Political Quotes

“I just wish to underscore the statement of the Senator from California with regard to the Outer Continental Shelf and point out that the Vitter amendment would allow drilling in the one place on the Outer Continental Shelf that is off-limits in law; that is, the Gulf of Mexico off Florida. There are several reasons that was passed in a bipartisan way with my colleague Senator Mel Martinez back in 2005. In the first place, there is no oil out there of any appreciable amount. The Senator has already pointed out there are 50 million acres under lease that are not drilled. Well, 30 million of those acres under lease that have not been drilled are in the Gulf of Mexico, where the oil is, in the central and western gulf. There is very little oil and gas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Why? Because Mother Nature had those sediments coming for millions of years down the Mississippi River, and then the Earth's crust compacted for millions of years and made that oil and the oil is where the sediments were. It is not out there and the oil companies know that and that is why they have 37 million acres under lease and only 7 million in the Gulf of Mexico are drilled, are producing of the 37 million acres. That ought to be prima facie evidence of why we don't need to go in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida. But there is more. Didn't we have some lessons from the BP oilspill 2 years ago of what happens to tourism when oil comes up on the beach?…”