fireman now with that introduction we're here to listen and to learn what this exxon mobil xom deal means for u s energy markets and energy policy but decades america's energy policy has been between a rock and a hard place due to our dependence on imported oil from the middle east but now we are hearing the natural gas trapped in american rock may provide us a pathway away from some of that the pendants i look forward to hearing from our distinguished witnesses on this important subject we thank you for being here let me turn now and recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee the gentleman from michigan mr upton well thank you mr chairman i'd also welcome two distinguished witnesses of this morning she said the topic of the hearing is the impacts of the exxon mobile x t o merger i see this merger as an important step forward to protect american jobs and promote domestic energy security cording to the mineral management service m m s annual revenues from federal mineral leases are one of the federal government's largest sources of non tax income over ten billion dollars in  year zero seven the figure does not include the nearly one hundred billion dollars in taxes paid by the industry just last year oil and natural gas industry supports more than nine million american jobs and adds more than a trillion dollars to the national economy and hope i don't need to remind our colleagues about the state of our economy or that unemployment is still in double digits nationally and fifteen percent in michigan we have to support private industry that will continue to invest in our economy and keep americans working we are clearly at a crossroads in the policy decisions that this congress makes will have a lasting impact on our economy and energy security india and china's energy consumption continues to grow by more than ten percent a year china is gobbling up energy resources around the globe and consumption will continue to sharply escalate as one third of the world's population enters the industrial age energy prices do drive our economy it is foolish and short sighted to take an adversarial posture against american companies that seek to develop american energy resources we should encourage domestic investment in domestic energy production especially as our energy needs are experts are expected to grow by nearly forty to fifty percent over the next couple of decades oil and natural gas are just a small piece of that overall puzzle in meeting the energy needs of future generations we have the capability and technology to responsibly pursue american made energy through domestic exploration let's not forget that for every barrel of oil that we produce here at home is a barrel less that we have to import from someplace abroad and every new natural gas field that is discovered and becomes technologically possible to explore makes the u s more secure from both an economic and national security perspective we owe it to working americans to put partisan politics aside and pursue long term solutions it defies common sense that some continue to shun coal nuclear and increase domestic exploration as part of the solution continued pursuit of such shortsighted policies w prove devastating it is well known that natural gas will play a more prominent role in a carbon restrained world in fact the success of any climate change policy will need to rely heavily on natural gas yet some members of congress are seeking to pursue policies that would take the majority of our domestic natural gas off the table i strongly oppose those efforts and it sounds like secretary chu agrees with that sentiment last week when asked about hydraulic fracturing he said and i quote if it can be extracted in an environmentally safe way then why would you want to ban it i think it can be done responsibly and quote we are a nation of the world's best and brightest minds the success and innovation of the two companies testifying today is an important example of that with the gray her emphasis on harnessing new technology in american ingenuity rather than government regulations that block americans resources we can address our expanding energy needs in an environmentally and economically sensitive matter we should support actions that reduce americans dependence on energy from unsustainable in unstable foreign governments and dictatorships i see this merger as continuing to that and i yield back my time a gentleman's time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington state mr inslee thank you very much an interesting test morici i think this is a good  news and a big question here the good news is this would suggest that a major energy producer sees the possibilities of natural gas which is a cleaner from a carbon dioxide energy source think coal there's good news that a major producer sees the potential there's some potential bad news in in the long term view however is that while this investment i'm told is somewhere in the the range of forty billion dollars the chinese are investing in in zero o two sources of energy while we are still seeking fossil fuels and that's troublesome china is investing twelve billion dollars an hour and renewable energy their plan on having thirty gigawatts and within the next two decades they just announced the largest photovoltaic solar energy plant in the world in construction in western china we know that in a carbon constrained world the good news is is that natural gas can help us in the short term in a o two load the bad news is that if exxon and others are not making the investments necessary to go to zero and extremely low c o two levels then we are going to be left in the dust by china and other countries that really are making these massive investments and we have to get out of the gates in that race or be left behind so i'll be interested in listening to exxon's plans in that regard and lastly i'll be interested in listening to excise plans to make sure we are a carbon constrained world if exxon is making this investment under the assumption we will be we would like to have a little help and u s senate to pass an energy bill that in fact will constrain carbon dioxide so we hope that we end up with good news and all those aspects look for testimony thank you gentlemen the time is expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from illinois holding this hearing on this pending exxon mobil and x e o merger recently the wall street journal stated that the merger quote has been widely viewed as the biggest endorsement yet for shale gas production both in the u s and abroad because exxon the largest u s oil company by market value has more wherewithal to develop unconventional natural gas resources such as shale in quote we are excited about the resource potential of natural gas in the commonwealth of pennsylvania the marcellus shale formation of the appalachian basin potentially represents the largest unconventional gas resource in the united states the american petroleum institute cites that natural gas already meets twenty four percent of u s energy demand in addition it heats fifty one percent of u s households cools many homes and provides fuel for cooking there are also over one hundred twenty thousand natural gas vehicles being driven on roads all across the united states natural gas burns much cleaner than gasoline or  making it more environmentally friendly and better for our atmosphere the pending merger of exxon mobil and x to go would create the largest natural gas producer in the united states with the largest base of domestic reserves in the industry there's one thing that people across the ideological spectrum can agree on when it comes to the issue of energy the united states needs to produce far more clean energy from a source that does not rely on the whims of tyrants in far off parts of the world i believe that natural gas will help us achieve our energy independence and make our environment cleaner and i look forward to hearing for witnesses today on the vision for further exploration and use of natural gas united states gentleman's time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania mr doyle thank you mr chairman for holding this important hearing today and thank you to mr tillerson and mr simpson for traveling here to provide testimony on the proposed merger you know if you talk to people in my neck of the woods in pittsburgh pennsylvania about energy issues there's a lot of excitement and optimism in western pennsylvania we realize that you need the whole breadbasket of energy to be successful in america westinghouse makes the a p one thousand and western pennsylvania we have a national energy technology lab that does research on carbon  future in our region and you know we've been known as a steel city but pretty soon we may be known as the saudi arabia of natural gas with the marcellus shale sitting underneath western pennsylvania so we're excited about what it means for the economic future of our state last year alone pennsylvania could attribute nearly fifty thousand jobs to environmentally safe natural gas production of long supported the development of domestic natural gas resources as one of the solutions to meeting the growing energy demand in the united states and this proposed merger between exxon mobil or next to zero energy demonstrates the importance of unconventional gas resources for energy portfolio we've had enormous success in my state of pennsylvania with horizontal drilling and natural gas shell place and i'm hopeful that the merger between these two companies will produce even better technology and more efficient drilling techniques many consider the marcellus shale to be in its infancy of development and while we're all eager to exploit the clean energy resources we need for our feet it is equally important to develop these resources in an environmentally sound and economically feasible way my state pennsylvania's done a great job in regulating natural gas industry while allowing it to grow and prosper both exxon mobil one next to zero energy have been a part of this growth and i look forward to their continued involvement in pennsylvania mr chairman thank you and i yield back the remainder of my time to ms thomas expired the chair recognizes the ranking member of the full committee the gentleman from texas say since this is a committee of primary jurisdiction over health care people ought to listen to what happened in massachusetts when a state that hadn't voted for a republican senator since  when i was a senior in high school only two years removed from joe namath and the jets winning the super bowl which could happen again this year by the way mr chairman joe namath won't be the quarterback  people are listen health care bill is dead if my friends on the majority really want to work together we will work to try to come up with a health care reform with the acts in on reform that works but who would have ever thought that a conservative texas congressman would be saying thank you massachusetts but it happened now on today's hearing when i welcome my friends from exxon mobil and x he we're here to talk about domestic energy and we're here to talk about natural gas well in johnson county texas in the barnett shale and that is probably my four year old son's college education so i am very supportive of the concept  domestic energy production very supportive of private ownership and stewardship and i think mr chairman you've got two excellent  leaders in the energy sector here who want to merge their companies to be even more efficient and more productive for producing more american made energy it is a proper role for this subcommittee to take a look at that merger and some of the issues that are associated with it but i don't think there needs to be any mistake that the more energy we make in america the better off we're going to be and again mr chairman  thank you for two things holding this hearing and not running for the senate in massachusetts i think had you ron i think the outcome would have been different and if your side would be smiling this morning in my side would would not be what would be smiling for you personally but we wouldn't be smiling that the decent ones were glad you decided to stay in the house i thank you i thank  i thank the gentleman very much and i would say that the politics may have changed but the problems that we have to solve have nots as we sit here today so whether the energy health care wall thank you mr chairman for calling this hearing to review the pending merger between exxon mobil and expo energy and thank you to the c e o s of each of these companies for appearing to testify today this merger raises a number of issues with respect to the future direction of the u domestic oil and gas industry and the potential environmental impact of increased unconventional natural gas development i'm eager to learn about it we know that natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels it produces less than half as much carbon pollution as coal and one third of petroleum burned in cars gas findings in several states have increased the proven reserves and driven potential reserves even higher is my understanding and recent technological advances have made the development of unconventional natural gas resources more affordable this creates an opportunity to use natural gas as a bridge feel signaling a twenty first century energy economy that relies on efficiency renewable sources and low carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas however there are legitimate public health and global warming concerns about the impacts from natural gas production  learn about these as well adjacent communities are concerned as am i about the public health impacts from the use and release of toxic substances that are used in natural gas production process this is an issue that deeply concerns me and it is an issue our committee should continue to look into that for today i'm looking forward to us taking a closer look at this proposed merger i look forward to the testimony that you're about to present especially regarding investments  my district in north texas i have an opening statement that i will submit for the record i don't know if i'll get