Political Quotes

“I appreciate that the gentleman from Colorado, Congressman Gardner, is proposing some changes in an effort to address some of the problems with his bill. The base bill would require the Department of Energy to make final decisions on almost all of the pending energy export applications in 90 days, without the benefit of complete environmental reviews. Now they look at their bill, and they appear to understand that this would be bad policy. The amendment would establish a different deadline. Now DOE must issue a final decision on an application within 30 days of completion of the NEPA environmental review. That is an improvement because it at least ensures that major LNG export projects are not approved without an environmental review. However, if this amendment is adopted, the bill will remain unnecessary and problematic. The bill is unnecessary because DOE already is approving huge volumes of LNG exports without any legislative action. They have proposed to further streamline their review at DOE so that it prioritizes review of the projects that have completed environmental reviews. That is already happening without this bill. So if we adopt this amendment, the bill will still be unnecessary because it truncates DOE's public interest review. We should give DOE the time it needs to weigh the pros and cons of granting an application. Instead, the bill sets a 30-day deadline that would rush that process.…”