Rick Perry talks Keystone XL, fracking in Decorah, Iowa

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry faced tough questions and even direct criticism from voters attending a December 18, 2011 town hall meeting in Decorah, Iowa, after he claimed that there is no proof tying groundwater pollution to hydraulic fracking.

The Texas Governor dedicated around ten minutes of the nearly hour-long event to energy issues, arguably his topic of choice on the campaign trail.

Perry began with his usual attack on the EPA, and called for the job of environmental regulation to be transferred to the states:

Rick Perry: I didn’t get around to tellin’ ya about the John Deer and the new engine that they're – the federal government has new emissions standards on this new engine that John Deer is building and its on the nitrogen oxide level. 

And I will tell you that I understand about environmental protections and I’m going to tell you just a quick story about Texas in a second and how EPA’s come in and tried to take over what we’re doing in our state and we’ve cleaned up our air more than any other state in the nation.

But the cost to that tractor is going to be $20,000 a copy.

You’re going to have to pay that and I would suggest to you that the air – I mean the difference in the quality of the air that that tractor is going to make is going to be miniscule at best. 

And the people of Iowa know better how to keep their air clean and to make sure their water is clear and drinkable than some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

And so these regulations, whether they’re bank regulations or they’re environmental regulations, they are strangling this country. 

I’ll pull every regulation that has gone forward since ’08 and test it for this simple fact: Does it kill jobs or does it create jobs?

And if it kills jobs, we’re going to get rid of them. 

We have the ability in our states to protect our environment.

And, as I shared with you, we cleaned up our air more than any other state in the nation.

Nitrogen oxide levels were down by 58% in the decade that we just finished. 

It’s our people. It’s our air. 

Why would we spoil that with the sensibilities in the state.

Next, Perry fielded two softball questions about the Keystone XL oil pipeline:

Voter: Yeah, on the oil pipeline from Canada tar sands down to Texas for exporting gas and oil versus exporting through British Columbia, Seattle.

What’s your pros and cons of that pipeline proposal?

Rick Perry: I’ve had some pretty lengthy conversations with both the Canadians and the governors that represent the states where that pipeline will go. 

Not all of them, but some pretty lengthy conversations.

I have been a proponent of that pipeline.

Energy independence should be a goal for this country.

That’s the reason when I talked about I’m an all of the above energy person.

I don’t think we should shut out any type of legitimate energy source.

I’m not for giving those tax credits, but I am for developing them and removing the regulatory hurdles. 

And what we’ve got today – that oil is going to go one of two directions. 

It’s either going to go West and the Chinese will buy it or it will go south for the United States consumption.

Every barrel of oil that goes south is one barrel of oil that we will not have to import from foreign countries, and in some cases foreign countries that are hostile to this country.

I mean, I look forward to the day when we can tell Mr. Hugo Chavez, “No thank you, we don’t need any Venezuelan oil.”

None.

But that pipeline creates a lot of jobs, and I’m talking about in the development of the pipeline.

I’m talking about in the building of the pipeline.

I don’t agree that the President should veto this bill.

He should let this pipeline occur.

And I know he’s being pressured by those on the radical environmental side of the aisle that want him to not build this pipeline.

This pipeline has been studied for at least three years.

The information that I have on it, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I’m an absolute expert, but the information is that it is one of the safest pipelines if not the safest pipeline that’s ever been built.

And there are already pipelines that go across the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska, which the bone of contention that they’re making.

So this pipeline needs to be built. We need to be looking for every source of energy.

I want to wrap up, one more thing about energy and then I’m coming to you sir.

The federal lands and waters that we have hands off right now for exploration should be opened up.

Only 8% of the proven reserves on our federal lands – and I understand there are places in our federal parks where we’re not going to be exploring. 

I mean, we’re not going to be going into the Everglades.

We’re not going into Yellowstone.

But we’ve got millions of acres of federal lands with proven reserves on them that need to be opened up so that we can safely produce those resources. 

