Click here to watch Ranking Member Barrasso’s remarks on Daniel-Davis Nomination.  

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (ENR), delivered the following remarks at a business meeting to consider the nomination of Ms. Laura Daniel-Davis to be assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management at the Department of the Interior; and to consider a number of legislative items. 

To watch the full business meeting and see the full list of bills considered, click here. 

Senator Barrasso’s Remarks on Daniel-Davis Nomination: 

“I voted against Ms. Daniel-Davis’ nomination last time she was before our Committee. 

“I will do so again today.

“Her record is clear. 

“She has enthusiastically implemented the Biden administration’s punishing energy policies. 

“She has shown that she will continue to violate the department’s multiple-use mandate. 

“Under her leadership, the department has worked overtime to halt American oil and natural gas development on federal lands. 

“The law requires the department to hold onshore oil and gas lease sales quarterly. 

“This department has defied the law. 

“They tried to ban new oil and gas leases sales altogether. 

“When a federal court lifted the ban, the department reduced the acreage that had previously been available by 80 percent. 

“It also increased royalty rates by 50 percent. 

“In other words, it is doing everything it can to undermine new oil and gas production on federal lands. 

“Americans are suffering. 

“Energy prices are near all-time highs. 

“Gas prices continue to be unaffordable to many. 

“This administration has failed every American by blocking increased energy production here at home. 

“Instead, this administration has been going hat-in-hand to Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, begging for more oil. 

“The U.S. recently hit the highest recorded average weekly retail price for gasoline ever - $5.01 a gallon. 

“A gallon of diesel reached a staggering $5.81. 

“The day Joe Biden became president the price of gasoline averaged $2.38 a gallon. 

“Now it is $4.44.

“That’s an increase of over 86 percent. 

“Families and businesses are getting pummeled at the pump. 

“There is no relief in sight. 

“The administration knows there’s an alternative. 

“Last week the Washington Post reported the White House was thinking about authorizing ‘hundreds of millions’ of additional barrels of domestic oil production. 

“The idea was to trade this production to revive its reckless tax and spending spree legislation. 

“The desperate ploy seems to have failed. 

“But it reveals that despite its denials, the administration is well aware that our nation can be producing a lot more oil and a lot more natural gas. 

“President Biden simply doesn’t want to. 

“Who knows how far energy prices could fall if we unleashed American oil and natural gas. 

“But the Biden administration will not allow it. 

“Ms. Daniel-Davis, and the rest of the Department of the Interior’s leadership team, are undermining American energy production and causing great harm to American families at the same time. 

“They are making us more dependent on foreign energy. 

“The administration is not just hampering current energy production.

 “It is threatening future production as well.

“In May, it cancelled three offshore oil and gas lease sales. 

“The department just failed to finalize a new five-year offshore leasing plan, as required by law. 

“This slow-walking of the process is ensuring that 2022 will be the first year since 1958 that the federal government will not allow new offshore oil and gas leases.  

“And worse, the draft plan even threatens to have no lease sales for an additional five years, ‘The proposed plan puts forward several options from no lease sales up to 11 lease sales over the next five years.’ 

“This is unacceptable when the president is begging dictators overseas for more oil. 

“We need more, not less, American energy. 

“We need officials at the Department of the Interior who are willing to fight for what is best for American families. 

“Laura Daniel-Davis has demonstrated she is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

“I strongly oppose her nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same. 

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.” 

###