- Washington Free Beacon: Report: Oil, gas output from federal lands drops during Obama administration
- Wall Street Journal: U.S. Banks Expect Rise in Energy-Sector Loan Defaults
POLITICO Morning Energy for 5/5/2015
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA, with help from Alex Guillén, Darren Goode, Matt Daily, Bob King and Elana Schor
WHITE HOUSE HOSTS CLIMATE INFRASTRUCTURE ROUNDTABLE: The White House today is hosting a roundtable with about 90 investors, local and state planning and transportation officials, policy experts and reps from the federal government and nonprofits to discuss how to better design infrastructure projects to be more resilient to the impacts of climate change. National Economic Council Deputy Director Jason Miller, White House Council on Environmental Quality Managing Director Christy Goldfuss, Harriet Tregoning from Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Community Planning and Development, and David Wilkinson of the Domestic Policy Council’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation are expected to attend the all-day gathering hosted by NEC, CEQ and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
The event, part of the president’s Build America Investment Initiative launched last July, will coincide with the administration’s release of a Federal Guide to Infrastructure Planning and Design. The guide “incorporates programs and opportunities from eight federal agencies and lays out a new set of principles to inform the work of local and State governments, public and private utilities, planners and other stakeholders around the country,” according to a statement from an administration official.
HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO AND WELCOME TO MORNING ENERGY: I’m your host Andrew Restuccia, filling in for Darius Dixon, who is on vacation in sunny Seattle this week. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken the ME helm, so go easy on me. Send tips and news to arestuccia@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter @AndrewRestuccia, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
KANSAS TO KILL RENEWABLE MANDATE? The Kansas wind industry backed a plan by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and state lawmakers to end a renewable mandate after winning assurances that the industry wouldn’t be hit with higher taxes. “The state’s renewable portfolio standard, adopted under former Gov. Mark Parkinson, requires that utility companies receive 15 percent of their power from renewable sources now and 20 percent by 2020. The new plan changes that mandate to a goal after 2016,” the Wichita Eagle explains. The plan passed a state House committee and is heading to the floor soon. Read more: http://bit.ly/1EMhNyI
CARPER AND BOXER FRIENDSHIP HAS ‘BASICALLY ENDED’: Sen Tom Carper told Bloomberg BNA that his 30-year friendship with Sen. Barbara Boxer has “basically ended” over Carper’s backing of a bill that would update federal oversight of dangerous chemicals. Boxer has been an outspoken critic of the bill. Read more from BNA: http://bit.ly/1AB1wJ8
ATTORNEYS GENERAL TO TAKE ON EPA CLIMATE RULES: The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s clean air panel, chaired by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, will hold a hearing today on legal issues regarding EPA’s Clean Power Plan — and you’re sure to hear all the old favorites. A panel that includes attorneys general from West Virginia and Oklahoma will hash out the various legal challenges to EPA’s rule, starting with the motherlode: That EPA is wrongly “double regulating” power plants. That issue is at the center of the lawsuit working its way through the D.C. Circuit — but even if that case is dismissed as premature, these legal challenges will resurface once the rule is finalized. Expect also to hear complaints about technology standards expected in the rule for future power plants. Also likely to make a cameo is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent assertion that interstate agreements that have been promoted as the easiest way to comply with the rule for existing plants would require congressional approval, a new legal question that already has drawn both skeptics and supporters. 10 a.m. in Dirksen 406.
D.C. CIRCUIT WON’T REHEAR GHG CASE: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will not take a second look at a lawsuit brought by Texas and others over five early EPA greenhouse gas regulations, which a split three-judge panel in 2013 upheld. Several states and industry groups had sought a rehearing by arguing that the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, which largely upheld those rules, conflicted with the appellate ruling. Yesterday two of the three judges from the original panel, Judith Rogers and David Tatel, voted against rehearing the case. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who dissented from the original opinion, wanted to grant a rehearing. In addition, the D.C. Circuit’s roster of active judges rejected a request for an en banc rehearing. None of the 11 judges requested a vote, the court said.
SETTING FREE THE BEARS: David Einhorn, the Greenlight Capital boss, told an investment conference that oil and gas producer Pioneer Natural Resources, was “dramatically overvalued,” Reuters reported http://reut.rs/1JMs2aC, sending shares in PXD down about 2 percent by the close of trade yesterday. Einhorn said Pioneer was among those energy producers whose fracking investments were losing money, and he said Pioneer was “burning through cash.” The company is due to release its first quarter results this afternoon. Einhorn’s presentation is here: http://bit.ly/1F3mIhV
— EOG’s first quarter wasn’t as bad as Wall St. feared: http://reut.rs/1KamSlF
API’S NOT LAUGHING: When Einhorn speaks a lot of Wall Street listens. So when he took his shot at “frack addicts” during remarks to the Sohn Conference in New York yesterday, warning that “higher oil price led to even greater cash burn” among drillers, American Petroleum Institute-New York Executive Director Karen Moreau fired back that Einhorn was “missing the forest for the trees, saying in a statement that, “American oil production jumped nearly 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while the cost-per-foot to drill a shale well fell 43 percent,” Moreau added in a statement.
