Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Testimony Before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (HQ)
As prepared for delivery.
Thank you for inviting me to testify. Americans
are again suffering at the pump. Gasoline and diesel cost more
today than they did a year ago.
As ExxonMobil’s CEO recently testified,
the prices of those fuels are a function of crude oil prices, which
are set by global supply and demand. As a matter of geology,
America will never control more than a tiny fraction of the
world’s oil supply. Therefore, America cannot prevent
gasoline and diesel prices from rising. Still, all else being
equal, buying a barrel of American oil is better than buying a
barrel of foreign oil.
Last year, American oil production reached its highest level since
2003, and President Obama recently announced steps that the
Interior Department is taking to increase safe and responsible oil
production here at home. Deputy Secretary Hayes will describe those
steps today.
For parts of the Outer Continental Shelf,
Congress has declared that a company cannot operate drilling
equipment that emits large amounts of air pollution without first
demonstrating, through EPA permitting, that the emissions will not
harm Americans. That requirement is not simply red tape, because a
single exploratory drilling operation can emit as much air
pollution on a daily basis as a large oil refinery.
In 2007, Shell Oil began seeking from
EPA’s Region 10 office air permits for exploratory drilling
operations on the Outer Continental Shelf off Alaska. Region 10 has
since issued five permits to Shell. An administrative court called
the Environmental Appeals Board remanded two of the permits last
December, after Alaska residents had challenged them.
I am confident that we will give the Board the
analysis it has called for, in time for the permits to be upheld
before the start of the next drilling season. I should note that,
on average, the Board decides air permit appeals in just over 5
months – that only 4 of the Board’s more-than-100 air
permit decisions have ever been appealed to a federal court –
and that none of the Board’s air permit decisions has ever
been overturned. Currently, there are only 4 pending air permit
applications for drilling on the Arctic OCS. That includes the 2
that I just mentioned. We anticipate many more,
though.
So, at the President’s direction, the
White House has formed a team of relevant bureaus at the Department
of Interior, the Department of Commerce, and EPA to coordinate
closely and prevent unnecessary delays.
Thanks to advances in drilling technology, including hydraulic
fracturing – or “fracking” –
America’s potential natural gas resource is nearly 50 percent
larger than we believed it was just a few years ago. The price we
pay for natural gas is not set on a global market the way the price
of oil is, and burning natural gas creates less air pollution than
burning other fossil fuels. So increasing America’s natural
gas production is a good thing.
Fracking involves injecting chemicals
underground at high pressure, and various substances come back to
the surface with the gas. It is not surprising, then, that Congress
has directed EPA to study the relationship between fracking and
drinking water. We are doing that, with input from technical
experts, the public, and industry.
In the meantime, EPA will step in to protect
local residents if a driller jeopardizes clean water and the state
government does not act. President Obama has made clear that we
need to extract natural gas without polluting our water
supplies.
We can mitigate the impact of high fuel prices
on American families and businesses by enabling them to travel the
same distances and conduct the same commerce on less gasoline and
diesel. The fuel efficiency standards that EPA and the Department
of Transportation established last year for new cars and light
trucks will save the average American driver $3,000 over the life
of the car and conserve 1.85 billion barrels of oil.
Additional standards that we will set this
summer for heavy-duty trucks will save a tractor-trailer operator
up to $74,000 dollars over the life of the rig and conserve another
half a billion barrels of oil. The increased bio-fuel production
mandates that EPA set last year will displace 7 percent of
America’s expected gasoline and diesel consumption in 2022
while decreasing oil imports by 41.5 billion dollars.
I am proud of the role EPA is playing to shield
Americans from the harmful economic impact of high gasoline and
diesel prices. EPA’s core mission, though, is protecting
Americans from harmful pollution. That is what Congress has ordered
EPA to do, and that is what the American people expect. Even when
gas prices are high and the economy is still recovering, Americans
do not like it when their families and livelihoods are harmed by
industrial pollution that could have been avoided.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.