Political Quotes

“I urge the passage of this legislation. I would like Americans to understand that the issue of whether we should drill or not is long overdue because I have heard this argument for 36 years because I was here when we drilled and opened the Trans-Alaska pipeline to provide 17 billion barrels of oil to America--17 billion barrels of oil. I've heard people say that there's only 2 percent. That is a figure that was arrived at in 1955. We have new estimates with new technology. We think we have about 20 percent of the world's reserves in fossil fuels. And we're not producing them. I've heard the argument this wouldn't change the price of gasoline. It's not quick enough. I heard that 25 years ago. We need to produce so we have a stable supply of domestic fossil fuels so other countries and speculators don't take advantage. They have us right now in a position they can take advantage of because we are not producing any oil of any consequence in the United States right now. We're down to 600,000 barrels a day in Alaska. If we drop much more, we won't even have that 600,000 barrels a day. Yet we have in Alaska in the Chukchi Sea, there's been $5 billion spent to find oil. We have not had the permit to drill because of this administration. They think there's 27 billion barrels of oil in one offshore development. The other one has approximately 14 billion barrels of oil in one offshore development.…”