Today’s hearing is most appropriate in light of high gasoline prices and a White House energy policy that is coming home to roost, so to speak. While the President has touted an "all of the above" energy policy, his actual policies have been anything but that. They have been decidedly unfavorable to America’s energy manufacturing industry – and that is true for crude oil production as well as refining.

The Administration has thwarted oil and gas development on federal lands and offshore. It imposed a hasty and prolonged moratorium on Gulf of Mexico drilling and then hindered resumption of exploration through slow permitting. And most recently, it has denied increasing the assured and safe supply of crude oil from our ally Canada through the Keystone pipeline to U.S. refineries.

The President also risks the jobs of American energy workers by threatening punitive tax treatment of energy manufacturing, for example, by singling this sector out and rescinding incentives to encourage job creation and manufacturing here in America. Why is energy manufacturing different than any other form of manufacturing? Why are these good-paying energy jobs deemed expendable by the White House, and why is the President himself pushing taxes that encourage energy companies to send these jobs overseas?

This manufacturing deduction, by the way, is an important incentive to refining and will further make these projects less economically viable if the President has his way.

The Administration is also pursuing policies that will shrink and punish petroleum refining both by forcing it to blend in alternative fuels even when they do not yet exist and by mandating ever more stringent emission standards even when the costs are huge and the benefits are uncertain...

 

See Vice Chairman Brady's entire opening statement in pdf format attached below.