through all the points that i need to make but this merger is an important one it highlights exons commitment to shale production in regions like north texas and it's important that that development continue to grow and provide jobs and if yes be developed in an environmentally sensitive way and i think we all have an interest in that because after all we live in the area where this activity is occurring i was heartened to hear from both mr tillerson mr simpson that one of the critical factors in the exxon exhale merger was employee knowledge base in shale development and congress does rightly share a great deal of the blame for the way things are going this country right now we have almost single handedly destroyed every sector of the american economy financial housing except for health care and energy and looked like this year that we were trying to destroy those as well this is an opportunity for us to learn how perhaps we might be helpful we have been helpful in the past research and development dollars provided by this committee and previous energy bills allowed for the development of the of the recovery of gas from the tight shale formations and congress justifiably should should share some of that credit but we have also been a military as toward many of the other aspects of developing energy american energy from american companies which we've heard over and over again and boone pickens has said it so clearly you can either pay for natural gas or you can be for foreign oil and i'll put my lot with natural gas we were all heartened a year ago two years ago to hear the speaker of the house say that natural gas was not a fossil fuel so i think the global warming issue was taken off the table by the speaker of the house and i for one was grateful for her leadership on that i will submit the rest of my statement for the for the record and i thank the witnesses for being here and very much look forward to their testimony great gentlemen's time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from california mr mcnerney well thank you mr chairman for calling this hearing and this is a very important merger so it's good that we have you in front of us today i've been very excited to see the effect of the horizontal drilling on the natural gas prices over the last five years supplies become more plentiful the price is gone down i'm also concerned about the environmental impacts on drinking water so i don't know if you're going to address that today or not but it's something that we're concerned about and i'm also concerned about the ective this big merger on our national economy and jobs so i look forward to seeing how you're going to address that issue that's something that we care about deeply in california since our deployments about eighteen percent so thanks for coming in the general's time has expired chair recognizes the gentleman from illinois  for the manufacturing arena for every day because he would always hold up a map in fact this is one of his old maps of the world and the competitive disadvantage we have because of high natural gas prices if you know supply and demand new opportunities can help lower cost he would remind us about that natural gas is seventy to eighty percent of the cost of fertilizer which is important in the agricultural economy farmers use it drying food processing crop protection and nitrogen fertilizer production we know about home heating in the midwest it's all in essence natural gas we note in the manufacturing community plastics is a key ingredient we just need to have more now i'm going to continue to reject putting the word carbon and pollution together i think the failed copenhagen meetings and climate gate and the cover up there along with job losses is also going to put to rest this whole climate issue and that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and we will continue to fight against any move to do that but we can agree on energy security and that's where more supply a diversified portfolio is so critical whether it's coal natural gas nuclear power hydroelectric wind solar we need that for energy security this country that's why this is so important this technology is great it's underneath the water table there is no fear we should not do any more harm and intervene anymore in the current rules and regulations i appreciate this hearing back my time that gentleman's time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas mr green it's great that my colleague from pittsburgh is going to have more of my folks from houston coming up there in pittsburgh going to hear a lot more i guess it's going to be the next energy capital i want to thank mr chairman for you holding this timely hearing on the exxon mobil t o merger and its impact on the u s energy markets financial and energy and i have to out of the significances merger potential the fifth largest u s energy company acquisition since one nine hundred ninety five and what it may forecast for future u s and world energy demands there is no doubt that it combined exxon mobil would be a major player and u s exploration and production activities x t o headquartered in fort worth texas has extensive expertise and and tight yeah hold almost ten percent of all proven u s natural gas reserves and become the largest u s natural gas producer and analysts have raised questions as to whether merger signals further widespread consolidation in america's energy industry or shift in energy strategy for the large integrator oil and gas companies traditionally onshore unconventional gas players have been dominated by smaller independent companies while majors have focused on offshore all resource bases are sufficiently large a significant investment required for production with decrease us natural gas consumption last year and with increasing calls for gas production producers to acquire new acreage and expand production capabilities a new partnership for the integrated companies may increase the access down tap resources most importantly the proposed merger valleys demand for clean burning natural gas as a fuel source with will only continue to grow by two thousand and thirty natural gas via largest source of energy globally and demand further increases the government's consider imposing cost on carbon emissions with half the carbon emissions of coal thirty percent less emissions from the no oil natural gas our most critical transition feel as we move towards cleaner energy with the recent advances that  technology is being exploited to europe and china due to environmental economic benefits of natural gas production congress and ministration must be diligent as we consider policies in us global climate change to utilize our domestic energy resources now you're back  here i don't have an opening statement per se but i do have some things i hope you'll address in your comments in your testimony it seems to me two of the biggest issues we face in the country today are connected and those are jobs and energy and i grow concerned about the amount of energy potential that we have in the united states and yet the amount that is kept off limits for development by the congress and the federal government so i'd be interested to know both in terms of the sort of jobs that are created by your industry by your company what you see in terms of the opportunity to create new jobs going forward through this merger and also the amount of natural gas and all that could be developed and what that could mean for america and american jobs i for one i'm eager to get america on a new energy path one that uses our own great resources invest in our own  country rather than send all this money overseas or to foreign countries some of which plot against us and some of which are clearly not our our best friends so i hope you'll talk about the technologies that are coming forward that your companies have been involved in i hope you'll talk to us about how big these resources are and what we need to do to gain access to those and what benefits can be derived from them and and what it means in terms of the economy and jobs for america going forward so it looks to me like if we can invest in our own resources using new technologies environmentally safe ways we can generate revenues to the government and create jobs in our hometowns so i look forward to your testimony and with that mr chairman i yield back my time gentleman's time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas mr gonzales gentleman waves his opening chair recognizes the gentleman from north carolina just about to feel thank you mr chair i too want to thank you for convening this hearing and especially to the two witnesses i anticipate very eagerly your testimony is today mr chairman the proposed merger that we are talking about today recognizes the energy industry as recognition of natural gas as an important bridge fuel for the coming years and the goal of curbing carbon emissions while also becoming energy independent in this country are captured in crease use of natural gas and so this is a good thing burning natural gas produced fifty to seventy percent of your greenhouse gas emissions and other fossil fuels and will be critical to achieving an eighty three percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by two thousand and fifty and we can do it and we are going to do it contrary to what many of my friends on the other side suggest as we continue to develop technology to sequester carbon from coal demand for natural gas will continue to grow in wayne county in my north carolina district progress energy an decision last august to convert three coal fired power plants to natural gas duke energy and my state has ongoing plans for several natural gas power plants energy companies across the u s to dealing with the future of a carbon constrained environment by moving to natural gas growth and unconventional natural gas production also greatly expands america's reserves and our ability to be energy independent expansion of exploration and production in the barnett marcellus and other unconventional sources has increased sixty five percent since the one nine hundred ninety eight in two thousand and eight ninety one percent of our supply came from domestic sources continued growth in the domestic natural gas market is good for energy independence so long as there is appropriate competition and i stress that appropriate competition to ensure fair pricing and commitment to environmental stewardship we would be wise to carefully consider the impact economically and environmentally of this merger incredible growth of an unconventional production must be mirrored by a regulatory activity that ensures the public trust i have run out of time mr chairman but thank you very much for recognizing me i look forward to the testimony of these two men you go back  we thank the gentleman the chair recognizes the gentleman from oklahoma mr sullivan thank you mr chairman and i thank you for having this hearing and i want to thank our two witnesses mr tillerson and mr simpson thank you so much for what you're doing and i wish the congress would take your in this very important issue of natural gas in our country when we look at energy policy in this country long term natural gas supply should be a big part of it and we need in from oklahoma it's one of the third largest gas producing state in the united so i have a vested interest in this but that's why it's so important that we use natural gas for other things like transportation fuel that's why the republican author of the natural gas act i think it's very important that we use it for transportation fuel are ten million natural gas vehicles around the world and we just don't we have about a hundred fifty thousand here in the united states also i want to hear more about you know we do have a lot of large reserves of natural gas here in the united states so it is american energy we don't lessen our dependence on foreign oil like others have said but one of the reasons we've gotten so much of that is because of the drilling techniques the horizontal drilling and the hydraulic fracking i read a report and you guys know more but i hear like sixty to eighty percent of the wells drill in the next ten years are going to have to use hydraulic fracking so i think it's horrible it be detrimental to this country if they outlaw that practice also i'm concerned and i want to hear what you have to say later on about the e p a removing the exemption of hydraulic fracking from the safe drinking water act also you know we hear barack obama president obama talk about all the stimulus spending and the taxing are creating all these jobs yet unemployment's gone up and i just want to commend you because what you're doing right here this is how jobs are created right here the government doesn't do it the private sector does it and we have about two million people that work in the energy industry in this country and they're going to lose jobs if these things going to affect we want to create jobs and i want to commend you for that as well and hear more about that too thank you very much gentleness time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from vermont mr welch thank you very much mr chairman i look forward to hearing the bringing attention in bringing solutions to the climate change problems that this country faces exxon mobil does have a history of resistance to acknowledging how severe that problem is  it has rhetorical he changed its ways in some respects recently it's devoted a substantial amount of funds to advertising but i understand that it still is very resistant so it's said to plan a much more active role that it's prominence in the industry would allow it to play so this merger has significant questions about  competition about energy about cost but it also i think has significant implications as to what role exxon mobil is going to play in assisting this country in addressing the problem of climate change  very supportive of this proposed merger but i would decide track to i just showed you a map of massachusetts in the red and blue and appears that your congressional district still remains under democrat but looks like most of massachusetts leading all up to cape cod