A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "Oil and Natural Gas Sector: Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources Review".

Madam Speaker, I thank the chair of the Appropriations Committee for yielding me 1 minute.

I rise to say, of course, everybody is going to vote for this bill. I wish I believed that.

Madam Speaker, this bill is a demonstration of the failure of 535 adults elected by their fellow citizens to act responsibly. Obviously, of those 535, a number have acted responsibly, have worked to get the job done.

There are really only 12 bills that need to pass the Congress. There are many other bills that are important bills and should pass the Congress that I voted for and make life better for America.

How is that?

I thank the gentleman, who is my friend, and I thank him for that.

As I was saying, this is a failure. We knew that these 12 bills have to pass. Why? Because if they do not, government shuts down. It stops serving the American people. It stops maintaining security and health and welfare of our people. So we know these bills have to pass.

But notwithstanding that, year after year after year, we come to this point where we are adopting a CR. It is really a CI, congressional irresponsibility.

Now let me say that I generally speak of the Congress, but very frankly, Madam Speaker, we have exercised our responsibility in this House. We passed 9 of the 12 appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate.

The Senate, Madam Speaker, has not sent a single bill to the House, not passed a single appropriations bill through the United States Senate. They have passed through some in committee.

I heard my friend Tom Cole speaking earlier on the rule. He is my friend, and he is a Member I respect. He is a member of the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee. He is a Member who respects this institution. But I disagree with him very much about why we are at a CR. We passed overwhelmingly 75 percent of the appropriation bills before August 1 and sent them to the Senate. They have neither acted on those bills nor have they acted on their own bills and asked to go to conference.

So we find ourselves at the 11th hour, as we did on September 30-- although we passed the CR a little before September 30--without having funded the government.

The gentleman referred to the fact that we control both Houses. Frankly, nobody controls the United States Senate. We are in the majority by one. But, unfortunately, in the United States Senate, you need not a majority; you need a supermajority. So the minority can defeat the majority.

The minority can defeat the majority in the United States Senate. That is an appalling place for our democracy to be. I have written an op-ed in Time magazine on that issue, and it has been distributed to many Members.

Mr. Cole made an assessment about why the CR is coming to the floor today with just hours to go before it expires. His assessment was not correct. The reason we have not gotten, as the gentlewoman has pointed out, to even the opportunity to discuss a resolution of the differences between the House and the Senate on spending levels and the objects of that spending is because Senate Republicans have refused to negotiate and made as a condition precedent--as we lawyers say, something that has to happen before you do something else--that we resolve all the riders.

Now, for any of us who have been involved in the appropriation process for any period of time, the riders are almost always the last items to be resolved, invariably. I served as an active member of the Appropriations Committee for 23 years, and for the last 16 years, I have been very much involved in working with the Appropriations Committee to get these bills passed.

Because of the refusal to even sit down and determine how much money we will spend overall, which is called in our jargon 302(a) numbers, the chairman has been unable to get to a discussion of the differences so that they could be resolved. If you can't discuss, you can't resolve.

So for Mr. Cole, frankly, to have intimated that somehow it was the Democrats that couldn't do it, it takes two to tango, and frankly, one of the partners in the Senate doesn't want to tango until something happens that almost always happens at the end.

The timing for the consideration of this CR resulted not from the majority's focus on passing critical legislation to help the American people get ahead, the Build Back Better Act, the infrastructure bill which, by the way, only 13 Republicans voted for, but my speculation is at least half of them are going to take credit for what was done in that bill, maybe all of them. It is as a result, this failure, of the minority's determination to slow down the work of Congress so that such legislation is delayed.

As a matter of fact, the minority leader of the United States Senate said exactly that. He said that he would not consider negotiating on the CR until Build Back Better was done, which means he is prepared to shut down the government. I think that is probably not true. I don't think he wants to shut down the government. I hope he doesn't want to shut down the government.

He wants to gum up the works on Build Back Better. I get that. He is opposed to it. He doesn't like it. He thinks it is the wrong priorities. That is an honest position to take. I think it is incorrect, but it is honest. But don't do it by playing games with the appropriation process.

In my view, the Senate treats the appropriation process as a back- burner issue. When we get to it, we will get to it, but we have a lot of other things we want to do first. For the last 10, 11 months, that is what the case has been.

To dissemble and derail the legislative process using every tool available to them to prohibit Congress from doing exactly what the American people are looking for us to do is not responsible. How sad. How shameful that reality is.

I agree that it is unfortunate that we have to take up another stopgap measure this week to keep this government operating. If it were based upon whether this is the right thing to do in terms of substance, I would vote ``no.'' But it absolutely is the right thing to do in terms of process.

But the chair is absolutely right; we need to pass an omnibus. I would hope that every Republican after, hopefully, passing this piece of legislation today

or tomorrow will then address how we are going to have an omnibus, how we are going to deal with the problems, how we are going to give the government agencies that which they need to meet new challenges that were not available to us a year ago and so they could not be addressed.

It is extremely disappointing that Senate Republicans are blocking progress toward full-year appropriations that will enable our government to serve the American people. I happen to believe that the ranking member, Senator Shelby, wants to see an omnibus passed. I believe that. But I believe the tactics of the Republican leadership in the Senate are not to do so until they get what they want.

That is dangerous for our country, and it is extraordinarily inefficient for the 2 million people who are waiting to see what we are doing. That is what they are focused on, not the job, not the priorities, not the dangers, but what is happening: Is the government going to fund us on Saturday? On Saturday, are we going to be able to operate?

There are few certainties in Washington, Madam Speaker, but one of them has now become that Congress will not complete the appropriation process by the start of the fiscal year. I have tried to make that happen every year that I have been majority leader. The chair of this committee, Rosa DeLauro, did everything she could to pass 12 appropriation bills by the August 1 deadline. If we had had any help on the Republican side, we would have done it--any help.

Now, we have only a four-vote margin over here, so on some of the bills that were more controversial for one reason or another, we needed some help. I will remind my friend--and I dearly thank him for yielding me the time. He knew it was going to be a somewhat extended discussion, but I thank him for that. It reflects back to how this institution used to operate, frankly, and I appreciate it. But he knows that when the Republican side was in the majority, and they could not get the majority of votes on fiscal issues, they looked to this side of the aisle. We always helped and made it happen; maybe not 100 percent of us, but a large enough amount so that the important fiscal issues would be dealt with and passed.

Only six times over the past 20 years has Congress come within 3 months of this deadline, the end of the fiscal year.

Now, I could go on for some period of time talking about Mr. Cole. He said the majority wasn't serious. We are very serious. We have been the ones that opened up government after it was shut down for some 35 days when we took over from the Republican leadership two Congresses ago. We can do better.

For Mr. Cole to say that we were spending time pandering to the American people by passing the Build Back Better Act or passing the bipartisan infrastructure act, I hope he reflects upon that statement and says, no, that was wrong. Yes, we focused on Build Back Better because we think it is important for the American people, but we had already passed the appropriation bills. They were already in the Senate ready to be acted upon, and we were ready to act in response.

Madam Speaker, this is the result of the inability of the Congress to work. The House worked. Republicans and Democrats, this House can work. Maybe sometimes I don't agree with what it does, and maybe sometimes my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't agree with what it does, but it works. It can pass legislation.

The Senate is not working, and it is hurting our country.

We should all resolve, however we vote on this CR, we should all resolve, hopefully, all of us--and I am a good friend of the ranking member, Ms. Granger. I think she wants to get this bill done. By ``this bill,'' I am talking about omnibus, all 12 appropriation bills. I think she wants to get that done. But I am not sure that she has been empowered by her leadership to do so.

We can have differences, and we have a way of resolving those differences. Ultimately, we vote. But if we keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, it undermines the credibility of the United States, the confidence that people have in our country, the confidence that our workers have in our stewardship of the leadership of this country, and the people's confidence. So we ought to resolve that we stop this.

