WASHINGTON - House Republicans finished off the last of their three “Oil Above All" giveaways to oil companies today by taking the first step towards opening up the East and West Coasts to drilling without enacting new safety reforms, without ensuring that any oil gained would stay in America, and without forcing oil companies to drill for the 11 billion barrels of oil on public lands they already been given access to, but are not using.
The week of debate over the three drilling-only bills offered by House Republicans ended today with the 243-179 vote passage of H.R. 1231, dubbed the “Beachside Drilling Act" by the Natural Resources Democrats. It caps a week long GOP effort to advance their oil-industry friendly legislative agenda which included:
* Passing legislation that would put a “shot clock" on the safety review of drilling permits, deeming them approved after 60 days regardless if there are still concerns.
* Granting a special drilling permit extension for Shell, Exxon, and Brazilian firm Petrobras, among others, that the Congressional Budget Office says would lose $10 million for taxpayers.
* Forcing new drilling operations off the East and West Coasts, regardless of the objections to new drilling made by individual states whose coastlines would be affected.
Republicans rejected every single legislative proposal from Democrats during the debate on the bills, including the following amendments:
* Revoking a manufacturing tax credit for oil companies.
* Instituting the drill rig safety recommendations of the BP Oil Spill Commission.
* Keeping any oil extracted from these bills here in America.
* Pushing the oil companies to drill in the 93,750 square miles they currently possess, but are not using.
“Republicans are giving away our East and West Coasts to the oil companies, while allowing Exxon, Chevron, BP and others to keep taxpayer giveaways in our tax code. Oil companies are saying it’s un-American to give back tax credits, but it’s really unbelievable that the American taxpayer is being asked to subsidize this industry to take over our shores," said Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee. “These bills won’t lower prices at the pump, they’ll just make drilling less safe and keep us addicted to oil from OPEC. This hasn’t been an honest effort to bring down prices, it’s been a financial and legislative shell game for multi-billion companies like Shell Oil."
“These bills are acts of willful amnesia," Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) said. “They deliberately forget the expensive lessons of Deepwater Horizon, and they deliberately ignore the overwhelming evidence that they will have no effect on gas prices. Instead of this cynical effort to use today’s gas prices to advance Big Oil’s agenda, we should be building a sustainable, 21st-century energy strategy."
Earlier today, 231 Republicans voted to reject two Democratic proposals offered by Reps. Holt and Markey today in the final amendment offered to the bill, while only one Republican supported the measure (see Roll Call 319, defeated 180-243). In casting this vote, Republicans voted against requiring any oil extracted from these new potentially opened areas to stay in America to drive down prices. At the same time, they rejected a proposal, based on the USE IT legislation introduced by Reps. Markey and Holt, that would set a goal for oil companies to drill on 50 percent of their already-available lands by 2013, encouraging more production o
