Senator Bingaman's Statement on Senate Floor is a Detailed and Reasoned Explanation of Oil and Gas In America Today

Senator Jeff Bingaman, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is well known for his reasoned and bipartisian approach to energy legislation.  On the Senate Floor today, Senator Bingaman outlined the myths and the realities of gasoline prices, oil prices and domestic production.  

Energy, especially oil and gasoline prices have been at the forefront of the current Transportation bill before both the House and the Senate this week.  A sticking point in this bill is the Keystone Pipeline XL and much has been made of the impact of this pipeline on the rising price of gasoline today. 

Senator Bingaman, in a reasoned and articulate speech, laid out the causes of higher gasoline prices in the United States.  In a direct reference to the Keystone Pipeline, Senator Bingaman points out that "we do not face cycles of high gasoline prices in the United States because of a lack of domestic production.  We do not face these cycles of high gasoline prices because of lack of access to federal resources, or because of some environmental regulation that is getting in the way of us obtaining cheap gasoline."  

Instead, the Senator states, prices that we pay for oil and the products refined from oil, such as gasoline, are set on the world market.  They are relatively insensitive to what happens here in the United States with regards to production.  Instead, the world price of oil and our gasoline prices are affected more by events beyond our control, such as instability in Libya last year or instability in Iran and concerns about oil supply in Iran this year.

Senator Bingaman shows that the oil production in the United States is 3rd largest producer of oil, second to the Soviet Union and Saudia Arabia. 

Click here for a full transcript of his remarks.