 It's a real privilege to welcome Senator Cornyn here today. Now I would say it's, we're walking in and I said, Senator, we could ask you to speak on 12 different topics today. You know, he's on the, he's a whip. He's the majority whip. He's also in the finance committee and judiciary committee. You can't think of more issues coming together in those two areas, and Senator Cornyn has to work with every day. But he wanted to come today to talk about a different subject that's energy security and I'm so grateful for that. This is a subject that doesn't get enough attention in Washington, partly because we have the luxury of being an island of gas in this country, so we don't have to worry about our own energy. But we do need to think about the rest of the world and our relationship to them and energy is an important dimension to that. It has been, but it hasn't been properly discussed. This is an opportunity. So could I ask you with your applause to welcome and thank Senator John Cornyn for being with us this morning. Thank you so much. Well, I'm still trying to internalize the security instructions you gave us a moment ago, John, but thanks for thinking about that so we don't have to worry about it. Well, it's a pleasure to be here with all of you and John, thanks for your introduction and appreciate your great service, not only here, but also to the United States Senate and the Armed Services Committee and of course your service at the Pentagon as well. Thank you. Well, it wasn't that long ago when the Senate was engaged in spirited debates about the need to increase American energy production and the consensus was that we were depending way too much on imported energy from the Middle East and other countries that created national security concerns of our own here at home. The argument was pretty simple. We should diversify our energy mix and at the same time tap into the vast resources we have here in America. The goal being, of course, was to move toward energy self-sufficiency and be less prone to dynamic changes in the global energy markets. Fortunately, with the energy revolution, I think have to give George Mitchell a lot of credit for not the fracking part, but the innovative horizontal drilling and the way we've now been able to produce more, so much energy here at home. But as we know, as a result of the innovations in the energy sector, our country has significantly diversified its energy resources. And last year, the United States consumed the lowest level of imported petroleum in 30 years. Our country is now the top producer of petroleum and natural gas. But unfortunately, the United States is still living with policies that have stifled our economy and negatively impacted our friends abroad as well. So today, I'd like to discuss what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey said, when he said we need to pay more and particular attention to energy as an instrument of national power. I believe we can and should do this by making energy, American energy, readily available to the world market for three simple reasons. One, our allies and our partners around the world need it. Secondly, providing U.S. energy undermines the leverage of some of our most formidable adversaries. And third, it just happens to be good for the United States economy. And that's growing along at a very tepid last year, what 2.2% of GDP. So the bottom line is promoting American energy would strengthen our strategic hand around the world, promote economic growth and enhance our national security. And it strikes me it doesn't, you don't get much better than that. So let's first talk about the needs of our allies and our partners around the world. Unlike growing energy independence that we are experiencing here in America, our friends in Europe are unfortunately heavily reliant on one country for their vast energy needs. A country that the senior senator from Arizona once described as a gas station masquerading as a country. Of course, I'm talking about Russia. Many European countries get more than 50% of their oil from Russia. And it's estimated that multiple countries in Europe would actually lose up to 60% of their gas if Russia withholds it or supply lines from Russia are otherwise disrupted. And the Baltic states, all NATO allies, rely almost entirely on Russia for their oil, gas and electricity. This is dangerous because of the lack of energy diversification means that Russia has our European allies over a barrel. The strategic vulnerability also means that our allies can be intimidated and coerced to acquiesce to Russian demands on everything from their prices of oil and gas to other international diplomatic efforts such as security cooperation with the United States or the imposition of sanctions against Russia's stemming from its invasion of Crimea. And of course, we don't have to look very far into history to see an example of this. In January 2009, Russia effectively turned off the gas for Ukraine for almost three weeks. This affected at least 10 countries in Europe who rely on natural gas that crosses Ukraine from Russia. In short, Russia holds the proverbial stick and can quickly punish Europe on a whim. In Europe as elsewhere, energy security is intrinsically linked to overall security. This lack of energy diversity in Europe represents a strategic problem for the United States. For one, many of these countries in Europe are our treaty allies under the North Atlantic Treaty and we have literally signed on the dotted line our obligation to defend the Baltic states and the rest of NATO should they come under attack. And unfortunately, Russia is not becoming more responsible in as a player in global affairs, just the opposite. Most of us had relegated the Cold War to the history books, but you may have noticed that things have been getting pretty chilly lately. In just the past few months, Russian aggression