The Republicans, through Mr. Cole, have talked about a motion to recommit. It mirrors the unserious nature of their opposition. Why do I say that? Because their motion to recommit has nothing to do with the funding of government. It has nothing to do with our responsibility to ensure that government continues to work on behalf of the American people. Rather, it would send this bill back to committee and would not possibly be able to act in a timely fashion that some 30 hours from now, I guess 31\1/2\ hours from now, government would shut down.

I would have understood perhaps a motion that would have said we are going to fund government at this level, or we are going to fund this objective and not that objective, but that is not what it did, totally irrelevant to the appropriations process bill. They may think it is an important issue. I get that. But it doesn't have anything to do with this issue.

Very frankly, that is exactly what the Senate has been doing on the Republican side, irrelevant issues, not the appropriations process. So we find ourselves now at a time when we must pass this CR.

I am not in love with this CR, but in a world of alternatives, there should be none for any of us. All of us should have the courage to be responsible. Madam Speaker, all of us should have the courage to say there is no alternative, and after we pass this bill and the Senate passes this bill, get down to the work between now and February 18.

I would hope we could pass an omnibus appropriation bill including the work of the gentleman from California, the gentlewoman from Connecticut, and all the rest of us on the priorities that we want to pursue as an American people and the investments that we want to make in achieving those objectives. I hope we do that.

Mr. President, I am proud to join with the majority leader and with my colleagues from Maine and Massachusetts to lead this effort to restore responsible methane emission standards at the EPA. We can take commonsense action right now to slow climate change and simultaneously reduce the incredible waste of a valuable energy resource.

Methane is the primary constituent in natural gas. It is an incredibly potent driver of the greenhouse effect. Over the short term, it is actually 86 times more powerful than CO2 emissions. It is estimated that about a quarter of all the human-caused global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution can be attributed to methane emissions.

In the United States, the lion's share of these human-caused methane emissions are from the production of oil and gas. That is due in part to outdated--oftentimes, even faulty--equipment and pipes that leak methane into the air, wellheads that leak methane.

Many oil and gas operators also engage in a practice known as flaring, where operators ignite and burn off excess gas, and, worse yet, venting, where uncombusted natural gas is simply released into the air.

Now, beyond the obvious consequences for climate change, these types of methane emissions waste incredibly valuable energy resources.

Fugitive methane also harms public health by polluting the air that we breathe. When methane leaks from oil and gas wells or pipelines or other infrastructure, harmful carcinogens--

carcinogens like benzene and other volatile organic compounds--also leak into the air alongside it. That means more children suffering from asthma attacks and more seniors having trouble breathing.

Methane pollution is real and present in many States, and it is a real problem in my State of New Mexico. We saw clear evidence of this over the Four Corners region in northwestern New Mexico--the San Juan Basin--and southwestern Colorado, when a giant cloud of methane, about the size of the State of Delaware, became so large by the mid-2000s that it could actually be seen by NASA satellite images.

This chart right here is a map from NASA of the western United States. You can see right here the cloud of methane over the Four Corners, which coincides exactly with the San Juan Basin, where much of our oil and gas has been produced over the course of the last several decades.

You can see from this map, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, how real and urgent the issue is. In recent years, researchers have detected increasing levels of dangerous methane pollution now over southeastern New Mexico, over the Permian Basin, where oil and gas operations have been booming for the last decade.

It is clear that this oil and gas producing region has joined the San Juan Basin as another major contributor to our methane emissions challenge.

Late last year, the EPA and the New Mexico Environment Department conducted helicopter flights over both the San Juan and Permian Basins. They used forward-looking infrared technology that can detect emissions from oil and gas operations that would normally be invisible to the naked eye.

I think if you could see methane, we would have solved many of these problems a long time ago.

For an example of what this technology can help us see at an individual oil and gas operation level, look at this side-by-side image from the group Earthworks. As you can see, this is what the human eye sees--simple oil and gas infrastructure, the number of tanks, some piping. But by using infrared imaging, you can see the enormous amount of methane simply being vented or leaking into the air. That entire plume is invisible to the naked eye, and, were it not so, I would, once again, suggest that we would have solved these problems a long time ago

The overflights that were conducted by the New Mexico Environment Department found that methane leak rates over New Mexico's Permian Basin in 2020 had increased by 250 percent over 2019 levels. It is simply unacceptable.

Nationally, the Environmental Defense Fund has found that while oil and gas production has not yet rebounded from a crash brought on by the pandemic last year, methane emissions are already soaring back to prepandemic levels.

That is completely unacceptable when companies have the knowledge, have the technology, have the workforce to fix these leaks and stop the wasteful practices of venting and flaring.

When we set clear rules and emission standards, most oil and gas operators are onboard with updating their equipment and their practices to minimize methane leaks and to bring that natural gas that they produce to market. That is their business plan, not wasting methane.

We saw this bear out in practice in New Mexico over these past 2 years, as our State's oil conservation commission convened conservation and public health advocates and local oil and gas producers to establish State-level methane emissions rules.

New Mexico's new rules govern not just oil and gas production sites but also things like pipelines and storage sites that also oftentimes leak methane into the atmosphere.

And under our new State rules, oil and gas operators have the flexibility to choose the best technologies to meet the target of capturing 98 percent of their natural gas by 2026.

A spokesperson for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association recently said that the group supports this goal and the newly finalized rules, which promote ``safe, responsible production of oil and gas.''

New Mexico has now joined other western States--States such as Colorado, North Dakota, and Wyoming--that have already adopted strong State-level methane emissions rules.

Until just recently, we also had strong Federal methane rules in place at the EPA. Now, unfortunately, these rules became one more target of the Trump administration's reckless rollbacks of protections of our clean air and clean water in this country. Late last year, President Trump dismantled an EPA rule that required oil and gas producers to monitor for methane leaks at their wells, at their compressor stations, and at their other operations.

This rule, or rollback of a rule, is simply a disaster for our climate and for public health. It was even rejected by much of the industry that it was purporting to help. Many leading American oil and gas producers and companies simply panned President Trump's rollback of these commonsense methane standards. As just one example, Gretchen Watkins, Shell's president in the United States, called the Trump administration's rollback ``frustrating and disappointing,'' and pledged to voluntarily continue reducing their methane emissions.

Why would they do that? Because it is the right thing to do, because it makes business sense, because the rollback was, frankly, nonsensical.

So repairing leaks and installing new leak detection technologies will also create a number of good-paying jobs. It is really the epitome of a win-win situation.

Without clear Federal rules in place at the EPA, however, industry- led voluntary emissions reductions simply won't go far enough to curb the problem that we have. We need clear standards that create clear requirements for reducing waste and harmful pollution.

And it is not just me saying this. Since we announced this effort to use the Congressional Review Act, more and more leading companies in the oil and gas sector have come forward to say that they would welcome reinstating the EPA's methane emissions standards.

That includes the EQT Corporation, one of the Nation's leading natural gas producers, which operates in West Virginia and Ohio and Pennsylvania. In a statement, EQT's president and CEO, Toby Rice, called the reinstating of uniform Federal methane standards ``sound federal policies'' and committed to ``producing our natural gas in accordance with high environmental and social standards.''

The major oil company Total USA says:

We welcome direct federal regulation of methane emissions

and support resolution via the Congressional Review Act.

Shell U.S. tweeted:

Sound policy surrounding natural gas is critical to its

role in the energy transition. We need to restore the direct

federal regulation of methane emissions--and we urge Congress

to approve the methane resolution under the Congressional

Review Act.

Not my words; Shell--one of the world's major producers of oil and gas.

These are the words of industry leaders who welcome us setting clear standards on methane emissions.

We are voting to reinstate the commonsense methane requirements for the oil and gas industry's production and processing segments and the methane and volatile organic compound requirements for oil and gas transmission and storage facilities.

