Energy

Floor Speech

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to talk in morning business about the energy issue facing the country. Anyone who has filled up the car or truck in the last month knows we have an energy crisis that is building and needs to be addressed. Last week I filled up my pickup truck. It cost about $50. Across the Nation, parents are driving in carpools. Farmers, small business owners, and commuters are experiencing sticker shock at the rising cost to put gas in their vehicles. Today oil is over $104 a barrel. That means on average Americans are paying $3.52 a gallon. It is going in the upward direction from there. We are clearly in an economic downturn. We have high unemployment. Now is not the time to sit back and do nothing as the price of gasoline goes up at the pump.

In response, the White House is beginning to talk about tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We know that will not work. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is available for natural disasters and global disasters. But experience has shown that any gain from releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is small and temporary, and prices quickly go right back up to their high and rising levels. If we diminish our resources, our reserves in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we are even more vulnerable to those who would do mischief to the country because they would know we have a diminished supply, or to the natural disasters for which we are supposed to be prepared.

Our problem is, we are the only Nation on Earth that has vast natural resources which we will not use. American energy is out there. It is under our land. It is under our waters. It is ready to be tapped, and it can be tapped environmentally safely. We could bring the prices down on our own accord. We know there is upheaval in the Middle East right now that could affect further the gasoline prices because of potential shortages. We are too dependent on foreign sources for our energy needs. It is a little more than 50 percent. That is not strategically sound, and it is most certainly not in our national security interest to leave us at that level.

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the biggest resources we have. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for nearly 30 percent of total U.S. oil production and 13 percent of natural gas production. By failing to take full advantage of that resource, we are putting our energy security on the line.

Mr. President, 400,000 jobs across the gulf coast are tied to the offshore energy industry. Nearly a year after issuing its moratorium and months since the moratorium was lifted, the Department of the Interior last week approved its first, its one and only, deepwater permit--one in a year. It's one and one only. There are thousands of idled leases, people sitting in the Gulf of Mexico idle that should be able to be at least exploring to determine if it is worth drilling. Yet the gulf is facing a permitorium.

My constituents know the pain of this ``permitorium.'' One unfortunate case is the Houston-based Seahawk Drilling Company. Seahawk Drilling used to be the second largest shallow water drilling contractor in the United States. It provided high-paying jobs to men and women in Texas and across the Gulf of Mexico. I say ``used to'' because in February bureaucratic delays in shallow water permitting forced Seahawk Drilling to declare bankruptcy. They could not continue to have the costs associated with their employment levels, and with their company being there without the opportunity to drill and produce and keep their employee base. They declared bankruptcy. It destroyed 1,000 high-paying Texas jobs.

I received a letter describing the pain and distress the company felt when it had to inform the dedicated Seahawk employees they no longer had a job. According to the letter, on the day Seahawk was forced to sell its assets and lay off workers, the chief operating officer had to ``fight back the emotions of the day. He took a deep breath and he left the conference room for a room full of Seahawk employees to tell them that their company was bankrupt.''

These are real people with real families who lost real jobs--American jobs--and it could have been prevented.

Since the moratorium was enacted, at least 13 rigs--deepwater and shallow water--have departed the Gulf of Mexico, taking with them good American jobs, and, furthermore, putting us in the position of having to import now from the foreign countries where these rigs have gone, not only taking away American jobs but forcing us to be even more dependent on foreign imports for our energy needs.

Offshore energy production is expected to decrease by 13 percent in 2011, due to the slow pace of permitting. This is unacceptable, and we must do something that is productive.

Yesterday, Senator Landrieu and I introduced the LEASE Act, the Lease Extension and Secure Energy Act of 2011. All our bill does is extend the offshore leases that are impacted by the moratorium and the lack of permitting for 1 year.

The LEASE Act returns to lessees the lease time taken from them during the moratorium. This will increase domestic energy production and protect some American jobs--those that have not already left. Despite being unable to explore for energy resources, the leaseholders are continuing to pay the expenses, as time ticks away on their lease.

The LEASE Act will prevent leases from running out, and it gives the lessees the certainty they deserve that they will have the full amount of the lease for which they have paid bonus payments to secure.

In 2009, the industry accounted for $70 billion in economic value and provided $20 billion in revenue to Federal, State, and local governments through royalties, bonuses, and tax collections.

I hope our bill will be noncontroversial. It would seem to me that anyone would agree that if you paid for a 10-year lease, and you have the expenses of exploring to see if that lease has potential, before you drill to see if the lease has potential, you would have the full 10 years, and not 9 years because you have not been able to use the year we have had the moratorium and the lack of permitting.

There has been another suggestion by the administration that perhaps we should be proposing energy taxes--up to $90 billion over the next 10 years. The President suggested that in his State of the Union message. Much of the taxes that would go on the oil and gas industry for expenses--that any industry, any business can write off, but would single out the oil and gas industry not to be able to expense their exploration and drilling costs--what would happen? If the prices go up, of course, who is going to pay those high prices? The families and businesses that are having to fill their cars with gasoline.

In fact, the administration, through the EPA, is trying to bring more expenses to the refining industry by purporting to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The administration is also adding to the refiners by saying they should not get the manufacturing tax credit.

We have been trying to encourage manufacturing in America because we want manufacturing jobs in America, and so many of those have gone overseas. But the administration proposes to tax refiners who are manufacturing the gasoline from the oil and add more expense to the product, which is gasoline, and, oh, by the way, take away the capability for these refiners to have the same treatment as any other manufacturer in our country.

Raising taxes on our domestic oil and energy industry is wrong, particularly at this time. We need to assure that we are not going to drive our energy jobs overseas. Yet what the administration is doing is counterintuitive if we all agree we want to keep the jobs in America.

So here we are with gas at $3.52 a gallon, and the summer driving season is upon us. We are looking now at estimates from the experts that gasoline could be $4 a gallon. What is that going to do to the family who wants to take a vacation at a reasonable price? What is that going to do to the workers who have to get to work and who are already strapped, and, for Heaven's sake, the poor people who are unemployed who are trying to go and interview for jobs with gas at $4 a gallon?

We cannot sit here and let this happen. It is time we get together with the President of the United States and have proactive energy ideas, programs, and solutions that are going to keep jobs in America, that will allow us to use our natural resources to begin to set the stage if we have upheaval in the Middle East that causes the supply to go down at a great rate. We need to have our supply go up to meet the test we should have of lowering energy prices for our people with our own natural resources. It is not to put the SPR out and put us in an even more vulnerable position. No. It is to use our resources, with Americans to take the jobs, and increase our supply so the price of gasoline at the pump goes down for the American people, and so we can have the jobs we should have in America stay in America.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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