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Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I can proudly say that Louisiana fuels the world. That is what we say in my State, and it is true. Louisiana accounted for more than 60 percent--6-0 percent--of U.S. energy exports last year. The United States is the world's largest LNG exporter, and Louisiana has some of the largest export terminals in the world.

It is a whole-of-State activity. A lot of the natural gas we export is produced in Haynesville Shale, which is in northwest Louisiana. That gas comes down to the Cameron LNG in Hackberry, LA, where President Trump went when it first opened. That one exports 12 million metric tons of LNG annually; Cheniere Energy in Cameron Parish, 30 million metric tons of LNG last year left that facility; and Venture Global in Plaquemines Parish, 27 million metric tons LNG, and they are expanding.

President Trump wants to reestablish American energy dominance, and that dominance starts in my State. I can proudly say Louisiana has the infrastructure, strategic location, and, most importantly, the workers to put the United States back on top. Louisiana's ports, railroads, highways, and pipelines provide an outlet for gas and oil from landlocked States to be exported from our ports to around the world.

Some oil is transported by rail, and the only place in the United States of America where six major freight railroad carriers converge is--you guessed it--my home State of Louisiana. Our fully integrated 50,000-mile pipeline network and 11,000 miles of State highways make Louisiana an obvious choice when considering which States can best transport these goods.

Now, obviously, when your State has the mouth of the Mississippi, where it drains into the Gulf of America, besides our LNG exports, we have six combined deep draft ports where we are moving oil and gas and also the refined products from that oil and gas, which is part of fueling the world. So Louisiana is critical to the production and distribution of fuel and fuel products.

I am making these points because reestablishing American energy dominance, ultimately, creates better jobs, higher paying jobs, which can change the trajectory of a family in my State and families elsewhere in the Nation. By the end of President Biden's term, after 4 years of attacks against American energy production, the Department of Energy reported tens of thousands of jobs lost. Tens of thousands of jobs is a statistic, but these are real people, real families we are speaking of.

Think of the young couple with three kids and the husband comes home and tells his wife that he has lost his job. He would have lost his job because of some activity the Biden administration did. The wife immediately wonders how they are going to pay the house note. The husband feels humiliated. He feels as if he is letting his family down. And, suddenly, there are sparks of argument between two people who have always gotten along, and kids see conflict that there never was before.

These are human stories, and those stories were relived over and over when these almost 30,000 jobs were killed.

By the way, they were killed not because the fuel was not needed, but because the last administration decided they felt uncomfortable with that fuel being produced in the United States of America. Well, tens of thousands of Americans suffered under that prejudice under President Biden. The war on American energy was a war on American jobs, which is a war on American families.

That war on the American family is over. I recognize, President Trump recognizes, that American energy dominance fueling our State, our country, and the world--and along with it, giving enough product for manufacturing of the refined products we all need--creates with it the high-paying jobs for Americans who never should have been out of work in the first place.

We are seeing evidence of this all over. Woodside Energy recently announced the largest single foreign direct investment in Louisiana history--a $17.5 billion investment in Calcasieu Parish for a new LNG export facility. This will support 15,000 jobs during construction and, once operational, thousands more. By the way, there are other things to do with this plentiful abundant energy. There are wonderful spinoffs.

Just as an aside, last month, Hyundai Steel announced a $5.8 billion investment to build a new, next-generation steel production facility in Ascension Parish. The facility is expected to generate $4.1 billion in annual revenue and bring in nearly 1,500 direct jobs to the State and thousands of indirect jobs. That is low-cost energy paving the way for more opportunity.

By the way, this benefits my State, our Nation, and guess who else benefits? Our allies. Europe imports 45 percent of its LNG from the United States, but they still get about 20 percent from Russia. If we send them 45 percent of the LNG, that is a growth from before the Russian-Ukraine war when that number was only 27 percent--there is a bill before Congress many Senators are supporting that puts stricter sanctions upon Russia. I would say that if the Europeans buy even less natural gas from Russia, they will need more natural gas from us, and we have the capacity to make that up.

We want to send more natural gas from Haynesville Shale through those LNG export facilities across the Atlantic Ocean, creating tax revenue for my parish governments, wealth for my workers, helps our national security, helps our economy, and helps working families.

The European Union using more U.S. liquefied natural gas throws a wrench in Vladimir Putin's war machine. Last year, the EU paid 22 billion Euros for Russian natural gas and, again, Putin used that money to fund his war. Next year, if the Europeans buy that much U.S. natural gas, that is $25 billion coming to our economy. After Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the United States helped Ukraine stand up against Putin, Europe did, too.

Let's use our energy to do it even more so. We can help them by saying: ``Don't buy Putin's gas to fuel his war, by ours.''

Louisiana is ready to help. America has the resources, we have the abundance. Let's put it to use.

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