GlobalWarming.org

Greenwire reporter Emily Yehle this week broke the news that then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson intentionally used her private e-mail account to conduct official business, which is contrary to federal transparency and record-keeping laws.  In an e-mail to Alison Richards, a lobbyist for Siemens Corporation, Jackson wrote, “P.S. Can you use my home email rather than this one when you need to contact me directly? Tx, Lisa.”

This e-mail was made public as part of the latest tranche of “Richard Windsor” e-mails released by the EPA in response to federal court order enforcing a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute last year.  Chris Horner, my CEI colleague who filed the FOIA request, commented that the e-mail to the Siemens lobbyist is the smoking gun that proves Jackson was deliberately evading the rules in order to conceal some of her official business from public scrutiny.

In another FOIA lawsuit against the EPA, federal District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled on 14th August that the Landmark Legal Foundation can question top EPA officials about their use of private e-mail accounts to conduct official business.  Lamberth wrote that, “The possibility that unsearched personal email accounts may have been used for official business raises the possibility that leaders in the EPA may have purposefully attempted to skirt disclosure under the FOIA.”

As Chris Horner told the Washington Times, “FOIA works on an honor system, and those systems only work with people of honor. So you see the problem.”

And in related news, Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent a letter to IRS official Lois Lerner asking her to turn over all e-mails from her private account in which official government business was conducted. Lerner is a central figure in the scandal over IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.  The committee’s investigation turned up evidence that Lerner was forwarding official IRS documents to her “Lois Home” account at msn.com.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers and Department of Energy have released a report titled, Economic Benefits Of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to Weather Outages. The report calls for increased public and private spending on infrastructure aimed at hardening power lines from wind damage. In addition, the report argues in favor of increased funding towards the expansion of the nation’s energy storage capacity, and recommends the construction of sensors to monitor power fluctuations.

While some of the suggestions mentioned in the report are positive such as the hardening of existing power lines to protect from storm damage, many of the recommendations raise serious concerns. The Obama Administration claims to want to improve grid resiliency, but their anti-energy agenda and support for renewable subsidies show otherwise.

Last year, CEI Policy Analyst William Yeatman described the problems that would arise should renewable energy be incorporated into the grid:

There is no economy of scale for renewable energy. The electricity grid is a humongous, complex engineering project. At any given time, the electricity flowing into the grid must equal that consumed from the grid. The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, and when these unreliable energy sources crap out, it sends grid operators scrambling to purchase backup power from reliable sources of power like coal and gas

What is the report’s solution? Energy storage.

If this were possible it might indeed solve the problem. However, there is a significant obstacle in the way. Energy storage technology of utility-scale energy does not exist. In addition, the report offers no suggestions as to how it might be developed demonstrating that the proposed solution is merely wishful thinking of government bureaucrats.

The report also claims:

“Since 1980, the United States has sustained 144 weather disasters whose damage cost reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total cost of these 144 events exceeds $1 trillion. Moreover, seven of the ten costliest storms in U.S. history occurred between 2004 and 2012. These “billion dollar storms” have rendered a devastating toll on the U.S. economy and the lives of millions of Americans.”

[click to continue…]

Last week I wrote about a wonderful interview conducted by Platts Energy Week’s Bill Loveless with Devon Energy CEO Larry Nichols. In the course of celebrating the life of entrepreneur George Mitchell, the father of fracking, Mr. Nichols put the lie to the notion that the federal government was the primary impetus in the development of the drilling technologies that led to the American oil and gas boom. In addition, he posits that George Mitchell could never have perfected hydraulic fracturing had he operated in today’s regulatory environment. Watch the whole interview here. Below, we’ve provided a transcript.

MR. BILL LOVELESS: Hello, I’m Bill Loveless. Welcome to Platts Energy Week.

He was called the father of fracking, a man who found the way to blast natural gas from shale deposits using water, sand, and a mixture of chemicals. George Mitchell died recently at 94, but not before leaving a legacy as a man who put hydraulic fracturing on the map and paved the way for today’s resurgence in U.S. gas and oil production.

Joining me to discuss this industry pioneer is a man who knew George Mitchell well. In fact, his company bought Mitchell Energy Development in 2001. Larry Nichols, executive chairman of Devon Energy, joins us from Oklahoma City. Welcome to the program, Larry.

MR. LARRY NICHOLS: Glad to be here.

MR. LOVELESS: Larry, fracking has been around for decades, but Mitchell began to draw more attention to it in the 1980s when he experimented in the Barnett Shale in Texas. What difference did he make?

