Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, my amendment would prohibit the use of funds by the Secretary of the Interior for the purpose of implementation, administering, or enforcing any rule or guidance similar to the proposed guidance that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released regarding financial assurances for oil and gas operations on the Outer Continental Shelf. The Federal Government currently requires American offshore oil and gas companies to buy liability bonds ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to tens of millions of dollars for every offshore lease. In August of 2014, BOEM published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking industry input on ``risk management, financial assurance, and loss prevention.'' Inexplicably, BOEM elected to circumvent the rulemaking process it initiated and, instead, released proposed guidance in August 2015 that creates new rules that will change the way the oil and gas industry funds these decommissioning costs--also referred to as ``plugging'' or ``abandonment''--of wells, pipelines, and other facilities in the Gulf of Mexico's Outer Continental Shelf. The Obama administration ignored warnings from stakeholders that this proposed guidance could drive many companies into bankruptcy precisely at a time when the industry is suffering from a commodity price collapse. A lot of workers in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast have been laid off.…”