William Tauzin: “Mr. Chairman, section 181 is located 64 miles from my district. It is much closer to my district in Louisiana, and much…”

“Mr. Chairman, section 181 is located 64 miles from my district. It is much closer to my district in Louisiana, and much closer, by the way, to Alabama and Mississippi than it is to Florida. That is point number one. Point number two, right adjacent to section 181 BP just discovered 1.5 billion barrels of oil. There are huge reserves there, 7.8 trillion feet of natural gas probably in section 181. Section 181 is under a 5-year plan approved by President Clinton in his executive order 98, signed off by Florida and the other States of the area, that in fact respects the rights of Florida not to have drilling within 100 miles of its coast. Section 181 can help us through a terrible crisis we are about to face. It is not moratorium, it is in the 5-year leasing plan, and it needs to be developed. Ninety-two percent of the new electric power plants that are planned to be built in this country are being planned to be built with natural gas. Yet, we produce 14 percent less natural gas in this country than we did in 1973. Section 181 is critical. It has, on best estimates, 7.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available for this country. We are not going to drill it? We are not talking about moratoriumed areas, we are not talking about monuments, we are talking about an area in the Gulf of Mexico right next to an area in Louisiana that is currently being drilled, currently being processed, for oil and gas for our country.”