Political Quotes

“I rise today to discuss my amendment that was made pending by my friend and the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell. The amendment I have offered, amendment No. 55, is a simple, commonsense amendment. It requires the Environmental Protection Agency to complete a study on the potential environmental and health impact of byproducts from tar sands oil that would be transported across our country by the Keystone XL Pipeline. One of these byproducts of tar sands oil is a black, powdery substance known as petroleum coke or petcoke. It is a residual from this tar sands oil and large amounts of it are produced in the refining process. In fact, it is estimated basically for every barrel of oil we get from tar sands, one-third of the material is this dark substance called petcoke. If we are transporting an awful lot of oil through the Keystone Pipeline, it naturally follows that we are going to get massive amounts of this petcoke. I have had an experience with this petcoke in my previous House district in the city of Detroit, where we had petcoke from the refining process of this tar sands oil being piled up along the Detroit River. We had a pile there that was at some times several stories high, a city block long. It was stored along the river in an uncontained fashion. It was blowing into people's homes, it was blowing into businesses, and it was also draining into the Great Lakes watershed.…”