On the recordFebruary 14, 2013
Madam President, I wish to respond to the Senator from West Virginia. Right now, between the oil we produce in the United States, both together with Canada and Mexico, we generate about 70 percent of the oil we consume. This project alone would add 6 percent. We are talking about over 800,000 barrels a day this project adds and brings to market. So we go from about 70 percent just for this project phase 1 to about 76 percent. But understand this pipeline project is expandable to 1.4 million barrels a day, so we can see it would take us up even higher. So we are talking about a significant contribution to our oil supply, again, from North Dakota, Montana, and Canada, versus, as the Senator says, countries such as Venezuela or from the Middle East.
