Bill Nelson: “here we go again. The oil companies are trying to have it exactly the way they have had it in the past. They have…”

“here we go again. The oil companies are trying to have it exactly the way they have had it in the past. They have developed an amendment that is very seductive by saying that you can have offshore drilling with the concurrence of the State if gasoline reaches $5 a gallon. What they have not told you is that if the price of gas goes up to $5 a gallon, of which the oil companies are making money hand over fist, they are going to utilize that to perpetuate the myth that they need to drill off the coast of a State like Florida, when, in fact, what they have not told you is that the oil companies already have under lease, which has not been drilled, 33 million acres offshore. The oil companies also have another 31 million acres onshore that have not been drilled. And the myth that they perpetuate, now using the fright of $5-a-gallon gas, is that we have to have more supply and therefore we have to go offshore. This is the seductive red herring of this amendment which was offered by a Senator whose State, Louisiana, has a big oil industry that drills off of Louisiana, where, in fact, there are deposits of oil. But when you get to a State such as Florida, there have been several dry holes, and the geology shows very little oil, plus we have the adverse interests. Now, why do we have to keep going through this drill over and over? It is because the oil companies are insatiable.…”