SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES
1300 Longworth House Office Building (Committee on Agriculture Hearing Room)
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
10:00 a.m.

• Press Release - Witnesses Express Concern over Obama Admin’s Increased Taxes, Fees and Regulations that Will Reduce American Energy Production (3/20/2012)
• Official Hearing Transcript

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON:

• "Effect of the President’s FY 2013 Budget and Legislative Proposals for the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service’s Energy and Minerals Programs on Private Sector Job Creation, Domestic Energy and Minerals Production and Deficit Reduction"

OPENING STATEMENT:

The Honorable Doug Lamborn
Chairman

WITNESSES AND TESTIMONY:

Panel I

The Honorable Bob Abbey
Director
Bureau of Land Management

The Honorable Tom Tidwell
Chief
U.S. Forest Service

Panel II

Mike McKee
County Commissioner
Uintah County, Utah

Erik Milito
Group Director, Upstream & Industry Operations
American Petroleum Institute
(Truth in Testimony Form)

Laura Skaer
Executive Director
Northwest Mining Association
(Truth in Testimony Form)

Whit Fosburgh
President and CEO
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
(Truth in Testimony Form)

BACKGROUND:

This hearing will focus on the President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget request and legislative proposals impacting the onshore federal energy and minerals programs. Since taking office the Administration has made energy and minerals development on federal lands so burdensome and so undesirable that companies consistently seek out state and private lands for development rather than deal with the lengthy and uncertain federal regulatory process. The Administration has consistently taken steps to delay and halt production on federal lands – such as delaying the issuing of a permit by months or even years, removing swaths of land from previously announced lease sales, restricting areas prospective for solar and wind energy development, withdrawing areas prospective for economic mineral deposits from mineral entry, and proposing regulations that will greatly stifle family-wage job creation and domestic production from federal lands. While federal onshore production is down and decreasing every year, the Administration has proposed increasing federal royalty rates oil and gas development onshore, issuing burdensome federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing, and continues to remove and block land from federal leasing for oil and gas development.