Is this what that proposed pipeline is really for, exporting gas for profit of gas company executives at the cost of our local land? Rep. Ted Yoho (R FL-03) of north Florida is on this House subcommittee.

25 April 2013, NATURAL GAS EXPORTS: ECONOMIC AND GEOPOLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES: HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION,

Opening statement by Chairman Ted Poe (R TX-02) of Houston:

Five years ago, companies were building terminals to import natural gas at the cost of billions of dollars because analysts agreed that the United States’ economy was going to need natural gas from overseas. Today, that scenario has changed 180 percent. Import terminals lie dormant. The Department of Energy has 19 applications waiting to get permission to export natural gas. Thanks to breakthroughs, the United States’ natural gas reserves have climbed 72 percent since 2000 and 49 percent since 2005. The amount of natural gas that is technically recoverable in the United States is 97 times greater than all of the natural gas we consumed in 2011. In plain terms, this means we have an abundance of natural gas that we are not using. It is just sitting there, and this is really not smart policy, or smart business.

A big reason why is the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy has not approved an application to export to a country we don’t have a Free Trade Agreement with in 2 years. When the DOE says you can’t export, that floods the domestic market with natural gas because producers have no place to sell it. Prices domestically have now dropped so low that it just isn’t worth it for producers to even pull any more natural gas out of the ground.

Poe goes on about mom and pop fossil fuel companies. Yeah, sure, like FPL (aka NextEra Energy) of Juno Beach, Florida with its 14,400 full time employees and Spectra Energy of Houston, Texas with its 5,600 full time employees. What about our mom and pop landowners Spectra and FPL want to bulldoze through on the way to the sea?

Unlike Rep. Poe of Houston, whose biggest campaign contributing industry is Oil & Gas, Rep. Yoho of Gainesville did not get significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. So maybe Rep. Yoho will stand up for his constituents against the Spectra that is haunting them, like Florida Senator Bill Nelson has started to do.

Yoho represents Florida from the Georgia border down past Gainesville, including all or parts of the pipeline path counties of Gilchrist, Hamilton, Levy, Madison, Marion, and Suwannee.

Video (skip over the first 37 minutes of dead air):

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-jsq

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