others complaining that we have been on it now since last week. I think it is important for Members to know we are expecting to see amendments filed. We are expecting to see Members come to the floor to call up amendments. I would encourage Members not to wait until the last minute because to use the majority leader's words, this is not going to be open-ended. So let's get to our business and let's get it done.

We have three amendments that are currently pending before the body. Before I speak to each of those, I would like to very briefly address my support for the underlying bill from the perspective of Alaska and being one who is immersed in Alaska's energy process and politics.

I heard from more than a couple of folks back home who have seen the debate and discussion playing out, whether it is on C-SPAN or in the media, and I have been asked: We understand Keystone is in the national interest. We get that. But is it truly in Alaska's best interest? Folks back home are a little worried right now. We are seeing the price for oil sink to lows we have not seen in years, sitting around $46 a barrel today. It has certainly had an impact on our State's budget--dramatically so. It is not just Alaska, I think we are seeing it in other oil-producing States. It is good news to have lower oil prices, but it is kind of a double-edged sword for some.

The questions that are being asked at home are legitimate, fair, and very important questions such as: OK. How does this fit in with the Alaska piece?

We certainly have large-scale infrastructure projects, particularly energy projects of a serious magnitude.

We have a world-class oilfield in Prudhoe Bay and the connector that the Trans-Alaska Pipeline provides from Prudhoe Bay down to tidewater in Valdez, an 800-mile silver ribbon that bisects our State, is truly a modern marvel. A State can have the resource, but if they don't have the infrastructure to move the resource it doesn't do them much good. It doesn't help their economy and it doesn't help fund education if they cannot move it to market.

As I mentioned, Alaskans are a little nervous right now. A New York Times article recently described what is happening in Alaska. The journalist described it as economic anxiety hanging over the State because of the drop in the price per barrel of oil. When a State relies on oil for about 90 percent of its revenues to fund its budget and the price drops dramatically, they notice it.

One way to deal with the variations and variables in price is to have sufficient production. Alaska is suffering from this economic anxiety because our oil production, which was over 2 million barrels a day, has dropped precipitously over the past couple decades. We are now talking about an oil pipeline that is less than half full. What does that mean to a State such as Alaska when the artery for the State's revenues is not pumping at an optimum level? We are in that place right now. As a State we are looking at what can we do to make a difference when it comes to production because there will be price variables. As long as OPEC is in play there will be price variables we are not able to affect as much as we would like.

We have the resource. We have an estimated 40 billion barrels of oil in our Federal areas, offshore in the Chukchi and Beaufort, on our coastal plain within the NPRA. We are not looking at a situation in Alaska where we are running out of oil or about to run out of oil. Our problem straight up is our limited ability to be able to access it. The holdback we get, the pushback we get from our own Federal Government, the policies that keep us from being able to access that resource has been our challenge.

Now back to the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone Pipeline is not going to be carrying any Alaskan crude. Don't get a mixed message. We have a pipeline. We have already built it. It is waiting to be filled back up. The need isn't infrastructure in Alaska but permission--consent from the Federal Government to access our lands, access our waters to achieve that energy potential.

When I am talking to Alaskans about the imperative for Keystone and how it intersects with Alaska, there are a couple of messages. The first one is simple. There is plenty of demand within just the United States for all the oil Canada and Alaska can produce at the same time. The demand is there, even with the surge we have seen coming out of the Bakken and the amount of increased production we have seen domestically in this country. We are continuing to import that oil. Again, it is better for us to rely more on ourselves. The world view that supports the construction of Keystone XL is the same one that leads to new production in my State of Alaska; that is, the recognition that affordable energy is good. This is my mantra. I keep advertising it. I have a bumper sticker that says ``energy is good.'' Affordable energy is good. The understanding is that low prices result when world markets are well supplied along with the desire to achieve North American energy independence. This is something I feel very strongly about.

Approving the Keystone XL Pipeline is not going to eat into the markets for Alaska's oil. This is an important message for Alaskans to understand. In fact, it is going to help us preserve the markets we have because right now our North Slope crude is shipped predominantly to the west coast--makes sense, it is in closer proximity--where it is refined into gasoline and other petroleum products for use in the lower 48.

We take it down our 800-mile pipeline, put it to tidewater, and it is refined on the west coast. We enjoy the benefit of it here. But this ANS crude--Alaskan North Slope crude--as we call it, is now finding itself in competition from the shale plays out of the Bakken. So what we are seeing is, without a Keystone XL Pipeline oil, the oil that is being produced out of the Bakken is finding a home somewhere. It is not just sitting there. It is being moved.

