John Culberson: “Once they're gone, those rigs will be almost impossible to bring back to the United States. The world's appetite for oil…”

“Once they're gone, those rigs will be almost impossible to bring back to the United States. The world's appetite for oil is going to continue for some time. All of us are committed to an all-of-the-above energy policy that encourages development in the intermediate term of alternative energy sources and the longer term, developing innovative new technologies like the quantum wire project, the extraordinary promise that carbon nano-tubes hold for transmitting electricity ballistically. There are so many new technologies that we have as a Nation great opportunity, great promise to invest in, but that's down the road. Right now, it is vitally important for our Nation's strategic security that we continue to find and develop every natural resource we can here in the United States. The Gulf of Mexico, our offshore waters has produced so much of this Nation's oil and gas. ... this is the very first incident of its kind. Tragic and catastrophic as it is, it is the very first. It like an airplane falling out of a clear blue sky, and you would no more ground all aircraft if a plane fell out of the sky for no good reason than you would shut down all drilling.”