Ed Markey: “I support the Sherwood-Markey-Barton amendment to reauthorize the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and establish a…”

“I support the Sherwood-Markey-Barton amendment to reauthorize the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and establish a Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve. On April 12th of this year, the House approved the Energy Policy and Conservation Act reauthorization by an overwhelming vote of 416 to 8. This bill included language that I authored to provide for the establishment of a heating oil reserve in the Northeast. What we did on that legislation was to work out an agreement with the Chairman of the Energy and Power Subcommittee (Mr. Barton) that constructed a kind of a classic Austin-Boston piece of legislation. The gentleman from Texas was concerned about the fate of certain marginal oil producers that operate so-called stripper wells. He noted that during the 1998-1999 price drop, these domestic producers had the proper set of incentives in order to continue to keep their wells open. As a result, our Nation lost at least 500,000 barrels per day due to the closure of hard-to-reopen stripper wells. So, what the legislation says is that when the price of stripper well oil goes below $15 a barrel, that there would be an authorization for that oil to be purchased in order, one, to fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve but, secondly, in order to keep the price of stripper well oil high enough so that there is an incentive for that industry to continue to make the proper investment in maintaining them as viable domestic sources of energy for our country.”