Where is it being moved to? It is being moved to refineries that have capacity. It is going west. It is going west to those west coast refineries that are used to getting Alaska crude. Keep in mind that as it moves west, if we don't have the pipeline, how is it moving there? How are we moving it? We are moving it by rail, predominantly.

Again, we will have that discussion about the environmental impacts of rail or truck versus a pipeline and the safety and emissions issues. If you want a cleaner way to transport oil, it will be in a pipeline. If you want a safer way to transport oil, it will be in a pipeline. We have had this discussion in the past--and again, so Alaskans understand--and the Keystone XL Pipeline will benefit us in terms of being able to continue to send our crude to those west coast refineries.

We have heard--I believe repeatedly and incorrectly--that the Keystone XL Pipeline is a foreign project that is going to carry Canadian oil to the gulf coast. We know where the name TransCanada derives from. We know that much of the oil to be transported will be from Alberta, but I think it is important to acknowledge that we have about 100,000 barrels of Bakken crude that will come from North Dakota and Montana and down through the midcontinent. If we have the Keystone XL Pipeline constructed, it will avoid the west coast.

The last point I will make for the folks back home, for whom I work and who are following this issue, is that I really think the Keystone XL Pipeline is a test for us. It is a test of whether we as a nation can still review, license, permit, and build a large-scale energy infrastructure project. We are looking at that in Alaska. We need to know that can continue to be done in this country, because if we cannot do it even here in the lower 48, where the costs are lower and there is an existing infrastructure that you tie into, which the Keystone XL will--you have the southern leg already completed--if we can't demonstrate that we can get beyond the process of permitting a leg of this pipeline over the Canadian border and into the United States, what confidence do we have that we are going to be able to do other big energy infrastructure projects? That worries me a great deal.

When people say that we are rushing this too quickly or that it is premature or that we need to let everything play out, I think we need to remind ourselves that 6 years is a pretty long time to play something out. Most companies don't have the wherewithal to wait something out over the course of 6 years because the cost of constructing this pipeline has not gone down during this intervening time period. If anything, the costs are going up. We know the costs are going up. We are working on the Keystone XL Pipeline right now, but it is just the first step of many I believe we need to take and to do in order to improve our energy policies.

I will be continuing my conversation with Members to explain how my State has an awful lot to offer our country--whether it is increasing the flow of oil in our Trans-Alaska Pipeline or getting production up so we are not half full and instead are full, so we can share that resource with people throughout the country. As we look to move our natural gas--our amazing quantities of natural gas--that massive infrastructure project is a way in which we can work to advance that resource.

Alaska has so much to offer the country, but we need to have the chance and the opportunity to do so. Our pipeline up north is already built. It was completed just after I got out of high school. In fact, I was privileged to have the opportunity to work up in Prudhoe Bay at that time and saw what actually happened out there in the oil fields. It has operated successfully, safely, and efficiently for decades. It has far surpassed what we believed we would be able to ship through that line, but it remains surrounded by billions and billions of untapped oil that can be brought to market, which would then bring in jobs, generate revenue, and keep prices as low as possible, and increase our security. We all want that.

This is a conversation that will continue until the conditions of Alaska's Statehood--those promises that were made to us back in 1959 when we became a State--are fulfilled and we are allowed to produce our resources as a State.

So watching what is going on with Keystone is something that is of great interest to the folks back home. We will continue to watch it and hopefully be encouraged that we do the right thing from a jobs perspective, from a revenue perspective, from an economic perspective, and an energy-security perspective.

We have three amendments which are pending. I was privileged to be sitting in the Chair a little while ago when the junior Senator from Massachusetts spoke about his amendment. His amendment relates to exports from the Keystone XL Pipeline. My colleague from Massachusetts is not from a big oil-producing State, as I am.

I believe it is fair to say that his State cares a lot about the cost of energy. They have cold winters, infrastructure challenges, and other issues as it relates to energy, and I appreciate that. But it is important to understand what my colleague's amendment would do. It would specifically prohibit the export of oil that is brought into the United States through the Keystone XL Pipeline, as well as the export of the finished products made from that oil. It is not just the raw crude that is put into the line. It is what goes down to the refineries in the gulf coast and is then refined into products--whether it is diesel or some other product. It is saying that the export of that should be prohibited.

Basically, his amendment is a full-on, flat-out statement saying that you can't have any aspect of it--any drop of that--leave this country. It essentially says that all of this--every ounce of this new Canadian resource--will be brought into this United States and will stay here.

