NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE

Gasoline Costs Hit Families' Finances
February 5, 2013
Wall Street Journal
By Tennille Tracy

Gasoline prices took a big bite out of Americans' pocketbooks in 2012.

The average U.S. household paid an estimated $2,912 for gasoline last year, sucking up nearly 4% of the average household income before taxes, according to government data out Monday. That is the highest percentage in three decades, with the exception of 2008, when the rate was nearly identical.

Many people are trying to cut down on fuel costs as they crunch the numbers on other family expenses. At an Exxon station just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, where a gallon of regular gas cost $4.49, car owners said they often waited to fill up their tank at cheaper stations and had started to calculate the shortest routes to conserve fuel.

Anne McKenna, a lawyer based in Baltimore, said she and her husband were saving for college for their three children. With a weekly gasoline bill that can reach $150, they take turns using the family's most fuel-efficient car, depending on who has a longer drive to make on any given day. "It's just the kind of thing you're aware of," Ms. McKenna said.

The nation's average price of gasoline is $3.52 a gallon, up 17 cents from a week ago, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge.

The single largest determining factor in the price of gasoline is the price of crude oil, which recently traded at about $96 a barrel.

The flip side of higher prices: The U.S. is using slightly less gasoline, thanks to thrifty drivers and more fuel-efficient cars. As of November, the U.S. was using about 8.7 million barrels of gasoline a day, down from nine million barrels a day in 2010, according to the Energy Information Administration.

• "ITI applauds the bipartisan work by Chairman Hastings and Ranking Member Markey on the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act.  Helium is necessary to many of our companies’ manufacturing processes, and any disruptions in the market could literally require their facilities to stop production.  That’s an outcome that the nation’s economy simply cannot afford.  The Committee's urgent and timely attention to this issue is greatly appreciated, and ITI looks forward to working with the Committee as the bill moves through the legislative process."

• “Failure to preserve our domestic helium supply will have reverberating effects on medical imaging manufacturers as well as the entire health care industry, as manufacturing facilities will have no choice but to slow or shut down production and physicians will be forced to turn away patients due to the shortage. We applaud Chairman Hastings and Ranking Member Markey for their leadership in introducing bipartisan legislation aimed at protecting access to the Federal Helium Reserve. Congress needs to pass legislation to prevent the premature closure of this reserve, and this bill is an important step forward in finding a solution.”

• “Helium is a critical gas used in the semiconductor manufacturing process and other types of advanced manufacturing and innovation. The severe shortage of helium supplies is already impairing key industrial sectors. Without prompt congressional action, the supply of helium controlled by the federal government would be off-limits to private users, adversely impacting advanced manufacturing in the U.S. We appreciate the bipartisan leadership of Chairman Hastings and Ranking Member Markey in introducing this legislation, and we urge Congress to make swift passage of legislation a high priority.”

Wildfire prevention is 1st priority in new Congress
Glenwood Springs Post Independent
Rep. Scott Tipton
January 14, 2013

As we begin the 113th Congress, I'm incredibly honored to have earned the trust of the people of the 3rd Congressional District and to serve as their representative for a second term.

During my first term, I focused on advancing the issues that most directly impact Coloradans. Many of the most pressing items we worked on involved our state's extensive open spaces and natural resources, including improving the conditions of our forests to prevent catastrophic wildfire.

Following an extensive fact-finding process to determine the most effective path to restore our forests back to health, I introduced the Healthy Forest Management and Wildfire Prevention Act.

In just a short amount of time following introduction last year, we were able to build a strong coalition of support that included the endorsements of 10 Colorado counties, and advanced it through the House Natural Resources Committee.

My first legislative priority for this Congress will be to reintroduce this comprehensive forest legislation to take immediate action to mitigate the conditions in Colorado forests that have fueled devastating fires like those in Waldo Canyon and High Park, as well as dozens more throughout our state this past year.

With millions of acres of beetle-killed timber, prolonged drought, unnaturally dense undergrowth in many areas, and warm temperatures combining to create prime conditions for fire, it's undeniable that Colorado's forests need immediate attention. We need to put a plan in place, and to act on it as quickly as possible.

