Restoring American Energy Dominance Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PORTER. Mr. Speaker, our country needs energy to flourish, and Democrats know that this means authorizing energy projects. If we are going to authorize energy projects, then we need to require any energy developer, including Big Oil, to fully cover the cost of cleanup and reclamation of their extraction.

H.R. 6009 negates that principle, which I feel strongly about as a single mom, of cleaning up your messes, and instead gives Big Oil carte blanche to drill with little or no regulation. With this bill, Republicans are endeavoring to undo all of my work and the work of my colleagues to hold Big Oil accountable and to protect taxpayers.

Last Congress, my bill to protect public lands and recover taxpayer dollars by raising the Federal royalty rate for oil and gas extraction was passed into law.

Since 1920, Big Oil had paid the same 12.5 percent royalty rate for the extraction of minerals on public lands, which was considerably lower than rates charged by States. This allowed Big Oil to exploit our public resources and pay the American taxpayers pennies. My bill ended this corporate giveaway to Big Oil and made sure the American people would get fair benefits for our public lands.

I also had a bill that would increase, for the first time in 60 years, the amount of money Big Oil would put down to promise to clean up its oil wells. Last year, that reform was included in the Bureau of Land Management's onshore oil and gas proposed rule.

Previously, the bond amount that Big Oil paid covered just a fraction of their cleanup costs, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. Oil and gas companies have abandoned thousands of wells nationwide without undertaking reclamation efforts to make those polluted areas environmentally safe, actions that could now cost all of us, as taxpayers, up to $333 million. My bill, for the first time in decades, put Big Oil on notice: You pollute, you pay.

My proposal had popular support, including across the West, which is home to much extraction. Ninety-one percent of western voters want oil and gas companies, not taxpayers, to pay for cleaning up and reclaiming public lands after drilling.

However, Republicans don't care about protecting the American people from environmental and economic harm. They would rather prop up Big Oil's profits and exploit the American taxpayer, upending real progress to finally hold Big Oil accountable.

H.R. 6009 would prevent the Biden administration from implementing the Bureau of Land Management's oil and gas rule. It would bar current and future administrations from increasing bonding requirements or implementing other fiscal reforms to protect taxpayers. It also prevents any administration from future updates to the Federal royalty rate.

It is hypocritical that Republicans, who drape themselves in the mantle of lowering taxes during campaign time, stand here today advocating for a bill that would force taxpayers to pay for sweetheart deals to Big Oil that boost their profits even further.

My Republican colleagues have the opportunity to prove me wrong. At the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to the Committee on Natural Resources. If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill, and that amendment would prevent H.R. 6009 from going into effect until the Comptroller General of the United States certified that this bill would, in fact, result in reduced energy costs for American consumers and would not result in increased, record profits for the oil and gas industry.

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Ms. PORTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues across the aisle if they have the bravery to show that they are not beholden to Big Oil's bidding and will stand up for consumers and taxpayers to lower costs? This vote will show where your allegiance is.

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Ms. PORTER. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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