Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012, Part II
Floor Speech
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Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.
A question: Does the President prevaricate? Does he mislead? I've been watching him on television the last couple of days, and he says that we only have 2 percent of the oil reserves, and we've been doing more drilling over the past couple, 3 years than we've ever done before. So let's look at the facts, and I hope somebody at the White House may be paying attention.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, the number of new permits to drill issued by the Bureau of Land Management is down 40 percent from an average of 6,444 permits in 2007 2008 to an average of 3,962 in 2009 2010. The administration is stopping drilling on public lands. During this same time period, the number of new wells drilled on Federal land has declined by 40 percent. And yet he keeps telling us the reason gas prices are going up is for a number of other reasons. The fact is, we're not drilling here. We've got more oil in oil shale in public lands than they have in Saudi Arabia, and we're not exploring for it.
President Obama cites that oil production is at an all-time high during his administration. However, oil production on Federal land fell by 11 percent last year. Oil production on private and State-owned land--land beyond the Federal Government's grip--grew by 14 percent. So what he's talking about is where he can't touch it, on private land, the drilling is up a little bit. But that's only a small portion of the oil that's available.
Federal lands hold an estimated--get this--116.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil, enough to produce gasoline for--get this--65 million cars and fuel oil for 3.2 million households for 60 years. And, yet, the administration keeps saying, oh, we can't do it; we're doing everything we can.
The American people need to know the truth. The truth is, if we use our own natural resources, in 5, 10, 15 years we could be energy independent. But this administration wants to put more control in the Federal administration.
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Mr. BURTON of Indiana. This administration wants to put more and more control in the Federal Government, in health care, in energy, in every other area, because he believes in a European-style, socialistic approach to government. And the American people need to know that. He isn't giving us the facts.
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