in the Baltics has served as another reminder of the fear Russia can strike into its neighbors. Should one of these encounters evolve into an actual attack, whether through Russian miscalculation or sheer belligerence, American resources and perhaps even American troops could well be put into harm's way to defend our NATO allies. And two weeks ago, General Joseph Dunford, the nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during his confirmation hearing that he believed Russia is the biggest security threat to the United States, saying that the country could, and I quote, pose an existential threat to the United States. General Milley, nominee for Chief of Staff of the Army concurs and I agree with him. No other adversary has the deadly combination of advanced military equipment, including an enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons, the belligerence, the history of invading its neighbors and a chip on its shoulder as a former superpower. So in this tricky geopolitical landscape, our allies are unfortunately dependent on Russia to help meet their citizens' daily needs, and it doesn't need to be that way. Our allies simply don't have the options right now to make decisions independent of Russia's long and ominous shadow. While Russia and Europe serve as clear examples of the need to make energy available for the benefit of our allies and partners, it's important to understand that doing so would also reduce the number of tools our enemies have to use against us. When we think of countering our adversaries around the world, it's easy to let our minds wander to strictly military options. We think of things like sophisticated counterterrorism or major deployments of U.S. combat troops around the world, but actually we have more tools in the toolbox than just those. We don't automatically think of how we can use America's vast energy resources to counter our enemies and weaken their strategic hand. Last week's announcement by the President about the nuclear deal with Iran serves as another example of what I'm talking about. Iran is, of course, a major supplier of energy to many of our allies and partners, including South Korea, Japan, and India. If the deal announced last week is implemented, we'll be freeing up Iran's energy sector, the primary engine of its economy. The revenue from Iran's energy exports, perhaps as much as a million-plus barrels a day, could be used, that revenue could be used for purposes harmful to the United States' interests, much like the $100 billion plus in frozen assets that the deal would hand back to the Iranian regime. The President's own national security advisor, Susan Rice, noted that the funds freed up in the recently unveiled deal would be, quote, used for the kinds of bad behavior that we've seen in the region up until now, ending up in places like Syria and Yemen and adding the threat to our allies like the nation of Israel. Of course, this windfall and the steady stream of funding that will ensue will also be used by the Iranian government to grow and modernize its military. With the lifting of the arms embargo, in a few years, Iran will be able to buy weapon systems like the S-300 missile defense system from Russia. Of course, this will make it even harder for any future president to utilize the military option against Iran's nuclear program should we need to do so. As Iran's coffers are replenished, the regime will have an even greater capacity to fund terrorism, including the equipping and supporting of its proxy Hezbollah, as well as other nefarious actors, such as the Assad regime in Syria and Iran's own Kuds Force, all of which work on a daily basis to undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East. And with sanctions lifted, Iran will now be able to invest money into growing its energy empire and lining the Iranian government's pockets with money from our allies to prop up its proxy groups while working against the United States in the region and around the world. But by making American energy available to the world market and to our allies, like those I mentioned, we can mitigate Iran's ability to destabilize the Middle East and damage America's interests. So while the administration has eased sanctions against Iran, unfortunately, so far, it's done nothing to ease sanctions on our own domestic energy producers here at home. An irony that Chairman Lisa Murkowski has pointed out numerous times. We have lifting sanctions on the export of Iranian oil while we maintain our own domestic sanctions on our own production here at home. So what can we do to help? How can the United States capitalize on its newfound energy dominance to help our allies and undermine our adversaries? Well, I think there's several common-sense ways we can approach the problem. During the United States Senate's consideration of the Defense Authorization Bill, I introduced an amendment that would help us see the big picture when it comes to just how dependent our allies are on nations who wield energy, their energy supply like a weapon. And I think one of the main goals of that discussion was to highlight the inextricable link between energy security and national security. Fortunately, many of my colleagues understand this and agree that the United States must consider energy as a major part of a multifaceted strategy to increase our security by enabling a stable energy supply to our friends and allies. And today, there's several legislative efforts to promote U.S. exports of our vast energy supplies to our allies and partners around the world. For example, Senator John Barrasso has introduced legislation that would require the Energy Secretary to make a decision on a project to export natural gas for countries with which we don't have a free trade agreement for natural gas in place. This bill would help our friends around the world plan for increase energy