I and several of my CEI colleagues were looking forward to an informal debate late Friday afternoon on energy policy sponsored by McKinsey and Company, the global consulting firm. As part of their “Drinks and Debate” series, McKinsey’s Washington, DC office invited David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation and Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress’s Climate Progress blog to make some remarks and then take questions from an audience of around 40 people representing all shades of the political spectrum. It sounded like a lot of fun because Romm often seems enraged and slightly deranged in his frequent blog posts, but unfortunately Romm cancelled at the last minute. Our host explained that Romm had pulled out without giving a reason and that his side of the debate would be represented by a bottle of Corona Light. It was still fun: David Kreutzer gave an engaging and stimulating presentation, as he always does, and the bottle of Corona Light proved to be more rational and less misleading than Romm.
Myron Ebell
Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine broke the big story this week that the Sierra Club received over $25 million from the natural gas industry to serve as a corporate shill for the natural gas industry’s attacks on the coal industry. Walsh wrote: “TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past.”
McClendon and Chesapeake Energy several years ago funded a multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the coal industry called “Face it, coal is filthy.” Two months ago, it was revealed that McClendon and Chesapeake had given as much as $100 million to the American Lung Association, one of the most reprehensible of the environmental pressure groups, to fund the ALA’s “Fighting for air” disinformation campaign.
House Natural Resources Committee Votes To Open ANWR and OCS to Oil Production
The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, 1st February, passed three bills to increase oil production on federal lands and offshore areas. The House Republican leadership plans to include the three bills as provisions in the five-year, $260-billion highway bill that was passed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee after a grueling seventeen-hour mark-up that ended at 3 AM on Friday, 3rd February.
H. R. 3407, which passed the committee on a 29 to 13 vote, would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on Alaska’s North Slope to oil exploration. Three Democrats voted for the bill: Representatives Dan Boren (D-Okla.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), and Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico). No one knows how much oil there may be below ANWR’s coastal plain, but the U. S. Geological Survey estimates recoverable reserves of 11 billion barrels. That is probably a very conservative estimate.
President Barack Obama spoke up for the economic interests of the little guy in his State of the Union speech to Congress on January 24th. On January 26th, the President spoke in Las Vegas about using taxpayer dollars to improve the economic well-being on one of those little guys in particular—Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens. He urged voters to support the Pickens Payoff Plan (officially titled the NAT GAS Act), a bipartisan bill sponsored in the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and in the House by Representative John Sullivan (R-Okla.).
The bill, H. R. 1380 in the House and S. 1863 in the Senate, would provide huge new subsidies to buyers and users of heavy duty trucks that use natural gas. Pickens owns Clean Energy Fuels, which builds and runs natural gas service stations. He also has major investments in a number of companies in the natural gas industry. The value of these investments would probably increase by several billion dollars if the bill were enacted.
However, Pickens has been clear that he has spent $100 million “of his own money” to promote the Pickens Your Pocket legislation only out of love for his country. “I’m sure not doing this for the money,” he told the New York Times last May.
A Christian minister’s zeal in Pennsylvania to save Mother Earth from the indignities of hydraulic fracturing has caused her to go a bit too far. Claiming that Jesus would oppose all fracking, the Rev. Leah Schade told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “God put human beings into the Garden to till it and keep it, not drill and poison it.”
The Rev. Schade overlooks the fact that we’re no longer living in the Garden of Eden, but in a world in which the hunter-gatherer lifestyle really won’t work for most people. If Jesus really wants us not to disturb the ground, then there goes industrial civilization, which is based on digging stuff up.
(By the way, the Tribune-Review article describes the Rev. Schade as being a Lutheran pastor and also as ministering to a United Church of Christ congregation in Union County, Pennsylvania. The United Church of Christ is the major denomination of Congregationalists, whose roots go back to the Calvinism of New England’s Puritan settlers, not to Martin Luther. The green religion has taken hold in both Congregationalism and Lutheranism, as it has in many branches of Christianity.)
Congress Agrees to Delay Light Bulb Ban
House Republican leaders and Senate Democratic leaders finally agreed Thursday night on the conference report for the omnibus appropriations bill to fund the federal government for the rest of the 2012 fiscal year. The Congress is expected to send the bill to President Obama for his signature before midnight Friday, thereby averting a government shutdown.
