mr. bromwich, mr. hayes, thank you. and i thank you for the efforts that you have made. i think the president's announcement this week as it related to alaska and the efforts on the annual lease sales up in pra, the permitting, i think these are positive signals. obviously, we want to make sure that they translate into action and reality. so we will be working with you on that. mr. hayes, i want to single you out here and thank you for your efforts to try to reach or resolve on cd5 in the npra. i think we recognize this is politically important. it speaks to what senator hutchinson and bingaman were talking about earlier. i think we recognize that we have a lot to do. but we've got to find a path forward there. so i want to continue working with you on that. secretary, i want to ask you just for a little bit of clarification here because you have you have -- you have discussed the various incentives that you wish to put in place to advance increased oil and gas. when i think of things, i think of encouraging you. to allow for a shorter period of time than the ten years,

mr. bromwich, mr. hayes, thank you. i thank you for the efforts that you have made. i think the president's announcement this week as it related to alaska and the efforts on the annual lease sales up in npra, the permitting, i think these are positive signals. obviously we want to make sure they translate into action and reality so we will be working with you on that. but mr. hayes, i want to simply -- single you out here and thank you for your efforts to try to reach a resolve on cd-5 in the npra. i think we recognize this is critically important and it speaks to some of what senator hutchison and senator begich were discussing earlier about the coordination within agencies. i think we recognize we have a lot to do, but we have to find a path forward there. i want to continue working with you on that. secretary, i want to ask you for a little bit of claire if i -- clarification here. because you have discussed the various incentives that you wish to put in place to advance increased oil and gas production. and when i think of incentives, i think of positive things t

mr. bromwich, i need to clarify for the record, you so that you had 14 deepwater wells. are any of those four or all of those revised? >> i believe all of them had been previously permitted. >> that is correct. i want to say for the record that these 14 deepwater wells that have received permits are not new wells. they are revised. they have been drilling prior to the deepwater horizon, and i understand that not all 14 of these are actually drilling. some of them -- >> that is not correct. >> they are all revised permits. there is not add new deepwater permits, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> if let's get this clear. there might be a lot of noise around washington but it is necessary for this to be clear. in order for us to move forward. why your staff is getting that, because it is my understanding based on the chart i got from your web site, not my website. it has 0, 0, 0, 0, 04 deepwater in 2011. it does not say one or two or 14. it says at 0 from your web site. this is new wells approved in 2009 and 2009 and 200011. the facts are that despite our efforts, the

mr. bromwich, i need to clarify for the record, you said that you have 14 deep water wells. are any of those new or are all of those revised? >> i believe all of them have been previously permitted. >> that is correct. soy i just want to say for the record these 14 deep water wells that have received permits are not new wells. they are revised. they had been drilling prior to the deep water horizon and i understand that not all 14 of these are actually drilling. some of them are water injection wells. do you know how many? >> that's not correct. >> ok. they are all drilling? but they are all revised permits? there is not a new deep water permit. is that correct? >> that is my understanding. >> ok. let's get this clear because there might be a lot of noise around washington but it is necessary for this to be clear. in order for us to move forward. so while your staff is getting that because it is my understanding based on a chart i got from your website, it is this is not my website, it has zero, zero, zero, zero, zero for deep water in 2011. it doesn't say one. it doesn't sa

i will have director bromwich give you a report on that. >> thank you, mr. secretary. we have approved permits for 14 unique wells in deep water. there may be different permits for each well. i think everyone is interested in new drilling that is done in unique wells. the number on that is 14. as the secretary points out, we could not really grant deep water drilling permits until there was contained a capability. that did not happen until the latter part of february. so, if you do the math, we have actually given, no permit a unique deepwater wells on the average of once every four to five business days since we had capability available. that is not a significantly slower pace than has historically been the case. the notion that it has taken a very long time to permit deep water applications is really not true. there are currently 14 deepwater permit applications that are pending. there are 25 that have been returned for various reasons, usually quite incomplete applications. they may not have certified the have met all the safety requirements that are not required. t