Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we are back to continue debate and voting on amendments to this bipartisan Keystone XL bill.

I will focus on two main subjects today. The first is to speak to what I think is the good progress we have made on this bill, moving us toward ultimately a final vote and final passage. I believe we probably surprised a few people yesterday by adopting an amendment on climate change that few thought would be adopted. We have now processed a total of nine amendments. Some would say, well, nine is not much, but just to put it into context, last year, the Senate held just 15 rollcall votes on amendments. That was in all of 2014. Over just a couple of days here in this new Congress, we are already at 60 percent of last year's total, and it is still January. We have eight amendments that are pending at this moment and set to be voted on today. We will work out the timing and order of those votes. My hope is that we will exceed last year's total today.

I believe our productivity has been good. I appreciate the cooperation of the ranking member on the committee. What we have been able to do with this measure is important because I think it stands in pretty stark contrast to what we have seen in recent years and, quite honestly, to the delays the Keystone XL Pipeline has faced over those years.

The second part of my comments this morning--I wish to provide a little bit of perspective about how long this cross-border permit has been pending, awaiting a final decision by the President.

Sometimes when we talk in terms of the raw numbers, some ask: What does that really mean? What does it mean to be on the 2,316th day that has passed since the company seeking to build this pipeline first filed its first permit with the State Department?

It has been more than 6 years, more than 76 months, and more than 330 weeks.

The President noted in his State of the Union Address this week that Keystone XL was just a single oil pipeline. And he is right--it is just a single oil pipeline. We have multiple pipelines that cross the border. We have hundreds of pipelines that cross the country. So it begs the question: How and why has it taken so long to get action on just one single pipeline? Why has it taken so long?

There have been a lot of examples we have heard on floor. I mentioned yesterday that President Obama was still a sitting Senator when the permit application was filed. Others have said the iPad was not even out on the market when the first permit was filed. We heard that 2,300 days is longer than it took the United States to win World War II, longer than Louis and Clark's expedition to explore the West, and longer than Project Mercury, which put the first American into space. There have been a lot of comparisons in terms of what it really means to be longer than 2,300 days.

I mentioned on the floor many times that in Alaska we are seeking to try to advance our natural gas resource, and in order to do so we need a big pipeline to move from the North Slope down to tidewater, and so we are working to train welders because we know that when that day comes and we have the opportunity to build that line, we are going to want Alaskans to have those jobs. They may be temporary in that you don't weld a pipeline forever, you do it until the job is complete, but those are good jobs for those Alaskans and for people who come up to our State.

The Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center in Alaska does a fabulous job. In my opinion, it is the best pipeline training facility we have in the country. Every year, graduates from the training center are sent out, ready to go to work on projects such as Keystone XL. We are probably talking about seven sets of welders who have graduated at this point, and we need to keep approving projects that can help these young people or those who have been retrained as welders to get jobs. That is what they are waiting for.

We can even think about this length of time which has ensued since the first permit application has been pending in terms of flying to Mars and back. We could probably complete about three roundtrips from here to Mars and back, depending, of course, on the distance between the planets, but I am just putting it in context.

If we wanted to stay closer to home, we could describe those 2,300 days in terms of how many times we could hike the Appalachian Trail--probably 10 or 12 depending on the weather. One of these days I would like to hike the Appalachian Trail. I don't know that I have the time, it is one of those issues when you think about how long this has been pending before this administration.

Today I will add one more example to show the comparison. At this time in the football season, we are all focused on what is going on with Super Bowl XLIX, which is coming up in 10 days now. We will see Super Bowl XLIX pit the reigning NFL champions, the Seattle Seahawks--in Alaska we don't have our own professional football team, so we kind of adopted the Seahawks. I will let my colleagues know that I will be standing with the ranking member in rooting for the Seahawks on the big day next week. A lot of folks are excited about it, and we will be watching it. The game will be played next Sunday.

For the moment, let's look back to September 19, 2008, when the first cross-border permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline was first submitted to the State Department. Let's specifically focus on the Seahawks because they provide a pretty good example of how much has changed over the past 6 years. Back in September of 2008, the Seahawks were about to start a season in which they would have a record of just 4 and 12--winning 4 games and losing 12. At that point they were still a good team and we were still rooting for them, but they were a pretty different team. For starters, the Seahawks had a head coach. Their current coach, Pete Carroll, was still at the University of Southern California coaching the Trojans. Their star running back, Marshawn Lynch, was about to start his second year in the NFL as a member of the Buffalo Bills. It would be another 2 years before Lynch joined the Seahawks and just over 3 years before the Nation discovered his love of Skittles during the game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

The most famous members of the Seahawks secondary--the Legion of Boom--are Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas. Back in September of 2008, both were still in college, respectively playing for Stanford and the University of Texas.

Of course, we cannot forget Russell Wilson. A lot of Alaskans are rooting for him to get a second consecutive Super Bowl as the starting quarterback for the Seahawks. Back in September of 2008--he played just a handful of college games at that time. He was a redshirt freshman at North Carolina State.

My point here is not necessarily about football--although that is what a lot of us are talking about--it is to demonstrate that a lot can happen over the course of 2,300 days, and it does, whether we are talking about what goes on in politics, in world events, or the world of sports. My point is that it should probably take the Federal Government less time to approve an important infrastructure project--what the President himself has called just a single oil pipeline--than it takes to build an NFL championship team.

I would like us to get to the point where we are done discussing the merits of this important project and be done in the sense that we can move forward not only with Keystone XL but move forward as a nation when it comes to North American energy independence and providing jobs and greater economic benefit to this country.

I am pleased with the process we have had on the floor over the past couple of days. I look forward to the series of amendments on which we will have votes this afternoon--likely after lunch--and the opportunity to be in further discussion about these issues that I think have been pent-up for a period of time.

With that, I acknowledge my colleague on the energy committee and co-fan of the Seattle Seahawks.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we had a robust discussion yesterday on two amendments that dealt with the issue of climate change. I think we had a very clear and resounding vote on the one that had a perfectly reasonable statement that climate change is real; climate change is not a hoax.

I also supported the amendment of my colleague from North Dakota on this same topic. I think it was important that we had that debate.

What I am hoping we can do now is get beyond the discussion as to whether climate change is real and talk about: What do we do? How do we move forward to those technologies? How do we make a difference with reasonable steps such as greater efficiency, a no-regrets energy policy that makes our energy supply even cleaner.

I want to move on to that. But I think at this point in time, with what we have had in front of us, we could have a whole series of amendments that basically restate the same thing.

I would like to move us beyond that conversation, and I look forward to that. But at this time I move to table, and ask for the yeas and nays.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we have the sense of the Senate that would express that all forms of bitumen or synthetic crude should be subject to the 8-cent-per-barrel excise tax associated with the oilspill liability trust fund. This is important because right now we have a legitimate but unintended loophole on the books, and it is also a matter of fairness because conventional oil pays into the trust fund. We need to address this, and I commend my colleague Senator Wyden for the effort he has done. But the problem that we have is that as we work to enact legislation to update our laws, we have to make sure it is consistent with the Constitution, which requires revenue-raising measures to originate in the House.

If we agree that we want to close this loophole, which we should do, we need to allow for the House to address this. Otherwise, we face a blue slip issue, and quite honestly, it would act as a poison pill to the Keystone XL bill. The sense of the Senate expresses to do it legitimately through the Constitution.

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