Political Quotes

“I would like to thank the Senator from Oklahoma and pick up on a point he made very well. He made of number of points that are extremely compelling, but one of the points he made is that overall, since about 2008, 2009, that area, our oil production in America is up 40 percent. So people say: Well, we are producing 40 percent more oil than we did in 2008, the end of 2008, so that is good. That is reducing the amount of oil we have to import into this country. We were below 50 percent. Now we are closing in on 60 percent and more oil that we produce. Together with Canada and Mexico, we are up over 75 percent, in terms of the oil that we consume, we produce in this country or get, as I say, from our closest allies and working on getting to 80 percent. Well, people would say that is very good, but the Senator from Oklahoma made a very important point. Understand that is because we are up 60 percent in oil production on private land--on private land. We are actually down in terms of our production on public land; we are down between 6 and 7 percent. So when you net the two, we are up about 40 percent, but that is because we are up about 60 percent on private land. I will give an example of how that works on the ground. In North Dakota 90 percent of the land is privately owned, so our oil production is growing tremendously. As I said, we are at about 1.1 million barrels a day and on our way to 1.4 million barrels a day in a few more years.…”