OKC Standard

U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) delivered remarks on the Senate floor yesterday in favor of the Protecting American Energy Production Act following Vice President Kamala Harris’ shift in stance on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) policy. Mullin emphasized the importance of American energy independence to reduce costs for consumers and to supply both the nation and its allies with cleaner, more affordable energy.

Full video of Sen. Mullin’s remarks can be found here.

Remarks as delivered:

“The bill I bring forward today is the Protecting American Energy Production Act. It’s real simple – it allows us to be energy independent. The backbone of our economy is energy… If you have high energy costs, and we’ve had a 37% increase in energy costs under this administration, you obviously are going to have inflation increase because energy is the backbone of our economy. You cannot make a product, nor can you deliver a product, without factoring in the cost of energy…

We have to bring back that resilience…The way we do that is that we understand real numbers. For instance, in 2019, fracking, which our current Vice President has been on record saying that she wants to ban, in 2019, fracking accounted for 63% of total crude oil production and 75% of our natural gas supply…

Let our allies count on us. We have more reserves under our feet, and we can produce it cleaner and more efficient than OPEC, than Russia, than Iran. Our allies want to do business with us.

Our economy desperately needs it…Why should we depend on allowing OPEC to set the world price for crude? Why are we allowing them to become rich off our backs when we ourselves could easily do that in a much cleaner and more efficient way?

The world’s demand for fossil fuels is increasing not decreasing. Why are we doing it at the cost of the American taxpayer? Why are we hurting our economy along the way?

This does nothing but enable Iran when they sell their product and sponsor the largest groups around the world operating terror organizations…

What Republicans are trying to do here today is bolster American energy production by preventing this administration and future administrations from banning fracking…

It is interesting my colleague from Massachusetts is lecturing us on energy prices when last time I checked, Massachusetts has the highest cost of energy to heat their homes in the nation…

Infrastructure is what creates an opportunity to bring down energy costs, which is why Oklahoma, on the other hand, which embraces fracking and embraces pipelines, has the lowest energy costs on average in the country. So if we really want to talk about bringing down costs for consumers let’s look at a model that works…

This is about becoming energy independent so we don’t have to import oil so we don’t have to import refined products. This is about being energy independent so we can bring down energy costs…

The current policy we are operating under with the Biden-Harris administration has brought energy costs up by 37% which is directly affecting every single Americans’ pocketbook today as we speak…Bring down the energy costs and inflation will follow. It’s not hard math; it’s commonsense.”