from the United States by providing a more reliable timetable and it would include countries like Japan and India, clear friends of the United States. Luckily, there is bipartisan support for bringing more certainty to the Department of Energy's process for determining energy export licenses and I wholeheartedly support Senator Barrasso's bill, which as I said has the requisite bipartisan support. I believe there are six Democrats who are co-sponsors of that bill. And of course, Chairman Murkowski has introduced legislation that would lift the crude export ban currently in place. It's an artifact and antiquated policy that effectively sanctions American energy providers from getting their products in the hands of our friends and allies. Let me also point out that while our friends and partners are clear-eyed about this and recognize that shrinking their energy vulnerabilities won't be easy, they are regularly calling on the United States to do its part to lift this ban and to provide a roadmap to greater energy independence. Earlier this month, the Czech Republican Ambassador said at a house hearing that lifting the crude export ban would, quote, send a strong signal to the world community that democracies stick together. He's just one of a number of voices from NATO-allied countries who are pleading with the United States to lift the ban and to provide more flexibility and options to our friends in Europe. So it's clear, it seems to me, that there is a need to get U.S. energy onto the global markets. Simple measures that would promote U.S. liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports would help NATO and our other allies and partners diversify their energy resources. But it would also mean that Russian and Iranian aggression would not be bankrolled by the United States or our friends. It's high time for the United States to make a more long, to take a more long term view of our own national security and of the peace and stability needed by our most trusted allies and partners. We need a broader and more objective perspective about what national assets could be brought to bear. We can and should use our energy resources as another tool in our toolbox to strengthen the strategic hand of the United States in a world that grows more complicated and more dangerous every day. Thank you very much. Senator, thank you so much for that thoughtful and long range remarks. We hear a lot of short term fixes in this country and especially in Washington and to be able to step out. And as a Texas Senator, you certainly understand the difference between crude quality and timing of infrastructure and refinery completions and that kind of stuff. So to be able to step up, what do you think the big reason for? We tried economics to move this forward. We tried national security. The equity argument seems to be gaining some traction. It's been two years since we kind of started this debate. What's the biggest impediment to why it hasn't moved so far? Well, my own view is that the American public simply takes for granted the great gift we've been given in terms of our own natural resources and the great innovation that's been undertaken by American entrepreneurs and vendors and the fact that fracking is still controversial in places like New York State where it's effectively banned is really mind boggling. It's as if people have just now heard about it when we've been doing it successfully in this country for 70 years or more. And so I also think that there tends to be more of ideological debates about things like climate change and carbon that and the role to be played by green energy resources and really frankly an exaggeration about what part of our energy needs that that could meet. I believe like the president said in all of the above energy policy, but as we've seen many of these many of these technologies are only able to compete at all with huge subsidies by the taxpayer. While our oil and gas sector is a huge taxpayer, many of these other green energy sectors are effectively getting checks from the federal government and not paying money into the treasury. So I think there's a lot of misinformation and just lack of thinking about this whole issue in a larger context. And that's the reason why I introduced that amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill and why my recent trip to Europe where our allies and friends were making this point to me, I thought, well, here's another way to frame the issue that is actually factual, but also maybe people would find more compelling. But so I'm hopeful we'll get some traction. Well, there's a timing and sequencing issue too. When LNG exports were first discussed, there was great panic about natural gas prices rising and our gas resources in this country are enormous and they're stacked so that you can drill in one formation hit a number of different horizons on the way down. As we move that into the power generation sector, we've reduced prices and simultaneously cleaned up in the environment. We have the transportation sector, 240 million cars that run on liquid fuels, gas and electric and support that but we also have a need even when we had, we had Fadi Barol here on a climate change rollout about three weeks ago. And he was talking about the forecast even for 2040 at this point while it's not 80% fossil fuel, it's 67 to 75% fossil fuel. So we can double triple the roll of renewables and as you said, we need them. It's a supplement that we need to go in that direction but we still need this conventional base for at least the next 50 years to do things about it. Well, and I think the one concern that people sometimes bring up when it comes to the idea of exporting our domestic energy is well, what's that gonna do to domestic prices? But I think every study I've seen and even the current energy secretary, Secretary Moniz has said that it actually