Keystone XL Pipeline Act -- Continued

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, the subject matter of these two
amendments is, No. 1, the Canadian oil company that wants to build a
pipeline through our country right now is exempt from having to pay
taxes into the oilspill liability trust fund. In other words, if there
is an actual accident in the United States, if the oil pipe breaks or
something happens, the Canadians will not have paid into the oilspill
liability trust fund the way every American pipeline company has to do.

So my first amendment would just say that they cannot be exempt from
that, and the hundreds of millions of dollars which they are
responsible for would have to be put into the trust fund.

The second amendment is an extreme weather amendment. That amendment
would call for a requirement and analysis of the impact that global
warming would have from the tar sands pollution and would require that
we have that scientific analysis just so that we can understand it and
its impact on extreme weather events in the United States and across
the planet.

We would need both of those amendments to be debated in order to make
sure we fully understand the implications of what is being debated here.

Finally, I wish to say that I note Senator Cruz from Texas has an
amendment which would almost automatically approve any natural gas
exports that were going to any WTO country in the world. I think that
is a very bad stance for the Senate to take.

We have to debate what the impact of the exportation of natural gas
on a mass basis is going to be on the price of natural gas here in the
United States--the price that utilities are going to have to pay for
natural gas to generate electricity, the speed with which we will be
able to transform our automotive sector from oil over to natural gas,
the impact on the petrochemical industry and other industries that are
now increasingly using low-priced natural gas in our country. We also
have to deal with the fact that the Energy Information Agency says that
the already-approved export of natural gas will lead to a more than 50-
percent increase in domestic natural gas prices for Americans at home.

I understand why the natural gas industry wants to do it, but I think
we have to have a big debate here in Congress over the impact that
those natural gas imports are going to have, especially if they are
approved automatically if they are heading to any WTO country in the
world.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source