And I would use a substantial amount if not all of that revenue coming into the federal government to help pay down the debt.

Voter: What do you expect to see happen to our local gas and also national gas prices on gasoline if that pipeline goes through?

Rick Perry: I don’t think you’ll see a big change, would be my instinct, until the infrastructure built.

Here’s what I think occurs when that pipeline is built, because then there’s confidence.

People will feel substantially more secure that this supply of oil in this case is going to have – is going to be coming.

We have found sources of energy that we had no idea that we have ten years ago.

I’m sure all of us have heard the stories a decade ago that we have found all of the petroleum products that there are.

They’ve all been found.

You know, we may be able to improve some secondary tertiary recovery to get it all out, but we’ve found it all.

And then we find these huge natural gas deposits that people didn’t know were there.

Frankly, we don’t know what’s under Iowa. 

The technology hadn’t been developed yet maybe.

That Iowa may be sitting on top of huge reserves of natural gas or oil that people haven’t found yet.

So my point is that the way to drive those prices down – and for American citizens that are on fixed income, I think one of the most important thinks that we could do as a country is to expand our energy exploration and our energy industry, whether it’s corn based with ethanol, or whether it’s gas, or with solar or wind.

Because once you get that huge amount of energy, you can drive down the cost of that energy.

Gasoline, electricity, the manufacturing costs, the costs of living can go down in this country if we will apply our energy resources that we have.

We’ve got 300 years worth of energy in this country.

Perry fell out of stride when confronted with a question about the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracking:

Voter: In reference to the natural gas, you talked about how there’s a huge natural gas deposit, it’s been proven that that technology to extract that energy has polluted groundwater.

Rick Perry: No ma’am.

Voter: Yes sir, it has.

Rick Perry: No ma’am.

We can have this conversation, but you cannot show me one place where there is a proven, not one, where there is a proven pollution of groundwater by hydraulic fracking.

Voices of other voters in the room: That’s false! That’s just false sir.

Rick Perry: Bring me the paper.

Show me the paper.

I’m just telling you – this whole – I am truly offended that the American public would be hoodwinked by stories that do not scientifically hold up.

If that was true it would be on the front page of every newspaper.

It would be on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News.

Everybody would be running that story.

We have be using hydraulic fracturing in my home state for years, and this is a fear tactic that the left is using and the environmental community is using to absolutely, excuse the pun, but does not hold water.

Voters again: That’s not true.

Rick Perry: Bring me the evidence.

And once you do that, you show it to me and I’ll be the first to say, “You’ve got a point.”

It didn’t take long for someone to step up to the plate and respond to Perry’s challenge. Within 24 hours, CBS News had posted a story covering the exchange, complete with link to a December 8, 2011 story bearing the headline “EPA suspects fracking linked to pollution”. That story covered an EPA study that, while still in draft form, links fracking to groundwater pollution.

C-Span has complete video of Rick Perry's town hall meeting in Decorah, Iowa.

Photo of Rick Perry by Ed Schipul via Wikipedia Commons

CNBC Republican Debate: Rick Perry, Rick Santorum on energy policy

In a Republican debate that saw Rick Perry forget whether or not he wants to cut the Department of Energy, the issue of energy received light treatment from GOP presidential candidates and CNBC moderators alike.

A few of the Republican presidential candidates trotted out the usual talking points.

“We can move toward energy independence,” said Jon Huntsman.

“… we have to legalize American energy,” proclaimed Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party Congresswoman from 6th District of Minnesota. 

Former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum was the only candidate who came close to making any kind of substantive remarks on energy policy at last night’s CNBC Republican debate.

And then, of course, an energy policy that everyone on this stage is going to agree with that says, we are going to produce energy in this country. I'm different than many of them, that I'm going to cut all the subsidies out and let the market work, as opposed to creating incentives for different -- different forms of energy that the government supports.

