Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman, Mr. Bishop. I am from Louisiana, and of course these leasing issues, the issues of drilling and oil production are very important to my State. And certainly any issue with regard to oil spills affects my State the most in the last year or so because of the Deepwater Horizon. But here is the point I want to make: The President has said that oil production in the United States and offshore in the gulf is the highest it has ever been. When I asked Secretary Salazar in the Natural Resources Committee, he said the same thing. Then I asked Mr. Bromwich and he gave the same answer. The truth is, Mr. Speaker, that the oil production off the Gulf of Mexico peaked at 1.7 million barrels a day. It is now down to 1.5 million barrels a day, and in the next year it will decrease by another 225,000 barrels a day. And even if we restore drilling permits at the level they have been previously, it will continue to decline over the next several years. So I think we can ill afford, Mr. Speaker, at a time when our gas prices continue to go up, to continue this activity that we have, this ruse, where we have a slowatorium off the Gulf of Mexico. I think we are up to about 12 permits in the deep water at this point. And I was speaking with the gentleman, an expert on this, yesterday. He said that we normally pace about 40 or 50 permits a year. So that means that we are at a fraction of what the actual permitting process would normally be in the best of times.…”