On the recordFebruary 15, 2012
I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for yielding. I am actually here to speak on Mr. Markey's amendment, the previous amendment. I do want to oppose the amendment of my good friend from Chicago, Mr. Rush, but I think Mr. Terry eloquently made the case as to why it is not in order at this point in time. Mr. Chairman, I want to go back to the previous amendment that Mr. Markey offered, which would restrict the use of both crude oil and refined products that come in from the Keystone pipeline to have to be sold in the United States. It goes without saying that if it's crude oil it would make absolutely no sense to transship it through the Keystone pipeline to the gulf coast and then put it in a tanker to go overseas. If you're going to export crude oil, it makes much more sense to export it directly from Canada. On the refined product end of it, you have to know one thing, which is that this crude oil that we would be importing from Canada is a heavy crude oil. We have some of the best refineries in the country that have been upgraded by billions and billions of dollars so that we can handle not just the light sweet crudes, like West Texas Intermediate or Saudi Light, but so we can handle these heavy crudes, like the Canadian crude oil, that would come down. When you have a barrel of crude oil, you can't just say, I want to make it all gasoline. You can make a lot of gasoline, but you're going to end up having to make diesel oil and asphalt and a lot of other products.…