will, this enhanced supply will probably, if not bring prices down because crude being the principal cost of gasoline, it will, it certainly won't raise gas prices which has been, is a concern that's been voiced but I think this every study I've seen has pretty much dispensed with that concern. You raised Iran and Senator Murkowski had been here earlier this year. The notion of Iranian supplies coming on the market, adding supplies, dropping prices influencing the net back for producers, does that help the debate or the debate? Well, I think it's, there's certainly an irony there that it's hard to explain and again, I think so much of the debate about energy and about the environment tends to be fact-free that it's just another little factoid that I think helps us understand what we're talking about a little bit better and I think it's hard, I don't have heard anybody come up with a good answer why we would lift sanctions on Iranian exports while maintaining them on ourselves just makes no sense so I hope maybe that helps advance the argument a little bit. Okay, I hesitate to say this in Washington since we're almost 500 days out before the next election but we're obviously already in the next election cycle. If the legislation proposed in the House or Senator Murkowski is trying to get consensus to move it out of committee and then bring it up maybe at Labor Day if we miss this window Labor Day to the end of the year 2016 how do you handicap passage of comprehensive legislation? Well, I know that the Obama administration has been surprisingly engaged at the commerce department for example, in allowing some exports of condensates and the like but again, I think I'm not optimistic to be honest that this would be a priority for the president or the administration given their commitment to climate change above almost anything else it seems like it's almost with a religious zeal it strikes me, there's, you know I think Republicans need to do a better job of talking about this, not contesting that whether humans actually impact the climate or whether the climate changes those are distractions but to point to innovations and actually the natural gas renaissance has done a lot to help environmental concerns but yeah, we've had elections every two years for I guess since the beginning of our country and I've always think that that's a pretty lame excuse for not doing anything but many times people use it because they don't wanna do something but I think this is a, the LNG issue seems to be much more mature and advanced and just not quite moving fast enough and the crude oil issue seems to be a little bit lagging behind that but I think all of the work that's being done now by Senator Mikowski's committee and the discussions we're having here and elsewhere are helping sort of frame the issue in a way that I think will ultimately get us to where we need to be but I can't speak to the timing. I thought I'd get that out. SPR, so as you get into issues on energy security there's been a lot of discussion about the size, composition, disposition of the strategic reserve and whether we need a 700 million barrel reserve and what kind of oil should be in it if we're changing heavier to light. There's been at least a couple of proposals on the hill now to sell some of that oil whether it's for healthcare financing or the highway trust fund is that a little bit premature from a security standpoint? Well, I think Senator again the energy committee is doing a study and I think as part of the energy bill that Senator Mikowski rolled out is proposing that a study be done to revisit the SPR to see how much do we need in there for that important purpose. A lot's changed. We've got a lot of reserve basically in place here in the United States that could be produced on a relatively short term. I think now there's roughly 125 day supply if I'm not mistaken and the requirement is 90 days. So we've got an oversupply but I think in the past democratic administrations have said well gasoline prices are too high we need to sell some oil out of the SPR which Republicans always complained about and now Republicans are saying we ought to use some of the SPR to help us pay for our highway bill. I'm not sure either party has clean hands on this but I think the real question is what is the right amount and I'm glad the energy committee and the Congress is gonna mandate that study so we can at least have the answer to that and we don't sort of continue to keep coming back to the SPR to pay for other bills. Well and there's a number of analyses that are out there are just beginning on this because the notion that if the SPR given the logistics and changed rerouting of pipelines, port facilities, domestic production where inland refineries don't need it anymore could you even move that much oil if you needed to? We used to be able to draw down four million barrels a day for 90 days. I don't think that capacity is there. Well those are important questions. We need to get some good solid information. Before we move forward on it. Excellent. On Iran, what do you think the debate's gonna look like in the Senate? Well there is obviously, I think from a national security perspective this is the most important issue that we are going to have to consider and will have considered in a long, long time. The prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon is really a horrible thing to contemplate and I think there is concern that when Secretary Moniz said our inspection standard would be anywhere anytime and then Secretary Kerry later says well he's never heard those words being uttered and it's an unattainable standard. There seems to be some confusion. So what Congress would now have is there's a 60 day period of time in which we will be able to review the agreement and ask these questions. I think today in the Foreign Relations Committee there's actually