Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise once again in opposition to another Natural Resources bill which, much to my dismay, I would love to have the opportunity to work on, on a bipartisan basis. Unfortunately, this bill is another technical bill that is masquerading as an effort to support energy development on public lands but is another assault on permitting processes, and, specifically, on the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Under this bill, a geothermal project that starts on non-Federal surface lands and drills into Federal subsurface would not need a Federal drilling permit if the subsurface makes up less than 50 percent of the total area drilled. If your eyes crossed when you heard me describe that technical language, let me explain. The Federal Government manages our Federal lands on the surface. That is where the soil, the trees, and all of that is. There is a separate permitting process for the subsurface. That is where we find oil and gas, other valuable minerals, and, in this case, geothermal resources that we may want to develop for energy sources. They are two different permitting processes. What this says is if you have a power plant or some other energy source on a piece of private land that is adjacent to or nearby Federal lands, you don't have to go through the permitting process to figure out whether or not the drilling from here down, across, and under our Federal lands would be harmful. That is crazy. Mr.…”