US Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican and North Dakota's lone House member, believes that hardline, pro-drilling arguments from his own party may be hindering the chances of bipartisan support for increasing oil and gas production on federal lands.
"As conservatives, as pro energy development people, we have to give confidence that we're not interested in just sort of raping federal lands, that we are sensitive to the fact that these properties are not owned by a single individual that has individual property rights, but they're owned by the aggregate of individuals of this country," Cramer said in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday. "That requires a little more diligence, it requires a little more care, it requires more consensus in how we approach that."
Public lands production can happen "without compromising the integrity of environmental protection," Cramer said.
Cramer, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee who has introduced a bill, HR 767, that would open a more than seven-year pilot program to streamline the Bureau of Land Management's permitting process for federal land projects in the Dakotas, said there is a stark division between Republicans and Democrats over permitting timelines.
"I sometimes sit in the committee and think some people want to make it 10 [days] and some want to make it 3,000," he said.
Those party line differences are becoming the norm in the ongoing energy debate and are readily apparent during congressional hearings on fossil fuel and renewable issues, where witnesses are typically only "there to embarrass Barack Obama on our side and [with] witnesses on the other side that support only far left green organizations that think jet planes can fly on solar panels."
"The environment around Congress is such that it seems to almost enhance a greater polarization than I think is really instinctive in all of us," he said. "Maybe I'm naive and I'm a freshman and so I still have this idea that somehow we can find a way to discuss these things more rationally."
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Still, while Cramer believes that the rhetoric should be toned down and that permitting on federal lands should be more stringent than on private lands, he claims the Obama administration has been an impediment to US fossil fuel production and is promoting energy policies that could derail the ongoing economic recovery.
Cramer, for example, blasted Obama's recent call for a special $2 billion trust fund that the government would use to shift the US transportation sector away from gasoline-powered vehicles. He said the proposal, which would be funded by royalties that drillers pay on their offshore oil and natural gas production, would eliminate fossil fuel industry jobs and cause oil and gas prices to rise.
"It would have a terrible downside to our economy," he said. "Not only because it would hurt the actual energy industry and all of the wealth and jobs and the economic opportunities it creates, but then it puts us at a further disadvantage globally when energy costs and availability are becoming a more important factor in siting decisions, for example, for manufacturing facilities."
The effort, Cramer said, is an attempt to "demonize" the fossil fuel industry.
"It's not a healthy economic attitude," he said.
Cramer served as a North Dakota public service commissioner overseeing the environmental siting of oil and gas pipelines, electric transmission lines, wind turbines and gas combustion turbines before he was elected to Congress last year with 55% of the vote.
Nearly 17%, or $224,300, of his $1.3 million campaign fund came from oil, gas, mining or other energy industry sources, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign funding.
Last week, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, picked Cramer to serve as a member of the House Energy Action Team, but Cramer conceded Tuesday that Congress is likely too divided to get any meaningful energy legislation completed this session. He said any accomplishments would be "low-hanging fruit," such as hydropower bills or energy efficiency initiatives.
He said, however, that he expects Obama to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
"While it will create some heartburn among his base, I just think it's a loser for him to not do it," he said.