There were a number of riders in the Interior and EPA appropriations bill passed by the House. Nearly all of the EPA riders were taken out by the House-Senate conference committee. The omnibus bill does cut EPA funding by $240 million below the FY 2011 level.
One Department of Energy rider that did survive will block implementation of the ban enacted in 2007 on standard incandescent light bulbs. That ban was scheduled to begin taking effect on January 1, 2012, when it would have become illegal to sell 100 watt bulbs. The rider only delays the ban from taking effect until the fiscal year ends on October 1, 2012. However, once adopted, most riders are routinely extended in succeeding appropriations bills. To take the rider out in future years, supporters of taking away consumer choice on light bulbs will have to mount a major effort.
Congressional Republicans Move on Keystone Pipeline
President Barack Obama’s announcement last month that he would delay making a decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election is provoking strong opposition in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and 36 Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill on Wednesday, 30th November, that would require the President to approve the project within sixty days unless he decides that it would not be in the national interest.
Representative Lee Terry (R-Neb.) introduced a bill on Friday, 2nd December, that would transfer the decision from the State Department to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and give FERC a thirty-day deadline to issue the permit after final agreement has been reached between the State of Nebraska and Trans Canada Corporation, the company that would build the pipeline, on a new route that goes around Nebraska’s Sand Hills.
Terry introduced his bill at a press conference just before the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on it. He said that House Speaker John Boehner was considering including the bill in a larger package supported by President Obama and Senate Democrats that would extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut. Including the Keystone bill in the larger bill would make it much harder for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to block in the Senate and for President Obama to veto.
Rep. Terry has been a strong backer of the 1,700 mile pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to U. S. refineries in the Gulf, even while most of his state’s political establishment has objected to the route. That dispute has now apparently been resolved. The pipeline would carry over 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the oil sands in northeast Alberta and from the Bakken field in North Dakota. Bakken production is going up rapidly, and much of the oil is currently being transported by rail to refineries in the lower Midwest.
Senate Defeats Resolution to Rein in EPA
The Senate defeated Senator Rand Paul’s resolution of disapproval of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) on Thursday, November 10. The vote on S. J. Res. 27 was 41 to 56.
Under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution required only a simple majority. Forty-one votes was a disappointing result. It can largely be blamed on four senators, who introduced two competing bills to delay rather than block the rule. S. 1833 was introduced by Senators Dan Coats (R-Ind.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.). S. 1815 was introduced by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.).
These bills allowed several Senators to vote against the resolution, while claiming that they support doing something. Since neither of these bills has any chance of getting the sixty votes necessary, this claim is entirely hypocritical.
The odd thing is that the four senators introducing these two bills represent states covered by the CSAPR, which may do serious economic damage to their economies. Perhaps they don’t care.
Sen. Rand Paul Files for Vote to Overturn Cross-State Air Pollution Rule
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has filed a resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to disapprove the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). A vote on the Senate floor could come as early as 9th or 10th November. The CSAPR has come under intense criticism from a number of States and several major electric utilities. EPA has responded by proposing some limited modifications.
Under CRA rules, once thirty Senators have sponsored a resolution of disapproval, it can be brought to the floor at any time even if the Majority Leader opposes doing so, no amendments are in order, a final vote cannot be blocked by procedural maneuvers, and passage requires only a simple majority rather than the 60 votes usually required.
If the Senate passes the resolution, which seems possible but unlikely, the House will probably schedule a vote within a few days. The House has already voted for a rider to delay the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. If both chambers pass the resolution, then it will be up to President Obama to sign or veto it.
The New York Times has a special section on energy in its 26th October edition that suggests that the paper is trying to catch up with the big news of the last decade in the energy sector. The front page story by Clifford Krauss is headlined, “The Energy Picture, Redrawn.” Inset photos are headlined DEEP WATER, HIGH ARCTIC, OIL SANDS, and SHALE, and the caption reads: “A CHANGED GAME New oil and gas fields are expected to yield a vast supply of fuels that should help relieve the United States of dependence on the Mideast and help drive booming economies in India and China.”
Here’s the conclusion of Krauss’s long summary of recent history: “‘The fossil fuel age will be extended for decades,’ said Ivan Sandrea, president of the Energy Intelligence Group, a research publisher. ‘Unconventional oil and gas are at the beginning of a technological cycle that can last 60 years. They are really in their infancy.'”