Roy Blunt: “I think importing oil is bad. I think importing gas and paying somebody to take that raw material of oil and turn it…”

“I think importing oil is bad. I think importing gas and paying somebody to take that raw material of oil and turn it into gas is a worse idea. It's hard for me to believe that people that run refineries would be doing that if the refineries were the problem. In terms of the leases, clearly, in the last 7 years, the amount of leased public lands has almost doubled. Most of that drilling has been for gas. In fact, our natural gas numbers are quite a bit better than they were before that started. Secondly, I think something like 52 percent of the exploration produces no product. It's a 10-year lease. Most of those leases are now beginning to get into the middle of that 10-year period of time. I certainly hope that we're encouraging, without doing anything that violates what we've already agreed to, that we're encouraging that to be done.”