Alaska's Right to Produce Act of 2023
Floor Speech
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1173, I call up the bill (H.R. 6285) to ratify and approve all authorizations, permits, verifications, extensions, biological opinions, incidental take statements, and any other approvals or orders issued pursuant to Federal law necessary for the establishment and administration of the Coastal Plain oil and gas leasing program, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. 6285.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6285, Alaska's Right to Produce Act.
H.R. 6285, introduced by Congressman Stauber, would block the Biden administration's attacks on Alaska, its North Slope communities, and their elected indigenous leaders.
Last September, the Biden administration announced two decisions that would disenfranchise Alaskan and North Slope communities.
First, the administration announced it was rescinding energy leases in the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR.
When it passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Congress approved and mandated the Department of the Interior for commercial leasing, exploration, development, and production in the 1002 Area. Production in the 1002 Area would be limited to roughly 2,000 acres out of the 19- million-acre refuge. This is just a tiny postage stamp when looking at the big picture.
Specifically, the law required the Department to conduct two lease sales in ANWR, the first by December 2021 and the second by December 2024. The Trump administration held the first lease sale, but the Biden administration immediately halted it and canceled the leases without warning last September.
Again, this was a law passed by Congress. Congress mandated lease sales in the 1002 Area with the goal of improving energy security and generating revenue for our country, the State of Alaska, and local communities on the North Slope. The funds these energy projects generate are necessary to support public projects and basic amenities, like roads and modern water and sewer systems, which have only recently arrived on the North Slope within the last 40 years. These amenities are ubiquitous to the lower 48, but the infrastructure is still being developed up in the North Slope.
In a hearing on these issues in September, Nagruk Harcharek, president of The Voice of the Arctic Inupiat, testified on the importance of energy production to quality of life for Alaskans living on the North Slope: ``We can quantify the powerful impact of these projects by observing the increase of life expectancy on the North Slope. In 1969, before our people had any land rights and no economic prospects as a result, life expectancy was just 34 years. By 1980, our average life expectancy was 65, roughly equivalent with Libya and lower than North Korea. Today, our people can expect to live to an average of 77 years. This increase, the most dramatic in the United States, can be directly connected to the proliferation of a basic economy, modern infrastructure, and services supported by resource development projects.''
While the administration canceled the ANWR leases, it also issued a proposed rulemaking for the management of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, or NPR-A. This rulemaking, the final version of which was announced 2 weeks ago, would lock up 13 million acres out of the 23 million acres that comprise the petroleum reserve and make it more challenging to conduct exploration and production activities in the rest of the petroleum reserve.
To make matters worse, meaningful engagement with local governments, Alaska Native corporations, federally recognized Tribes, and Tribal nonprofits across the North Slope of Alaska was severely lacking throughout the rulemaking process. It was utterly nonexistent before the rule was proposed. Additionally, an affront to the communities on the North Slope, the rule was proposed during the whaling season and overlapped with the ANWR comment period.
When pressed to provide more time to comment during a virtual meeting, Department officials explained that they couldn't extend the comment period further because of the Congressional Review Act.
These actions and the utter lack of meaningful engagement and input were panned by the entire Alaska delegation, along with every elected official, local governments, Alaska Native corporations, federally recognized Tribes, and Tribal nonprofits across the North Slope of Alaska.
Again, I thank Congressman Stauber for his work on this bill to repeal these disastrous actions by the Biden administration and for listening to the voices of Alaskans.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of H.R.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on the HEAT team.
I will also point out to the American people that the Biden administration is the gift that keeps on giving to Putin. Not only would they not put sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, now they have put sanctions on U.S. pipelines.
They have put a pause on LNG gas exports. Our friends in Europe, Germany, and Poland would love to have our LNG. They would love to have U.S. LNG, but guess what? We have got a lot of it, but we can't send it there because this President not only won't restrict Russia, he restricts American producers and allows Putin to continue to fund his war machine by selling gas to Europe.
I love the way my colleague across the aisle operates. He talks about deflecting when what he is doing is deflecting. He is trying to deflect from the issue in Alaska--where, once again, the Biden administration has failed miserably--by talking about Ukraine.
I don't know if the gentleman has checked the voting record, but I voted to support Ukraine. It is regrettable that we have to send more foreign aid, more military equipment to support countries that are fighting against evil regimes like Putin, like Iran because of bad foreign policy, and a lot of it has to do with energy policy.