is now in the red and i spent four years in south deerfield that part of the area looked like it remained democrats but i think you made a wise decision based on looking at this map if nothing else colleague on that side talked about fracturing and how they're concerned about the drinking water but i would say to him that since one thousand nine hundred eighty s hydraulic fracturing has helped to produce more than seven billion barrels of oil and six hundred trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the united states so the oil and gas industry strongly believes that the continued use of hydraulic fracturing is essential to produce more of the oil and natural gas that the u s will consume in the next decades ahead and according to the  american petroleum institute up to eighty percent of natural gas wells drilled in the next decade will require simply require hydraulic fracturing and without it most of our country's abundant natural gas resources cannot be produced so i hope my colleagues on that side will not  be overly concerned about the impact of the drinking water one thing i would say mr chairman there was an article dealing with this merger in the press it said x t o s hedge more than half of its natural gas production for two thousand and ten or about a one point two five billion cubic feet per day with some additional hedges already in place in two thousand and eleven by contracts exxon says it makes only limited use of derivative instruments to hedge oil and gas production so i guess maybe one question will come out of this hearing is what will this deal mean for trading operations going forward x t o so mr chairman with that i thank you again for your hearing and i look forward to the witnesses opening statements thanks gentlemen very much the chair recognizes the gentle lady from california ms mystery thank you mr chairman for calling today's hearing i'd like to also thank the palace for appearing before us to day and i look forward to hearing your views on the recently proposed merger at your companies and the ramifications of this agreement for the u s oil and gas markets as we continue to discuss ways in which to address global climate change it is imperative that the federal government support approaches that are effective innovative and efficient it's equally important however however that we ensure that the merger not adversely impact north american oil and natural gas markets and with regard to production competition prices and consumers the exxon mobil x t o deal may prompt its peers to move toward similarly and consolidate and already tight oil and gas market create additional concerns for the regulatory bodies that oversee the oil and gas supply and more importantly studies have shown that fewer participants and as you can lead to both lower and higher prices for consumers we cannot allow our best intentions to encourage the expansion of natural gas to impair our ability to protect the health safety and welfare of the american people while it is also critical that we embrace new technologies we cannot do so at the expense of clean water clean air or a country security i look forward to working with my colleagues to examine these issues and to making certain that the proposed merger is in keeping with our efforts to save our environment and generate new jobs mr chairman the energy industry is critical in my home state of louisiana and the haynesville shale play along with other major natural gas fans around the country of change the landscape of our country's energy outlook i look forward to learning more about this merger and its impact on our nation's energy economy and i welcome the panelist to our committee as we discuss the issue today we cannot overlook the fact that our country lacks a comprehensive national energy policy that will put the us on a path to energy independence instead of working in a bipartisan manner to help break our dependence on middle eastern oil and create new jobs this administration in the liberals running congress are sending our country down a path of economic destruction while pursuing a radical environmental agenda that will lead to nothing more than millions of american jobs being shipped overseas to countries like china and india at a time when our american families can least afford it the cap and trade energy tax along with the threat of heavy handed e p a regulation of carbon represent the most drastic and dangerous attempts to hijack our country's countr energy sector in my home state of louisiana thousands of jobs will be lost under cap and trade energy tax and as a matter of fact there is a company that is currently basing their decision to locate in either brazil or south louisiana on what washington does on the cap and trade energy tax these dangerous proposals taken together with their efforts to create a government takeover of health care along with the reckless spending and borrowing will destroy the fabric of our country cripple our condo me and place an overwhelming burden on our children and grandchildren it seems mr chairman that this administration and those running congress will stop at nothing to pursue this liberal agenda that is killing our economy resulting in thousands of dollars in higher taxes for american families and small businesses and shipping millions of american jobs overseas instead of pursuing this radical agenda it's time for this administration and the liberals running congress to finally listen to the american people and the result of last night's election in massachusetts should serve as a wake up call that the american people have rejected this liberal agenda they want to focus on jobs and they deserve better than the backroom deals being made on health care thank you want to go back the gentleman says time has expired chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona m thank you mr chairman and i want to thank our witnesses i look forward to hearing your testimony it is widely known that the merger between exxon mobil and xtina energy is conditioned on hydraulic fracturing remaining legal and practicable i think this raises for this congress yet one more ok's and to visit the issue of public policy and to do it in a balanced and reasonable way there is virtually no nation indeed i think no nation in the history of mankind which has locked up more of its natural resources and done more damage to its job base then this country in the name of protecting its natural resources on the one hand and its environment on the one hand that is appropriate we should be careful to protect our environment but on the other hand i hope we as a nation of begun to learn that that has to be done with great balance and care because irrational restrictions can cause us to do what we are doing now which is to buy our energy from foreign sources who have no interest in our national security and indeed are often our enemies and who will not do  job of extracting that energy and as clean a fashion as we would in two thousand and seven seventy seven percent of the natural gas we consume in the united states came from the united states a vast majority of our domestic supply is accessible only through hydraulic fracturing a or subsequent underground movement of fracturing further although thousands of c d n wells are fractured annually e p a did not find confirmed evidence of drinking water wells have been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing it is incredibly telling that this kind of merger has to be kinetic conditioned on the government not pursuing an irrational policy which will lock up our own natural resources i command the people who have put this deal together i believe it is in our nation's interest and i think it is time that we focus on producing american energy in america american jobs in america and protecting our own environment rather than relying on foreign resources where they do no better job of protecting their environment which is indeed our environment as well and with that i y colorado i of course a very strong supporter of natural gas development it's a clean domestic energy resource and a big source of jobs in my own state and the merger agreement between exxon mobil and next language effectively allowing exxon mobil to cancel the merger of laws are enacted making hydraulic fracturing quote illegal or commercially impracticable seeing as i have introduced legislation on hydraulic fracturing this piqued my interest good news my bill would not make hydraulic fracturing illegal nor would it make it commercially impracticable i support the use of hydraulic fracturing please let me say that again i support the use of hydraulic but i also see port being in an environmentally responsible way currently there's no requirement under federal law to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing although we know that many of those chemicals may be highly toxic the oil and gas industry is the only industry exempted from one of the nation's landmark drinking water loss the safe drinking water act and frankly all of our constituents have the right to know what chemicals are being used in their community particularly if they are near underground sources of drinking water my bill would simply require disclosure of the constituents used in fracking fluids while protect protecting the proprietary formula much like we require coca cola to list its ingredients but not its secret recipe what my bill would do is simply restore the e p a saw so already to ensure that hydraulic not endanger drinking water under the safe drinking water act that seems reasonable and simple to me i think that's our job as congress i look forward to the testimony today and also to working with the industry to make sure we can support hydraulic while at the same time making sure it remains environmentally sound great the journalist times expired we thank her for joining us that all time for opening statements by members has been completed so will now turn to our panel variety of management positions in domestic and foreign operations since joining the exxon organization in one nine hundred seventy five we thank you for joining us mr jealous and whenever you're ready please begin german marquee ranking member up there members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear today americans face a critical challenge continuing to develop affordable reliable and secure energy supplies needed to grow our economy and create jobs while also continuing to improve environmental aspects of energy production and use the combination of exxon mobil and x t o is an important step towards addressing this challenge the development of our combined resources will create the opportunity for more jobs and investment in the production of cleaner burning natural gas spread across many parts of the united states it will support our nation's economic record recovery strengthen our nation's energy security and help meet our nation's environmental goals at exxon mobil we focus on the long term the global scale of our industry the volatility of the world commodity market in which we compete and the decades long time frames of our projects require us to plan far into the future our agreement with mexico is consistent with this approach that combines the complementary strengths of our two companies x t o's technical expertise and their substantial unconventional natural gas resource base in the united states and exxon mobil's own global resource base our advanced research and development proven operational capabilities our global scale and importantly our financial capability it will better position us to meet americans long term needs for fordable reliable clean burning natural gas enabling a strong and growing u s economy requires meeting americans total energy needs including feels to power their businesses heat their homes and generate electricity increases in domestic natural gas supplies can meet an increasingly important share of these needs this is due in large part to important technologies pioneered by exxon mobil xom t o and others which enable us to unlock enormous supplies of unconventional natural gas in the united states with recent advances in extended reach horizontal drilling combined with the time tested technology of hydraulic fracturing a process in use for more than sixty years we can now find and produce unconventional natural gas supplies miles below the surface and they say an environmentally responsible manner innovations such as these unconventional natural gas is projected to meet most of america's domestic natural gas demand by the year twenty thirty representing a substantial change in overall energy and the overall energy profile of the united states in the five year span ending in two thousand and eight the u s energy information administration estimates that the u s total proven natural gas reserves increased by thirty percent to two hundred  five trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of about forty one billion barrels of oil in an eighteen month span ending in mid two thousand and eight natural gas production in the united states increased thirteen percent  fifty seven billion cubic feet per day that's an amount equivalent to all of the natural gas production in the entire united kingdom and total u s natural gas resources estimates have increased thirty five percent in the last two years from this americans can now count on nearly a century of domestic natural gas supply at current rates of consumption in addition to its domestic abundance natural gas hold several other advantages for americans it is the cleanest burning of the fossil fuels emitting up to sixty percent less carbon dioxide than the current leading fuel source used to meet america's electricity needs natural gas production is also responsible for significant economic activity job creation and revenues for local state and federal governments in the it states in two thousand and eight it contributed three hundred eighty five billion dollars to our nation's economy and supported more than two point eight million american jobs more than six hundred twenty two thousand of these jobs are through direct employment representing a twenty percent increase in job employment