Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, joined Jackie DeAngelis on Fox Business to discuss North Dakota energy jobs and energy production.
On Energy Jobs in North Dakota:
“It’s heartbreaking to see the men and women who were working once and, by the way, working really good jobs. These new clean energy jobs that the Biden Administration is promising don’t today pay as much, frankly, as the oil and gas jobs do. The reflection of 34 rigs [today] versus 57 rigs [in 2019) is really seen in the sales tax numbers. It gets right to the bottom line. McKenzie County, Watford City, North Dakota, the heart of the Bakken, a lot of federal lands, home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s north unit. Their sales tax revenue is down 44%. That means the hardware stores, obviously, the restaurants, the bars, grocery stores, all of the retailers. That’s a massive drop in revenue at the local, small business level. It’s not just a matter of the oil workers, which is bad enough, which is awful. It’s the entire value chain including the small retailers.”
On Energy Production:
“Pipelines and frankly all the production in the United States of America of natural gas and oil and fossils is done cleaner and greener here than anywhere else in the world. This transfer of 2 million barrels a day or 2.5 million barrels a day of production from the federal lands of the United States to Vladimir Putin and Iran and Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ is bad on every level.”