Moderator Jim Cramer, best known for his show Mad Money, challenged Santorum on the question of energy subsidies: 

Senator Santorum, I want to talk about a high-quality problem our country has.

I just came back from North Dakota. We have made the largest oil discovery in a generation there. Not only is it a -- the find a big step toward creating energy independence, it stands to create as many as 300,000 jobs. But what the guys tell me up there is that they can't handle the rush without federal help.

Would you favor incentives, incentives to get workers and businesses to where the jobs are to support this boom?

Here is how Santorum responded:

No, because we have done it in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has Marcellus Shale. It took a while for us to ramp up, but we're drilling 3,000 to 4,000 wells.

The price of natural gas, because of Marcellus Shale, which is the second largest natural gas find in the world, has gone from $12 to $3.65. And we let the marketplace work. So, no, we didn't have the federal government come in and bail us out. 

Later in the evening, Texas Governor Rick Perry took a shot at explaining his own energy policy:

When -- when you look at what I've laid out, whether it -- the energy side and getting the energy industry going -- and Rick Santorum is absolutely correct on that, is let's get our energy industry freed up, federal lands, federal waters, pull back all of those regulations. Everybody on this stage understands it's the regulatory world that is killing America.

A complete transcript of the November 9, 2011 “Your Money, Your Vote” Republican Presidential Debate is available on CNBC.com

Rick Perry: Green jobs or dirty jobs?

Rick Perry sought to shift the spotlight away from Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan by focusing on jobs and energy at the October 18, 2011 CNN Western Republican Presidential Debate.

“Well, here's the nine that we need to get focused on,” said Perry. “And it's not 999, it's not 59. It's that 9 percent unemployment in this country.”

“We've got 300 years of resources right under our feet in this country,” the Texas Governor claimed. “Yet we've got an administration that is blockading our ability to bring that to the surface, whether it's our petroleum, our natural gas, or our coal. And 1.2 million jobs could be put to work.” 



In many ways, Perry’s jobs plan is the polar opposite of the vision offered by Barack Obama during the 2008 election, which focused heavily on creating green jobs by investing in clean energy. It’s a difference Perry highlighted at the debate.

“You have an administration that is killing jobs because they want to move us to a green energy,” he said.

Of course, New Hampshire is not Texas. We don't have much in the way of oil, natural gas or coal. What we do have is green jobs. A Brookings Institute Report published in July found the state added 3,915 “clean jobs” from 2003 to 2010, bringing the total number of clean economy job in the state to 12,886. That's food for thought for any presidential candidate looking to score points with Granite State voters.

Rick Perry talks manufacturing jobs at NH Town Hall

Rick Perry responded to a voter's question on how to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. during an early morning Town Hall Meeting in Hampton, NH. In his response, Perry bashed the EPA and defended his record on the environment as Governor of Texas.

Video and transcript of Perry's remarks: 

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Voter: Governor, when you go to Manchester later today you’ll see a lot of old red brick buildings along the Merrimack River. And if you go any of our towns, you’ll old brick buildings in the middle of the town. And in the old days they used to make things there. All of the things they used to in those buildings are now made in China and Indonesia and Taiwan and places like that. Is there any way you as president can get back those manufacturing jobs from those places back here?

Rick Perry: You just described on the great reasons that the over litigation, over taxation and over regulation in particular, in particular those last two, have driven so many driven so many of our countries – uh companies – off shore.

Just this week, the Chief Executive of Coca-Cola, one the great old venerable companies in this country made the statement that it was easier to do business in China than it was in America. Now think about that statement. That it is easier to do business in a communist country than it is in the United States? What have we let happen to this country?

And what he was talking about was the regulatory side of it. We’ve pushed so many of our businesses off shore because we allowed for activists in some form or fashion – and I would suggest to you that the EPA is one of the worst culprits.

Let me give you a great example. Texas cleaned up its air as well as any other state during the decade of the 2000’s. We reduced ozone down by 27 levels -down by 27 percent. Nitrogen oxide levels down by 58 percent. Those are real pollutants and we cleaned up our air. This is the air that our kids breathe. We did that.