since the year two thousand and six significant job growth occurred in many states including arkansas all colorado north dakota south dakota utah and pennsylvania discovering developing and delivering clean burning natural gas is in trouble to the work of the us all and gas industry which in two thousand and seven alone contributed more than one trillion dollars to the nation's economy and supported more than nine million american jobs the challenge americans face is significant to reverse our nation's economic difficulties meet our energy needs and reach out and run america environmental goals we all must do our part governments help by posting stable tax and regulatory policies which encourage competition on a level playing field consumers help by using energy efficiently and industry helps by taking the risk to develop new energy technologies and new cleaner burning energy resources such as unconventional natural gas in my view the combination of x t o and exxon mobile will enable us to more effectively play our part in addressing the challenge our nation faces and will help create the enter graded solutions that provide americans with the energy supplies the energy security the environmental protection and the economic growth they expect and that they deserve thank you thank you mr tillotson our next witness is mr bob simpson the chairman of the board of ex t o energy incorporated mr simpson was one of the founders of x t o in hundred eighty six and has been chairman and chief executive officer are held similar positions with the calm company ever since we welcome you sarah whenever you're ready please begin  turn on that microphone sir and move it in a little bit closer to that got it thank you chairman markey ranking member and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to let me appear here today discuss our merger with exxon our green builds on next quarter century success in developing affordable reliable cleaner burning us unconventional natural gas supplies for use by americans from a number beginning in west texas i learned a lot about hard work long hours with our family farm and my family members also got smart enough to realize that our great american education system could open up far reaching opportunities beyond those of sanding cotton fields and his taxes the government is there to help with the support of one of my heroes the iconic president john f kennedy a generation of kids got the financial assistance to pursue their academic dreams during the sixty's i was one of them my dreams that we did baylor university where i learned and also earned two degrees with honors  from the strong foundation i am proud to build a career in the exciting and challenging and critical history of energy here in the united states some of you may not be for me with so let me share with you a little of our assets some big aspirations and about thirty five million of investor money and the early lean years the company did not make enough for me to justify us our not hundred ninety three we went public with a national market cap three we focused on hiring talented people encouraging innovation and turning low producing all natural gas resources into high producing or higher producing months later we turned our attention to u s unconventional natural gas before many others did as a relatively abundant cost effective cleaning burning cleaner burning u s energy resource we felt unconventional natural gas had enormous potential and supporting the united states growing demand for energy i believe we made the right call today where one of the leading producers of natural gas in america with a total resource base equivalent to forty five of natural gas our shareholder equity has grown from the thirty five million in one thousand nine hundred six to thirty one billion in our proposed merger for the last decade our stock performance was number two for all stocks on the new york stock exchange with an average increase of forty two percent per year in appreciation our production grew by seven hundred fourteen percent in the fields during that same time and we employed today thirty three hundred men and women virtually all the united states throughout our history we are focused on developing technology and operating practices that enable us to produce energy resources safely efficiently and in an environmentally responsible manner every employee that seal shares our commitment to operational excellence this commitment led us to success for our company and our country there is growing evidence that  current consumption rights in america now enjoys a more than one hundred year supply of natural gas here in the states and with changes in technology and constantly evolving production innovations we may have only scratched the surface as we have grown and developed we have always been mindful of the future and how we could continue to do best to develop the opportunities that we have been able to identify and we're viewing our future path we realize that we need to look at options to take what we have achieved and bring it to a new and higher level we recognize that the opportunities before us could best be reach their potential if we could find an organization that could bring additional scale technology and financial capacity to the work we have been doing and i'm pleased to say that we found that organization in exxon mobil our proposed merger would enable us to continue apply the technical expertise and operational excellence we are known for to a greater number of unconventional natural gas opportunities throughout the united states it will continue our strength of exxon mobil's strengths including its r and d project management operational integrity environmental performance and financial capacity moving forward exxon mobil intense establish a new upstream organization to manage global development and production of unconventional resources  enabling the rapid development of deployment of technologies in operating practices to increase production the new organization will be located in fort worth texas at x t s current offices additional production of domestic unconventional gas will result in increased supplies of energy which will lead to expanding markets all of which significant hands are energy security i strongly really this proposed merger is a good deal for our shareholders our employees and our consumers here in the united states we will support our nation's economic recovery and energy security while also helping meet our nation's environmental goals i am proud of our company's success over the years and look forward to the consumer continuing that success with exxon mobil in the years to come thank you thank you mr s my question to you is this that there's a lot of fuel shifting which goes on when natural gas is plentiful and two thousand and eight is a good example where there were ten thousand new megawatts of gas fired power that was installed in america eight thousand new megawatts of wind but only eleven hundred new megawatts of coal in two thousand and nine there wasn't one new coal fired plant in the united states how do you see this going forward especially because of the profile of where the marcellus shale is and in some of these other formations in terms of fuel substitution going forward what is the future of coal and electrical generation in your opinion i think that in my planning for the company we recognized all the way back to ninety six we shifted our focus from a balance on gas companies a natural gas and then  growth was based on natural gas we recognize that is the clean burning fuel in america you know to be honest about our consumption of fuel in america ninety percent of it is either c of those three gas is clearly the superior fuel for the future in bridging to a lower carbon environment so ice again speak for the natural gas industry and my own personal belief that natural gas is the wave of the future and exciting news it's not academic we have found it leads to resource in america that we will be able to put fuel of on sure and offshore production of natural gas given the breakthroughs that mrs simpson and others have made and now you are announced merger with his company well relative economics are not that different and the reasons are in order for offshore resources to be commercial and in particular in the locations where we are discovering large  resources offshore which is now in deeper water it takes a very large accumulation so you have to have a very large discovery over which you can input very expensive production and extraction facilities so the total economics of the resource extracted through the investment floats on the watch against taking a similar sized resource on shore and developing it with literally thousands and thousands of wells and the infrastructure that go with that are comparable and so there's the the differences are really technical challenges will do the comparison then as well with the implication of liquefied natural gas if you would from other countries  and with bringing down more natural gas from alaska in terms of the economics given the fact that mysel us and barnett are indigenous and right there in region well clearly the largest the emergence of these large now discovered and proven unconventional resources are going to act to put pressure on the economics of added every other source of natural gas particularly those that either have to come from long distances ellen g or have to come from arctic regions like the alaska natural gas pipeline simply because the market now has a greater supply vailable to it and so that is going to require that those other sources are going to have to continue to find ways to reduce their cost in order for them to compete at what the market prices will likely be in the u s it's simply a matter of now more supply available here locally more closely to the lower forty eight markets than than we previously would have thought even five years ago so you are projecting lower prices for l n g as a result of these discoveries and a merger well the price setting mechanisms here in the united states are going to be unchanged it's still going to be largely supply demand driven pricing mechanisms there are very very few long term natural gas contracts any longer in the united states we long ago through deregulation and the restructuring and evolving of natural gas markets have gone t much shorter type of sales a range months so the supply signal are quite immediate in terms of what the what the demand the construct in general in general william essex supply put pressure on  suppliers going to put pressure on prices so you think the longer term trend is lower prices for imported natural gas than otherwise if this supply had not been identified here domestically i think without question without this supply because the unconventional supply is going to represent an ever growing component of the total u s natural gas supply over the next twenty years it's going to be supplying upwards of half of our total natural gas supply in the u s so again it's clearly you introduce that level of volume into the marketplace it affects every other source of supply let me turn to recognize the gentleman from michigan mr upton thank you mr chairman i'd like to start off by just saying that i think for many americans when they think about the discovery of both oil and gas in the production of it they go back to that movie they never really hillbillies to clamp and just put in a pipe and there it is they don't necessarily understand that you have to have here i've actually been and look at the barnett operation here great things for my colleague mr pitts about the marcellus bock and other resources around the country but really without that so it is as i think most of our colleagues here on the on the panel regardless of republican or democrat we understand the importance of that in the documents on the merger itself there's  no longer commercial and as you've heard mr simpson comment in his remarks and as you know in response to questions what has enabled this new source of natural gas supply to the u s is a combination of  integrated technologies but a key component is hydraulic fracturing and without how drastic fracturing the gas that's locked in the shale rock stays locked it just stays there we the existence of this resource has been known for decades but we did not know or have the techniques to unlock the gas so that it would flow from the shale rock into the well bore we've drilled through the shale for years and they and they don't flow when we drill through them so if you remove fracturing as one of the key enabling technologies this resource can no longer be recovered so obviously our deal would make no sense the provision that's in the merger agreement is one that's these are standard types of provisions you would find when two companies talk about mergers and they talk about the risk and so it's in there to protect the exxon mobil shareholders in the event something transpires before this deal would close and i think it's just a recognition that we see a lot of regulation that comes out of the congress and the u s government that provides a little bit of that but there's an enormous propensity to regulate in this country so it's just a recognition that that's a risk mr simpson you want to add to  that i couldn't get natural gas to and i'm in texas now that house is sitting on the largest natural gas producing field in america today and so now what i would say is that what's allowed us to go from the psychology of charted to one of abundance in essence is to the technology of how drought fracture now i just don't believe that given that as a consequence there's any real risk of legislation that would prohibit that practice so this really is a win win for me and these great resources and because of the increased supply push further pressure downward pressure on the inslee thank you mr tillerson our job in congress job is job one is jobs now as you know for obvious reasons i want to ask him some questions about this merger as it pertains to the ability of the united states to really seize the economic opportunities in the new non fossil fuel based systems in addition to