With this vote, Congress will once again affirm that the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to take action to protect the air that Americans breathe from dangerous and harmful pollutants like methane, just like we did back in 2017 when the Senate came together on a bipartisan basis to uphold similar rules that govern oil and gas production on Federal Bureau of Land Management lands. In that vote, our former colleague Senator John McCain and our colleagues Senator Susan Collins and Senator Lindsey Graham joined with Senate Democrats in retaining the BLM's methane rule that promoted responsible development of natural gas resources on our public lands.

I would hope that all of us, and I mean all of us, sincerely--this is an effort that should receive the support of every single Senator in this body. I would hope that all of us can come together on a bipartisan basis once again to restore and strengthen responsible Federal methane standards for oil and gas operators. I am so pleased that

Senator Collins has already joined us as a cosponsor on this resolution.

Finally, I would like to point out that these rules are important not just to the health of oil and gas producing States like New Mexico or Wyoming or Colorado, because these rules will ensure the safety of not just oil and gas production sites but also of the gas pipelines and the storage sites that exist in every State in this country and in communities across this country.

These upstream segments of the oil and gas industry are in every single community you can imagine in all parts of the Nation. Just like we all know we need to remove poisonous lead from our drinking water pipes, we need to be sure that the natural gas lines that run into our homes and into our businesses are not leaking harmful methane pollution in the very spaces where we all breathe and live.

As we transition towards a 100-percent clean energy future, a future without pollution, we must do all that we can to mitigate the harmful pollution caused by our current use of fossil fuels, and that is exactly what these rules are designed to do.

As President Biden demonstrated just last week when he convened leaders from around the globe, Americans are ready for us to move past former President Trump's backward and reckless vision on climate. Restoring and strengthening methane standards at the EPA will be one of the most powerful steps we can all take here in this Senate today to confront the existential threat posed by greenhouse pollution and a warming planet, and it will make the air over all of our communities cleaner and healthier and easier to breathe.

For all of these reasons, I would encourage once again not just a few of my colleagues but all of our colleagues to join us in voting for this bipartisan resolution to restore some commonsense and some responsible Federal standards for the waste and leakage of methane.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the House majority whip the schedule for next week.

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to yield to my friend from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), the majority whip of the House.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for walking us through those. Of course, I would first like to, as we note that the majority leader is not here, wish Mr. Hoyer a speedy recovery. I got to speak with him yesterday, and he is doing better and appreciates the prayers and thoughts from our colleagues.

And I told him: You don't have to rush back. You want to make sure you get better before you come back.

And I know from experience to take the time and get better. And I offered, by the way, use of my physical therapist, and maybe he and I will do some joint physical therapy when he returns. But he was in good spirits and is looking forward to coming back. I know the gentleman from South Carolina shares that as well.

MR. CLYBURN. Absolutely.

I am sure the gentleman from Maryland is watching right now as he is recovering, but I said, we are used to sparring and having some fun conversations back and forth through the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus, but we also look forward to seeing him back in the middle of this fray soon, too.

If I may, I did want to ask. There were a couple of bills that deal with the origin of the coronavirus, and I know we have been having those conversations about trying to get a deeper investigation into the origin of the coronavirus. But the Senate had passed over a few weeks ago a bill, S. 1867, that came out of the Senate unanimously back in May, which requires the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information that relates to the origin of COVID-19.

I am not sure if this is a bill that you all were looking at bringing up, but we wanted to just ask if we could have S. 1867 brought to the House floor. It was a bill that passed unanimously out of the Senate, which does indicate that there was strong interest on both sides to get that information declassified so we can get more information about the origin of COVID for all of our Members to be able to see, not just those Members that have access to that information.

I am not sure, again, if the gentleman was looking at that, but if that is something you all could look at, I think it would be well received by both sides, and then would help us quickly get that information available for all to see.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

There is an old adage: ``Why put off tomorrow what you can do today?''

There is unanimous support for S. 1867 to not wait until August. And, in fact, it was May when Senators--all Republicans and all Democrat Senators--recognized that this is something we should do and we should do now, and this would get more information out to the public, as well as to our Members.

I would also ask if the majority would look at H. Res. 90, which is a resolution that supports the international investigation into the origin of COVID-19.

There are many countries. We have heard a lot of European countries have expressed interest in having an international commission to look into this. I don't know why the United States would be reluctant to be a part of that investigation.

But, again, in light of all of the new information that has come out, some emails recently since our committee has met, show more and more that there is a high likelihood that COVID-19 started in the Wuhan lab. Whether it was intentional or not, there is strong evidence pointing to the fact that it likely started there.

We have not had a single hearing, not any of the standing committees, and here we have a committee that, by its name, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus was established for the purpose of investigating COVID-19, all elements of it, not just what is happening here in America.

We just recognized over 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 on the steps of the Capitol just a few days ago. So, clearly, it has hit our country hard, but it has hit the whole world hard. Millions of people have died. And now there is real evidence that has come out, including from some of our own scientists here in America, that they may have been aware over a year ago that COVID-19 originated in the lab as opposed to what the original projections were that it was a bat-to-human transmission. Now there is a lot of evidence pointing to the opposite of that.

In fact, many of us were calling for that investigation over a year ago, and some were called conspiracy theorists, yet now the hard scientific data shows that it may have been, in fact, started in that lab.

Why are we not having those hearings now in our committee, other committees, again, not months from now?

But if China knew of this, there may not be scientists that we can get access to, but we have American scientists who were in communication with those scientists. Whether it is directly or indirectly, there may have been taxpayer funds that were involved in that. We should be trying to find that out now. And China may be trying to cover some of that up.

The quicker we can get those hearings and those investigations, the more we can find out while it is still possible to find it out. I think it would help a lot of us to understand what really happened, what went wrong.

Because if it was started in that lab, this would be a disaster dramatically greater than Chernobyl in terms of devastation to the world, loss of human life. We should all want to be finding

out. There were a lot of investigations into Chernobyl. This is dramatically worse than Chernobyl. And if it was self-made, that is something we should be investigating now. I am not sure why there is a reluctance to do it.

But I would ask the gentleman, if I could just reiterate, I know we sent a letter--over 200 of our colleagues signed on--asking that we investigate it, all the committees of jurisdiction, including ours.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, we will continue to press for that investigation.

And, you know, I am from New Orleans, and I know what it is like to have cooks in the kitchen, but I also know how important it is to have a lot of eyes looking at the same thing. And the more eyes looking into something where there is mystery, where there is uncertainty, where there is speculation, I think the more people looking at this, the better.

Again, our committee is uniquely set up. There are other committees that are set up to look at different aspects of it. We should all be looking at it because the more questions we ask--it seems like right now more questions are raised. We need to get answers to those questions, and we get those answers by having that oversight hearing. We don't want some kind of Soviet-style coverup. We want to be looking at those questions and having people brought in.

There are American scientists, some people who work for this United States Government, who could help us answer those questions, and they haven't been brought forward. We can compel them to come forward, especially in light of these emails that have come out recently, which show that some of those scientists were aware over a year ago that it may have started in the lab.

That was not shared with us in previous hearings. I think a lot of our Members on both sides would like to find that information out as much as we can. And the more we are asking questions, the more I think we will get answers that everybody in the country and around the world wants to know. So, we will continue to press for that.

I also want to ask about the appropriations process. I understand the Committee on Appropriations is starting to do some work to start bringing up the bills in committee so that we can, hopefully, have an appropriations process move forward. We would be strongly encouraging a bipartisan appropriations process but also an open appropriations process.

So, as we look to the floor schedule, we are hearing that maybe in July some of these bills would come to the floor. As the gentleman knows, when we bring appropriations bills to the floor, whether it is a fully open process or even a modified process, you typically have well over 100 amendments that come to the floor on these appropriations bills.

