Henry Cuellar: “I want to thank the ranking member, Mr. Pallone, for yielding and his leadership in the committee, for all the work that…”

“I want to thank the ranking member, Mr. Pallone, for yielding and his leadership in the committee, for all the work that he and his staff have done. I also want to thank my fellow Texan, Mr. Olson, for bringing this legislation to the floor. I want to thank my colleague, Representative Johnson, for introducing this bipartisan bill, along with my friend Gene Green, also from Texas. In particular, the dean, Mr. Barton, I want to thank Mr. Barton because, back in December 2015, Mr. Barton and I worked along with a team here to lift the ban on oil exports, and that has been the boom for not only Texas, but for the rest of the country. Today's legislation, Madam Chair, deals with H.R. 4606, the Ensuring Small Scale LNG Certainty and Access Act. This bipartisan legislation codifies the Department of Energy's recent efforts to encourage the exports of small volumes of natural gas as countries in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America look to the United States to meet their natural gas needs. Let me give you an example, a different type of country, Mexico. Mexico is getting a lot of natural gas from us and refined products. In fact, the U.S. has an $8 billion surplus when it comes to natural gas that we are sending off, so we can also help our friends in the Caribbean and Central America and South America if we do the same thing. The bottom line is this means jobs. I have the Eagle Ford area, and I know about the jobs.…”