House Energy Action Team

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you.

I am honored to get a chance to talk about a great American resource, and that is our energy. Let me take you back a little bit. I'm 43 years old. I can remember in elementary school I was allowed to be able to work with the debate team in high school. It was my honor to be the littlest guy in the middle of this high school debate team. In the 1970s, the debate topic that year was ``Resolved, America Should Pursue Alternative Energy Options.''

Since the 1970s, we've been talking about hydroelectric and solar and wind. We've been trying to advance this technology, and I hope we will continue to crack the code on that to make those energy solutions work well for us. Since the 1970s, we've been talking about trying to get off fossil fuels and--guess what--it is still the dominant resource that we are using in our country, and it is still the most effective resource to be able to move our vehicles, to be able to heat our homes and to be able to produce these petrochemicals that are used in almost everything that we lay our hands on nowadays.

I hope one day I can run my car off a pinwheel

that's on the top of it, but currently I run my car on gasoline. I hope I can heat my home one day with a solar panel on the roof, but currently the technology is not there to be able to do that. My home is heated with natural gas. There's electricity in all the different dynamics that come in. I look at it and I say, at 43 years old, I've been hearing my whole life that we need a national energy policy--drilling, pipelines, production, retailing--to be able to work out a plan that we can run as a country that is all of the above that is every bit of our energy, but that is not ignoring the energy that we have here.

I can tell you I am sick to death of hearing how we need to shut down fossil fuel production in the United States because of environmental reasons, knowing full well that we will just import more of those fossil fuels from all around the world. The United States produces the cleanest energy on the planet. If we want to have clean energy, whether that be fossil fuels or alternative fuels, we should be doing whatever it takes to make sure we drill here, that we produce here, and that we are the ones that are using the energy in the cleanest method possible. No one does it cleaner than us. I can assure you we don't go to Saudi Arabia and find out they produce energy cleaner there.

So if you're truly concerned about planetary issues with the environment, you would make sure all the production that's needed in the United States is produced in the United States to make sure that we continue to protect that.

Let me take you to my beautiful State. Come walk into Oklahoma sometime. Since 1949 in Oklahoma, we've been fracking for oil. What many people are calling some new technology of fracking, and everyone seems to be afraid of it, and say, Is it going to hurt the groundwater and is it going to hurt all these things, I smile and I say, Come to my beautiful State. Since 1949, we've been fracking. Over 100,000 times we have fracked in Oklahoma; 100,000 times plus. Come drink our water, come breathe our air, and come see our absolutely beautiful God-given State. We can do this in an environmentally friendly way.

We have in my district 5.7 percent unemployment because we have a lot of great energy companies that are doing a terrific job of both protecting our environment and providing jobs for the people in our area. We can do this. And to flippantly say, these are dirty oil companies and they're big oil companies, and we've got to do whatever it takes to punish Big Oil is flippant.

I was in a hearing not long ago with Timothy Geithner. He was discussing punishing Big Oil and getting more taxes on that. I was able to say to him, Mr. Secretary, are you aware that the majority of energy companies in the United States are independent producers and they're small companies? Ninety-five percent of the drilling and the oil and gas production that happens in the United States is done by independent producers, these 18,000 small companies that are out there.

These 18,000 small companies that are out there, they account for 67 percent of the total energy production in the United States. These small companies, on average, have 12 people on staff, 12 employees. These are not big, giant companies. And throwing around terms like ``Big Oil'' and attacking them makes me smile when I think about what is happening in Oklahoma with lots and lots of service companies and producers and drillers that are really doing great jobs.

I was talking to one of those companies recently. Guess who they are targeting to be able to hire? Their favorite people to be able to hire are returning vets because of their work ethic and because of the skills they are bringing back. They are companies specifically going after returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to be able to hire them.

It was interesting. We were talking about drilling. You go into a drilling platform, and they say their favorite people to be able to hire are actually tank drivers returning from the war zone because they are used to driving equipment and looking at a screen and dealing with multiple things all at once. These are folks who are employing our veterans and providing great jobs.

Recently, I was on a fracking site, being given a chance to watch it. When you go into a frack site, I don't know what your image is of what it looks like to actually see a well being fracked, but it is high-tech jobs, people on computers, as well as people and pumping. It is trucks and people providing food and people providing all the equipment. It is both people with big wrenches and people with small computers. And you see this multitude of jobs that are provided by oil and gas and by fossil fuels that we are producing right here in America.

We are at a moment that we can either say: We want all green jobs. We want to destroy the jobs that are in producing fossil fuels and try to create new jobs in green jobs; or we can say: Let's do both. Let's encourage the growth of green jobs, but let's not, in the process, also discourage one of the most productive industries that we have in the United States, and that is providing our own energy.

I would love for folks to come to Oklahoma and to be able to see the great companies that are doing some very innovative things.

If I may mention one more thing, just today, one of our companies, Chesapeake, announced a new initiative that is taking natural gas and injecting it into a heat-up service and using biomass and injecting air at a high temperature, and out comes gasoline that runs in our cars. They are not asking for any kind of Federal grant. They are doing it on their own and producing brand new clean energy that will run the current vehicles we have now. At the same time, they are, in the next 10 years, dropping $1 billion to upgrade an infrastructure for natural gas on the highway system so big trucks can run on natural gas and will have a place to be able to fill up.

Industries are doing this. They want to see this. This is a way that great American companies can produce great American energy. They are patriots, and I hope we will continue to encourage these folks.

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