FERC DENIES COVE POINT REHEARING REQUESTS: FERC denied requests today from various environmental groups and BP to reconsider its September 2014 approval of Dominion’s Cove Point LNG terminal in Maryland. An environmental assessment of the project “found that there were no significant direct or indirect impacts” and thus no detailed environmental impact statement was required. Local citizen and environmental groups opposed to the project argued that FERC failed to consider the effects of gas drilling in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. But FERC concluded that gas exported through Cove Point would not necessarily come from those areas, and that gas drilling was likely to continue regardless of the export facility’s status. Read the document: http://politico.pro/1R7T9iz
OIL EXECS TALK DISCLOSURE RULE WITH SEC: Representatives of the American Petroleum Institute and several major oil companies met last month with officials at the SEC about the agency’s Dodd-Frank rulemaking on disclosing payments to foreign nations, according to a newly posted notice. The April 14 meeting saw executives from API, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Chevron meet with several SEC officials to discuss the so-called Section 1504 rule. The SEC’s first version of the rule, which requires energy and mining companies to reveal payments made to foreign governments for resources extraction as part of a transparency push, was vacated in 2013. The agency has been slow to propose a new rule, and is facing a lawsuit from Oxfam America seeking to force it to finish the work. The meeting with oil industry executives was the SEC’s first since June 2014, according to agency records, indicating it may be gearing up to issue a new proposal. The administration’s fall 2014 Unified Agenda indicated an October timeframe to propose a new rule, though those dates often slip back.
NEW OZONE STANDARD, WHO DIS? The Sierra Club today will launch a free program that will text participants when smog in their area reaches potentially threatening levels. “Our hope is that this text alert system helps parents better protect their kids by alerting them when the air outside is unsafe to breathe,” said Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. The American Lung Association said last week that 40 percent of Americans live in counties with “unhealthy” levels of smog or particle pollution. The text program will also let participants contact EPA in support of stricter smog.
ARTICLE MAKES JUDGE CONSIDER POSTPONING PEBBLE ORAL ARGUMENTS: The federal judge weighing a complaint from the developers of the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska may postpone oral arguments until after EPA’s inspector general finishes an investigation into the matter. Erica Martinson of Alaska Dispatch News (and a recent POLITICO Pro alum) published an article (http://bit.ly/1KaA2ir) over the weekend on the Pebble legal battle — and apparently Judge H. Russel Holland noticed the part about EPA’s IG investigating the matter. Citing that article, last night he ordered EPA and the mine developer to weigh in on whether oral arguments over whether to dismiss the case scheduled for May 28 should be postponed until the watchdog’s report is released sometime this summer. “The court is concerned that the Inspector General’s investigation might involve the claim made by Pebble Limited Partnership in this case,” Holland wrote: http://politico.pro/1R7PeSN
ME FIRST — BIOFUELS GROUPS WANT TO MEET WITH OBAMA: Advanced biofuels groups wrote to President Barack Obama on Monday to ask for a “high-level White House meeting” to discuss renewable fuel volumes for 2014, 2015 and 2016. Read the letter: http://politico.pro/1EbiNZR
DOE DEFENDS PONEMAN GIG: The Energy Department last week reassured Sen. John Barrasso that former Deputy Secretary Daniel Poneman’s new job as head of Centrus Energy didn’t violate ethics guidelines. Barrasso, whose state’s uranium industry is a competitor with Centrus, formerly known as USEC, wrote [http://politico.pro/1FLHBNv] to DOE in March criticizing Poneman’s new job as a symptom of an “inappropriate and legally questionable relationship.” DOE Deputy General Council Eric Fygi said in an April 30 letter that a document check “does not reveal any indication” that Poneman “violated any ethical obligations” in this matter. Read the letter: http://politico.pro/1IbEdx9
QUICK HITS
— What do weightlifting, California and the environment have in common? Arnold Schwarzenegger explains in a Time op-ed: http://ti.me/1bsQhLW
— “An analysis of drinking water sampled from three homes in Bradford County, Pa., revealed traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids, according to a study published on Monday.” The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1OVzVxW
— Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill extending a state tax credit for coal. Argus: http://bit.ly/1EMi6JU
— House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop wants to take on revenue sharing. Fuel Fix: http://bit.ly/1JMT9Cu
Tags: energy, fuel, gas, oil
