Gordon Votes For DRILL Act
July 17, 2008, WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon strengthened efforts to ease pain at the gas pumps by voting for legislation to increase domestic drilling and bring relief to consumers struggling to cope with record gas prices.
“The United States needs an energy policy that reduces our nation’s dependence on foreign oil,” said Gordon. “We need to use every option at our disposal to deal with rising costs, and that includes alternative fuels, renewable sources of energy and increasing our domestic oil production and refining capacity.”
Today (July 17), Gordon voted for H.R. 6515, the Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands Act. The DRILL Act would speed the production of Alaskan oil from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and reinstate a ban on the foreign export of Alaskan oil, allowing domestic oil to be used in the United States. The bill would expedite construction of a pipeline from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to the lower 48 states.
The DRILL Act incorporates “use it or lose it” provisions on oil companies, requiring companies to drill on the leases they already have or give them up for other companies to drill on that land.
The vote failed because it did not receive the required approval of two-thirds of the voting members of Congress.
“I’m disappointed this vote failed. This is important legislation, and I will continue to push for it,” said Gordon.
“There are 7,740 leases available for 44 million acres offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf, but oil companies aren’t drilling on 33.5 million of those acres. There are another 34.5 million acres of federal lands available on-shore for drilling. Oil companies have leases there, but they’re not drilling. They need to use the leases they hold on these 68 million acres of land or lose them and let someone else have the opportunity to increase domestic oil production.”
The vote follows an announcement by the U.S. Department of the Interior to open an additional 2.6 million acres of land in northern Alaska for oil and gas exploration.
Gordon also is advocating increased investment in research and development of new energy technologies, a cornerstone of his America COMPETES Act that was signed into law last year. As chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, the congressman is working to advance energy-related bills through his committee.
On Wednesday (July 16), Gordon’s committee approved H.R. 6323, the Heavy Hybrid Truck Research, Development and Demonstration Act. The bill would encourage hybrid research for trucks by offering grants to manufacturers to build, test and eventually sell hybrid heavy-duty trucks, such as delivery vans, buses, tractor trailers, garbage collection trucks and construction vehicles.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that an average delivery truck using a hybrid drive system could save approximately 1,000 gallons of fuel per year compared to a traditional model.
“The price of fuel is affecting consumers, small businesses, our nation’s trucking and aviation industries, and communities that have to budget fuel for trash collection and school buses,” said Gordon. “The heavy truck sector accounts for a very large portion of the nation’s fuel use. Even small improvements in their efficiency can have a substantial impact. Hybrid technologies hold the promise of greatly reducing the fuel consumed by the nation’s truck fleet.”
