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Dems say GOP energy bill would generate 'fake' revenues for transportation bill
House Democrats on Wednesday said Republicans are over-estimating the extent to which new U.S. energy development can help pay for federal highway spending, in particular because shale oil development is still years away.
“What they do is, they bring out proposals here that try to build real highways with fake oil revenues that are never going to materialize,” Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said during debate on the Republican energy bill, H.R. 3408.
“So rather than working here in the real world, where the real transportation needs of our country are dealt with real revenues that are coming in, they talk about oil shale, which Shell [Oil Co.] says is at least another 10 years away.”
Markey added that even the Congressional Budget Office has said the energy bill would only raise $4.3 billion over 10 years, not nearly enough to offset the highway spending Republicans support.
“In reality, this bill amounts to little more than a giveaway of our public lands to Big Oil under the guise of funding our nation’s transportation projects,” Markey said.
“According to government estimates, this region may hold … more than one and a half trillion barrels of oil equivalent,” Hastings said. “That’s six times Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, and enough to provide the United States with energy for the next 200 years.”
The bill, titled the Protecting Investment in Oil Shale, the Next Generation of Environmental, Energy and Resource Security (PIONEERS) Act, would direct the secretary of the Interior to issue more research, development and demonstration (RD&D) and commercial oil shale leases, as well as make permanent guidelines on oil shale production that the Department of the Interior released in 2008.
But the bill goes beyond oil shale, and combines two other energy bills. Another piece of it would open up about 3 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy production, and would require the administration to move ahead with new offshore production in the Atlantic, Pacific and Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The bill is meant to help pay for the GOP’s highway authorization bill, and was split off from that bill, H.R. 7, which will be considered separately in a few weeks.
The PIONEERS Act also includes language requiring the permitting of the Keystone oil sands pipeline (this story originally said that language remains in the main transportation bill, H.R. 7).
Following debate on the PIONEERS Act, members were expected to spend Wednesday afternoon and early evening debating up to 20 amendments to the bill.
— This story was updated at 9:29 a.m. to correct that the Keystone language is in the energy bill, not the transportation bill.
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