I would prefer not to have to vote to send more military aid to our allies and our friends who are fighting for freedom and democracy, but this President and his administration has put us in a weakened place on the world stage, and, unfortunately, we have to take votes like that.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I also appreciate Mr. Hern's leadership on the RSC and the establishment of the HEAT team and the efforts that they have been putting into making sure we are energy independent here in America.
I just have to take issue with this issue about lackluster sales or lackluster lease sales. I note that the first ANWR lease sale was held in early 2021 during the throes of the COVID pandemic when oil prices were historically low, and the argument is that the administration projected, the Trump administration projected $1.8 billion from ANWR lease sales over 10 years, and my friends are arguing they only made less than 1 percent of those initial projections. They are not telling, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.
This one sale was held after the election of President Biden who said on the campaign trail that he would end oil and gas production on Federal lands. I have to point out to my friends that revenue comes from oil and gas royalties based on production, not leasing.
Mr. Speaker, a lot of things to contest here and issues to cover, but I want to start with this idea of environmental treasures and this idea that ANWR is this environmental treasure that was never intended for any kind of development. Let's look at a little history.
When ANWR was created in 1980, the law included a section, section 1002, setting aside 1.5 million acres of the coastal plain to be assessed for its development potential. After years of careful study, in 1987, the Department of the Interior recommended that the 1002 Area be open to responsible development projects.
The Alaska Native village of Kaktovik, which has public interest in the lands in ANWR and multiple entities as members of Voice, is the sole community located in the 1002 Area of ANWR and the only community located in all of the over 19 million acres of ANWR.
The president of Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation testified: ``We are a small community that suffers as the Federal winds blow and feel the Biden administration is working to effectively erase us from the land that we have inhabited for hundreds of years. Since 1980, we have fought to open the 1002 Area, also known as the coastal plain, to oil drilling and pursue economic freedom.''
On to another issue that my friend from California mentioned about the poor air quality there due to forest fires: if my colleagues would work with us on that, we could fix that issue, as well.
What California has is very poor forest management. They have a hands-off approach to forest management. As a result of that, we are even losing giant sequoias. As much as 20 percent of the ones on the planet we lost in 2 years due to catastrophic wildfire were not because of climate change but because fire had been suppressed in those groves for over 100 years. They finally had to pay the piper. You had white fir trees that grew up into the lower canopy of the giant sequoias. My colleague from California knows I am a forester and would love to help fix some of those problems with forests in California.
Now, to this issue about energy cost and reliability, as my friends across the aisle are pushing for more and more solar and wind, I am an all-of-the-above energy kind of guy. I would love to have more solar and wind, but we have to have baseload power. We have to have either coal or natural gas or a lot more hydro or a lot more nuclear power.
Going back to an earlier discussion that nuclear power is generated from uranium and that we are now dependent on Russia, we have to buy our uranium--most of it--from Russia or Kazakhstan to generate our nuclear power.
When we talk about low-cost solar energy, I have a real problem with that. Maybe it is low cost in the United States because we pay solar farm developers 30 percent of their costs with our tax dollars. If you build a solar farm, you get a 30 percent tax credit back. If you spend a million dollars, you get $300,000 back from your fellow taxpayers. If you build a windmill, you get 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour.
Maybe that is a way that it is lower cost, but if it is truly lower cost, why is the number one manufacturer of solar farms in the world building 50 gigawatts of coal power plants every year? That is China, which we rely on to buy not only the elements and minerals that we need to do electrification but also builds most of the solar panels with Uyghur slave labor. They are building a big coal plant every 5 days.
Now, natural gas in the United States has caused us to be able to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions more than any other country in the world. We are only around 13 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions now, and China is over twice that.
When we become more dependent on China, when we become more dependent on Russia, who are big polluters, then we are becoming more responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions than if we would use our own energy and our own minerals to build things here, to build them more efficiently and more effectively than any place in the world.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time.
To close, I am going to quote from the testimony of Charles Lampe, the President of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation who testified on the Biden administration's action in November.
We do not approve of efforts to turn our homeland into one giant national park, which literally guarantees us a fate with no economy, no jobs, reduced subsistence, and no hope for the future of our people.
I urge all my colleagues to show their support for Alaska and the Alaska Native communities on the North Slope by voting for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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