The second panel is perhaps more of our technical panel. We have several witnesses present to help answer questions about modern development on the north slope and what it might look like in the future. Joining us today are mr. Aaron shut. Aaron is the president and ceo. Thank you for being here. You also brought your son with you which is a great Educational Opportunity for him and we appreciate you both being here. Lois is with us and she has been before the committee before. We welcome her back, she is the Arctic Program director for the wilderness society. Following ms. Epstein, we will have mr. Richard glenn, also a frequent flyer to the energy committee. He is executive Vice President for land and Natural Resources with the arctic slope regional corporation. It is good to have you back. Pepper show is known to many alaskans and many in washington d. C. His the former special assistant at the department of the interior during the previous a ministration. Welcome back test on our p
Our nation, surrounding it with the shield of your favor. How worthy you are of our praise. Strengthen our lawmakers for todays journey. Give them strong hearts, sound minds, and diligent hands. May they do their ethical best to represent you, joining their plans to your will in order to accomplish your purposes. Incline their hearts to your wisdom and love as you keep them on the path of integrity. We pray in your sacred name. Amen. The president pro tempore please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President . The presiding officer majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell today the senate is continuing to consider s. 1 a bill to approve the keystone x. L. Pipeline, and there are six amendments pending, three from each side. Well begin voting on those amendments as soon as chairman mu
July. Julys prices are not what they are now. Folks are locked in. They talk about being frozen in someplace, well, their prices are also frozen in. Well we know and understand the challenges when it comes to energy. We know and understand the challenges that come when it comes to keeping your house warm or your lights on. So we have every interest to make sure we are pushing out, we are being innovative, we are being as efficient as we possibly can when it comes to energy use and consumption. I want to urge us, to push us, to be really aggressive in pushing us towards those technologies that will allow us in a small population state that has no real energy grid, so to speak, to figure out how we can how we can be more selfsufficient, get us off diesel get us off 10agallon oil in kobuck alaska. Weve got to figure this out. Were going to be doing it. Were talking about the challenges that we face. But i think as we begin this good robust debate on things like climate, i think we need to
From you that we need to take steps to lessen the damage of the supreme courts hatch act so im pleased to announce my colleagues in Indian Affairs have issued a final rule to do just that. They issued it yesterday and that will help with Greater Transparency to make sure that lands will be taken into trust for housing schools and businesses that we want to continue to work with you to ask things like that. Next the Land Buyback Program and the historic cobell. We want to implement that in a smart and flexible way. We have been listening to you. You want predictability and transparency on the timing and implementation efforts and we announce we are expanding the implementimplement ation strategy so more tribes can participate. We know there is time sensitivity to this and we want to work with you to get that fully implemented because we no cobell is really important to write some of the wrongs of the past. The third is Indian Education. You know we have a generational transformation goi