Pete Domenici: “today, I introduce a bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to hold a lease sale within one year in the area known…”

“today, I introduce a bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to hold a lease sale within one year in the area known as 181. This bill does not in any way alter the moratorium law on the OCS. The areas covered under this bill are not under executive or congressional moratorium. Furthermore, this bill protects a 100 mile buffer from the coastline of the State of Florida and it protects the prerogative of the United States armed forces to perform military activities in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. These protections are explicit in the bill and can not be disputed. But more than that, this bill seeks to protect the American people from the rising cost of heating their homes. Only six years ago, the price of natural gas in the U.S. was $2 per million btu. In the past few months, we have witnessed the price of natural gas rise above as much as $14 per million btu. This morning, amidst a winter of above- average temperatures throughout much of the United States, the price of natural gas was over $8 per million btu. In countries competing for our jobs, the price of the same commodity is substantially cheaper than that, in some cases one or two dollars per million btu. This increase in cost and volatility in the price of natural gas in the United States should have the immediate attention of our Nation's policy makers. The effects of the rising price of natural gas cut across every major sector of our Nation's economy.…”