Does the gentleman anticipate that we would start, around July, seeing some of those bills come to the floor? And will we have that ability on the floor to have those kinds of amendments brought forward in a process that we have seen in the past?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and we look forward to that robust process through both committee and, ultimately, on the floor.

The last point, I wanted to ask about deals with infrastructure. We are seeing a lot of different groups both in the House and Senate that are working on various infrastructure plans. I know we had Members on our side, Ranking Member Graves and others, who rolled out a plan recently that covers traditional infrastructure, which would be roads and bridges--even broadband, waterways--paid for along the way, not with tax increases but with responsible budgeting.

I wanted to ask because we are hearing different reports on what may or may not come to the House floor. Budget reconciliation, possibly, and tax increases, unfortunately, are still being floated out there, which is different from what we are hearing right now with the bipartisan Senate plan.

Can the gentleman shed light on what is anticipated on the floor, whether it would be a budget reconciliation bill in the weeks or months ahead or maybe a bipartisan plan, which we would surely encourage, laying out some ideas of infrastructure that would be bipartisan that we would support?

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman could answer that, I would be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Hopefully, we can have that debate and work together to achieve that vision for the future as we are dealing with the problems of today and our infrastructure needs for today, but also do it in a fiscally responsible way. I think that is what the two sides, especially in the Senate, are looking at.

I still haven't gotten an indication, specifically, as it deals with some kind of reconciliation bill that may or may not come to the floor. Hopefully, it is not some attempt to raise taxes and do things that would undermine our economy, our competitiveness, and our ability to create more opportunities for people to achieve the American Dream by entering into the workforce and ultimately moving their way up and having their own opportunities as well, which would be undermined with higher taxes.

If that part of the equation gets brought in, clearly, that changes the dynamic. But, hopefully, we stick to the traditional infrastructure needs that you and I would both agree need to be met. Hopefully, we can find a path to get there together. That is what we will be working toward in the week ahead.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman has nothing else, I am prepared to yield back.

Hopefully, we can keep that difference in mind.

I appreciate the gentleman filling in, and we will see the gentleman from Maryland back soon enough and maybe even moving a little faster than before. I am not going to challenge him to a race because he would defeat me in that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from South Carolina, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of S.J. Res. 14, which we will vote on later today. I want to thank Senator Heinrich, Senator Markey, and Senator King for their leadership on this resolution. And I might be mistaken here, but I understand that when the Presiding Officer was Governor of Colorado, the Presiding Officer might have set the precedent for the creation of this point of view that is expressed in the resolution before us. So the Navy salutes Colorado.

The American people rely on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ensure that our Nation has clean air, clean water, a clean environment, and a safe climate. Unfortunately, in 2020, under the previous administration, the EPA strayed from its mission any number of times.

One of those missteps was that Agency's methane rescission rule, which deregulated methane emissions from the oil and gas industry--our Nation's largest industrial source of this dangerous greenhouse gas. By passing this resolution, Congress, today, will reject and nullify this dangerous rule and restore clean air and climate protections from our Nation's largest sources of methane pollution.

Let me explain what methane is and why it is so harmful to our climate and to our health.

Methane is a super pollutant that damages our lungs and our planet. Compared to carbon dioxide, methane is a small part of our overall greenhouse gas emissions. Having said that, though, scientists tell us that methane is responsible for roughly--get this--one-quarter of the manmade global warming that we are witnessing today. Let me say that again: Methane is responsible for roughly one-quarter of the manmade global warming that we are experiencing and witnessing today.

Over a 20-year period, methane is 84 times more harmful to our climate than carbon dioxide--84 times. For a small molecule, methane punches above its weight when it comes to its contributions to climate change.

The oil and gas industry is our Nation's largest source of methane, responsible for nearly 30 percent of total methane emissions. For comparison, this amount of methane pollution has the same climate effect as the emissions from our Nation's entire fleet of passenger vehicles in a year.

In addition to damaging our climate, methane emissions also contribute to ground-level ozone, known as smog. Breathing in smog harms our lungs, and it aggravates lung diseases like bronchitis and asthma. Exposure to smog has been linked to premature death, and children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to these health risks. If we want to meaningfully tackle the danger to our health and our climate, we need to reduce methane emissions from the entire oil and gas sector.

In 2016, as I was alluding to earlier, the EPA acted to do just that. Building on State actions, such as in Colorado, whose former chief executive is presiding at this moment, the EPA put into place commonsense Clean Air Act regulations that required the oil and gas industry to update its equipment. The rule also required the industry to inspect frequently in order to find and repair leaks and malfunctions that are such a big source of our methane problem.

Based on feedback from the oil and gas industry meeting, these new emission requirements did not place an undue burden on companies or raise costs for consumers. In fact, many oil and gas companies and industry groups supported the measures, and they still do. That is why it was so surprising when, in September of 2020, the EPA issued the final methane rescission rule to roll back what so many believed to be commonsense approaches for reducing methane risks.

While the Trump administration moved forward with this damaging policy, the consequences of climate change were roiling--roiling--our Nation. California, for example, experienced its worst wildfire season on record, with historic forest fires covering an area about the size of the State of Rhode Island. Other Western States--including Oregon, Montana, and Colorado--were ablaze with unprecedented damaging wildfires.

At the same time, other parts of our country were being battered by violent, extreme weather. The people of Iowa experienced one of the most costly thunderstorms in history, with hurricane force winds, causing $7.5 billion in economic damage. It flattened, I am told, over half of that State's corn and soybean crops in one day.

Coastal towns in Southern States like Florida, like Louisiana, and like South Carolina were battered by hurricane after hurricane after hurricane. In the summer of 2020, last summer, we saw the most hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean in recorded history.

Despite all of this, the Trump administration took a step to undo one of the key tools available to us to combat methane emissions that contribute greatly to climate change. The methane rescission rule was a stark departure from the widely accepted, science-based, and commonsense view that we should protect people and our planet from the dangers of methane.

In promulgating the methane rescission rule, the Trump administration ignored the global scientific community, including EPA's own Agency scientists, who warned that the extreme weather events of 2020 were just the tip of the iceberg of consequences we can expect if we don't keep global warming below an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius between now and 2040.

The bottom line is that the Trump methane rescission rule would allow more methane pollution, increase public health dangers, and bring us ever closer to the brink of irreversible climate catastrophe. It is this Trump EPA action that my colleagues and I reject today through the resolution before us.

The methane rescission rule stated that methane couldn't be regulated under the Clean Air Act. We reject that. The methane rescission rule stated that EPA couldn't regulate the entire oil and gas sector from wellhead to storage. We reject that. The methane rescission rule stated that greenhouse gasses couldn't be regulated. We reject that. The methane rescission rule also reversed EPA's longstanding position on what is required to regulate a pollutant, making it harder for EPA to implement clean air and climate protections. We reject that as well.

With approval of this resolution, though, EPA can and should still move forward to strengthen methane standards for the oil and gas sector in the future. This effort is also very timely, coming on the heels of President

Biden's climate commitment for our Nation to reduce emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by the end of this decade--by 2030.

Passing this resolution will be good for our health. Passing this resolution will be good for our planet. And passing this resolution will be good for America's economy. That is why so many States, so many environmental groups, and even a number of significant oil and gas companies support this resolution.

Joining over 60 environmental groups, as well as 20 State attorneys general, seven major oil and gas companies support today's resolution to reinstate requirements to control methane emissions. From the Environmental Defense Fund to Shell, from the League of Conservation Voters to BP, from the Natural Resources Defense Council to Equinor, there is a broad consensus among stakeholders with different interests--different interests--that Congress should reject and nullify the methane rescission rule.

So why do a number of oil and gas companies want Congress to reject the Trump rule, restore existing regulations, and pursue further regulations? They know the best way to boost growth in their sector and across the economy is to keep methane and other climate pollution in check. With unchecked methane releases in its operations, natural gas production and use become part of the climate problem, not a part of the solution as we endeavor to drive toward lower carbon fuels.