natural gas first i want to ask you does exxon believe that human caused emissions of carbon dioxide and some other gases we have said for some time that there's no question the climate is changing that one of the contributors to climate change are greenhouse gases that are a result of industrial activity and there are many greenhouse gases besides c o two which i know you know that and the real challenge i think for all of us is understanding to what extent therefore what can you do about it and it is a scientific challenge it as a risk management problem there is a risk the consequences if those risks play out are pretty dire and so our view for some time has been forced and for most let's continue to support the scientific investigation of what is one of the most complicated areas of science that people are studying today and that is clear the climate the science around climate and what affects the climate it is extremely complicated and we have supported that work and i know the congress has made funds to support that work and and we support the scientific advancement of understanding this issue the better we understand that the better the technology solutions then will be provided and that will be provided in the most cost effective way to consumers the world over so yes we we acknowledge that it is a contributing factor where i think we have differences and where we've perhaps talked past one know from time to time is that being a science and engineering company we understand the science we understand the difficulties of modeling the science and there are a number of very complicated models that have been developed by people who are studying the issue around the or altered to try and first replicate what's happened so we understand the science and then predict the future and it we look at the competency of those models there's not a model of vailable today that is competent and i think all the people who run those models would acknowledge that so we say keep studying it in the meantime the risks are significant the consequences could be dire shall we should take action and we are taking action ourselves and we are engaged actively in the discussion here in the capital on both ends of the congress around what various policy options might be sensible the reason i ask you that is i still get letters from some constituents saying humans are not involved in changing the climate it's it's egocentric to think that humans could cause a cause a change in the climate and i am going to report to them that the leader of the largest energy company in the united states believes that we are one contributing factor t climate change i'm going to report that to him i hope to listen to that of a person with tremendous scientific background as your company has with some of the most brilliant engineers in the world working for you believe that and now the question is what's the right response if my correct in assuming that your decision to enter into this acquisition in part is induced or motivated at least in part in a belief that we will be in some version of a carbon constrained world in the future in some sense is that one of your motivations well as we undertake and every year we undertake our own internal energy outlook what are the demands for all forms of energy going to be one of the  be and we have identified now over the last few years the growing importance of natural gas much of which we would attribute to consumers around the world understanding that there are moves underway and already are policies in place in much of the world in europe european countries and elsewhere that do put a price on carbon and that does shift you towards natural gas demand here in the united states we expect natural gas demand to grow about twenty percent over the next twenty years it's going to grow and its relative contribution much of which is due to our view that eventually there there is already an incentive i think among most consumers and companies to lower their carbon footprint so there's a natural incentive natural gas also provides from an energy efficiency standpoint a number of favorable attributes as well so it would be it was in a consideration i wouldn't tell you that we priced it in  would tell you that in all of our investment decisions though we have in our economic modeling we put a carbon price in our economic decisions and project something for the future so that we at least are considering what the effects on our investments might be in the years to come we we are opposed to cap and trade systems as policy options we do not feel that they are the most cost effective way to put in place the proper incentives for people to be more  your opinion as chairman or c e o of the largest privately on the energy company in the world and certainly the largest in united states if waxman markey would actually be passed which luckily it's not but if it were could the united states in your opinion in a cost effective way or maybe any way at all meet the target of reducing c o two emissions eighty five percent by the year two thousand and fifty from the two thousand and five baseline well obviously you can meet any target if you don't care what it cost and so if you're willing to suffer enormous job loss and reduced economic activity because one of the ways you  achieve those targets is to shut activity down that's the easiest way to reduce emissions is don't emit i'm so in your role again is c e o of the largest energy probably on energy company in the world and certainly in the united states  you have to minimize risk to your stockholders and maximize employment opportunities for the employees under your direction and so your acknowledgement to mr inslee this is simply a prudent business decision that that's the real political world that exxon mobil is in and you need to be prepared to adopt to that reality well as i indicated our in our economic prospects we have to make some assumption about what the future may be we have to do the same for what we think the price of the commodity will be what we think the cost of business will be and so the fact that we include a price on carbon is just acknowledgement that there is a likelihood that there will be a price there already is in some part of the over the last x number of years and we've all seen the stories about exxon mobil's right of return so we'll i will stipulate you two gentlemen are pretty good at what you do and the country's glad that you're pretty good at what you do  tillotson what does exxon mobil get by merging with x well as as as we have studied the unconventional resource base globally  it has enormous potential certainly here in the united states which i know we're most interested in today but there are enormous unconventional resources globally in many countries that could be very important not just to their country but to the global resource holdings that x t l has amassed here in the united states exxon mobil has been taking acreage positions in countries around the world and you see the domestic resource base what merging with exxon mobil mr sim successfully now we also enjoy one expertise which will put together their advanced r and d and the global scale will bring exciting opportunities to the staff we've assembled so you get their expertise in kap is there any indication from either your gentleman staff that the justice department or the f c c is going to be negative on the merger well we've only just begun you know that dialogue with them including answering their questionnaire so i wouldn't i wouldn't want to be so presumptuous as to prejudge what r s reports indicate that i mean it doesn't give either the merged company wouldn't have a corner on the domestic energy market and the standard any trust metrics this is a merger that appears to fit within those parameters under all of the h s our metrics that are typically used to judge competitive elements this merger does not give rise to my time let's talk about now whether or not this is commercially impracticable it's not a term we use in pittsburgh a lot pennsylvania we have rules in place to protect our underground sources of drinking  water i talked to mr starnes and asked if he wanted to be a pennsylvania water tester so that he could drink the water first before the rest of us had to do it he declined but in pennsylvania in order to obtain a permit drillers must identify any anticipated impacts of water withdrawals on water resources wells cannot be drilled within two hundred feet of structures or within one hundred feet of streams or wetlands pennsylvania law requires drillers to case in grout wells through all fresh water aquifers before drilling through deeper zones in order to protect groundwater from pollutants inside wells d e p t inspectors investigate residents complaints about water quality there is a presumption that well operators are responsible for any pollution or near of nearby groundwater and well operators are required by law to replace or restore adversely affected public or private drinking water supplies there's also role that require operators to disclose all chemicals to be stored and use that a drilling site including chemicals  in order to guard against contamination and ensure safe disposal of these these chemicals that's pennsylvania law now mr simpson x two yo currently operates natural gas wells in pennsylvania true or false that's true very good in view of the one hundred eighty one billion cubic feet of natural gas produced in pennsylvania in two thousand six hundred phone is it safe to say that pennsylvania's regulations have not made it commercially impractica to extract pennsylvania substantial natural gas reserves now from our experience first of our drilling in pennsylvania so far is very limited handful of wells in our experience we've been able to comply  the one area we might want to examine to see if it impedes in terms of the going beyond where we are but again it's not our primary focus in terms of where we drill we drill last year we drilled about twelve hundred own personal knowledge is limited as to the operations and pennsylvania but you have you have at least i know when you bought when energy that included about one hundred fifty two thousand net acres of marcellus shale leasehold do you currently have that marcellus shell is an opportunity for you by the way we love having in pennsylvania we want to get that gas out of the ground we're off doing that but the regulations that are already in place in pennsylvania don't seem to be stopping you from considering pennsylvania's p operations thank you so my question is is is because this more solid shell formation goes over several states and we have some laws that have regulation some some states that have regulations some states that have no regulations and and everything in between what a national regulatory framework that create more uniformity and predictability for companies like yours do you think it makes more sense that that you just have one law that creates some predictability for you or do you like this patchwork of of maybe you know fifty different laws that if each states adopt their own laws you know our industry and historically our companies built in variety of states texas oklahoma new mexico primarily in louisiana and what i would say is that we have adapted to each individual states rules regulations we believe that that's been a successful program and that  environment and relate in industry issues are regulated satisfactorily i believe for both us and the consumer and citizens through state regulation and mr chairman i see my time's expired i have lots of questions about leasing practices and i see that we in pennsylvania have a lot to learn from our friends in texas and louisiana and i'd like to explore that if there's a chance for a second round of questions gentleman's time has expired the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas mr burgess thank you mr chairman in fact i'd like to explore if it's possible to do that horizontal drilling from north texas up to pennsylvania direct from the marcellus shale and you know it's impossible to overstate the anomic value to our area of the barnett shale has brought the country entered a recession in december of two thousand and seven i don't think we felt it in our area until december of two thousand and eight a full year later than the rest of the country since you talked about the house without the ability to heat with natural gas i remember being in an all electric home and in the eighty's as well we had a very cold snap like we just had these past couple of weeks back in the eighty's and the electric bill was seven or eight hundred dollars for heating the home in  these past two months in texas have been brutally cold our gas bills have in some cases been almost one hundred dollars to heat a similar size house so it is a it is so substantial economic benefit for jobs and development in our area and it's a substantial economic development delivering energy at a reasonable cost to people who live in north texas so it is it is with a great deal of relief that  are sitting together at this table and looking exploring the possibility of of linking up the knowledge base with x t with the with the capital and the ability to scale that exxon mobil has i think that is a that is likely to be a very rewarding development mr simpson your company does presumably because of different missions and what have you of that in the size of your two companies but how will this work going forward and what what should we look to is that going to be the activity as far as derivatives and hedging congressman i think the use of the hedges in the way that ex deo has traditionally used them really common for companies of their size they're also growing their business at the r pace that they're growing as a means of just gently providing for a secure cash flow so that they can keep their ongoing activities underway with some type of forward planning basis you know because of exxon mobil's size in our global scale  our cash flow and our financing structure is quite different and so we have never used hedges or derivatives as part of our financing structure the reference to the limited use that