Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to respond quickly to my friend from New Jersey on the refinery issue because I actually have two refineries in my district, so not all refineries are located on the East and West Coast or in the Gulf. There are quite a few of them in the historic middle part of the country as well. I am always concerned about those jobs as well because, as my friend suggests, they are extremely important. He is precisely correct when he says that just producing oil is not enough. You want to be able to refine it. I also will tell you that sitting in Cushing, Oklahoma, is over 250 million barrels of oil that can't be refined because there is not a sufficient capacity for that particular kind of oil in this country. I would also suggest that it is not fair for people to say you can only sell the product you produce one place. Nobody else in the world does that. Nobody else says you can't sell your product to any place in the world in any market you want to. Only we do that. Many people might want a captive audience, but that is just simply not fair to the people at the other end of the process. They ought to be able to sell their product, particularly when, in certain kinds of crude, there is just simply not sufficient capacity. I would suggest over time if we just have faith in the free market, those things will be worked out, and we will eventually have the appropriate balance and supply.…”