1-On-1 With U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin

Oklahoma’s new U.S. Senator, Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), has barely settled in and is already introducing legislation that, if nothing else, sends a strong message about his priorities.

This is the first week the Senate has been in session this year. 

Mullin is still in a temporary office, but that didn't keep him from putting forth legislation that he believes is necessary to take politics out of energy policy.

Canceling the construction permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline on his first day in office and putting a moratorium on new drilling permits on federal land were policy decisions, President Biden said, were made with the nation's economic and environmental future in mind. Mullin said they were purely political.

"If this administration is going to play politics with energy, which is which they’ve done from day one," Mullin said in an interview Wednesday, "then we’re going to take it out of their hands."

Mullin is proposing to that through the passage of three bills, which he introduced this week. The bills have no text yet and no co-sponsors, but Mullin said those will come.

For now, he said, taken together, these bills would help make the U.S. energy independent. 

S. 19 would, as the title states, "clarify that a state has the sole authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing on Federal land within the boundaries of the state."

"We shouldn’t be asking permission from Washington D.C," Mullin stated, "so, for fracking permitting, we want to make sure it’s in the states' hands."

A second bill, S. 23, would "establish a more uniform, transparent, and modern process to authorize the construction, connection, operation, and maintenance of international border-crossing facilities for the import and export of oil and natural gas and the transmission of electricity."

Mullin said cross-border permitting has typically been regulated by presidential decree -- "we want to move that out of the presidential authority and put it into the departments -- the agencies that are over them. For example, the Department of Energy, allow them to assess the permit, take it out of the politics. Like I said , the Keystone pipeline became political."

The third bill, S. 20, would empower states "to control the development and production of all forms of energy on all available Federal land."

That land belongs to the state, it doesn’t necessarily belong to the federal government," Mullin said. "I get it, they might have taken it as a [national] park, but it’s our backyard, we live there."

In the Democratic-controlled Senate, Mullin's bills aren't likely to see the light of day, but he said they should because they would boost the nation's economy and make unnecessary for the president to ask nations like Venezuela and cartels like OPEC to help us bridge our supply gap.

"If we want to quit that, then let’s drill here inside the United States," Mullin said. 

"Let’s get it back to the Trump policies. That shouldn’t be a partisan issue, that should be a bipartisan issue -- it’s good for all of us."

Mullin served on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House. He’s still waiting to learn his committee assignments in the Senate. His top priority is Armed Services.