On the recordMay 17, 2012
I thank the gentleman, and I rise in strong support of the gentleman from Georgia's motion to instruct conferees to support the Keystone pipeline in the transportation bill. Let's start with a quick tutorial here. Right here above the United States border in Canada, a couple hundred miles north of our border, lies the second or third largest current reserve of oil. Now, there's already an existing pipeline coming down through the Bakken fields in North Dakota. This blue dotted line is the new pipeline, the one that is of controversy now, mostly because the environmental left, the NRDC and some other organizations that have come out and opposed that because they don't want fossil fuel use, especially a heavier crude. Now, that's the focus of the debate. They have stated that their whole goal here is to kill this pipeline. Now, what does this pipeline do for the United States of America? First of all, we have the second or third largest reserve here. This pipeline will bring 800,000 barrels per day. We've already heard from two different gentlemen that our country imports about 10 million barrels per day. So if we can bring 800,000 to a million barrels per day, that's that much less that has to be imported from a country like Venezuela. And, by the way, we import about 800,000 to 900,000 barrels per day from Venezuela.…
