Kelly Armstrong: “Saying that gasoline prices are down is a little bit like giving an arsonist a medal for putting out a fire that he…”

“Saying that gasoline prices are down is a little bit like giving an arsonist a medal for putting out a fire that he helped start. They are still 50 percent higher than when President Biden took office. That is not counting inputs for ag products like fertilizer, which the natural feed stock is natural gas, all of those different issues. That is not really the point in all of this. Two things can be true at once: The world's going to need more oil and natural gas and drive more electric cars in the next decade, and this bill has a little bit of something for everyone. The last time we brought a refinery online in the United States with any true downstream capacity was the year I was born, 1976--46 years ago. If we want to continue to build more electrification, have more batteries for more American-made electric vehicles, well, we need the rare earths to do it. This bill does those things. When you live in a small community like I do in the geographic center of North America, we have recognized, very clearly, how hard it is to get the products that North Dakota makes that the rest of the world needs to market. Doesn't matter if it is corn. Doesn't matter if it is fertilizer. Doesn't matter if it is oil. Doesn't matter if it is natural gas. We used to be the shining example in the whole world on how to put infrastructure in the ground. That is no longer the case, and it is not because Americans don't know how to do it.…”