Companies know where the global market is heading. They know regulations will support innovation and technology deployment in their industry, bringing down emission reduction costs for everyone.

I sometimes like to quote Albert Einstein, who said, among other things: ``In adversity lies opportunity.'' Think about that: ``In adversity lies opportunity.'' We can see that in the issue of methane pollution and in climate change. It presents plenty of challenges. Yes, that is true. But it also presents a remarkable opportunity. It is an opportunity for us to protect our planet, improve the air that we breathe, and strengthen our economy.

At the same time, the product that the oil and gas industry is capturing can be sold to fuel more homes and businesses across the country. I want to say that again, too. At the same time, the product that the oil and gas industry is capturing can be sold to fuel more homes and businesses across the country. That is why today I will gladly vote for this resolution, which reaffirms that the Clean Air Act requires EPA to take action to protect Americans from dangerous pollution like methane.

In passing this resolution today, Congress is rejecting the Trump rule's baseless interpretation of the Clean Air Act and, in its place, reinstating commonsense methane public health and climate protections across the entire oil and gas sector. We are also clearing a path for additional protections from methane and other hazardous climate pollutants.

As a Senate, we are making our intent clear: The Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority and the mandate to establish methane emissions standards, even stronger than the ones we reinstate with this resolution. This includes all facets of the oil and gas industry now and moving forward, from production to processing and from transmission to storage.

We are saying to EPA loud and clear: It is your mission to protect the environment, to protect human health and public welfare from the dangers of climate pollutants like methane. And there is a lot of work still to do before that mission can be achieved. It is time that we get to that work. We don't have a lot of time to waste.

I have a couple of unanimous consent requests I would like to offer. One is to place supportive materials into the Record. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the Record several of my materials in support of S.J. Res. 14 that is before us today; first, the Biden administration's Statement of Administration Policy supporting passage of the resolution; second, two letters of support for passing this joint resolution--one from the 57 leading environmental and advocacy groups and another, the Shell Oil Company.

These letters demonstrate the breadth of support for regulating this harmful pollutant and rejecting the methane rescission rule.

I ask unanimous consent for these to be inserted into the Record as appropriate

Now, Mr. President, I will yield the floor, but before I do, I want to salute you for your role in an earlier day, in an earlier place, your State of Colorado, for helping get this started. We are in your debt. Good work. God bless.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 486, I call up the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 14) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to ``Oil and Natural Gas Sector: Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources Review'', and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S.J. Res. 14.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today, we are here to consider S.J. Res. 14, a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the Environmental Protection Agency's 2020 methane rescission rule. This Trump EPA action removed direct Federal limits on methane pollution from new and modified oil and gas facilities, essentially increasing pollution and exacerbating the climate crisis.

While we are voting on the Senate version of this joint resolution today, I want to thank my colleagues, Representatives DeGette, Peters, and Lamb, for leading this effort in the House. The House version of this resolution advanced out of the Energy and Commerce Committee earlier this month.

Mr. Speaker, methane is a potent climate-disrupting greenhouse gas that is responsible for approximately one-third of our warming and resulting climate disruption. Addressing methane is an urgent and essential step to mitigate climate change.

The greatest and most cost-effective way to curb methane pollution over the next decade is through the fossil fuel sector, which is the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has a responsibility and obligation to protect public health and welfare from dangerous climate pollution like methane. But because of the Trump rescission rule, there are now no clean air protections in place to curb dangerous methane pollution from the oil and gas sector.

What is more, the Trump rule created massive regulatory loopholes that shield the vast majority of climate pollution produced by the oil and gas industry from critical Federal standards for years to come.

The Trump action was a thinly veiled attempt to block regulation of the worst oil and gas industry actors at the expense of our health, our safety, and our planet; and it came at a time when we need these protections more than ever.

Mr. Speaker, without bold action to curb emissions from the hundreds of thousands of sources in the oil and gas sector, methane pollution will continue to cause significant harm to public health, threaten the stability of our economy, and compromise the well-being of future generations and the planet.

That is why this joint resolution disapproving of the rescission rule and reinstating the 2016 Obama-era methane standards is so important.

Ambitiously addressing methane can yield tremendous climate, public health, and financial benefits across the country. It is why we see an outpouring of support from business and consumer groups, State and Tribal officials, local government officials, outdoor recreation and tourism leaders, environmental and conservation groups, and health and faith leaders. We even have significant support from within the oil and gas industry itself.

So, today, we are using the Congressional Review Act to soundly reject and nullify one of the most egregious environmental rollbacks of the Trump administration.

With today's vote, Congress stops the significant retreat we witnessed during the previous administration in the fight against climate change, and we reinstate an essential tool for addressing the harm a warming world means for our communities, our health, our economy, and the planet.

With today's vote, Congress restores the robust Clean Air Act pollution standards established in 2012 and 2016, while clearing a path for stronger protections in the future.

With today's vote, Mr. Speaker, Congress recognizes the danger methane poses, as well as the economic opportunity and certainty created with commonsense and cost-effective limits on this pollution.

Since the Senate already passed S.J. Res. 14 with a bipartisan vote of 52-42, it is now up to the House to do the same so we can send this resolution to the President's desk.

For the sake of our communities, our families, our country, and our future, I strongly urge all Members to join me in supporting this joint resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), your neighbor and the prime sponsor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Peters), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and a strong environmentalist.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Lamb), one of the chief sponsors of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes now to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), who also represents one of my favorite places, Santa Fe.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Peters).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez).

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire as to how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if the gentleman is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it is quickly becoming clear that the greatest potential to curb methane, and thus climate change, in the next decade is in the fossil fuel sector.

The U.N. Environment Program and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition published the ``Global Methane Assessment'' just last month, and they found that fast and ambitious methane mitigation is one of the best strategies available today to deliver immediate and long-lasting benefits for climate, agriculture, human, and ecosystem health.

They also found that rapid and dramatic methane pollution cuts could both slow global warming and prevent a quarter-million deaths every year.

Also, reduction measures used to curb methane from the oil and gas sector would also cost the least or, in some cases, even have negative costs, as captured methane can be resold for revenue in the oil and gas sector.

These relatively inexpensive methane reduction methods are possible with currently available technology, like fixing leaks in gas pipelines and stopping venting in gas drilling.

These findings support what many already know to be true, that ambitiously addressing methane pollution can yield tremendous climate, public health, and financial--and I stress ``and financial''--benefits across the economy. This is why we see most of the oil and gas companies supporting this resolution.

Disapproving a rule that would lead to an increase in methane pollution, and reinstating the 2016 rule's commonsense and cost- effective safeguards, should be an easy ``yes'' vote. For that reason, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to oppose S.J. Res. 14, the Methane rule Congressional Review Act repeal. The Democrat majority and the Administration are not passing this legislation for climate change, they are passing it to support big oil and foreign petrol dictators.

We are in a weird place in this Nation when the action of hurting American energy development in favor of foreign development is celebrated by the majority, but that is where we are today. While my Majority colleagues are celebrating this as a massive win, the reality is the only people winning from this action are people who don't need wins, and the losers are the American people.

By repealing this common sense balanced rule, this Congress will now put the agencies in a place with fewer tools, fewer options, and on a path for a rule which will directly harm most of our nation's oil and gas producers, while leaving the world's worst actors free to continue polluting the globe. America's oil industry isn't made up of supermajor oil players, much of America's oil comes from small and mid-sized producers. The rules proposed by the Obama Administration would have decimated that sector of the oil and gas industry with burdensome costs and massive paperwork requirements, all for a fractional impact on methane emissions. The rule drafted by the Trump Administration recognized this and would have protected all industry while at the same time working to lower our national methane emissions. However, as a result of this action today the Democrat Majority is deciding that they want to side against small businesses and join the side of Big Oil pushing costly, burdensome, and ineffective methane regulations on all American producers. The result will be an oil and gas industry dominated by bigger and bigger oil companies using their size and buying ability to squeeze out small producers.

