Joe Barton: “I want to focus, in the small amount of time that I have, on one of the principal components of this particular piece of…”

“I want to focus, in the small amount of time that I have, on one of the principal components of this particular piece of legislation. That is the apparent attempt to say that some of these leases that were granted in 1997 and 1998 were somehow flawed, and that there were mistakes made and things were covered up and the oil companies tried to renegotiate some of these leases to get a sweetheart deal. Nothing could be further from the truth. On November 28, 1995, President Clinton signed Public Law 104-58. It was entitled the Outer Continental Shelf Deepwater Royalty Relief Act, Royalty Relief Act. It was the intent of this act to offer royalty relief, royalty suspension in certain tracts in the Gulf of Mexico in order to create an incentive to get the oil companies, both large and small, to actually bid on these leases, to spend money to promote them, develop them and hopefully find some commercial production. There was no mistake about it. It was the intention of the act to sign some leases that did not have royalty or had a lesser royalty than was commonly in place.”