Keystone XL Pipeline

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, but I have to say this last weekend, as I was going through all the different news and the many things that we track, I was quite surprised last Friday afternoon at the way the President addressed something that this Nation has discussed for 7 years--a pipeline permit, a permit called the Keystone XL Pipeline.

It is not a revolutionary thing. Quite frankly, I wish to show you something. These are all the pipelines that currently exist in the United States.

Right now, there are 19 international crossings of pipelines already coming into the United States, either from Canada into the northern part of the United States or from Mexico and from the South. There are already 19 of them. This would just be a 20th pipeline. There is nothing different about that.

There are 60,000 miles of crude oil pipelines in the United States right now. There are about 63,000 miles of refined product pipelines. If you want to go to natural gas, there are about 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines already in the United States. Yet this pipeline is treated like some radical and new invention--as if we have never considered a pipeline before. But what surprised me so much wasn't the 2,600-plus days that this pipeline request sat on the President's desk. What surprised me was his reason for actually deciding not to do then the permits. That was the surprising part.

Quite frankly, last Friday afternoon as I heard the reasons, I went back, read the transcript, and these were the three reasons the President gave. He said: No. 1, ``the pipeline wouldn't make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy,'' and he encouraged us to pass a highway bill instead because it would provide more jobs. I don't remember ever discussing and saying: This pipeline is going to provide as many jobs as highways. That has never been discussed on this floor. It is apples and oranges. A highway bill is public funding. It is the taxpayers that actually fund transportation, and we should do highways in transportation.

This is a private project that was never intended to have as many jobs as a highway. It is a pipeline. So he said it is not going to provide enough jobs, and so he is not going to permit it.

The second reason he gave is this: ``The pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers.'' He said gasoline prices are already low, and so we don't need this pipeline--as if gasoline prices don't rise and fall and we shouldn't plan forward for the future.

Do you want to know why gasoline prices are low right now? It is because over the decades, Americans have done this, and we have an efficient system of moving energy. By the way, the pipeline is the safest and least expensive way to move energy around our country. So what the President is saying is this: What we have is enough. I don't want to plan for the future anymore. I don't want to look for what is going to help our children. Our prices are low enough. I don't care what our children pay in the future days.

Well, that is absurd. But, quite frankly, the third one is the one that was the most jarring to me, so I want to be able to say this statement to you. This is reason No. 3 the President gave: ``Shipping crude oil into our country from unstable countries would not increase America's energy security.'' Let me read that to you again because I was so stunned by it. This is exactly from the President's speech off of the White House site. This is what the President said off this statement. He will not permit the Keystone Pipeline coming from Canada into the United States. He said shipping dirtier crude oil into our country would not increase America's energy security. He said:

What has increased America's energy security is our strategy over the past several years to reduce our reliance on dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world.

Now, as I heard the President say that, I was a little taken aback because I don't remember any other President referring to Canada as an unstable part of the world from which we don't want to get our energy--an unstable country, and saying Canada was that country.

So I kept reading it and rereading it, thinking maybe he was implying something else, but the problem with that is he either means that Canada is an unstable country and we don't want to be reliant on them to get energy or he is saying the Middle East and other countries are unstable and we don't want to rely on them, so maybe we should buy from Canada instead. Either way it makes absolutely no sense.

But in its context--as I read it and read it and read it--the President stated that we don't need to have a Keystone Pipeline because Canada is unstable and we don't want to buy from unstable countries.

I would tell you that since the War of 1812 we have gotten along with Canada pretty well. We seem to have settled our differences about 1815, and they have been a very stable trading partner for us. It seems nonsensical to hear the President say: Because it doesn't produce enough jobs, I am not going to permit it. Because it won't affect the price of gasoline today, I won't permit it. And because Canada is unstable as a trading partner, I am not going to permit it.

The President can choose to do whatever he chooses to do, but answers like this make no sense to the American people and they make no sense to energy country when we understand full well the actual facts on the ground.

In recent days, we have actually started an energy swap with Mexico. Many people may not even know that. You see, all oil is not the same. Heavier crude oil is preferred by many of our refineries in the United States. Quite frankly, our refineries are capable of separating out more of the different minerals and such that are within heavy crude or what is often called sour crude. Our refineries prefer the heavier crude, much like what Canada produces and many parts of the United States and Mexico produces. Many of the refineries in Mexico actually prefer the light sweet crude. We actually have more light sweet crude in America than we can use and what our refineries would prefer to have.

So in the past couple of months, Mexico and the United States have worked a swap from pipelines, where they are picking up about 75,000 barrels of light sweet and swapping us 75,000 barrels of heavier crude because they have a commodity we want and we have a commodity they want. That is how we could solve some of our energy issues, to actually look for what is the most efficient, whether it is purchasing it from a pipeline from Canada, which makes great economic sense to us, or exporting our oil anywhere else around the world, whether to Mexico or any other country.

This body knows full well the United States cannot sell our oil on the world market because we have a statute in place that would have us believe we are running out of oil rather than having a tremendous amount, which is factually true, and we have particular types of oil that like sweet crude many refineries around the world want. We actually have more of it than we can use. We should sell that. We should put that on the open market. It is cleaner, it is easier to refine, and it is a way to be able to stabilize jobs in the United States.

I have been in front of this body time after time with a simple statement: We can sell unleaded around the world, we can sell diesel around the world, we can sell coal around the world, and we can sell natural gas around the world, but for whatever reason we can't sell crude oil around the world. That makes absolutely no sense and we should fix it.

Tens of thousands of Americans have lost their jobs because this body has not acted on something as simple as being able to sell a product the world wants and we have on the world market. It is fixable. It is not about environmental disaster. The world is going to use oil. Even the administration and quite frankly even the President in his own speech made this statement last week: The truth is the United States will continue to rely on oil and gas. And so will the world. Until some other solution is out there, which no one sees currently on the horizon, we are going to continue to use oil and gas. Why don't we do it the cleanest way possible and why don't we provide American jobs while we are doing it?

It is fixable. It shouldn't be divisive. It is about putting Americans back to work and about helping our economy.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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