Ron Kind: “I am not sure about my colleague from Washington State, but one of the most surprising facts I learned as ranking member…”

“I am not sure about my colleague from Washington State, but one of the most surprising facts I learned as ranking member on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources this year was the incredible access and availability of these oil and gas companies on most of our public lands already throughout the country. Roughly 95 percent of the public lands they have access to. Granted, there may be things we can streamline in regards to the permitting process and some of the regs that surround those, but 95 percent. In fact, there was a story that broke yesterday in the Anchorage Daily News where Phillips Alaska Company up in Alaska announced that they discovered three oil and gas fields on the North Slope of Alaska that was newly opened, the National Petroleum Reserve up in Alaska. This was a reserve that the Clinton administration actually permitted out to the oil and gas industry. They now have discovered a tremendous oil and gas reserve to the tune of 429 million barrels of oil up in the North Slope, which is the largest energy find, energy resource find, in over the last decade.”