Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to introduce S. 2248, a bill that would clarify the States' sole authority to regulate the process of hydraulic fracturing at the State level as opposed to the Federal level. I am pleased to be joined by Senators Murkowski, Vitter, Sessions, Cornyn, Risch, Hoeven, and Lee as cosponsors. The reason for this bill is the State jurisdiction of a process called hydraulic fracturing, which has taken place since 1949. In 1949, the first hydraulic fracturing well took place in Duncan, OK. It is interesting that there has not been one documented case, in over a million wells using this process--in 60 years--of groundwater contamination. As a matter of fact, numerous studies, including reports by the Groundwater Protection Council, the EPA, and recently the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, have found no evidence of hydraulic fracturing posing a risk to water wells or groundwater. A lot of people believe--and I am among them--that the reason to take it over at the Federal level is to do away with hydraulic fracturing. It is interesting that, recently, with some of the shale deposits and discoveries that have been made in the United States, we have been able to get in there, using this process, and come up with huge reserves and start producing these reserves. In every case, without exception--in fact, I will go so far as to say you cannot get one cubic foot of natural gas out of a type formation without using hydraulic fracturing.…”