Ted Poe: “The moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling will prevent drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for the next 6 months or…”

“The moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling will prevent drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for the next 6 months or longer. Why do we have the moratorium? What is the purpose? When we have a plane crash, as disastrous as that might be, we don't close down the entire airline industry for 6 months--that wouldn't make sense--but now we want to close down the drilling offshore for 6 months. What is the reason? The 6-month moratorium on drilling will be another economic catastrophe for the United States. Six months is a long time in the drilling business. These wells can't start and stop overnight, and neither can the support industries. Mr. Speaker, this chart right here shows the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, and on this chart, out in the Gulf of Mexico, there are about 4,000 offshore rigs. These 4,000 rigs will not be allowed to drill, based upon the administration's moratorium, for the next 6 months. All of these yellow dots represent a drilling rig that is offshore, and they go about 75 to 150 miles off the Texas-Louisiana coast, not counting those off of Mississippi and Alabama. Some companies are already moving workers to Brazil and to the Middle East because of this absurdity of a moratorium. Texas and Louisiana will lose an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 jobs just in this industry, not counting all the related industries that are onshore.”