Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge my colleague from Alaska, and I appreciate the comments he made this morning in his first speech on the Senate floor and in choosing to clearly focus on the opportunities that we have as a State and the challenges we face.

I do feel it is unfortunate that, as a State, it seems that our largest battle is against our own federal government. How unfortunate is that? I feel very fortunate to have him as a partner here in the Senate as we take on these initiatives that have such impact and are of such import to our State and to how we fit with the other 49 States. We have no shortage of issues to take up when it comes to Federal overreach and the impact it has on our Nation and our State and how we will be able to develop our resources. I look forward to working with the Senator in these different areas.

I do have to comment, given where we are in the discussions here on the Senate floor about the Keystone XL Pipeline and what benefit that infrastructure will provide to this country by way of a resource that will help us with our energy security and truly helps us with our national security, is it not better to receive oil from our friend and our ally Canada than it is from Venezuela? To me these are subjects that should not even merit that level of discussion because it is just common sense.

Yet this President and his administration have taken 6 years to get to a point where they may decide on this issue. It has taken 6 years to decide whether it is in our country's best interest to receive oil from a friend and neighbor rather than from those who would do us ill. And then in a stunning act on Sunday--in one breath--this administration has taken an area that has been identified as the greatest source of oil potential that we have in this country, outside of Prudhoe Bay, with an estimated mean average of 10.3 billion barrels, which could provide 1 million additional barrels a day that would come down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which my colleague has talked about, and would help us to provide our Nation with the resource we need and would not only help us from a jobs and energy perspective but also from a security perspective.

On one hand, the President is saying, nope, I think I would rather continue to receive oil from Venezuela and Nigeria and all these other countries, and then on Sunday he just decides to put it off limits--the greatest source of oil we have identified in this country to date.

Just this morning, the President released his 5-year lease-sale plan, which is putting off--not deferring but withdrawing--areas in the Beaufort and the Chukchi, which will limit our opportunity for the 23 billion barrels of potential in the offshore there.

As my colleague has noted, the President has taken off half of the national petroleum reserve--the area we have designated for accessing our oil and gas resources. There is a move underfoot right now where this administration, I believe, is going to make the first production in NPRA and push it to a place where it will be uneconomic.

We have a stunning situation. This administration says they want an all of the above energy policy, except maybe in Alaska. We can't do it in ANWR. We are going to push you off of NPRA, and offshore we are going to make it that much more difficult for you. We are going to put the throttle on Alaska's energy opportunities for this country. We are going to put the throttle on Canada and say: Don't run it through the United States--not down into the gulf coast where we have these refineries.

What is he doing? He is putting our national security at risk with actions such as these.

So when we talk about Keystone XL, this is more than just a pipe or piece of infrastructure crossing the border. We are talking about energy security and national security. Then we have actions from this administration this week that choke off Alaska's energy opportunities. This is why I need my colleague in this fight. Believe me, the Alaska delegation is prepared for it.

It just causes us to wonder why. What are they thinking? What about energy security and national security for this country? We have the potential to be secure. North American energy independence is not a myth. It is real. But we have to have the will to make it happen--we certainly have the resources. We just need the ability, the opportunity to be able to develop them. So get out of the way and let us do that.

My colleague from Washington and I have been working all morning trying to see if we can't identify a series of amendments that we might be able to move to this afternoon. We would like to give colleagues a sense of how we are going to be advancing through these additional amendments, get some additional amendments up pending, and really lay out that process. I think we have had really constructive conversation this morning, and I am encouraged. Obviously, we have a few more issues to work out, but I am hopeful we will be able to announce--hopefully in the short term--a glidepath that will give Members a little more certainty.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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