MR. NICHOLS: Well, yeah, fracking has been around for about 60 years. Clumsily done when it was first done, but over time, people experimented with it. And George Mitchell had this almost fanatical belief that he could frack the Barnett Shale and get gas out of it. We all knew the gas was there, but could not produce it, and he relentlessly over years and years kept pounding away, experimenting with different techniques, different refinements until he finally started making it work.

[click to continue…]

The public fight that Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, picked with the Environmental Protection Agency last week looks like it will continue into the August recess. On 1st August, the committee voted on a party-line vote to authorize the chairman to subpoena the EPA for the data underlying several major epidemiological studies that are used to justify Clean Air Act regulations. Chairman Smith then executed the subpoena and sent it to new EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who in September 2011 as Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation had promised the committee to turn over the data.

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.), the ranking Democrat on the Science Committee, sent Chairman Smith a letter on 30th July objecting in lengthy detail to the proposed subpoena. In her letter, Rep. Johnson attacked the credibility of Dr. James Enstrom, who was fired by UCLA after 36 years as a research scientist because his results have sometimes been politically incorrect.  In particular, he has questioned the EPA’s claims of hundreds of billions of dollars of health benefits from its Clean Air Act regulations.

Dr. Enstrom responded to Rep. Johnson’s attack in a letter to Chairman Smith in which he demands that Johnson “immediately withdraw her defamatory statements about me. Furthermore, I request that the Ranking Member identify the person(s) who originated these defamatory statements.” Since both the Chairman and the ranking Democrat are from Texas, the story has been picked up by the Texas media. Chairman Smith has also now replied to Rep. Johnson in an 8th August letter.

Platts Energy Week with Bill Loveless is a weekly treat. In most markets, it comes on early Sunday mornings, but if you sleep through its first broadcast, you can still access the show through its website.

This morning’s show featured a wonderful interview with Larry Nichols, executive chairman of Devon Energy, about the legacy of George Mitchell, the relentless entrepreneur who perfected the technology—known as hydraulic fracturing—that made possible the recovery of vast reserves of oil and natural gas from previously inaccessible (i.e., uneconomic to extract from) geologic formations. Thanks in large part to Mitchell’s work, there’s been a much-reported rebound in American energy production. Mitchell died on July 26^th.

Mr. Nichols is well qualified to comment on Mitchell’s lasting impact. Devon Energy was an innovator in horizontal drilling, which, when coupled with hydraulic fracturing, precipitated the oil and gas boom. Indeed, in the early aughts, Devon invested in Mitchell, and together they pioneered the new technologies.

Highlights of the interview include: Mr. Nichols putting the lie to the mistaken contention that the federal government’s role was instrumental in the development of the technologies that led to the oil and gas boom; and, his belief that it would have been impossible for George Mitchell to have perfected hydraulic fracturing in today’s overbearing regulatory environment.

I highly recommend watching the whole interview here:

The House of Representatives on Friday, 2nd August, passed H. R. 367, the REINS Act, which would require House and Senate votes to approve proposed major regulations, by a vote of 232 to 183.  Six Democrats and 225 Republicans voted Yes, while all the No votes came from Democrats.  Eighteen Members did not vote.  The REINS Act isn’t going anywhere in the Senate.

Earlier in the day, the House voted on an amendment offered by Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) that would require congressional approval before the executive branch could implement a tax on carbon dioxide emissions using regulatory authority.  That amendment was adopted by a vote of 237 to 176. Again, 225 Republicans voted Yes.  They were joined by twelve Democrats.  All 176 No votes came from Democratic Members.  Eighteen Members did not vote.

Rep. Scalise is chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, which has made a vote on a resolution opposing a carbon tax one of its top priorities.  The amendment is somewhat narrower than H. Con. Res. 24, but the vote does put Members on the record on a carbon tax.  The vote reveals that 176 Democratic Members of the House are not opposed to raising taxes.  That vote could play a role in some districts in the 2014 congressional elections.  A number of House Democrats lost their seats in 2010 because they had voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

The twelve Democrats who voted for the anti-carbon tax amendment are: Ron Barber and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, John Barrow and Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Henry Cuellar and Filemon Vela of Texas, William Enyart of Illinois, Jim Matheson of Utah, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Collin Peterson and Tim Walz of Minnesota, and Nick Joe Rahall of West Virginia.

Whether the executive branch has authority to implement a carbon tax under the regulatory authority of the Clean Air Act or any other statute is highly dubious.  However, several environmental pressure groups have been pushing the idea, and the Obama Administration has proved that it has little regard for the law.

On 1st August, the House also passed the Energy Consumers Relief Act by a vote of 232 to 181.  Again, no Republicans voted against the bill.  Nine Democrats voted for it.  H. R. 1582 tries to set some limits on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to promulgate expensive new regulations.  Again, the bill is not going anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.