Sec. 3. Findings and purposes
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The Congress finds that— the Constitution of the United States invests in Congress the authority to manage Federal lands and the natural resources contained within them; the natural resources contained within lands owned by the Federal Government are ultimately owned by the people, and can be explored and developed by them in their pursuit of happiness to fuel the American way of life; the United States spends over $1,000,000,000 per day to import crude oil from foreign countries, representing the largest wealth transfer in history; the domestic oil and natural gas industry is responsible for approximately 9.2 million jobs; the United States has substantial undeveloped oil and natural gas resources underlying Federal lands; multiple legal challenges relating to the leasing, exploration, and development of Federal lands can significantly delay and even prevent these desperately needed oil and natural gas resources from reaching the American public; expedited and focused judicial review of legal challenges to proposed oil and natural gas development activities is necessary to ensure that additional American oil and natural gas resources are made available without undue delay to American consumers; the approximately 43 million leased outer Continental Shelf acres currently account for about 15 percent of the United States domestic natural gas production and about 27 percent of the United States domestic oil production; the leasing of these domestic offshore areas for oil and natural gas development provides significant economic benefits to the Federal Government, as well as to States and localities, through the creation and sustenance of jobs and domestic product; the Federal Government distributed over $10,000,000,000 to Federal, State and Indian accounts from energy production during fiscal year 2009, primarily from oil and natural gas production; the outer Continental Shelf is a vital national resource reserve held by the Federal Government for the public, which should be made available for expeditious and orderly development, subject to environmental safeguards, in a manner that is consistent with the maintenance of competition and other national needs;
Executive Order 13563 on Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, issued on January 18, 2011, requires that to the extent permitted by law, each agency must, among other things— propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits justify its costs (recognizing that some benefits and costs are difficult to quantify); tailor its regulations to impose the least burden on society, consistent with obtaining regulatory objectives, taking into account, among other things, and to the extent practicable, the costs of cumulative regulations; select, in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity); to the extent feasible, specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt; and identify and assess available alternatives to direct regulation, including providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior, such as user fees or marketable permits, or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public;
Executive Order 13547 on Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes, issued on July 19, 2010, provides for the development of coastal and marine spatial plans
(CMSP)that build upon and improve existing Federal, State, tribal, local, and regional decisionmaking and planning processes; the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act ( 43 U.S.C. 1331 et seq. ) already provides a comprehensive and complete framework for undertaking oil and gas activities within the framework of a CMSP-based program; through the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Congress has already established the process for development of coastal and marine spatial plans for oil and gas leasing and other authorizations, and it is not necessary to create a new regulatory regime as this would go against the Executive order; the Coastal Plain of Alaska is an important potential new source of domestic oil and gas production; the delivery of oil from Alberta, Canada, to domestic markets in the United States is in the national interest of the United States, and the earliest possible completion of the Keystone XL pipeline will best serve the national interest; there are 103 nuclear reactors currently operating in the United States, providing 20 percent of the electricity of the United States, slightly less than the electricity generated by natural gas; nuclear energy is the largest provider of clean, low-carbon electricity, almost 8 times larger than all renewable power production combined, excluding hydroelectric power; nuclear power is responsible for 72 percent of emission-free electricity production in the United States; nuclear power plants virtually eliminate emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants associated with acid rain, smog, or ozone; nuclear energy supplies consistent, baseload electricity, independent of environmental conditions; between 1960 and 1980, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued 169 permits to construct nuclear power facilities; even if every nuclear power plant is granted a 20-year extension, all currently operating nuclear power plants will be retired by 2055; long lead times for nuclear power plant licensing, permitting, and construction indicate that action to stimulate the nuclear power industry should not be delayed; there are 17 combined operating license applications currently pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 26 new reactors in the United States, with 4 applications inactive due to regulatory uncertainty; those proposed reactors will use the latest in nuclear technology for efficiency and safety, more advanced than the technology of the 1960s and 1970s found in the reactors currently operating in the United States; the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ( 42 U.S.C. 10101 et seq. ) requires the Federal Government to take ownership of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel and build a permanent geologic repository in which to store such waste; the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended in 1987, selected the Yucca Mountain site to be the sole geologic repository in which to store high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel; the Congress reaffirmed Yucca Mountain as the sole candidate site for a geologic repository in 2001; despite such laws, the Government has failed to accept high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from utilities and has delayed construction of the Yucca Mountain repository; failure to accept high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel has led to more than 74 lawsuits filed by utilities against the Government, $1,000,000,000 in settlements being paid, and an estimated $16,200,000,000 in potential liabilities to settle remaining lawsuits; each year the Government refuses to accept high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel adds an estimated $500,000,000 in additional liabilities associated with future lawsuits; the failure of the Federal Government to accept high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from utilities is a significant barrier to the future development of additional nuclear power; the United States has 58,000 tons of radiological material stored at more than 100 sites in 39 States; the 103 commercial nuclear reactors operating in the United States produce approximately 2,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel every year; the Yucca Mountain repository’s capacity is statutorily limited to 70,000 tons of waste but can safely hold 120,000 tons; operators who have paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund have been denied access to permanent storage of radiological material as promised by the Federal Government; permanent geologic storage capacity is a finite resource on which the industry depends; and operators have the technical expertise to develop new and more efficient processes of disposing of new radiological material, including finding repositories in addition to Yucca Mountain. The purposes of this Act are to— apply our founding principles as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to restore the individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by restoring a true all-of-the-above, free market, all-American energy market in the United States; promote expansion of domestic employment opportunities through energy development on Federal lands and through less intrusive government on private lands; respond to the Nation’s increased demand for domestic energy resources, including oil and natural gas resources; support the utilization of the outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas production and transmission; confirm and ensure the validity of oil and gas leases issued under the Final Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, 2012–2017; ensure the continued leasing of outer Continental Shelf areas pursuant to the Final Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, 2012–2017; facilitate interagency coordination and cooperation in the processing of permits required to support oil and gas use authorization on Federal lands, both onshore and on the outer Continental Shelf, in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and timeliness in permit processing requirements; promote process streamlining and increased interagency efficiency, including elimination of interagency duplication of effort; improve information sharing among agencies and understanding of respective agency roles and responsibilities; promote coordination with State agencies with expertise and responsibilities related to Federal oil and gas permitting decisions, and balance Federal interests with the interests and well-being of State and local communities; promote responsible stewardship of Federal oil and gas resources; maintain high standards of safety and environmental protection; and enhance the benefits to Federal permitting already occurring as a result of a coordinated and timely interagency process for oil and gas permit review for certain Federal oil and gas leases.
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