But this federal government, this EPA came in to Texas in January and said, “We’re going to take over your air permitting process because we don’t like the way that you’re doing it,” in essence.

That will mean, at our comptroller’s estimate, the loss of 360,000 jobs. They will leave. They will go off shore.

Listen, we live on the Gulf of Mexico. I understand the importance of being able to drill safely there and making sure that we don’t put our environment in jeopardy. But we know how to do that.

Yes, from time to time there are accidents. But if we’re going to work on the concept of an accident free world, there will be no manufacturing in America anywhere, any time in to the future.

We have to be thoughtful, we’ll use science on how to protect our environment, but we have to get back to drilling for instance. And using our natural resources, whether it’s… it’s… I mean, whatever energy source it is needs to be freed up from over regulation out of Washington, D.C. And then let them compete for the free market.

Now I don’t care if it’s wind or if it’s solar or if it’s clean coal or whether it’s oil and gas. Whatever it may be, America has to get back working. And we’ve gotta get our energy industry as part of that – and a big part of that. Because if we do not, we’re continuing…

$450 billions dollars we send offshore every year to buy energy and a lot of that goes to countries that really don’t like us. 

Rick Perry's record on fracking

Just one month before jumping into the Republican race for president, Texas Governor Rick Perry made his state the first in the nation to require drilling operators to disclose chemicals used during the hydraulic fracturing process when he signed into law HB 3328.

Perry celebrated the move in a speech delivered on June 15, 2011 at a Peterbilt factory in Denton, Texas.

Watch video of Rick Perry's speech on energy 

Transcript of Rick Perry's speech on energy:

Thank you Bill [Jackson, VP of PACCAR Inc and GM of Peterbilt Motors Co.] for that introduction, and I'd like to thank everyone here at Peterbilt for taking me on a tour of this facility.

Those of you unfamiliar with the story of this plant here in Denton, allow me to sum up: This is a facility that employs Texans to produce trucks powered by natural gas produced right here in Texas.

I think we all can get behind that.

This factory stands as yet another example of what's possible when innovative minds are given the freedom to explore, to try new approaches and meet challenges in unique and exciting ways.

That's always been the Texas model, and it's working.

It's working from the standpoint of creating jobs with Texas home to the most new jobs in the nation since 2001, and 45 percent of the new jobs created in the United States since June 2009, according to the Dallas Fed.

It's also working from the standpoint of cleaning the air with our ozone levels down 27 percent from 2000 to 2009, the most improvement in the nation, and our NOx emissions down nearly 58 percent.

A lot's been said in the last few days about the EPA's continuing efforts to take over Texas' regulatory systems.

For reasons of their own, Washington insists that new layers of bureaucracy, layers that add cost but don't do a thing to improve air quality are reason enough to destroy our successful flexible permitting program, as they continue to take more and more control over state matters.

We're not here to talk about them today, though, this is a day to talk about smart, effective government.

The 82nd Legislature passed several bills that will help Texas continue to lead the nation in energy production and expand our use of alternative sources of power, an area in which we're already a national leader.

SB 20 sponsored by Rep. Jim Keffer, who's with us today, will create a new "clean transportation triangle" between Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, helping add the infrastructure necessary to allow natural gas-fueled trucks, such as the ones produced here, to expand their range across our state.

We also passed legislation to increase transparency in energy production.

SB 527, co-authored by Sen. Nelson and sponsored by Rep. Tan Parker, provides for additional air monitoring stations around the Barnett Shale region, and HB 3328authored by both Rep. Keffer and Rep. Parker requires additional disclosure of the materials used in hydraulic fracturing.

This new fracking material disclosure law, one of the first and the strongest in the nation, will help ensure safety and environmental quality, while encouraging American energy production and reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Taken together, SB 527 and HB 3328 will reinforce what we already know, that hydraulic fracturing is a safe, effective way to unlock decades' worth of energy trapped far beneath our state's surface.