When developing a plan to improve conditions throughout the Western United States' vast expanses of forest, it makes sense to include the input of those who live in the region and have a boots-on-the-ground view of the urgent challenges facing forest management.

To that end, I propose a comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck approach to restoring forest health.

The Healthy Forest Management and Wildfire Prevention Act would give states, and affected counties and tribes the authority to designate high-risk areas on national forest and Bureau of Land Management lands, as well as the authority to provide for the development of proposed emergency hazardous fuels reduction projects for those high-risk areas.

With increased local control, states can better protect their communities, species habitats, water supplies and natural areas with preventative action to control the conditions behind devastating wildfires.

Additionally, this legislation would prevent delays of projects designed to increase safety and preserve natural habitats by reducing frivolous litigation. It achieves this by working within the guidelines of existing law to apply the expedited procedures and authorities under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 in an expanded range of areas.

By applying these authorities and procedures, the bill would accelerate hazardous fuels reduction projects carried out in response to conditions that pose an immediate threat to schools, recreation areas, utility or telephone infrastructure, campgrounds, heritage sites and other critical infrastructure.

Finally, the Healthy Forest Management and Wildfire Prevention Act would permanently authorize Good Neighbor Authority, the authority of the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture to enter into cooperative agreements with state foresters to provide forest, rangeland and watershed protection services on applicable federal lands. This cooperative management style has proven to be extremely successful and is now praised as a common sense solution by both sides of the aisle.

Given the severity of the wildfires across Colorado last summer and the continued hazardous conditions for 2013, it is critical that we move this bill through the House and send it to the Senate as quickly as possible so that we can begin to address the problem.

I am working with my colleagues on the House Natural Resources Committee and the House Agriculture Committee to bring this bill to the House floor, and I anticipate the committee activity on it in the coming months.

We cannot wait for another summer of destruction to pass before taking action to improve forest conditions. It's our responsibility to act now to proactively manage our forests, prevent future destruction and loss of life from wildfire, and foster a healthy natural environment.

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton represents western and southern Colorado in the U.S. Congress. He is a businessman from Cortez.

"California is sitting on a massive amount of shale oil and could become the next oil boom state…Running from Los Angeles to San Francisco, California's Monterey Shale is thought to contain more oil than North Dakota's Bakken and Texas's Eagle Ford -- both scenes of an oil boom that's created thousands of jobs and boosted U.S. oil production to the highest rate in over a decade…In fact, the Monterey is thought to hold over 400 billion barrels of oil, according to IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. That's nearly half the conventional oil in all of Saudi Arabia. The United States consumes about 19 million barrels of oil a day."

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During the height of this year’s record-breaking fire season, the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held a legislative hearing on bills to address forest health and reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fire. Following a Forest Service report on the need for restoration on 65-82 million acres of National Forest land, the Forest Service testified that it had restored 3.7 million acres in 2011. Restoration is the process of assisting recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. Following the hearing, we submitted a series of questions to get further detail on what methods the agency used to “restore” these lands.

In its response, the Forest Service explained that of those 3.7 million acres, over 1.4 million – nearly 40% of the total – were “restored” through a combination of prescribed fire (fire intentionally set and monitored by the agency) and wildland-use fire (fire allowed to burn to achieve resource objectives). Meanwhile, commercial harvest was only allowed on 195,477 acres - 5% of the total work for 2011 and only .1% of the 193 million acres managed by the Forest Service.

In short, the Forest Service “restored” seven times more land by the use of wildfire than by management to produce merchantable wood products, support jobs, or generate economy activity and revenue for our rural forest communities and schools. The 195,000 acres treated this year produced 2.4 billion board feet of timber – down 80% over the last twenty years. This decline in forest management has resulted in millions of acres of unhealthy forests caused by insect and disease infestation and overgrowth, an ever growing threat of catastrophic wildfire, and significant damage to local economies.

This data shows that there is tremendous opportunity to restore active management of our forests that will create jobs and foster economic development.