On the recordJuly 27, 2011
I thank the gentleman. Not surprisingly, I fully agree with the gentleman that this language again is inappropriate in here. It's punitive. It requires excessive record-keeping, and ironically, because normally we are getting complaints there is too much record- keeping. Well, now what we do is we're requiring in this bill even more detailed records that are not now required. It is going to expand the bureaucracy. They have to provide quarterly reports on any oil and gas permit or plan that wasn't approved by the agency. So in other words, the intention is to discourage the agency from not approving anything even if they feel that the oil and gas drilling operation might not be a safe one, that they don't have the requisite rules in place to prevent a Deepwater Horizon tragedy. It says for each such document that the bureau receives, they have to provide the date the document was returned to the applicant, the date the document is treated by the bureau, and the date of final agency action, and on and on. More and more records that are not necessary. We know what the intent of this is. It's to tell BOEMRE, the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, it's in your interest to just speed these along. Don't hold up any of these permits because if you do, you're going to have this very burdensome requirement on you. Here it's 16 months after Deepwater Horizon, and the Congress hasn't enacted a single significant safety reform.…