But Big Oil isn't the only winner Democrats are picking today. Foreign petrol dictators are winners as well. Not a single foreign producer is obligated to meet our methane rules for their production. So while the result of this bill will be to squeeze small oil and gas producers in Bakersfield and Kern, California, the foreign, Russian and Saudi imports that make up a majority of the California oil consumption will be untouched. There isn't a single Aramco, Saudi, oil well in the world that will comply with the methane rule that will be produced as a result of this action today. But there will be millions and billions of barrels of Saudi oil consumed in California over the next decades.

Again, don't let the majority fool you today, this action isn't about reducing methane emissions or impacting climate change, this action is about Big Government supporting Big Oil and giving foreign petrol dictatorships an advantage over American producers. That is why I am voting no on this bill and urge all my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, along with Mr. Peters and Mr. Lamb, I am very proud to stand as the sponsor of the House companion of S.J. Res. 14, and I rise in strong support of the legislation.

The purpose of the legislation is very simple. It is to reduce our methane emissions and to help stave off the worst effects of the climate crisis before it is too late.

Methane, as we all know, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases on the planet, and when it is released into our atmosphere, it becomes a leading contributor to global warming.

Climate experts agree that one of the most important things we can do right now to combat the climate crisis is to reduce the amount of methane in our atmosphere, and that is exactly what this legislation does.

It restores the 2016 methane emission rules that were put into place during the Obama administration, and it negates the Trump administration's last-minute attempt to roll back these rules on its way out the door.

One-third of all of the methane that is released in this country comes from the production of oil and gas.

This legislation will, once again, require our oil and gas producers to take the steps needed to reduce the methane emitting from their drilling sites.

These emissions don't just harm our planet. When methane is released from oil and gas sites, it is often accompanied by other pollutants that are known to cause additional harm to people's health.

That is why this legislation is so important, and that is why the Trump administration's egregious attempt to eliminate these important rules and let oil and gas companies release more methane from their drilling sites was met with such outrage and fury by citizens across this country.

And you know something?

And not just from the citizens, but from the biggest oil and gas companies in the country, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and more, and also from smaller producers around the country. These are the companies that stand to benefit most from the rollback of the methane rules, and even these are against it.

So when I hear the ranking member talking about how we are going to be on the backs of oil and gas companies, the very companies she is talking about support this legislation today.

I just want to read a few of the names of the companies, large and small, that support the rollback of the Trump administration's methane rule and the reinstatement of the Obama-era rule:

BP America; Shell U.S.; Equinor North America; Total USA; ExxonMobil; Jonah Energy; Pioneer Natural Resources; EQT Corporation; Interstate Natural Gas Association of America; Cheniere; DTE Energy; Equitrans Midstream Corporation; Occidental Petroleum; Devon Energy; Edison Electric Institute, which is a consortium of groups; Center for Liquefied Natural Gas; Austin Energy;

Calpine Corporation; Pacific Gas and Electric Company; Tenaska, Inc.; and others have all submitted comments, and the comments they have submitted are in support of S.J. Res. 14 and the rollback of the Trump administration's egregious rule.

So when my colleagues on the other side say this is going to hurt oil and gas, the very companies they are talking about support this because the Trump administration's rule was so extreme and egregious.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a summary of the quotes in support of this legislation from these companies, a letter from BP, a letter from Occidental, and a letter from Equinor.

Energy Companies Support Federal Methane Regulations

Many oil and gas companies publicly support direct federal

regulation of methane because methane pollution hurts public

health, the planet, and the industry itself. These companies

also support restoring the common-sense requirements to

control methane pollution that were eliminated and undermined

at the end of 2020.

Methane regulations work to reduce methane emissions and

waste from oil and gas operations. To meet the requirements,

companies use cost-effective tools and off-the-shelf

technologies to find and plug methane leaks and reduce

venting and flaring. But the previous administration revoked

all federal air pollution limits for oil and gas transmission

and storage facilities and created legal confusion that

undermines further progress in cutting methane pollution.

Here's what industry is saying about closing these loopholes

and directly regulating methane:

BP America: ``Direct federal regulation of methane is key

to preventing leaks throughout industry and protecting the

environment--and gets us closer to #netzero. That's why we

support the Congressional Review Act methane resolution.''

Shell US: ``Sound policy surrounding natural gas is

critical to its role in the energy transition. We need to

restore the direct federal regulation of #methane emissions--

and we urge Congress to approve the methane resolution under

the Congressional Review Act.''

Equinor North America: ``Ensuring that natural gas

continues to provide climate benefits means reducing

emissions from its production. We support the methane

resolution under the Congressional Review Act. Direct federal

methane regulation is an important step on the pathway to net

zero.''

Total USA: ``Curbing methane emissions with bold policies

is imperative to get to #NetZero2050. We welcome direct

federal regulation of #methane emissions and support

resolution via the Congressional Review Act #cutmethane.''

ExxonMobil: ``Last year we [ExxonMobil] announced our

support for the direct regulation of methane emissions for

new and existing oil and gas facilities. That hasn't

changed.''

Jonah Energy: ``Jonah Energy believes in common sense

federal regulation of methane emissions to reduce impacts and

achieve climate goals. We support Congressional Review Act

measure S.J. Res. 14 (https:/lnkd.in/ebHbACW) that will

reverse prior rulemaking and allow reasonable federal

oversight of methane. In fact, we opposed the rollback by the

last administration. Achieving climate goals is important in

our backyard, and across the nation. Reasonable federal

regulations of methane emissions provide consistency and

certainty covering all sectors of natural gas development and

promote public confidence our national energy sources.

Pioneer Natural Resources: Pioneer has long supported

federal regulation of methane if those regulations encourage

innovation and operational flexibility. Clear rules would

provide certainty for operators and strong environmental

benefits. We support use of the CRA to reinstate regulation

of methane''

EQT Corporation: EQT Corporation supports congressional

resolutions that would reinstate a rule imposing a federal

standard on methane. Company believes the ``responsible

development of natural gas will help meet future global

energy demand as we address climate change together''.

Interstate Natural Gas Association of America:- ``We

support federal methane standards . . . our members have a

long history of minimizing methane emissions from their

operation. A stable regulatory framework will allow the

industry to invest in the critical infrastructure necessary

to reduce emissions and meet increasing demand for cleaner

and more affordable energy.

Cheniere: To maximize the climate benefits of natural gas,

we recognize the imperative to minimize #methane emissions

across the natural gas value chain. We support effective

policies and regulations that reduce methane emissions,

including the current Congressional Review Act effort to

restore federal regulation of methane emissions. Cheniere

will continue to collaborate with industry, academia and the

scientific community to deliver cost-effective solutions that

reduce methane emissions from the natural gas sector. We also

will continue to push for increased transparency regarding

methane emissions reporting and data, as well as efforts that

create a level playing field with all operators domestically

and internationally.

DTE Energy: Strong, sensible methane regulations at the

federal and state level give our industry the foundation on

which to go even further through these voluntary initiatives.

Providing a proper regulatory framework ensures industry's

ability to continue to make important progress reducing

methane emissions. [Public Comment 11/25/2019]

Equitrans Midstream Corporation: ``We must continue to push

our industry forward in a meaningful way in order to

effectuate real mitigation of climate change impacts, and we

support approval of the methane resolution under the

Congressional Review Act,'' said Diana Charletta, president

and chief operating officer of Equitrans Midstream.

Occidental Petroleum: ``We support the direct regulation of

methane . . . because it is very potent and we need to have

regulations in place to ensure that we have adequate controls

throughout the industry.''

