Jack Reed

Thank you, Senator Murkowski.

As Senator Feinstein pointed out, not only do we look at a very complicated and challenging fire season ahead...

So the obvious question is, how do we get from 14, let's say, to double that literally in the timeframe you're talking about with your strategy?

One of the annual challenges we have is to ensure you have the appropriate resources to deal with fires.

I concur with Senator Tester was a very productive and very thoughtful hearing.

I want to thank the witnesses for their excellent testimony and for your skillful leadership of your agencies.

We hope to have all of that in place for competitive leasing later this year.

We want to encourage the development of offshore wind, and so we want to keep our auction process as simple as possible.

And, frankly, they also, deserve the opportunity of, evaluating, and commenting on the procedures to insure that they are fair to all potential parties.

But also the leasing reforms that we have applied are to provide greater certainty to the industry themselves that if they lease a parcel of land, that they're going to be able to develop that parcel of land.

Let me just say right up front. It is quite--it is a lot cheaper to drill on private land than it is on public lands.

I know Senator Murkowski is going to get into this, and she's raised a very important question about the difference between production figures on private lands and public lands.

Even though our budget was based upon an assumption that an increase of royalties would go to 18.75 percent for both oil and natural gas, let me just reassure the members of this subcommittee that that decision has not been reached.

I'm still about safety and environmental protection.

I would urge you again to expedite--Secretary Salazar has committed to expedite this draft environmental assessment.

Thank you very much, Senator.

Making sure that the right resources and policies are in place and that safe and responsible energy development on public lands is a significant part of this subcommittee's jurisdiction.

I'm especially grateful that we had the opportunity to discuss with him the potential for offshore wind development to create new manufacturing and assembly jobs and to generate renewable energy in my home State of Rhode Island and in…

I want to welcome our witnesses to the subcommittee's oversight hearing on Federal offshore and onshore energy development programs within the Department of the Interior.

Rhode Island has been helping lead the way on offshore wind in developing its 'pilot-scale' offshore wind project

Very important and timely questions. In fact, let me just follow up.

Even with such an increase, my presumption from what I have seen, would only cover a fraction of the BLM's cost to maintain this facility.

I would hope, with the leadership of this subcommittee, that we can see some august, robust support for the LWCF.

Criticism from some about investments in the LWCF, I will just say he is not on this subcommittee, but Senator Barrasso and Senator Enzi from Wyoming are great beneficiaries of the LWCF.

The way in which we could move forward with the true conservation agenda that fulfills the dreams of many in the conservation world would be to have enough money to be able to do many more of these landscapes.