a hearing, the first hearing on this issue and Senator Corker and Senator Cardin have really I think done a good job on a bipartisan basis to handle this in a responsible way but in the end I think the question is going to be is this a good deal for US security and I've got my own reservations when we sort of separate and compartmentalize this idea well we're just gonna deal with the Iranian nuclear issue and we're gonna ignore all of the proxy war that the Iranians have been conducting against the US and our allies since the beginning of the regime in 1979. Iran the regime has American blood on its hands and dating back to the early 80s in Beirut with the bombing of our embassy there and killing American personnel with the use of improvised or explosively formed penetrating devices that would basically melt through our armor in Iraq and kill American soldiers. This is not a rational actor. I wouldn't equate this to through the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This is a theocratic regime that's inspired by an ideology that defies I think some rational thoughts. So I'm very concerned about it and I think we should all be concerned about it but we're trying to be responsible and thoughtful as we go through this process but in the end I hope that the American people know as much as I know about this and they can make their own judgment and convince their elected representatives to vote in their interests and not based on some desire to get a deal or have a legacy item. Can you separate the two though so on the nuclear components and what would be waived or suspended or rolled back versus the counter-terrorism and other pieces they stay in effect. Well they do although and this is a subject of some controversy yesterday during a briefing Secretary Kerry, Secretary Moniz gave us whether or not part of this deal was giving up those sanctions for the nuclear on the nuclear side while maintaining them on the terrorism and human rights side I don't know how you can necessarily compartmentalize that to me it's all part of a unitary sanctions regime that's designed to deter and discourage Iranian aggression and bring them to the table and negotiate a better deal and I'm very disturbed that Secretary Kerry and even the president seemed to say well the alternative to this is war. That's not true. The alternative to this is a better deal and the way we get to a better deal is by ratcheting down those sanctions and frankly not continuing to move the goalposts in favor of the Iranian side and change our policy during the course of these negotiations from denying Iran a nuclear weapon to now one helping them manage a pathway to acquiring one which seems to me where we are. And I don't want to belabor the point on that it just part of it is it seems like there's sanctions fatigue among some of our allies. So the question is unilateral versus multilateral. This isn't an easy vote right now. We're the 800 pound gorilla but it's interesting to see now with the UN vote that a lot of our allies and part of the P5 plus one countries are already in Tehran trying to cut some deals. And so that's gonna be challenging. We had to do a briefing for a part of the government that will go nameless on Iran about a month ago and the export levels had crept up to about a million and a half barrels a day of crude end condensate like total liquids. And it was South Korea, Japan, China, Turkey. There's a number of different people that were picking up on this. One last question then I'll open it up to the audience and this is kind of a back home question. What are you hearing in Texas about lower prices and what it's doing to stress on cash flow and production protection? Is that why you're here in July? Well, obviously Texas is an oil and gas state although with low oil prices, our economy is much more diversified than it has been in the past. So we're still doing relatively well. We grew at 5.2% last year compared to the national, it's 2.2%. And I don't think that's an accident. I think it has a lot to do with the policies coming out of Washington versus what's coming out of Austin. But sure, our energy producers down there are asking me why are we confined to the West Texas intermediate price and why can't we sell our product on the global markets and get the Brent price? And when you start to see rigs being stacked up and people laid off, that's a pretty good question to ask and I'm not sure I've heard a good response to that. Yeah, I went through the downturn in Houston in 86, not pleasant. So that's one reason why, and also my recent trip to Europe, why I've been trying to think of how do you explain this to people who don't necessarily come from an oil and gas state and perhaps take for granted this great American natural resources and this renaissance and American produced energy? How can you explain it in a way that they will find compelling? And I think this is to me another way to tell that story. Yes, and the flip side of that is too for the Europeans, interconnections, new storage, don't negotiate in January on gas prices, building LNG, receiving facilities would also be extremely helpful because our light crew does not a good match for some of these places around the world. I'm gonna open up. So if you haven't been at CSIS before, we have three simple rules. When we do public participation, the first one is that when we recognize you, identify yourself, wait for a microphone in a crowd like this, identify yourself and your affiliation. And while we always love commentary to the extent that you can pose your question in the form of a question, it makes things go a little quicker. So, questions. You were so clear, Senator. Get you a microphone. Hello, sir, Daniel Vasquez, owner of IntelliWings LLC. When sanctions on Iran begin to go away and big companies like Boeing can sell lots of airplanes, how do you see