Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Not surprisingly, my friend and I have a number of disagreements on the wisdom of getting rid of these particular regulations. We do agree on the importance of actually capturing methane gases. Frankly, my friend is right. That is a profitable thing, and most companies try to do it on their own. We do, frankly, need more infrastructure in this area, no question about that. The BLM has been less than cooperative in allowing that infrastructure to be built on Federal land, and that has made this problem more difficult than it needs to be. But it is important to recognize, overall, the amount of methane gas that actually escapes has gone down steadily and, frankly, dramatically, even as production has moved up. So additional regulation is unlikely to change that process. It may actually complicate it. In terms of where the appropriate authority lies, again, I would just remind my friend, as he knows, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to do this. So if it felt like it needed it, it could. The BLM has actually moved into a new area beyond its traditional jurisdiction because it does not have authority, under the Clean Air Act, to draft these kind of rules and regulations. The Clean Air Act, again, is already in place. The EPA has the authority. If we need to do something, let's do it. In terms of the disbarment procedure for contractors, what we have is already awfully robust.…”