Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1938, North American-Made Energy Security Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. POE of Texas. I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding. I also admire the gentleman from Florida with the exotic tie and his comments. But I stand in support of the rule and, of course, the underlying bill. The rule is a fair rule.

I represent southeast Texas. We still think we're the energy capital of the world. The pipeline from Canada will go down into southeast Texas, Port Arthur, Texas, which actually has high unemployment. The pipeline will go to the refineries. The refineries will be able to expand and hire refinery workers to refine that crude oil. I think that's a good idea.

The Canadian oil sands will be able to produce 175 barrels of oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia. The idea that we need to move away from Middle Eastern oil is a good idea. Maybe we ought to support our loyal allies that are in a stable country.

A medium-sized pipeline, just to give you some statistics, pumps about 150,000 barrels a day. To replace that, you would have to have 750 trucks a day or a 75-car train every day.

Pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil. Seventy-five percent of the accidents occur with a third party causing the accident to the pipeline. But if we don't make a decision--that's what we're asking the President to do--make a decision. And as my friend from Florida knows, being former judges, we made decisions. It didn't take us 3 years to make a decision. You get the evidence; you make a ruling. And it has taken, I think, the Federal Government way too long to make a decision on this issue.

But failure to act--delay, delay, delay--is tantamount to a "no,'' and eventually the Canadians will sell that crude oil that they have to China or other buyers. So I think it's quite important that we go ahead and make a decision, have the Federal Government rule on this issue.

There are 500,000 miles of pipelines into the United States; about half of those run through Texas. I'm told that a third of all those pipelines run through my congressional district. We have a lot of pipelines. And I think it's important that we continue to try to take care of ourselves, use a safe product from Canada, make sure that all the environmental requirements are imposed in making this pipeline that creates jobs in America--build a pipeline, create jobs in southeast Texas for Americans and the refinery business--because we still rely on crude oil.

And last I would say, I agree, we need to eventually have green energy, but we don't have that now. So if we cut off all of this, what will we use?

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. WEBSTER. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. POE of Texas. So I urge support of the rule. I urge adoption of this legislation so that we can move forward with construction, American jobs, and deal fairly on the issue of energy reliance upon ourselves and getting that from our allies instead of Third World dictators like Chavez and the Middle East.

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