Thank you very much, Senator.

I would urge you again to expedite--Secretary Salazar has committed to expedite this draft environmental assessment.

Even though our budget was based upon an assumption that an increase of royalties would go to 18.75 percent for both oil and natural gas, let me just reassure the members of this subcommittee that that decision has not been reached.

Let me just say right up front. It is quite--it is a lot cheaper to drill on private land than it is on public lands.

We want to encourage the development of offshore wind, and so we want to keep our auction process as simple as possible.

I'm especially grateful that we had the opportunity to discuss with him the potential for offshore wind development to create new manufacturing and assembly jobs and to generate renewable energy in my home State of Rhode Island and in…

I'm still about safety and environmental protection.

I know Senator Murkowski is going to get into this, and she's raised a very important question about the difference between production figures on private lands and public lands.

But also the leasing reforms that we have applied are to provide greater certainty to the industry themselves that if they lease a parcel of land, that they're going to be able to develop that parcel of land.

And, frankly, they also, deserve the opportunity of, evaluating, and commenting on the procedures to insure that they are fair to all potential parties.

We hope to have all of that in place for competitive leasing later this year.

I want to thank the witnesses for their excellent testimony and for your skillful leadership of your agencies.

One of the annual challenges we have is to ensure you have the appropriate resources to deal with fires.

Thank you, Senator Murkowski.

I concur with Senator Tester was a very productive and very thoughtful hearing.

So the obvious question is, how do we get from 14, let's say, to double that literally in the timeframe you're talking about with your strategy?

As Senator Feinstein pointed out, not only do we look at a very complicated and challenging fire season ahead...

Thank you and Ms. Bennett for your work with the coastal watersheds of Region 1, in particular, in Narragansett Bay.