Political Quotes

“today Sen. Crapo, Sen. Risch, Sen. Merkley, and I are introducing the Geothermal Production Expansion Act of 2011. The bill is aimed at making improvements to the Geothermal Steam Act and is very similar to legislation introduced in the 111th Congress as S. 3993. Both bills contain identical provisions to allow the Secretary of the Interior to lease a limited amount of public land adjacent to existing geothermal property at fair market value. The reason for this change is to allow the rapid expansion of already identified geothermal resources without the additional delays of competitive leasing and without opening up those adjacent properties to speculative bidders who have no interest in actually developing the resource, only in extracting as much money as they can from the existing geothermal lease holder. Current lease holders are understandably reluctant to nominate adjacent lands to proven resources for competitive leasing because doing so would immediately signal the value of those adjacent properties. As a result, existing geothermal developers will likely not realize the full potential of the geothermal energy resources that they have spent millions of dollars exploring, proving, and developing without these changes. And, the Treasury will not realize the economic value of those adjacent parcels, which go unleased and undeveloped as a result. For these reasons, the bill has the strong support of the Geothermal Energy Association.…”