My colleague has raised the concern that the United States should not be that passthrough entity. He used the terminology that it is similar to a straw from Canada down to the gulf, and then it goes out the back end from there. The President, in a comment, used the term conveyor belt and that the United States should not be that conveyor belt. The argument is that we should not just be a passthrough where Americans get none of the benefits. Well, if we didn't get any of the benefits, I think we should be talking about that.

It is important to know this is not the first time we have had this discussion or this idea in front of us. Back in early 2012, it was part of an amendment that came before the floor. It was defeated 33 to 65. We had many of our Democratic colleagues join with all of the Republicans to reject a statutory ban on exports.

I am hopeful this amendment that has been offered and is pending will see the same fate and ultimately be defeated by at least the same margin. I say that because I think it continues to be unnecessary, and I strongly believe it takes our export policies in the wrong direction.

This is not just Lisa Murkowski saying this takes us the wrong way. The Department of Energy has looked critically at the issue of the Keystone XL oil being exported and whether or not that makes sense. In their analysis--and they state it pretty succinctly--they say: Without a surplus of heavy oil in PADD 3--that is the gulf coast area--there would be no economic incentive to ship Canadian oil sands to Asia via Port Arthur, which is where it is coming out of.

The Department of Energy's conclusion--they had a pretty broad discussion about it. But their conclusion was then reinforced by the State Department in its final supplemental EIS for Keystone, which is a document that everybody should read--granted that it is 1,000 pages long, or thereabouts, but there is a summary that helps to condense so much of it. In the State Department's final EIS, they say that ``such an option''--that being export--``such an option appears unlikely to be economically justified for any significant durable trade given transport costs and market conditions.'' Think about that. I believe these conclusions make some pretty good sense here.

The purpose of the Keystone XL Pipeline is to bring Canadian and American oil--let's not forget the 100,000 barrels coming out of Montana and North Dakota--to the gulf coast. It does not make any sense to bring oil all the way--850 miles--to refineries that can refine it--remember, these refineries in the gulf coast are set up to deal with exactly this type of oil. So we have the line that brings it from the north to the south where you have refineries that are able to handle this. So tell me why it would make sense to just use this pipeline as a passthrough--as a conveyor belt or straw--and then ship it to refineries around the world that will add that transport cost to it. As the State Department EIS said, it would not be economically justified.

It is important to understand, again, what is going on down there in the refineries in gulf coast, and the State Department looked at that. What they found was that the traditional sources of heavy oil used on the gulf coast are declining. Why are they declining? What we traditionally see coming in as imports there--coming in from Venezuela and Mexico--has been drawn down or lessened, if you will, for a host of different reasons, but not the least of which is because we are producing more here in the lower 48 States in the Bakken.

We have talked a lot about the misalignment that is going on within our refineries and what is being produced and what we are capable of refining. But again, what we are seeing in the gulf coast is an ability to take on more capacity for this heavy oil. The opportunity to refine the product that is coming out of Canada there in the gulf coast refineries is real. It is there.

Now, I think it is important to be honest here. I don't want to be written up in somebody's fact checker. Believe me, we looked at that. There are small amounts of oil from Keystone XL that could be reexported as a matter of economic efficiency, but that should not give anyone a reason to panic or get everybody all excited. It may come as a surprise to some, but the reexport of Canadian oil that is not commingled with the domestic crude is already completely legal. It is already a routine matter where the Commerce Department just routinely signs off on it. This is no big deal. There is no change in policy that is dramatic.

The Obama administration has already approved dozens of licenses to reexport crude oil all across the world.

I think it is important to recognize that this amendment offered by my colleague from Massachusetts would not just block the export of the crude, it would block the export of finished products. As he said, it would be everything. It would be the crude, and it would be everything that is then produced. Every bit we have he would have stay here. But blocking the export of finished products would be a reversal of existing law and current practices. And think about it--just from a practical perspective, how do we enforce this? How would we realistically enforce this measure of diesel that came from this refinery, from this pipeline here in the lower 48--that we can go ahead and export--and this is what we do. It is not any great state secret. We move our refined products, and we do so in a significant way to the benefit of our Nation. So how do we fence off everything that comes out of Keystone XL and say: The refined product from this particular pipeline can't move outside this country. It creates potential havoc, and maybe that is the point.

I think the Senate should recognize that this amendment is not going to improve this bill. I don't think it will change anybody's mind. I don't think it is going to bring new support. I think it is meant to kind of poison the well and perhaps ensure that this pipeline will never be built and that it can't operate.

