Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we are back on the bill before us, a measure that would allow for the permit to be approved to allow for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada into the United States. We had good discussion last week, certainly on Friday.

We have several amendments that are pending before the body. The Senator from Massachusetts has one on oil exports, Senator Portman on energy efficiency, and there is another measure sponsored by Senator Franken relating to American steel. Obviously, it is important that we begin to process these amendments because we have a significant amount of interest in the issues in front of us. At this point in time there are--we had over 50 filed amendments as of Friday evening. As of this morning, we maybe have more on deck. There is clearly a great deal of interest not only on Keystone XL but other energy-related amendments as well.

As we work through finalizing the events for this afternoon, I would like to alert Members that we would like to have votes on at least the three pending amendments that are before us that I just mentioned, hopefully by midafternoon. We are aware the Senate will close early today because of the President's State of the Union this evening. So my hope is that we would be able to process these three.

It has come to our attention that Senator Portman's amendment may need to be modified. He is in the process of doing that, and it may be that we will be able to accept that amendment this afternoon by voice vote.

At this point in time, I would encourage Members to come to us as the floor managers here, and let's figure out how we can get these amendments pending before the Senate. On the Republican side we have three folks who are queued up ready to offer theirs when it is appropriate. As we had agreed last week, we will go from side to side in terms of the amendments that will be considered. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a good, constructive week as we turn to regular order here in the Senate processing amendments.

With that, I would turn to my colleague on the energy committee, Senator Cantwell, for any comments she might care to make.

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