that smaller companies can also work with energy or security in a loosened sanctions regime? Impact those smaller companies. Yeah. Well, I don't think we know the full impact on this in terms of the lifting of the sanctions. One of the things that the president did that I think is irritated Congress, I'm not sure that's a strong enough term, but to run to the UN and get the UN National Security Council to prove this deal before the president brings it to Congress and has the US government review it and the American people be able to understand it is troubling to say the least. But I think we'll have that opportunity and I think over the next couple of months and I think in the end people will understand clearly, but it's pretty obvious that the international sanctions regime has gone by the wayside and no matter what the United States government continues to do and that will obviously undermine our ability to deter and discourage bad behavior on behalf of Iran. So I'm frankly not very optimistic about it. I don't know how this translates into, I'm sure larger enterprises are better situated to take advantage of the commercial opportunities in Iran and probably smaller businesses less so. But I actually, I don't have a very good answer for you because I think it'd just be all speculation at this point but certainly things are gonna change and my only question is are they gonna change for the better or for worse and I'm concerned about that. Well and this is one of the questions even for larger companies that right now we're in a period where if snapback can occur or some things are suspended but they're not taken off the books or they're waived but they can come back by executive order, what triggers that and do you leave technology in place? Do you wait to go in and make investments as they'll be stranded? Well I think the idea of snapback sanctions is about the same, sort of falls in the same category as anywhere, anytime inspections. It sounds pretty good but I don't think it's workable. This sanction regime has taken years to put in place and now it's gone and I think that's very concerning. With the opening to Cuba and I should have addressed this earlier but the notion of US supplies whether it's gas or oil to the Caribbean or sharing technology for offshore drilling with Mexico and Cuba, does this make sense for the US to use best practices, use this? I wouldn't call it leverage but expertise that we have. Well I'm more familiar with Mexico than I am Cuba. I suspect you are. And I was in Mexico city, I was in Mexico city and I was in Mexico city about, well I guess it was in March. When the Chamber of Commerce hosted a lunch and all the major US players in the oil and gas sector were down there sort of trying to figure out what to make of energies of Mexico's new energy laws which allow for outside investment in participation. And we went by Paymex to talk to them and they're gonna transform themselves from a purely state-owned energy company and they obviously have a lot of work to do there. But I think as Daniel Juergen has pointed out so eloquently in his books and his speeches, I mean energy is interconnected with economy, security and I think certainly Mexico stands to be a huge player. The shale plays that we are producing from in South Texas don't stop at the border. And given the American technology and the resources and expertise, I think Mexico's gonna continue to be a major player. They already are a significant player. Cuba, I don't know as much about but I imagine as our relationship with Cuba changes that that will be an area where there will be opportunities sought and found. A large incremental of gas exports to this point have been pipeline gas to Mexico. Which they've ramped up actually fairly quickly. All right, we're gonna take two in the back. Senator, thank you. Walker Williams, Leadership Africa USA and by, I should let you know I'm also involved in an LNG plant and I'm building and trinidad and tobacco so I'm in the industry. I just wanted to ask if you've commented on Iran, you've commented on Russia, does China fit into the mix at all? On China? Well, China is obviously they need to continue to grow at a very high rate or they're gonna have even more problems than they've had with civil unrest in their country as they continue to try to grow, they need the energy to grow. And I know that concerns about the South China Sea and potential confrontations there. I think one of the big reasons why China feels so strongly about that is to protect their sea lanes so they can continue to import the natural resources that they need. I can't remember what the percentage of their oil supply that is imported through the South China Sea but I believe it's a very significant amount. So while I don't believe that China is on a par with Russia in terms of their aggressiveness, they are certainly a power to be contended with and I think they're going to be very protective of their energy lifeline from around the world and that's gonna cause them to continue to grow and develop their navy and their ability to protect those energy lines. So I think China is a little bit different category there but energy obviously does play an important role for them in terms of their national security, in terms of their ability to grow their economy and provide jobs for their people. And this is one of the geopolitical shifts we talked about earlier, right? So 75% of what comes out of the straight of form is now hangs the left and goes to Asia which is not what it used to be and there's opportunities for shale gas development. This could be a twofer, you know renewables, efficiency and natural gas can be good for the climate as well as good for their energy security and energy markets so we could make that a win, okay. Senator, I'm Fred Hutchison with LNG Allies. First of all, thank you for your leadership on