Devon Energy: We believe a meaningful reduction in methane

emissions is essential to managing the risks of climate

change. While the Congressional Review Act is an

extraordinary legislative tool that should be used

judiciously and with caution, we support the ongoing effort

in Congress to chart a path toward a durable framework for

regulating methane at the federal level that encourages

innovation and operational flexibility.

Edison Electric Institute: EEi supports Congress using the

Congressional Review Act to enable EPA to develop strong and

cost-effective federal regulations on methane emissions

throughout the natural gas supply chain for new and existing

sources.

Center for Liquified Natural Gas: The Center for Liquefied

Natural Gas (CLNG) and its members support the proposed

resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act

(CRA) and the reinstatement of regulations of methane

emissions from the natural gas sector.

Austin Energy, Calpine Corporation, Pacific Gas and

Electric Company, Tenaska Inc, and Others (Joint Comments):

``EPA should continue to directly regulate methane from new

sources in the oil and natural gas source category . . . the

importance of controlling these emissions is clear when

considering that the oil and natural gas source category is

the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the

US, contributing 31 percent of US methane emissions in 2017,

according to EPA's Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions

and Sinks: 1990-2017 (published in 2019).''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here to speak on the upcoming methane Congressional Review Act matter and speak in support of overturning the Trump misrule regarding the problem of methane emissions.

Let's just start by setting the stage that about one-quarter of the global warming that we have experienced has been due to methane and about one-third of that is due to the activities of the oil and gas industry. So this is a very significant part of our climate problem--I should say our climate and oceans problem--and we don't actually know how bad it is.

The Environmental Defense Fund has recently estimated that methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations could be as much as 60 percent higher than previous estimates. So it is a significant part of the problem.

One of the reasons we don't know how bad the problem is, is because of the way the oil and gas industry has behaved about reporting its methane problem. Now, just to understand, what the natural gas industry would like to tell you is that natural gas is a far cleaner fuel, far safer from a climate perspective, than coal or than oil--bunker oil or whatever else you want to burn. And it is true that once natural gas has been burned at the burner tip, it is less harmful. But what the natural gas industry wants you to forget is everything between the well and the burner tip because through that enormous web of piping occurs so much leakage that satellites flying overhead can pick up the pools of methane floating in our atmosphere from the leakage. The natural gas industry doesn't want to talk about that.

One of the things that they did is they got the Trump administration to, early on, withdraw EPA's request that in the previous administration the industries more or less agreed to that would have required oil and gas companies to report on their methane emissions. When the fossil fuel apparatchiks occupied in the Trump

administration the offices at EPA, Energy, and Interior, and other places important to the industry, they did what the industry wanted, and the very first thing, March 2, 2017, was to withdraw the request that would have had oil and gas companies report how bad their methane leakage actually was.

It didn't take long to follow that up on March 28, with an Executive order from Trump directing EPA to suspend or rescind existing methane regulations for the oil and gas industry.

But that wasn't enough for the oil and gas industry. On April 19, they got EPA to postpone implementation of a rule that would have required them to equip new wells with equipment to prevent methane leaks. You wouldn't think that would be asking too much, particularly from an industry that wants to tell everybody that it is better for the climate and the environment than the rest of the fossil fuel industry. But no, they asked EPA to undo that requirement so they could more readily leak methane from new wells.

Even that wasn't enough. In May of 2017, they got the Department of the Interior to suspend a rule that would have required oil and gas companies to curb the flaring of methane from their oil and gas wells on public lands.

And then again, September 11, 2018, they got EPA to propose a rule to weaken the methane leak detection and repair requirements for their new wells--weaken the detection and repair requirements for methane leakage from their own wells.

Then they proposed a second rule to eliminate EPA's regulatory authority over methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. That is getting a little bit out there because methane is a greenhouse gas regulable as a pollutant by the EPA, and it also has a whole lot of unfortunate characteristics for people who have to breathe it in entirely apart from the climate harm and damage it does. But that is what the oil and gas industry wanted the EPA to do, to eliminate its regulatory authority over methane emissions.

Then, more recently, on August 13, 2020, they got EPA to promulgate a rule to eliminate that rule--to eliminate that regulatory authority over methane emissions from oil and gas facilities.

This is dirty conduct by an industry, to take advantage of its ability to plant industry operatives in positions of public responsibility in order to leak more methane, put less equipment in place to protect against methane leakage, and reduce its requirements even to report on the methane leakage that is going on. That is not responsible corporate conduct. These rules are a disgrace. The CRA should pass, and we should get on to taking on this problem of methane.

I will close by pointing out that I have a bill that would do quite a lot to solve this problem. One of the problems in this whole enterprise of pollution is that, when it is free to pollute, people will pollute. If corporations view themselves as having only an obligation to their shareholders and only an obligation to their shareholders that is denominated in dollars, why would they ever spend any money at all to protect against pollution, unless they were required to or unless it had a cost?

We know it actually has a cost. People suffer from pollution; that is a cost. Our oceans are acidifying because of carbon dioxide pollution; that is a cost. People lose their homes in wildfires that didn't used to happen; that is a cost. My State has to plan to lose its current map to sea level rise and to lose precious shorefront land; that is a cost. These are real costs. The industry just doesn't want to pay them. They want a free ride on everybody else's suffering, and one way to solve that is to put a price on the pollution.

And, by the way, this is not a liberal, Democratic environmental agenda. This is economics 101. Milton Friedman, for Pete's sake, said that if you want to have an economic system that works, you have to put what he called ``negative externalities,'' the bad things that happen that hurt other people. You have to put the cost of that into the product. Otherwise, you don't have a market system. You have a subsidy system. You are picking winners and losers.

As much as my colleagues on the other side like to say that they don't like subsidies and they don't want to see government picking winners and losers, when it is the fossil fuel industry that gets subsidized, when it is the fossil fuel industry that is the winner, they can't line up fast enough to subsidize and pick winners and losers.

So we are going to have to work pretty hard to solve this problem because we have some real hazards in front of us. What my bill would do is to measure the thing that they didn't want to do--measure methane emissions from oil and gas production. As I said, new developments in satellite technology means that we don't have to depend on them any longer. We can actually do a lot of this measuring. We can check their measuring. We can, to use Reagan's phrase, ``trust but verify'' what they are reporting with a whole lot of other data that we can pull together.

So get the data. How much are they leaking? Figure it out basin by basin because that is where it really happens. It happens in these pools that emerge from the basins from all of the leakage. And then put a price on it.

It is not hard to do. There is a social cost of carbon that President Obama proposed. President Biden has put it back in at the previous level, while they get to work on figuring out what updates there should be to it. We have a social cost of carbon. You can quantify the methane harm and compare it to the carbon harm. You can make an equivalency between those two and you can determine what the social cost of methane leakage should be. It is really not all that complicated.

We would start it in 2023, so that the industry, which has been so reprehensible in its leakage, in its influence over EPA, and in its influence in the Trump administration--we are actually giving them a chance to clean up their act and do what they should have done all along. So it would begin in 2023, and it would cost them $1,800 per ton of leaked methane.

You leak it; you pay for it. It is not that complicated. When I was growing up, we had a pretty simple rule in my family: You spill it; you clean it up. I don't know why that is suddenly not an appropriate rule when the company and the industry gets big enough and has enough political power and dark money to be pulling strings around here. That ought to be the rule. You spill it; you clean it up. You leak the methane; you pay for it.

So I hope that we can get that methane factor passed into law, as well, because we know perfectly well that this is not an industry that is going to pursue the public interest if it is not required to. We saw that in the Trump administration. We saw it on March 2, 2017. We saw it on March 28, 2017. We saw it on April 19, 2017. We saw it on May 10, 2017. We saw it on September 11, 2018, on August 28, 2019, and on August 13, 2020. Over and over and over again, they hurt the public by using their clout over the regulatory Agency of this country to their own benefit.

