Listen Here or read the transcript below

Joe Mathieu

… So the Senators said a lot there, accusing the administration of being disingenuous about this issue, particularly about drilling. The argument spilled over into the White House briefing room today. With Press Secretary Jen Psaki, an interesting exchange here with a Fox news reporter, Peter Doocy, remembering that the President referred to 9,000 unused drilling permits said they could get to this tomorrow. Here’s Jen Psaki:

Jen Psaki

First of all, nearly 60% of leased acres remain non producing, that’s a lot, in the range of 20 million acres. So there are 9,000 unused approved permits to drill and that should not require us inviting them to do that. They should do that themselves. They have the leases, the permits are there. I don’t think they need a embroidered invitation to drill that is their oil companies. What is happening here is that, we are seeing, these are private sector companies, we recognize that, many of them are making record profits. We see that, that is all publicly available data. They have pressure to return cash to investors and their shareholders. What we’re saying right now is there is a war, we’re asking them to to go use the approved permits use the unused space and go get more supply out of the ground in our own country.

Joe Mathieu

On there’s Jen Psaki in the briefing room today, now you’ve heard both sides of this. You heard from the White House. You heard from the Republican Senator from Louisiana. We wanted to talk with somebody who’s been researching this independently. Steve Ellis, the President of the group Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent nonpartisan voice as they say for taxpayers. His take on this. From his perspective:

Steve Ellis

It goes beyond leases and permits and you know are all of those going to be good wells or not. The fact of the matter is that they are squatting on a lot of coveted projects, particularly onshore that you can’t make them drill.

Joe Mathieu

You can’t make them drill but if you are the administrations saying they can drill any time they want, starting tomorrow. Is that an honest statement?

Steve Ellis

In some cases, yes. And, you know, I thought it was interesting with Senator Cassidy and he keeps saying, you know, it takes about 7 weeks which he is talking about West Texas, which has got to be private land not public land. But then, you know, or than it takes up to a year for offshore well right now, particularly the oil industry and their advocates in Congress, you know they’re going to say whatever is going to be advancing in the best interest of the oil and gas industry. And that’s flexibility. And that is let them get whatever they want in their pocket and then maybe they will drill.

Joe Mathieu

Do you have a sense of how much red tape is involved, if I’m using the right term right, for an oil company to begin drilling on leased land, something that’s already permitted, is there any more red tape?

Steve Ellis

Certainly there are, you know, requirements and some of that’s about making sure that people are protected from long-term liabilities and that, you know, you don’t have that Deepwater horizon or you don’t have leaks and spills on public lands. And so it’s not clear to say exactly that there’s all these other hurdles because people are different stages of the race. 

Joe Mathieu

Steve Ellis, Taxpayers for Common Sense

Share This Story!

Related Posts