I encourage my colleagues to look at a couple different documents. I mentioned the final supplemental environmental impact statement the State Department did. It is an important read for the critical analysis that went into it. I have cited those areas where they speak specifically to the impact of the export. There are others who have reviewed not only that but other documents, other outside facts.

I mentioned that President Obama had made reference to the conveyor belt theory or tagging Keystone XL as being a conveyor belt for the oil. He made that statement when he was in Burma in November. His specific words were that it would provide ``the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else.''

So the fact checkers got on President Obama for that and did a pretty good analysis. I felt it was a pretty good analysis. They laid it out in clear English and ultimately decided that the President was going to be awarded three Pinocchios for that statement. For those who aren't familiar, if a person makes a significant factual error or obvious contradiction, they get three Pinocchios.

But it wasn't just the Washington Post and Glen Kessler who did this assessment. We also had another fact check come out of PolitiFact, and they also rated that statement mostly false on their Truth-O-Meter.

I ask unanimous consent that both of these fact checks be printed in the Record.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Again, I think it is important to have a full understanding of what we are talking about when we talk about the export of Keystone XL and the imperative that in order for something to work, as the Senator from Massachusetts has suggested that we are just going to have this passthrough, it has to make sense for those who are moving this product. There has to be economic justification at the other end. And what makes sense is to move that product to the gulf coast, where our refineries have the capacity to handle that heavy crude, turn it into product there, and continue to create jobs within that region.

I am not going to support the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts, which I think is obvious from my statement, but I believe it is important to give some of the background. I would commend to colleagues some of these articles I have referenced.

There are two other amendments that are pending before us, and I will speak very quickly to the amendment that has been offered by the Senators from Ohio and New Hampshire. They have once again teamed up to offer this bipartisan amendment on energy efficiency. They have worked very closely on these issues over the years. We are to the point where we can't think about energy efficiency without thinking Portman or Shaheen, so I commend my colleagues for their diligence. I have been happy to support them in their efforts, and I am happy, quite honestly, that we will have an opportunity to vote on an amendment that does relate to energy efficiency. It is not the full-on energy efficiency bill my colleagues introduced previously, but it is an amendment with text that is identical to the measure that came out of the House, the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act. This is a bill that moved through the House 375 to 36 during the last Congress, toward the end. We tried to move it through in the Senate, and we came close to advancing it by unanimous consent, but there were still a few outstanding concerns we couldn't get around, so it is back before us once again. But really nothing has changed since then, and in my view this is a good reason why this proposal is really regarded as important and noncontroversial. It is cost-neutral. It contains four provisions, one of which is extremely time-sensitive.

Sometimes people don't want to get down into the weeds of certain aspects of what we are dealing with. The time-sensitive provision we are dealing with is these energy efficiency standards related to water heaters where we have a consent decree from back in 2010 that our water heater manufacturers have until April 16 of this year--so actually 3 months from today--to meet these revised minimum efficiency standards from DOE.

The problem we have is that DOE's standards effectively ban production of these grid-enabled water heaters that many of our rural co-ops use for electrical thermal storage or demand response programs. So instead of saving energy, these revised standards now threaten to actually work against these goals. So we have a bizarre, unintended consequence in this situation.

We have been working for a couple of years now to address this and to fix it, and now it is urgent. Now we have to deal with it because, again, we are at 3 short months. The manufacturers are worried about what the Congress is going to do. Is it going to be resolved? Should I be building any of these? Thanks to the cooperation of the Senators from Ohio and New Hampshire, we have an opportunity to have this measure in front of us once again.

There are three other provisions in this amendment that are equally noncontroversial. They all relate to voluntary efficiency programs. One focuses on the efficiency of commercial office buildings. Another provides greater information about energy usage in those buildings. The third looks at energy-efficient government technology and practices.

This is one that I hope we will be able to advance without further delay. This is really a commonsense effort to fix a real problem for our rural co-ops.

More importantly, let's embrace energy efficiency around here. We are now involved in the discussion about increased production, which is very real. I started off my comments by talking about Alaska's desired contribution to the national energy economy, but I view energy from a three-legged stool perspective: We have increased production. We have all the technologies that are going to allow us to achieve our potential with our clean and renewable resources, which is hugely important, but we also have the efficiency and the conservation piece. We don't talk about that enough around here. We need to do more. Shaheen-Portman is one way to get us there, albeit in a very small way.