You can't count on them to take care of this on their own. They just won't. They have proven that. That is not a contested fact any longer. We gave them the chance to clean up their act without this kind of requirement, and they totally failed. In fact, they spent all their energy trying to degrade the regulatory authority that kept them trying to clean up methane.

Let's solve this problem. Methane is a real problem. There is a lot of it changing our climate. The climate situation has become an emergency. Methane is easily preventable from leaking. And, by the way, here is the added bonus: It gives a lot of people jobs. There is a lot of work that we can do to reclaim the damage that the fossil fuel industry has caused. Cleaning up the wells, cleaning up the mines, cleaning up the piping--those are all real jobs.

So let's get after it. Let's start with the CRA. Let's go on to a proper methane fee to put the leaking out of business and on from there.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, later today we will have one of the most consequential votes we have had in this

body in years, perhaps the most consequential vote in terms of our climate and the risk that climate change imposes on all of us here in America and across the world. It is a pretty straightforward vote, although it is an interesting procedural problem.

The vote is a Congressional Review Act vote to repeal the repeal of the regulation on the release of methane from oil and gas, both drilling and transportation. A repeal of a repeal is the legislative equivalent of a double negative, and, of course, we all know a double negative produces a positive, and that is exactly what will happen in this case.

Some years ago, regulations were imposed upon the oil and gas industry to control the escape of methane from drilling operations. This isn't about natural gas or oil; this is about fugitive gases that escape into the atmosphere as part of the drilling process or the transportation process.

The problem is that methane is the nuclear weapon of climate change. Methane is 80 times as dangerous as CO2 in the atmosphere, in terms of capturing heat and contributing to climate change--80 times; not 80 percent more, not 8 times more, 80 times more.

Now, the good news is methane only persists in the atmosphere for about 20 years; CO2, unfortunately, over 100 years. So because of its short residence time and its high potency, removing it now will have immediate and substantial effects on the overall amount of greenhouse gas that is in our atmosphere.

There is nothing we can do in the short run to deal with climate change that is more significant than the vote that will take place on this floor in a few hours. This is probably, as I said at the beginning, one of the most important votes that we will have in this Chamber in order to forestall and slow the climate catastrophe that everyone acknowledges is headed toward us--whether it is wildfires, whether it is changes in ocean temperature that affect sea life, whether it is hurricanes, whether it is pure temperature.

Let me talk a bit about climate change as a national security issue. I serve on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. It is a national security issue for a number of reasons. One is sort of dollars and cents. It affects our military facilities around the world that are going to be affected by rising sea levels. We are going to have to spend billions of dollars in order to shore up those facilities. So that is just kind of nuts and bolts, dollars and cents.

But the part that really worries me is migration. We all know about the migrants from Syria, from the Syrian civil war. I don't know the exact number--maybe 4 or 5 million. But those migrants upset the political system of all of Europe and created a major political crisis.

The estimate for climate migrants because of the inhospitality of the climate in the band around the central part of the Earth is in the hundreds of millions--between 100 and 200 million climate migrants who are escaping a place that they can't live in anymore because of drought, because of famine, because of a lack of drinking water, or just because of high temperatures.

Humans aren't evolved to live in places that are at 130 degrees of heat. So people are going to be on the move. Think of the disruption caused by the immigration or the migration from Syria and multiply that by 10, 20, 30, 40 times. That is what we are talking about, and that kind of pressure and famine and drought and all of those things throughout history are what have caused wars.

It is a threat multiplier. It is a threat creator. It is, in fact, a national security issue. This isn't about just being concerned about whether we will have more warm days in April. This is a national security issue, and it is of worldwide import

Now, why is this vote today important if it is a worldwide issue? I have had people say to me: Angus, why are we going through all this? Why are we going to cost ourselves any money when it is just as big a problem coming from China or India?

We can shut down all of our businesses in Maine, and we are still not going to be able to solve this problem, nor could we if we did it in the United States. Molecules of methane or CO2 don't care about borders. They go around the world, and they are causing this problem to happen around the world.

But, yes, this vote today is important because it is a signal to the rest of the world that we are serious about this problem. A negative vote today is a signal to the rest of the world that we don't care, and the rest of the world is going to be paying attention.

This is a global problem. It is going to take solutions from every country and particularly from the larger emitting countries, like the United States, like China, like India. But we have to show that we are willing to do it here, if we are going to ask other people to make these kinds of steps in their country. And that is why I think this vote has international implications as well as national.

Now, what about the cost? Are we imposing some enormous cost, or are we talking about new technology? No, this is a relatively cheap way to get a major improvement in the emission of greenhouse gases.

We are not talking about carbon capture, which is very important, but we are a ways away from cost-effective carbon capture technology, and the costs are still very high. This is of relatively low cost.

Regulating methane emissions from oil and gas production is

the right thing to do for our climate and the air quality of

communities across the country.

I couldn't have said it better myself, but I am reading someone else's words.

It's widely acknowledged that methane is a highly potent

greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 80 times

greater than CO2. Beyond the long-term impacts

related to climate change, methane emissions also have

implications for local air quality. We owe it to the

communities where we live and work to reduce these emissions.

Who said that? Angus King didn't say that. Shell Oil said that. Many, if not most, of the major producers of oil and gas in this country are supporting this vote today. This is not a vote where fossil fuel is on one side and the environmental community is on the other. No, this is a broad coalition of people worried about health, of people worried about the environment, of people worried about climate change, and also people in the industry who are worried about the effects of this on their industry if we don't take care of this.

And here is very interesting data. We all know that different technologies have different impacts on the environment, and these bars are the emission levels per unit of energy produced of various alternatives: air pumps, wood pellets, natural gas, propane, heating oil, coal. These are all in use in the United States.

We have substantially lowered our emission of greenhouse gases because of the conversion from coal and oil to natural gas, and that hasn't been caused by regulation or by the dead hand of government. That is because of the market, because of the enormous production of natural gas in this country.

Now, here is the problem--and I have always thought of natural gas as a transition fuel. Sixty percent of our electricity in New England comes from natural gas, and, indeed, our CO2 is down because of that. But here is the problem. See this little black line here? That is the actual emission from natural gas if you count methane.

So the environmental, the climate advantage of natural gas disappears if you count the methane that is released in the production of natural gas. But it is controllable. It is not inevitable. It is not something that is impossible.

There are now technologies to survey pipelines to detect leaks and to prevent them. It is really pretty straightforward. If you have a pipeline that is leaking and is putting methane in the atmosphere that is 80 times as bad as CO2, let's fix it. And that is all we are talking about today.

We are talking about restoring commonsense regulations on the release of dangerous climate-change-inducing gases, principally, methane. Some of the other things that are released are also dangerous for people living in the area of the well or the pipeline leak.

I am not opposed to the use. I mean, right now, as I say, natural gas is the preferred alternative--and you can see why--except for the methane problem. So let's eliminate that. Let's make the chart look like this. Then, natural gas works. But we have to deal with methane.

This is the low-hanging fruit of climate action. This is an opportunity for this country to make a statement internationally, to make a statement to our people, and to do something about the most serious environmental problem we face.

Every day that goes by, it gets more expensive to deal with. Every day that goes by, it is going to be more difficult for our people, the impacts are going to be more catastrophic, and the impacts are going to be more difficult in terms of what we have to spend to deal with it.

So let's spend relatively little now to eliminate one of the most serious risks. It is not minor. It is a very significant part of the climate issue, and it is one that we can do at a relatively low price, with not a heavy hand of regulation but commonsense regulation. And we can do something important for the American people and, indeed, for the people of the entire world.

This is an important vote this afternoon. I hope it is a resounding vote. It should be. It should be a resounding vote to say to the world and to say to the people of this country: We are on your side. We understand there is a problem heading for us, and we are going to act to deal with it.

This is our responsibility. It is why we are here, and we have the capability to do this starting today.

I yield the floor.