House Energy Action Team Hour
Floor Speech
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Mr. FLORES. I thank my friend from Colorado, and you're exactly right. I do have extensive experience in the oil and gas business and also in the energy service business. So I know firsthand the impact on jobs and American energy security that having a robust supply of domestic oil and gas can have.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight another missed opportunity by the Obama administration to address rising gasoline prices, to promote American job creation, and to provide for American energy security. While the President may claim his administration supports an all-in approach to energy, the facts, however, tell a different story.
Here are four examples of rhetoric versus reality:
Example number one, last November, the Department of the Interior released a draft 5-year plan that fails to open any new areas to new energy production in the Outer Continental Shelf through 2017. This proposal will send American jobs overseas, forfeit new revenue to the Federal Government, cause higher gasoline prices, and will deny access to American energy resources that would reduce our dependence on unstable and unfriendly Middle Eastern sources of oil.
Yesterday, I helped spearhead a joint bipartisan letter with 182 signatures from this House, which we sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, expressing strong support in the House for the consideration of new and expanded access offshore for the production of oil and gas.
The vast offshore areas of the United States serve as a potential source of the Nation's energy supply containing significant quanties of valuable taxpayer-owned resources in yet-to-be discovered fields. Opening up access to new areas of the OCS will bring new jobs, new energy, and new revenues to the Federal treasury and all at a time when economists expect gas prices to soon skyrocket. Our country desperately needs these benefits now, not at some far-off date in the future.
In addition, new access to American resources will help reduce our reliance on unfriendly and unstable Middle Eastern sources of energy. For these reasons, it is vital that our country have in place a plan that maximizes the opportunity to assess all of these resources that we have available so that we can make informed decisions regarding the appropriate shape and scope of future domestic offshore activities.
Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming support of the American people for offshore drilling, the Obama administration's 5-year draft plan released last November severely limits the outstanding resource potential of America's offshore areas, and it neglects our Nation's vital energy needs. That is why the Obama administration should listen to the strong bipartisan message that the House has sent supporting increased access that would allow us to extend offshore energy production.
Example number two, the President buried the Keystone pipeline and the thousands of jobs and the energy security that it would have helped provide. In light of the fact that his administration approved a similar Canadian oil sands pipeline, the Clipper pipeline, in 2009, it is obvious to the American people that the Keystone XL pipeline was sacrificed solely for political gain.
Example number three, the Obama administration has directed numerous Federal agencies to attempt to regulate and reduce the use of hydraulic fracturing. This is the technology that makes our current abundant supply of cheap natural gas available to us today. Restricting fracking will reduce natural gas, hurt jobs, and hurt American energy security.
Example number four, this iPad costs about the same amount of money, $600, as six barrels of oil. In terms of profit, however, Apple makes many more times the profit margin on this one iPad than the American oil and gas industry makes on that same six barrels of oil, yet the Obama administration wants to raise taxes on oil companies. This doesn't make sense. How can we expect American energy producers to produce more oil and gas at a lower cost when we raise the taxes on them?
The American people have more common sense than this. The American people know that if you raise the taxes on Apple computer, Apple can't make more of these available at a cheaper cost. Yet, for some reason, the President thinks that we're going to have more domestic energy if we go and attack the oil companies with higher taxes.
Access to affordable energy will always be central to our Nation's prosperity. But with new technologies, today's strengthened environmental review, and updated safety standards, there's never been a better time to
develop energy responsibly. But without the option to even look, we deny ourselves an incredible opportunity for energy security and the promised economic benefits that domestic energy production entails to the American people.
The American people want us to get this right. They want Washington to get it right. And they overwhelmingly support an all-of-the-above energy approach for American energy, increased offshore drilling, and they approve overwhelmingly the Keystone XL pipeline.
This is important. Just yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned: ``A major disruption that sent foreign oil prices up substantially could stop the recovery.''
Mr. Speaker, House Republicans have a plan to wean our economy away from unstable Middle Eastern oil. If we want an America built to last like the President referred to in his State of the Union address, then we must have access to safe and affordable American energy to build that economy, to build that America built to last, and to power that America that's built to last.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support and pass H.R. 7, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, so we can work together to grow the economy, to create American jobs, to facilitate lower gasoline prices, and to provide energy security that this country needs, not only for our current generation, but for future generations of American children and grandchildren.
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