The last amendment we have pending is an amendment offered by my colleague from Minnesota on the other side of the aisle, who also serves on the energy committee. He has introduced an amendment that would require that all of the iron, the steel--that all the manufactured goods that are used to construct Keystone XL be produced right here in the United States.

I think all of us want to do all we can, certainly, to encourage more jobs and job creation here in this country and to put in place policies that would allow us to do so. I do appreciate that the Franken amendment inserts language in the amendment that allows--or I guess it avoids a conflict with our international trade agreements because we know that could have really threatened the bill. It would actually have given the President real reason to threaten to veto this bipartisan bill. But they have addressed that within the amendment. I also appreciate that the amendment allows the President to waive the requirements for American materials based on findings he makes. So that is language which is included in it.

But I have to tell my colleagues, we are sitting here at 2,310 days since the initial cross-border application was submitted for this project. I was reminded that when the initial application was first presented, the President was then Senator Obama. That much time has elapsed. So I see this language, and I think it is included in this amendment in good faith, but I just can't be convinced that the President would actually exercise this type of a waiver in a timely manner. He certainly hasn't demonstrated it at any point throughout this whole, long, drawn-out process we have been on with Keystone XL after 6 years.

So I am going to be opposing this amendment for the same reasons I opposed it when we had it in front of us in 2012. It was included as part of a broader amendment at that time, but it did fall on a pretty strong bipartisan basis.

These are important issues to be thinking about and considering, and I did take good time to review this. Again, I think all of us want to do more to encourage job production, job creation. I buy American and I buy local wherever and whenever I can. I strongly support the use of American materials in American projects, whether it is in my State or around the country. I know the Presiding Officer probably does as well, as does the Senator from Minnesota. But in considering whether we here in Congress should mandate specific materials for the Keystone XL Pipeline, I have come down on the side that we should not mandate that.

I think we need to look at several things. First off is the commitment that has been made to buy American without any sort of mandate, without any requirement coming out of Congress. Fully 75 percent of the pipe from this project is going to come from North America. That is the commitment that has been made, and I understand that more than half of that--about 332,000 tons--is going to come from Arkansas alone.

Again, this is a commitment that has been made to ensure that America does derive benefit, that we do see those--direct and indirect--induced jobs. When you make a commitment, you say that we will pledge a full 75 percent of the pipe for the project that is going to come from North America. I think that is important. It was important enough that TransCanada announced this 3 years ago. So this is not just something they have decided in order to help facilitate this--that we are going to say 75 percent. They made this commitment a while ago.

Here in Congress we passed the Buy American Act, and that act specifically is applied to projects that are Federally funded. But keep in mind here that when we are talking about Keystone XL, this is a private project. Keystone XL gets no subsidies. It will receive no taxpayer dollars. It will be built to the government's specifications. We have seen that when you look to that final SEIS, where the additional mitigation measures are required once the permit is approved. It will be built to government specifications, but I don't think the government should decide what it is actually built with. We are going to define the parameters in terms of mitigation, but, again, this is a private project. This receives no Federal funds, and it would be somewhat precedent setting. So I asked the Congressional Research Service to see if they can identify for me any other projects where the Congress has sought to force or direct private parties or a private company to purchase domestic goods and materials--so all of the materials that go into it and not just the steel but everything else in there. They have been looking. They have some pretty sharp folks over there at CRS. So far, they have not been able to come up with an example in our laws. I am concerned about this, quite honestly. As much as I support ``Buy American'' and making sure that we receive the benefit of these jobs from creating these products, I am concerned about the Congress' setting a precedent here. I think it potentially puts us on a pretty slippery slope.

If we are going to set the precedent here for Keystone XL and say, well, you have to do it for pipelines, why wouldn't we do it for other energy sources? Is that going to be a requirement we are going to place on wind turbines?

I know some of my colleagues are in some States where they are manufacturing good made-in-America wind turbines. I am all for that, but is that a policy we are going to take on--where we are going to say, no, it is an important industry, it is an important sector, and so we are going to require that it all be made in America? If that is the case, why not on our vehicles? Why not everything?

I worry about that. I worry about the precedent. I worry about where we go beyond Keystone XL if that is the requirement. I think it is also important to listen to the industry's perspective on this position. The American Iron and Steel Institute have been a huge supporter of Keystone XL for years now. They have 19 different member companies, major producers such as U.S. Steel. They have 125 associate members.

