Alan Lowenthal: “I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his arguments. And we have no problem with the underlying process. The question…”

“I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his arguments. And we have no problem with the underlying process. The question is, why should we truncate this process at this time when important work is now being done by the Department of Interior? We do not object to the Department of Interior going forward. The Department has said in a timely manner they will finish this this year. That is appropriate. It is not necessary at this moment to eliminate the environmental process when in fact we know it's moving forward in a fair and a judicious way. If anything comes up, we need to hear that and understand that for future oil leases. And so I really request that we urge the defeat of this amendment and allow the proper process to go forward because we do not oppose the underlying theme of the bill but we do oppose the truncation of the process. I reserve the balance of my time.”