Lynn A. Westmoreland: “more smoke and mirrors that we are hearing this morning from the majority party about, oh, there is plenty of land to…”

“more smoke and mirrors that we are hearing this morning from the majority party about, oh, there is plenty of land to drill in, the big oil companies just aren't drilling. Let me just straighten that out just a little bit. Ninety-seven percent of the Federal offshore drilling sites are off-limits. Ninety-four percent of the federally owned onshore areas are off-limits. Fifty-two percent of the area that oil companies drilled in between 2002 and 2007 were dry holes. We need to allow these oil companies to drill in areas where there actually is oil. I don't know the economics that the majority party has, but if there is no oil, why would you drill there? That does not make sense. If the government would sell companies leases that have oil in them instead of selling them places that turn out to be dry holes, then we would have more oil produced in this country. We imported over 600 million gallons of gasoline last year. We need to add to our refinery capabilities, also.”