On January 8--actually, right after we came into session--before this amendment was even filed, the American Iron and Steel Institute sent every one of us a Steelgram reiterating their support for Keystone XL, and their letter is pretty definite. They are not nuanced about it. They say:

It is essential that Congress act to ensure the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline without further delay.

I think we should listen to those words. Those words aren't coming from a TransCanada. They are not coming from an oil company. They are coming from associations and workers around the country who believe earnestly and honestly that construction of this pipeline will be good for this country and it will be good for these families. So let's listen to them. Let's agree that 2,310 days and counting is more than enough time to make a decision.

We saw the Nebraska Supreme Court come out with their determination that the decision that came out of Nebraska was not unconstitutional. So it clears away that excuse, if you will, or that reason to say we can't move forward.

There is really nothing holding up a decision at this point in time other than the President's unwillingness to move on

this issue. I think if we want to move forward and provide good jobs--and we have had the debate about how many jobs are really created. Is it the 42,100 that the final SEIS states in terms of direct and indirect jobs?

If you want just to focus on the permanent jobs, that is definitely a much lower number--35 to 50 permanent jobs. But you know what. When you build something, there is the opportunity for good, honest work for well-paying jobs for welders, for truck drivers, for operators. People are looking for an opportunity such as this. They want to be part of building something. I can tell you that in Alaska, when we are debating how we are going to move our natural gas to market and how we are going to build this natural gas pipeline that will move this, nobody is saying that we can't build this because it is only going to provide temporary construction jobs. That is not what we are talking about. They know that there is benefit there. They are hoping they are going to be part of that benefit.

When we talk about where we are with some of these amendments coming forward, I think it is good to have this debate. I think it is good to have this discussion, whether it is talking about exports, because that is a legitimate part of the discussion, talking about requirements that may be placed on construction. But I think we have to remember we are not the zoning board here in the Senate or in the Congress. This bill doesn't have anything to do with siting. We are not determining the route. That is what the States do and rightly so. What this 2-page, 400-word bill does is approve the issuance of that permit to allow for construction, but we are not the ones determining that this is the way the line goes.

I would urge colleagues to look critically at the language and see exactly what it does. Understand that when we are talking about the benefits and burdens of a pipeline, it is true that pipelines are not 100 percent fail-safe. Not much that we build is 100 percent fail-safe, but what we try to do at every turn and at every opportunity is to make it as close as possible. But when you look from a safety perspective, from an environmental perspective, the safest and most environmentally sound way to move this oil is in a pipeline. It is not putting it in rail to other parts of the country. It is not putting it on the roads as we are seeing. Those are the options right now. Whether people in this body or across the Chamber here object, Canada is accessing their resource. They are accessing their resource, and they will move their resource. Right now the way they are moving it is in a way, quite honestly, that adds to emissions, has greater potential for a spill and for an environmental incident. So I am looking at it from the perspective that Canada is going to move that. They have made that very clear.

In fact, there was an article just a couple of days now, in the Wall Street Journal--and it is talking about the impact of lower oil prices and the impact on what is happening in Canada as an oil producer. Are they slowing down their production in response to lower oil prices? Absolutely not. What we are seeing is almost--I don't want to describe it as a doubling down because that is an inaccurate phrase--but what we are seeing is continued effort within Canada to access their oil resources. Some of the statements that are made by some of the Canadian oil companies are really quite telling. They say that Canadian Natural is a company that will ``ensure the oil sands will continue adding to the global oil glut for a long time to come, regardless of the price of crude.'' They go on to say: ``It's not well understood just how robust the oil sands are. If you stopped expansion of the oil sands tomorrow, you would have no decline in the production base for decades ..... But few of the largest producers in Canada envision scaling back production at their oil sands operations.''

So what we are seeing is there was big investment up front with the oil sands in Canada and accessing a resource that is plentiful, but if you are to believe some of the statements from these Canadian companies, they are going to continue to produce their resource, even in the face of what we are seeing--declining world oil prices.

If Canada is going to continue to produce, how is that product going to be moved? I would rather it be moved safely through a pipeline, with fewer emissions through a pipeline, and to a part of the country where we are set up to accommodate that resource in our refineries so that we can refine that product to our benefit.

To me, that makes sense. So we will have good and--excuse the pun--energetic debate about amendments in these coming days. I think you can see from my comments we are going to have some amendments that I like and some that I am not supporting. But what I am looking forward to is the fact that we are at a point that we are describing as regular orders. We are going to be voting on amendments, perhaps quite a few, as we move toward the final passage of this bipartisan bill. I look forward to the exchange that we will have.

I thank you for your attention, and I yield the floor.

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