we have for those are our on physical  contracts to make physical delivery of the crude all primarily and it's to cover very short periods of time when crude's in transit primarily thirty sixty day kind of contracts and that's just to manage the risk exposure across a short period time but they're not used as a financial instrument for exxon mobile because they're not needed for our financing structure and and so in the future we would not we would not be continuing those hedging programs so as far as hell that impacts the consumer the  at the at the end of the stream likely to be perhaps the opportunity for more stability in pricing and less of the the the wild swings that we saw in summer two thousand and eight well it's hard to say i mean because it's hedging activities of x t s certainly important to them on the grand scale of the natural gas markets may not be significant so i think it's very hard to say what if any impact the removal of that activity from the market's going to have on just the strictly the local scale of the number of jobs provided by both companies in the areas significant the corporate location the corporate headquarters in fort worth  important to my district areas around my district what what can we look forward to what will happen with jobs and corporate location well one of the important elements in this congressman barton was i was asking for you know why the why the merger was important yes we get access to x t o's large u s domestic resource base but a very important part of this merger is exhales organization and they have a twenty year track record now of having invested take a lot of to understand how the unconventional resource base can be profitable profitably commercialized and brought to the market provided to consumers we've we've built unconventional acreage holdings around the world what we want to do is retain their organization we want to retain their fort worth location as the headquarters of what will be a new global unconventional gas resource organization to use their know how and their capabilities bring some of our technology in r and d capabilities because we have a significant r and d activity underway around the in conditionals bring some of our project management capabilities and our financial stability and put the best of all of those together in this new organization for to create more opportunity to develop the resource here domestically but also we intend to use as an opportunity to develop these resources globally because extent we can develop more global energy supply all through that's better for the u time has expired chair recognizes the gentleman from utah mr mets thank you mr chairman and i think the panelists i apologize i haven't been here for the whole hearing neither hearing taking place in the science committee at the same time so i've been moving back and forth between the two mr simpson i know there's been some discussion of hydraulic fracturing today perhaps on the took place and i was in the room in your experience had there problems with this technology th with the horizontal drilling techniques that have been developed particularly in the last decade and the two combined have unlocked this resource that we're talking about today which i think between  long life reserves long life means generally tight reservoir our unconventional reservoir low decline and while the country had a decline rate of x percent ours was always about half whatever the countries was so that we could more readily grow and so we've relied on that fracturing for a long time as a country as a company we virtually  drill no wells that don't employ some form of hydraulic pressure every well your company drills yes virtually every well you know that may not be used offshore some some more permeable reservoirs but our properties are based on tight gas and unconventional reservoirs are which include a tight gas and in my experience in the last few years we've gotten up to around a thousand plus wells good while now subject to state rates regulation and without incident and so i don't believe it's necessary i think the risk is if we're not careful we go backwards and frankly the going here in america and so i think it's just tantamount that we find a way to continue that practice because it's such a valuable thing to this country and so i personally and we talked about earlier will believe in the wisdom of congress collectively the greater wisdom that it's the practice will continue because with saif and the consequence of not being able to do  economy is too great i appreciate that i do think it's congressman paul so in great detail describe the state regulation state of pennsylvania is not unusual in most states have  very detailed regulations around our drilling activities and our hydraulic fracturing activities that govern the protection of the drinking water awk refers in all states those i think i've been tested and have been proven to be quite adequate a has testified before the congress last summer that they cannot document a single case the new york water resources development board investigated hydraulic fracturing they could not document any threat to safe drinking water so i think the real question is will what's the need for federal oversight other than it's just going to add another layer to the states that will add cost a uniform regulation congressman paul would not be preferable because the water opera for years and the geology in the structure and is different for every state and they know their water resources and their requirements better than anyone up here is going to know and they going to protect them better and so the states are regulating this well and a uniform rule would actually add a layer of complexity i think for the state regulator and any time you add a layer you add a cost and when you add a cost you just knocked off an increment of production because somewhere out there is the marginal cost well and it doesn't get drill i appreciate that thank you i know you know that mister gentleman's time has expired the chair than we ever thought we would have imagined that one of the newest finds a couple years ago was under underneath a state wildlife refuge underneath a lake and it's been operating now for four or five years and of course it's a state wildlife refuge you know the department natural resources on that lake every day and watching watching it so we're excited about this and my all focuses energy security and the ability of the united states to make sure that we have the energy we need without being dependent on imported crude oil now the great thing about what our debates have always been is you know how do we do that or at least be independent using north american resources we have to go in the outer continental shelf we have to take advantage of these new natural gas lines and then we've got to use these commodity products allow the market to decide how do you change that the clean air act which was talked about quite a bit and was very successful in cleaning up toxic that's why i really have this climate debate because carbon dioxide is not a toxic event i don't care what people try to say here in this chamber it is not a toxic image now stuff we cleaned up in the clean air act was toxic but when we did the clean air act they did a business plan on how to deploy and what he used technology for coal or natural gas you know natural gas then historically use in home eating but now we can use it in transportation fuel now we use it not just in me this will be the question it's kind of a lead in how based upon the policies that we enact here that does change the business plan for the deployment of those commodity products does it not mr tillerson well clearly the regulations or mandates from time to time that are put in place change the economic relative economic choices that an investor has to develop energy resources or consumer has to buy and consume them so you know without question what what is done here moves that needle back and forth and that's why we have always been a proponent a strong supporter  keeping the playing field level not mandating solutions but set the framework in place and then let the market forces pick the most efficient solutions whether natural gas belongs of transportation fuel versus electric  baseload right now our economic analysis would suggest that electricity baseload is actually much more efficient use of the gas than to use it in compressed natural gas vehicles and we've been have a discipline to provide you some of the work we've done because we study it all the time we're in the transportation fuel business when i appreciate that because and we'll accept you know some help and be an educated but all i want is the market to decide that correct versus policy which pushes commodities into an arena that may not be economically feasible and then you really waste a valuable resource so mine would all always be about having the competitive in vanity of the economy through competition  best commodity for the for the best and use in in that arena the but what you did if i can restate it what one thing you did highlight if we do a stab what's another barrier by oversight of federal regulation that six with our energy situation where you were in eighty's representing my area north of houston we had a depression in texas louisiana and oklahoma because of energy prices the rest of the country was coming out of the recession in the early eighty's but we still were in it so congratulations and back out of a joke that i was over in louisiana one day visiting in one nine hundred eighty seven and and they found out i was from texas they said all our energy prices are tough but in texas you know i have cattle and g in the shale discoveries are so important for our country that if there is a problem and i don't think there is because we have had some incidences i know there was a whale and and pennsylvania  that had some problems with the whales from the residents in the area but that was because the supplier of the concrete didn't provide the correct amount there are problems that is so important our national interests that we need to fix it  because we need that natural gas we need that long term one hundred years plus viability we had in fact my colleague and i are a good friend congresswoman de gette actually put some seats between us today normally sit next to each other because although i heard her statement and i support the expansion i just want to make sure we don't throw so many regulatory roadblocks that we can have the shale production not only in texas and louisiana arkansas are now in congress in and i appreciate how exxon mobil exxon originally an exxon mobil treat their employees have a lot of constituents that are very happy retirees and support for your  employees is really good i noted in your statement several analysis is speculated whether the merger between exxon mobil and would signal further widespread consolidation in america's energy industry or a shift in strategy to the for the largest  large integrator or gas companies focus back on u s natural gas in the past eighteen months b p any and total have also bought into the gas industry which is primary developed by small and midsize gas producers do you believe the exxon mobil x t o merger is a signal that large integrated companies will continue to invest more heavily in the u s unconventional natural gas olds either through acquisitions mergers or joint venture and if so would market conditions lead to this increase in joint ventures or mergers and what a bank be they could have on the competition with our domestic market well this would be hard for me to comment on what others will do clearly this is an enormous resource opportunity and we are all in the resource acquisition development production business so the fact that as you noted it has already attracted the attention of other major companies as well both u s and foreign companies who are investing in the resource with respect gas producers in the united states the documents thirteen thousand seven hundred all in gas operators this is a business that while it contains a lot of risk the hurdles to entry in this country where  mr simpson can start over a very small basis in a very tough economic a very tough economy barriers to entry are fairly low people who are willing and have the courage to take the risk can enter this business on a least bali's basis and build a business  it's history then who's littered with riches and failures and bankruptcies and that's just the nature of it but one of the the real competitive after abuse in this country is that it has that characteristic and there are thousands of players the fact that this merger occurs still leaves enormous amount of opportunity for others to come in and participate so our participation or even as it attracts the participation of other large companies is unlikely to change the competitive balance which has been a characteristic of this industry for decades and this really doesn't change it thank you as chairman thomas time has expired  recognizes the gentleman from north carolina thank you very much mr chairman and i thank my friend mr sullivan for the accommodation i was due at a meeting on haiti over in the capital about thirty minutes ago and so i'm eager to get over for that meeting but thank you very much and let me thank the two witnesses for your testimony today what i particularly thank mr tillerson for the work that he does with exxon mobil i have two credit cards in my pocket one is an american express and the other one is an exxon mobile credit card only two credit cards and on you have an employee must a lot of johnson who moved to washington some months ago and and i share that with him when he first got here it's a company that i'm very very fond of and so thank you thank you for what you do i have in front of me a quote from secretary chu nobel peace prize winner scientist fizzes that he made several days ago and i for fear of misquoting him i want to read it verbatim and simply ask you your comments on it  said the following i think it can be done responsibly and the e p a and other agencies will be looking to ensure that it's done safely and