The success of hydraulic fracturing led to the opening of major fields in Barnett Shale, along with newer fields in Haynesville in the Northeast and Eagle Ford down South, creating thousands of jobs, millions in investments and providing more affordable energy for Texas families.

Again, this was not a success that was created through a mandate or because of draconian penalties or based on ever-shifting numbers on a bureaucrat's spreadsheet.

This was a success created by the brightest minds of our energy industry who tackled a challenge head-on and created the drilling techniques that would be hailed by energy experts as the "biggest innovation of the first decade of the century."

The state's biggest contribution was keeping our economic climate favorable, keeping our regulatory system predictable and fair, and then simply staying out of the way.

That's the way it's supposed to work.

Truth of the matter is, America needs all the innovation we can muster to reduce our dependency on foreign sources of energy.

And again, our combination of job creation and improved air quality here in Texas proves that there's a way it can be done, The Texas way.

Rick Perry talks energy in New Hampshire (Video)

Texas Governor Rick Perry responded to a voter's question about energy independence during his first visit to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate.

Video of Rick Perry talking energy policy in Greenland, NH

Transcript of Rick Perry comments on energy independence after his speech in Greenland, NH 

Rick Perry: He’s asking the question of how do we become energy independent? How do we create the jobs? What would be my plan to make America more energy independent? Is that a fair way to put it?

Voter: Yeah.

Rick Perry: When you heard me talking about removing the burdens on the job creators. The energy industry in America is a great example of that.

And the fact is, I am an all of the above energy guy. Now, I have a little asterisk on corn-based ethanol. It’s got some problems and I think they are going to start moving out of those subsidies and that government can’t go picking choosing winners…

But wind energy, solar energy and biomass… I am a supporter of nuclear energy. As a matter of fact, we’ve got three plants that are permitted in the State of Texas.

My heart goes out to the folks in Japan and what they’ve gone through. It’s a massive tragedy. But the fact is we don’t have tsunamis in Texas. And that state is an ideal state to be building nuclear power plants.

The fact is natural gas, which is… we don’t know where all the natural gas is in this country. We’re finding fields in Pennsylvania. Up in the (?), in the Marcellus over in Pennsylvania as I mentioned, in the Hainesville, down in east Texas and Louisiana. The Eagle Ford is a monstrous field in South Texas that we didn’t even know was there ten years ago.

We need to free our country to go and explore. But this administration is sending messages.

You know, I will tell you this. We finally have an energy policy in America at long last. And it is to make us as dependent on foreign sources of energy as we can be. And that is wrong. It is wrong for American jobs. It is wrong for our national security.

Free those agencies of the onerous leadership at the job. The EPA coming into the State of Texas, telling us they’re going to take over our air permitting process because they don’t like the way we are doing it. Now you remember the refining capacity we got in the State of Texas. We cleaned our air up in the decade of the 2000’s more than any other state in the nation: 23% reduction of ozone; 57% reduction of nitrous oxide. By the way, those are real pollutants, not to be confused with CO2.

But this administration wants to come in. Hydraulic fracking and the “questions” that they’re asking about hydraulic fracking – without that this natural gas that is the shell plates can never be produced.

You go to the Gulf Coast, whether you’re in Louisiana, Mississippi or Texas and the jobs that have been lost because this administration’s decision to not allow the permitting without any type of rapidity moving forward.

You know, and it kills me. I’ve got folks in Texas and Louisiana – and Bobby Jindall is a great governor. But you’ve got him over here and people loosing jobs in Louisiana because the president and his administration won’t let the permitting process move forward. But this president goes to Brazil and delivers $2 billion to help them deal with their offshore drilling projects. What are they thinking?

We need to be getting the energy industry going in this state and we need to be looking for ways to reduce the regulations and the cost instead of getting them off.