the energy exports issue. Senator Murkowski and Senator Campbell yesterday released a draft bill that has the provisions of S33 dealing with LNG exports which would be very helpful to the LNG industry. Congressman Upton's bill has also been recently released and is likely to contain those provisions. On a rolling scale from likely to highly likely to improbable, what do you think the prospects are of Congress enacting a major energy bill on a bipartisan basis this year? I know Senator Murkowski who's a proponent of lifting the ban on exporting of crude left that out of her bill and is gonna introduce that on a standalone basis and I suspect the reason she did that is because she probably couldn't get Senator Cantwell to work with her on that bill if that were included. And so the fact that the LNG component is in there I think should be encouraging and my hope is that Senator Murkowski will have a hearing and a markup on that bill soon and Senator Cantwell's an influential member of the Democratic Caucus and they're like I said at least six co-sponsors of one of the LNG bills that Senator Bross is the principal sponsor of and so when your job is to count the votes like mine the number six is kind of magical when it comes to the Democrats because you add six to 54 Republicans and you can get cloture and that means you can actually have an up or down vote on a piece of legislation. It's not quite that simple but so I'm somewhat encouraged and I would love to see us expedite the exporting of LNG. I think to me one of the most exciting things about the energy sector is I remembered just a few short years ago when people were talking about peak oil and we were talking about importing LNG and the fact that things have changed so dramatically in such a short period of time now we're turning those around and export natural gas and potentially export crude. I says a lot about American innovation and entrepreneurship but I can't give you a timetable. I would say this fall is going to be kind of bumpy because we're gonna be tied up in everything from appropriations fights over the spending caps from the Budget Control Act and sequestration. We have the debt ceiling issue and so I think that's gonna eat up a lot of oxygen this fall but the fact that Senator Cantwell and Senator Murkowski are working together hopefully they can get a good bipartisan bill out and make that available to the majority leader then to bring to the floor I find encouraging so hopefully if not this fall hopefully shortly thereafter. Seconder. Senator thank you and thank you for equating security with energy and not just military power anymore and I think that's critical. Why do you think that none of the announced presidential candidates from either party are focused on this at all? Well I'm hoping as a result of prestigious organizations like CSIS paying attention to this and giving me an opportunity to speak and others like me that we can help them make this a part of the presidential campaign. I think the good thing about that is if the winner has taken a strong position they can claim some sort of mandate and then it makes provides a little momentum once they take office and it's not, there's only about about 500, a little over 550 days I guess that President Obama has remaining in office so we're gonna get a new president pretty soon and this would be a great thing for the new president to be able to work with Congress to actually deliver. So I hope we can help them by helping them think about this in a different way that perhaps they have traditionally. Yeah, because you said as remarkably the world has changed if we had done policy in 2004 we would have been totally wrong, right? So we have time for one more question we promised the Senator kind of a hard stop at 9.30. Reed Dubois, CSIS Senator as the majority whip you're kind of close to the calendar. On the question about small business prompted me to think about the export import bank reauthorization. Can you give us some insights as to where that might be going in the near to intermediate future? And secondly you made a comment about your amendment to the NDAA. Do you see a conference report coming out of that and a vote on the conference bill before the August recess? Well I thought I was gonna make it out of here without talking about anything controversial. No, I'm kidding of course. We had some procedural challenges and so we were able to I guess get some reporting requirements for the intelligence community and for the Department of Defense on the role that energy should play in terms of our national security assets. That report is still hung up in the conference committee and the president yesterday said he would veto the NDAA over the Guantanamo issue. The import-export bank will probably be offered, the reauthorization will probably be offered as an amendment to the highway bill which we just got on last night. And there seems to be based on a test vote that occurred in the Senate earlier this year there were 65 votes in the Senate for reauthorizing the bank. Although there are skeptics like me who would like to see some reforms and not just a straight reauthorization. It seems to me that Senator McConnell recognizes that when 65 senators wanna do something then they usually can get it done under our rules. So I expect that it will probably be added to the highway bill and then it will be sent over to the House. And I guess the speaker is going to have to make a decision about what to do then. So we'll see. Excellent. So one of the reasons that we get speakers like Senator Cornyn here is that we can get them out on time so they can start their real day job before they dip. But thank you so much for joining us this morning and for actually a broad array of issues that you've covered and hope that you'll do it again. So we'd love to invite you back. Thank you so much. Join me in.