responsibly if it can be extracted in an environmentally safe way then why would you want to ban  it the question is can you do this right so it doesn't leak into the water table i think you can secretary said but he also said that if it's done wrong that it presents substantial risks can you do it incorrectly and start to pollute the water tables yes he said the secretary said companies should not use fracking in a shale rock that is close to a water table or an unstable fault line you don't want to be mucking with shale that is very very close to the water table and the secretary said there's a hundred ways to mess this thing up do you agree or each of you do you agree or disagree with the secretary's assessment well i think you know clearly it's a risk that we have to manage in the expectation is that we manage it well and i don't know if you were in the room moment ago or not congressman but i commented on the testimony that's been given to the congress last june a both from the results of a four year study they did in two thousand and four where they could not find a single documented case of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing to our knowledge there have been a million  documented cases of contamination of groundwater from hydraulic fracturing and in your in your places along so these graphics there is a graphic in there that tries to describe why that happens it's not just by happenstance and it's a picture of how whales are designed it looks like this and a secretary chews comment that you don't want to frack near freshwater zone that is exactly correct and we wouldn't want to fracture near freshwater zones because if the fracture penetrates the freshwater zone we haven't achieved what we spent the millions of dollars to do which is frac the hydrocarbon zone when these this all starts with a well designed and when these wells are first drilled and was commented on by congressman  state agencies already regulate how these wells will be drilled and there are multiple layers of steel casing that pro tech the freshwater zones as the well as being drilled just so we can simply get the well drilled those same steel casings then the number of people that are on the location during a fracture procedure and there's a large number and a lot of those people are there to monitor the pressures on the formation and the various casing strings to ensure there is no failure of the protective  written the risk would be if you if you ruptured these multiple layers of casing in the fluid went where you didn't want to go but you have hundreds to thousands of feet of rock strata between the water and the hydrocarbon bearing shale and then you have multiple layers of steel casing as well so it is a risk that we know we have to manage and wells have been designed over the last many decades to do just that and that's why running out of time here and managing that risk then you feel that the public has a right to know what chemicals are actually being pumped into the ground in their communities and whether it's close to the drinking source well we wouldn't object any disclosure on the contents of what's in the frac fluid and in fact today if only these locations in order to comply with other regulations there are material safety data sheets on chemicals that are on the location so that if there is and that's primarily if there is either resurface spill or an exposure to human that could be harmed by the exposure that those materials safety day sheets are viable so that people know exactly what's on that site so there's already some level of disclosure we understand the concern of some of the service providers who formulate the fractal woods that they are concerned about competitive loss of competitive advantage we would work with them and see if we couldn't find a way to  important i want to discuss it again here real quick if we could in regards hydraulic fracking it seems almost ludicrous that we're trying to do this and like you said over the past sixty years not a single documented case of drinking water contamination has ever been credibly tied to a drop fracturing due to engineering or technical safeguards designed to protect groundwater none it's been going on for like sixty years also in the energy recovered from  shows you how important it is to the nation's energy supply accounts for thirty percent of the u s recoverable oil and gas reserves and has had more than seven billion barrels of oil and six hundred trillion cubic feet of natural gas the u s energy supply  does not does not pose any significant environmental risks yet we're trying to do this also you're right you know the states are the best people that are equipped to do this to regulate this they're the ones that know the players they know the geology they've been there before they've seen it it's the best way instead of having another layer of bureaucracy again impeding on jobs is about jobs so i wanted to see if you guys could tell us what growth in the natural gas industry especially in unconventional resources means for jobs in the u s what states and regions of the countries will have will have jobs created through exxon exxon  natural gas development and production you both can comment on that well commented earlier on the growth that we expect natural gas to take here in the united states over the next twenty years about twenty percent half of power generation we think over the next twenty years is going to be fired by natural gas and if you look at the profile of gas supply that we expect to come from the unconventional resources that could lead to jobs in excess of three hundred thousand jobs would be created over the next you know couple of decades to support that activity and they'd be created and you can look at that map and you can see where these basins fall and so if you're in the state that the basin is over is under you could expect to see activity in your state and i think  been commented in pennsylvania a normal job creation fifty thousand jobs in the last couple years and we expect that to approach one hundred thousand jobs because of the activity in the marcellus shale and a contribution to pennsylvania's  budget of eight billion dollars out of the marcellus shale activity so it has both a an enormous job creation benefit as well as revenue benefits to local governments state governments and the federal government been growing at twenty thirty percent a year directly the individuals there we also generally run the second most drilling rigs america in exploring for this right and developing this resource and that would that's many thousands of jobs directly as a result of this activity that we caused with our drilling activity that's also going to be growing so in quantify and you know you go back to when i began in seventy six natural gas production that did not grow in this country until recently and so the last thirty years mostly it has been a struggle to maintain and offset decline and not to grow this resource during the last three or four years as the first time in my career that i've seen you can actually grow this resource tremendously leading to the  benefits of both job and price and security for this nation and so that is a testimony from from a guy who lived it we generally lived off the scraps of the fields most of my career and the exciting thing order of magnitude they were discovered in the twenty's the shale discoveries of the day probably represent five times the resource base that they ever delivered and they were the two largest fields in this nation so it's not just replicating the past it's reinventing the future and so along with that will become the job growth it's corollary to that is probably beyond the numbers that we've talked about because there ar reaching include marketplace products and simulations that will be derived from the growth of this product and we appreciate that two hundred jobs in oklahoma and now for e mail be more and also i was going to ask both of you to what does this merger signify do you think the american people about natural gas as a fuel for the future and what you think the takeaway should be on this today that you'd like to see the american people see if i think it's pretty exciting if you get both the answer very briefly  just say it's a signal to the american people that we have an enormously valuable natural resource that can be developed and can be delivered to provide them a new source of reliable before double energy i would say the largest natural gas find in the history of our country and now we're finding more as you've talked about more fines in different parts of the country just last week there was announced a tract of the gulf of mexico just off the coast of louisiana that they thought was completely dried up where they found a massive reserves of natural gas there as well so you know there are more natural natural gas and oil fines that were coming up with as the technology advances and i think you know i want to ask you both about the technology advancements because it gets lost in the shuffle a lot people talk as if as if the technologies of twenty years ago were still being employed you know i like to tell my colleagues that the best place to go fishing the gulf of mexico is next to an oil rig because number one with the environmental safeguards that are in place it's one of the best habitats for fish they love congregating and thriving in that area and in the fishing captains know that because that's where they take people to go fishing and you'll you'll catch some really good fish and some of the best you're going to find right there next to the oil rig in fact a motor boat right around the gulf of mexico is going to leak more oil than a large offshore rig and yet you know you listen to some of these people  that want to limit the production of our country's natural resources and they act as if those technological advances never occurred and so i want to get your take first on if congress does do what i think would be very bad policy not just on cap and trade but also on the limits of fracking what would that mean to the kinds of production that's going on right now in the united states in a fifth both of you can well that i think is mr simpson has alluded in the unconventional area if you cannot hydraulically fracture these wells then you wouldn't drill them and so you just stop at that point because you cannot commercially recover the gas strap there the same would be true for the emerging oil shale plays bokken in north dakota has to be fracture stimulated and even beyond the unconventional and tight or then a commission will place a lot of conventional wells utilize hydraulic fracturing to get the rights up to commercial level  it allows you to produce more and therefore improve the economics so if you remove hydraulic fracturing as a technique we don't have an alternative technique today that will do that will achieve the same result from the  wells we have a lot of technology tools we bring them all together that's what allows us to to make these things economic but there is not a replacement for hydraulic fracturing to achieve the same result in these types of resources any idea on the kind of job losses our country experience if we weren't able to do that well all of the job growth we've talked about would pretty well come to a halt and then you would just allow the wells that are producing to decline to be depleted so you clearly would see job growth and then there would be some obviously immediate effect on job losses because you wouldn't drill the wells anymore if you couldn't fracture them so all the employment that goes with drilling activity into support that would immediately  you have a graphic in front of you it talks about the number of jobs the industry by a large by and large creates and that a lot of those jobs are a bit under risk if the if there were some provision made that we can no longer utilize this technique or or made it so costly that it didn't give you the economic results you needed one of the exciting things about the development of technology that you alluded to earlier and one of the exciting things about joining forces supply are pretty well founded on those types of recoveries and the areas we're talking about i believe you know in generations the coming years that come that recovery factor will increase and so these reserves will be larger and that will lead to further growth in security americans and also companies such as exxon mobil i think are the most likely with the r and d they do and the resources they devote i think that is a again a partnership that we're joining in that's more likely to lead to that kind of technology than and so that's a force they bring to this table but again it's not widely understood when we talk about recovery of as we're only talking about a small fraction of what's in place and that that's to come for the future in this technology i've seen advance in my career tremendously we could not we didn't know what years is tremendous and there is room for that type of advancement into the future should the resources be deployed and you can continue to study it with active interest and and talented people and i think  our zation has very talent skill people and think so there's the teaming of the two will lead to further innovation and i know that some of this debate has been brought up as a as a safety issue in trying to be couched in terms of  water safety and of course as as you point out as all of the others on the committee pointed out that there's many studies that have been done and not one has suggested that there's any kind of threat to the water safety so this really has nothing to do with safety it's about it's about a policy decision we're going to make and in do we really want to utilize the resources that this country has in the ability that we have to make our country independent of especially of middle eastern oil countries that don't necessarily want to do good things with the money that they're getting to our country where would exploration come from because our country still has a large appetite for energy consumption and energy exploration is an international industry where where would where would the the