“USE IT OR LOSE IT” FULL OF INNACURATE INFORMATION
Friday, July 25th, 2008With Texas families and small businesses continuing to feel the pain at the pump as another holiday weekend is close upon us, Congress has yet to bring forth an energy plan that will lower gas prices.
You may have heard of the Majority’s “use it or lose it” proposal. This plan calls for Congress to force energy companies to “use” their leased federal lands to produce oil – or “lose” those leases. The truth is that “use it or lose it” is already the law of the land. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer each voted for it in 1992. Under the law, federal energy lease holders already must produce oil or natural gas within five to 10 years after drilling begins. If companies fail to comply, the Secretary of the Interior has the power to cancel the lease. If Pelosi and Hoyer have already voted for this legislation, and it is already law, why are they insisting on bringing up another bill to do the exact same thing? Perhaps, it could be because they have no meaningful plan of their own to bring down gas prices.
The “use it or lose it” plan claims that energy companies are sitting on 68 million acres of federal land without exploring or drilling for oil and natural gas; however, this is nowhere near the truth. According to the American Petroleum Institute, companies actively develop their leases-but not every lease contains oil or natural gas in large enough quantities. Companies can evaluate leases for several years only to determine that they do not contain oil or natural gas. Those of us in Texas know that it is not easy to bring oil and natural gas to the market. There is a long and costly process of obtaining the lease, evaluation and exploration before you can even begin the production phase.
Another false claim is the accusation that 4.8 million barrels of oil per day and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day may be ‘extrapolated’ from the oil companies unused federally-leased lands. The truth is that no Democrat or any federal authority can provide a source for this information. In fact, earlier this week, The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (an independent group funded by member fees, not oil companies) wrote Congress to explain the process of developing oil and gas leases, which completely goes against these facts.
The truth is that the only way to lower gas prices is to explore for new American energy in an environmentally safe way as well as increase our conservation. I remain committed to working in a bipartisan manner to increase the supply of American energy, promote conservation and help lower prices at the pump. Congress can’t do that by simply voting on misleading or inaccurate bills that do nothing to solve the problem. I call on my Democratic colleagues to work with Republicans and produce energy legislation that will provide the American people with the relief they desperately are seeking.