Chairman Joe Barton

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Joe Barton, Chairman
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Barton Urges Colleagues to Support Adding New Refinery Capacity

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued the following statement today on the House floor in support of H.R. 5254, the Refinery Permit Process Scheduling Act:

“Getting new refinery projects sited and permitted is a challenge to energy developers, especially to new market entrants who could offer alternatives to today’s overworked refineries.

“The plain fact is that our country is losing the ability to refine oil into motor fuel. We’re not only importing oil in ever greater quantities, now we’re importing gasoline by the shipload, too. The threat we face today is not only to the price, but to the supply. If you tried to buy gasoline at one of the stations that have run out of gas lately, you’ll remember the gasoline lines of the 1970s. High prices are a hardship, but dry pumps are a disaster.

“The last American refinery to be built from scratch in this country was over 30 years ago and I believe it was in Louisiana. We have shut down more refineries in the last 30 years than we have refineries in operation today in the United States. Most of those are clustered in the Gulf region which as we know because of Katrina and Rita are in harm’s way if hurricanes continue to batter that part of the country. Katrina has taught us some very bitter lessons. One was: Don’t put too many of your refinery eggs in one basket. This bill does nothing to dictate new refinery locations—only developers and local and state governments can do that—but it will make certain that the federal government does its part to eliminate needless, in my opinion, bureaucratic delay if somebody wants to build a new refinery or expand an existing refinery. In my opinion, we need to do that. We consume about 21 million barrels of refined product in the United States every day. Our refinery capacity located domestically is less than 17 million barrels per day. That’s a shortage of 4 million barrels a day of refinery capacity for domestic demand for refined product from oil.

“Does that mean environmental protection will take a back seat? Nothing of the sort. Under this bill, while the EPA will be given priority to coordinate and consolidate the permitting process, we are not backing down on one permit required at the state or federal level. The EPA and the

Department of Energy under this bill are required to work together to work together to consolidate and streamline the permitting process so that we can get a decision in a timely fashion. The bill before us would require all agencies responsible for considering permit applications for an oil refinery, coal-to-liquid refinery or biofuel refinery, to sit down at the table and hammer out a coordinated action plan of scheduling. They’ll put permit applications on parallel tracks, and instill focus and teamwork in the process.

“The schedule will appear in the Federal Register for all stakeholders to see.

“And if an agency drags its feet and throws everyone else off schedule, you can go to and a court can order a particular agency to get back on track. It can’t tell the agency how to rule but it can require that they meet the schedule that’s been agreed to by all the other state and federal agencies that have permitting authority under the current laws.

“Public participation will go on exactly as it has in the past, all open records requirements will go on exactly as they have in the past. So we’re not short-sheeting any environmental protection law under this pending legislation. All we are saying is since we have a situation in the United States of America, where we use 21 million barrels of refined products every day and we only have refinery capacity for 17, that it’s about time that we do something to make it possible to build and expand existing refineries in the United States.

It takes a million dollars per 1,000 barrels of capacity so we need 4 million barrels of new refinery capacity. That’s somewhere between $40 billion and 60 billion. No one in their right mind is going to put up that kind of money to expand refinery capacity when it takes 10 years to get the permit just to build or expand existing refinery. The bill before us today will make it possible to get a decision on the permits, the president has asked that we do it within one year. The bill before us does not set a one-year timetable exactly but we would hope that the consolidation process and the parallel-track process would certainly shorten the 10-year permitting window. If we could get it down to a year, 18 months, I think the day would come very soon, you’d see companies announcing new refinery projects which would be good for our public and lower prices.

“With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. I would also ask that Mr. Bass of New Hampshire manage the rest of the floor time on the majority side.”

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