natural gas come from if we weren't able to get it from the united states well the current limited imports that the u s does have largely come from canada by way of pipeline and then through elegy imports as we've added capacity receiving or receiving capacity to access more of the l n g markets that are also growing globally so it obviously would come largely from from those two sources and obviously as we talk about energy independence and those and that's that want to have a comprehensive energy policy that allows us to break that dependence on middle eastern oil these kind of radical policies would only increase our dependence on foreign oil at a time when we should be doing the opposite we should be creating jobs this would run jobs often make our country more dependent on competition for it's price it's going to be allocated to a lot of it to where is the highest price in the world to track it here would be price i would submit that a good example for we are today in the last decade i have seen natural gas spock to ten or fifteen dollars several times journey in relation to a cold winter such as we're having now look at gas today it's well over five the energy equivalent that you multiply times so you get thirty something dollars a barrel versus price fall so clearly natural gas is a relative bargain i think that bargain is being driven  largely by supply as because it is a commodity and as to the price in the future when i can just comment on my observation as i know we're having a cold winter and i know i've seen it spike in the last decade several times and we had cold weather now this time we had record supply going into this winter almost forty c f that's almost twenty percent of our demand in the ground ready for winter so between that and the record near record production that we're experiencing recognizes the gentleman from arizona mr shattuck thank you mr chairman and thank you gentlemen for being with us i apologize that i was unable to stay for all of the answers to the questions that you provided but i want to start mr simms my talking to you and asking a question or at least making a comment first of all i applaud you as an entrepreneur i think the nation is better off for what you've been able to find and do but i must tell you that when you told a story about the house that you had in texas where you couldn't get natural gas to your home yet it sits on one of the largest natural gas resources or fields we now know of you then said given that and given the realities of the natural gas we know is there and can now get out with today's technology including hydraulic fracturing you can't imagine this is your state and you said i can't imagine that the congress would pass laws restricting us from getting to those resources trust me i find that statement stunningly politically naive and i think there is a grave risk that the congress might do that and that you need to be aware of that risk and that's why it's in this agreement i have no problem with the government making rational decisions not to go after known resources if in fact they can't be brought out in an environmentally safe way but i think it's important that be an informed decision i believe you would tell me that if we ban hydraulic fracturing either outright or through the unintended consequences of legislation we pass then all of these numbers that we've been talking about the hundred year supply the reasonable price that you just talked about you tell me are gone is that correct there's a risk that because if we restrict i guess with all of these fields the barnett haynesville fayetteville marcellus west virginia ohio and woodford with all of those we are dependent upon hydraulic fracturing to get to them right that's correct current congressman so if we suddenly could not get to them our domestic supply would drop precipitously perhaps a third and the price would go up accordingly i believe that to be the case mr tillerson i want to commend you for the thought of putting into the agreement the condition it goes through only if the congress doesn't specifically or by unintended consequences make hydraulic fracturing impossible and the reason i want to commend you for doing that is again i have no problem with american people making rational policy decisions to protect the environment but that requires an informed electorate and i think one of the things we've done in this country is we've made natural resource decisions on oil and gas without the public having any idea we for example i think the american public believes today that we are drilling offshore that we've now opened up some of the areas of american offshore for drilling as a result of the spike in energy prices roughly two years ago guess what that's completely false and i think you know that you know that technically they open those lands up but even where leases have been issued lawsuits have been filed and there's no exploration or production going on if you american people believe that we're going after our resources but in fact we're not they can't make a rational decision and i think when they don't know that the government adopting policies which are costing them jobs or driving the cost of their energy through the roof then they cannot make a rational decision and i would bet that there are thousands of exxon stockholders who if they study this deal and are aware of it and look at and say well what's that why do we put that in and you say to them what you said to us well we had to put it in because the congress might do something like that in congress seems to love to regulate just for the fun of regulating often when there's no benefit to the regulation if they figure that out then maybe they'll decide to get politically active and at least make the debate on the inside here be a rational one based on facts and i guess my question of you is  do you agree that if we pursue policies that prohibit hydraulic fracturing you will have a devastating impact on the price of energy and on jobs in the us yes if you pursue  policy or any policies that restrict access to the natural resources of the country it has a detrimental effect and you would agree with me for example that there is no meaningful leasing or no meaningful production going on offshore in america today because of the current policies or lawsuits in place following the repeal of some of those policies we are approaching what may which is what is likely to be the lowest level leasing activity in many many years and america the americans are paying a huge price for that well we started we could have started to have a lot more domestic resource development activity in production than we have today if that access were granted as a gen concluded this is a general proposition do you think that we do a more environmentally sensitive job of removing natural resources from the earth than or at least as sensitive as the other countries around the world where the the u large is the standard bearer because of the history of the industry here they have aleutian of the industry and the regulatory environment much of which has been very helpful to setting standards elsewhere in the world so i think your your observation i would agree with that i don't think you will find a more rigorous regulatory environment around our industry anywhere else in the world thank you gentleman's time has expired all time for questions from some committee members has expired which gentlemen for coming today mr tillerson you testified in response to a couple of questions ago that at least exxon mobil doesn't object to disclosing what's  correct that's correct would that be also your position mr sampson it would be conscious and recognizing that in my legislation and also in my opinion i'd i don't think we should that the proprietary chemical formula should have to be disclosed unless there are some emergency and i would assume that would be both of your gentlemen's positions as well mr keller so you would want the the  proprietary information disclosed to mr simpson would that be correct that's great now that's good news to me because that's all my bill does and an ice i see my friend from arizona has left but as i said in my opening statement i have absolutely no intention to outlawing out outlawing fracking in fact i think fracking is important to get a lot of these reserves out of the ground and i think mr tillerson you testified earlier fracking has been around for sixty years but i think you would agree with me that it's been in about the last ten years or so that it's been used a lot more than it had been because of the necessity of getting some difficult difficult also mr simpson you agreed that state regulations that you believe state regulations are the best way to monitor fracking activities across the fifty states correct correct are you aware that only four states have l specifically directed at hydraulic fracturing yes or no some states were these places are emerging are putting in place the regulatory structure ok but right now only four states have it correct and they can look to other well i don't i don't you don't know ok is it your position acknowledge that some states have a more mature regulatory structure around it rather than i apologize i only have a few minutes so so but it would be your position i would assume that that the rest of the exxon mobil how much how much money does your company spend complying with the regulatory process the use of the fifty states every year would have to get you that now would you be willing to do that i'll see if we can  ehrman i'd ask unanimous consent that the gentleman be allowed to supplement his statement was out in for me and mr simpson how much does your company spent annually when plying with these different fifty state laws on the closure i would need to get  and would you be willing to do that as well sir thank you very much i'd appreciate that because my here's the here's my next question is it your view then mr taylor said since you're willing to have the components of disclosed but you do you do not want to see that happen under the safe drinking water act would that be your testimony today that is correct and would be your view because that would be an additional red regulatory hurdle that you would have to jump the regulation that you're promoting or in your bill all it says all it says i take that as a being a very sort of your person that all it says is but i've dealt with the and i ask you can i ask the question please  if your company has to report the fracking materials to the e p a under the safe drinking water act just like every other person who puts puts things into the ground how much more would it cost your company every year and regulatory compliance i do not know because i don't know how the regulations are going to be real or do you and do you and there therefore do you is can you say today whether or not simply reporting the components which you agree should be reported under the safe drinking water act would make it commercially impracticable i do not know you do not know and and and what about you mr simpson do you know i do not know ok and has anybody told you how much more it would cost to report it under the safe drinking water act versus fifty different state laws now once told me such and have they this my favorite show when i was a kid was rocky and bullwinkle and they used to have this segment once a week where where mr peabody was kind of scientist tech would take this little boy sherman into the wayback machine to study fractured history and and that's a little bit like what this hearing is like to me because in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight we sat in this room we had a big hearing i was on the subcommittee america was running out of natural gas we had a natural gas crisis this is the testimony coming from the natural gas industry to the comm and it's too precious of a resource to actually be used in the generation of electricity and that's where we were in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight listening to the natural gas industry so it's a bit of a fractured history here now that the o'henry ending is that we probably have two and a half or three times more natural gas than we have all well that has half the carbon emissions of coal and electrical generation and that it's in areas of the country where it is going to be most needed so it's very interesting but even as i was listening here over and over again in the hearing those continuing lee heard fracture it by taking you know sherman back into the wayback machine so i just want to again make that clear there's no secret plot to do that there is there is a goal to make sure that it is used to safely  and with sound environmental regulations but i haven't heard from of witnesses today that they oppose those goals how we achieve them be something we continue to discuss and congresswoman de gette is raising that but i just want to once again say there is no secret plot here to ban hydraulic fracturing given the fact that there have been one million wells i heard that have been drilled using that technique i think what we heard here today is that exxon mobil is putting down a saudi one billion dollar bet on what america's energy future will be and it's moving in a low carbon direction and i think that's a smart bet on the part of exxon mobil and and i appreciate mr tillotson testimony that humans do contribute to global warming he doesn't yet know if it's what percentage it but yet it does play a role and and i appreciate that because that helps us in terms of moving forward with policies to do promote low carbon futures because i think that helps to push us in the correct direction i think as well it helps us to invest in america create jobs here in our country and to create an environment where we do develop strategies to back out that imported oil to back out the for us to move to an era where we have exploited all of these opportunities which domestic natural gas are presenting to our country and my hope is that we can move in that direction so we thank you for your testimony we look forward to the results of the study of the safety components of the techniques that are used in hydraulic