U.S. Sens. John Cornyn, R-TX, and Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, responded in unison when IHS Markit Vice Chairman and CERAWeek Chair Dr. Daniel Yergin asked them what has changed in Washington over the past year.
"Everything!" they said enthusiastically.
"When you think about where we were last year and where we are now, it is a world apart," Sen. Murkowski said. "We've returned to kind of a normalcy when it comes to regulations coming out of the agencies."
Sen. Murkowski, who serves as chair of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said "extraordinary developments in a positive way" have occurred in the regulatory and permitting sectors.
"From where we're sitting in Alaska, it's a bright new day," she said, addressing delegates at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, held recently in Houston. "We have opportunities that we haven't had for 40 years with the opening of the 1002 area in the Arctic National Wildlife Region (ANWR), the national petroleum reserve."
The level of activity and engagement in that area, Sen. Murkowski added, is almost unprecedented.
"We have the five-year lease plan that has just been laid out with an array of possibilities," she said.
Protecting the basket
The change in the regulatory process and the Trump administration's pro-energy attitude have resulted in consumer confidence being at one of the all-time highs since it's been monitored, Sen. Cornyn noted.
"And unemployment now is down around 4 percent, the lowest it's been in 17 years, I believe. And unemployment claims are the lowest they've been since 1969. Our economy is taking off and, of course, the energy sector is such an important part of that," he said, adding the energy industry benefits "like we all do" from the tax reform bill that was passed by Congress and signed into law in December.
"We've finally become competitive in the global economy with countries around the world," Sen. Cornyn said. "And we're seeing repatriation of money that had been parked overseas come back here and invested in American jobs and business. So it's an exciting time."
Sen. Cornyn hopes master limited partnerships' savings due to the recent tax bill, as well as approximately $20 billion available to go into the highway trust fund over the next two years, will be invested in pipelines and other U.S. infrastructure.
"There's a lot of different pieces of this that we can cobble together to come up with a package that I think will look substantial and have a very important economic impact on the country," Sen. Cornyn said.
Sen. Cornyn, who serves as majority whip, said he always thought energy should be considered "an instrument of national security or something we can use to not only maintain strong relationships with our friends and allies but also as a carrot to try to develop economic relationships with countries that may not be our friends, necessarily, but may want to benefit from the reliable energy source we can supply.
"This opens up a world of possibilities for us, not just economically and not just in the job sector but in our national security and our international relationships."
Because national energy production, refining capacity and petrochemical construction are concentrated in Houston and the Gulf Coast region, with $150 billion of investment going into new factories and facilities in the coming years, Sen. Cornyn stressed the importance of investing in infrastructure "that will protect this region and that productive capacity against future hurricanes that we know are going to come."
"If you put all your eggs in one basket, you better protect that basket," he concluded.
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