North American Energy Infrastructure Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TERRY. Mr. Chairman, today marks the 2,104th day since the original Keystone XL pipeline application was filed at the U.S. State Department, as required by law. For 5 years, this administration has either just been completely incompetent or has, for political purposes, decided to placate its radical environmental political base--the very same folks who said that they would boycott the election if he signed this permit.

Regardless, this administration's failure to make a decision on a single project in over 2,100 days should leave every one of our constituents shaking his head. I have led on this issue, and we have given this President numerous opportunities to get this process right, which he has not done to date.

I introduced the first bill in May of 2011 to turn on the shock clock for the President's decision. The bill passed, and it was even signed into law, but, later, he went ahead and killed the permit instead of following through. Later that year, on December 1, we introduced a second bill to move the decision from the State Department to FERC. In June 2012, we introduced another bill, declaring no Presidential permit is needed for a border crossing. Then last year, in March, I introduced H.R. 3, the Northern Route Approval Act, which stated that no Presidential permit shall be required for the Keystone XL pipeline.

We are doing this because we understand that, if we are energy independent, we are more secure. This is an issue of national security, and we are going to take as many whacks at trying to get this passed as it takes. The legislation we are considering today is almost 5 years in the making, and I am happy to join with Chairman Upton in supporting this bill that comes from our committee with bipartisan support.

As our energy future and security go, so go our economy and our Nation. The President has failed in his leadership. He has hurt job creation, hurt our economy, has made us more dependent on OPEC and Venezuela, and has diminished our standing with our Nation's number one trading partner. His failure to lead on this issue shows that his process is clearly broken.

Today, we consider a different process, and if signed into law, the Department of Commerce would be in charge of permitting oil pipelines that cross our border, which would be based on the same standard of whether it is in our national interest. FERC would be in charge of permitting natural gas pipelines that cross our border. The Department of Energy would be in charge of permitting electrical transmission lines that come over our border--again, under the same standard of: Is it in our national interest? Where I come from, that is called common sense. We need to take the election politics out of this and go with the experts, who will determine whether or not, based on the facts, it is in the national interest.

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Mr. TERRY. I appreciate all of that.

Mr. Chairman, by the way, I would disagree with the last speaker on whether or not there would be no environmental oversight. The State Department has over 10,000 pages of environmental studies that were done.

Even under this process, where you let the experts in the respective areas do their job, if there is a Federal trigger in here, all of that has to occur, just like with any other project.

Now, we also heard that there would be this tremendous amount of natural gas exporting without permitting. What was left out of that sentence is that, for there to be an export facility, it has to be permitted, and all of the environmental studies and all of the other studies that are required will be done on behalf of the export facility.

So I think we need to put those in context because you just can't have half the facts laying out there. You need all the facts to make the decision.

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