During a House Energy Committee hearing before the Congressional Recess, Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) asked President and Chief Executive Officer of the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association Andrew Black about partisanship during committee hearings.
00:00The mayor now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio's 6th District for five minutes for questions.
00:18I'm pretty loud. I'll just speak.
00:20Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:23My attention will be here after that Andy Black. I hope you're doing well today.
00:27So thank you for your support in liquid energy. I really appreciate that.
00:31My district really much relies on it.
00:34So several points of focus of how safe pipelines could actually make the Ohio 6th a better place to live
00:39is we now have a project of a cracker plant which will mimic the Manaka cracker plant,
00:44which is across the border in Pennsylvania.
00:46It's a $12.5 billion project. A lot of union jobs will be building that.
00:50It's very exciting. It's going to crack the gas into butane, propane, heavy gas, liquid gas,
00:56all kinds of exciting things.
00:58In the Ohio Senate, I was instrumental in building three gas power-generated plants.
01:02It was a thrill of mine. We right now have about $40 billion worth of potential investors
01:06that are going to come to the Ohio 6th.
01:08We're going to build six or seven more of these.
01:10And so what's going to happen is the Ohio Senate right now has Senate Bill 2,
01:13which is an energy bill which is going to direct state money to coexist with federal money as a united force to developing energy.
01:21Data centers are coming up.
01:23AI advancement centers are coming up.
01:25And general manufacturing is coming all along the Ohio River.
01:28Pipelines support this industry and sometimes run through our neighborhoods.
01:32They need to be safe.
01:33One of the most exciting things is the evolution of the pipelines that I have seen in my career
01:38and the development of what you call the smart pipeline, which I think most of the public is ignorant on.
01:43Smart pipeline actually allows for a safer progress of moving gas around through these neighborhoods.
01:48The liquid and gas pipeline advisory committees were created decades ago with the help of
01:55FEMSA on safety rulemaking and policy development.
01:58What is your personal perspective on the value of these advisory committees in their existence with safe pipelines?
02:05Well, the project that you mentioned in Ohio and those in the Marcellus are great.
02:09Wonderful examples to create jobs to benefit and not have to take it all down to the Gulf Coast.
02:14Right. So it's great for our country to have that flexibility.
02:17The advisory committees were created by Congress to make regulations better.
02:21Right. Any proposal that FEMSA has needs to go to the gas or liquid or sometimes both.
02:26And that can make for a good exchange on helping people understand how a regulation should be modified to be more feasible, practical, economical.
02:36So it's good that we have those advisory committees and we would look forward to future regulations going there.
02:42I think that's really exciting.
02:43I think in making these committees even more strong is really what the exciting part is.
02:47Right now these committees are meeting four times a year.
02:49In your personal opinion, do you think that needs to happen more frequently?
02:52And what better ways can we put to have guardrails inside these committees to have more safety, more rulemaking, more compliance to industry so the industry becomes a safer process?
03:02I know some of my gas colleagues believe it's important to have a certain number of advisory committees.
03:08To me, quality is more important than quantity.
03:11Let's make sure those advisory committee members are up to speed, not just on regulation but also on technological developments so that everybody understands what the latest possibilities are.
03:21That may take more meetings.
03:22Do you think it's possible that we could take the political bent away from these advisory committees so it could be more of a bipartisan approach where everyone's voice could actually be represented in the committee and nobody would feel left out or threatened to be part of this process?
03:35Yeah, they're constructed that way and they should be.
03:37Yes, sir.
03:38Well, I thank you so much for your thoughts on this.
Be the first to comment