Archive for the ‘Washington watch’ Category

US energy tax policy poised for big changes, or none at all

By Brian Scheid | May 15, 2013 12:01 AM Comments (0)

Billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and natural gas producers will be eliminated under a proposal US congressional tax writers are floating. But they’re also floating a proposal that would make these tax breaks pretty much permanent.

They are thinking about getting rid of the controversial production tax credit for wind and also thinking about keeping it for a very long time. They might take up a carbon tax, they might not and they might raise the federal gasoline tax, or lower it. It’s really unclear at this point.

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A new gig for the former head of the IEA

By John Kingston | April 22, 2013 03:07 PM Comments (0)

The competition in academia for big names is always fierce. With universities focusing anew on energy, and new campus think tanks popping up, it’s becoming even more competitive. For example, the University of California-Davis last year lured Amy Myers Jaffe away from Rice University’s Baker Institute, where she had been almost since its founding.

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Regulation and Environment: Reviewing the safety record three years after Macondo

By News Desk | April 22, 2013 03:56 AM Comments (0)

We just hit the three-year mark on the Macondo anniversary. In this week’s Regulation & Environment column from Oilgram News, Gary Gentile reviews the industry’s record on safety, and efforts to prevent another Macondo, since that time.

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Ken Salazar signs off from the US Interior department

By Gary Gentile | April 11, 2013 04:18 PM Comments (0)

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar spent his last few hours in office Thursday sitting across a table from a House Approriations subcommittee promoting and defending the proposed 2014 budget he won’t get a chance to administer.

On his last day in office, Salazar returned to Congress, where he began his career in DC as a US Senator in the class of 2005, a class that included his friend Barack Obama. This time, he was on the House side, sitting in the cozy basement hearing room where the subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Activities holds court.

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LNG approval process has lots of consequences, more questions

By Brian Scheid | April 2, 2013 04:53 PM Comments (1)

There are few, if any, looming decisions that could have a more profound impact on US energy policy than the Department of Energy’s ruling on liquefied natural gas exports.

The decision, which sources expect will be announced this summer, could alter US relations with Japan, diminish Gazprom’s share of the European market and cause a dramatic swing in US gas prices.

But for all the potential consequences and the growing number of theories over the outcome, relatively nothing is known about how the DOE will ultimately make its decision.

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A hockey coach drops the gloves — or threatens to — over Obama and Keystone XL

By Herman Wang | March 26, 2013 04:57 PM Comments (1)

Darryl Sutter is a Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Los Angeles Kings.

He’s also a fiercely proud Albertan, and given the chance to meet US President Barack Obama on Tuesday, he had a message on a subject near and dear to Canadians.

No, not the de facto national sport of ice hockey.

Rather, Sutter reportedly wanted to score a point for the Keystone XL Pipeline, a controversial project that has strained ties between the North American neighbors.

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Another voice calls for E85 as a solution to the RINs conundrum

By John Kingston | March 17, 2013 11:59 PM Comments (2)

The idea of using E85 as a way out of the blendwall/RINs issue in the US has another backer.

But it’s not a new backer. Well-known energy economist Phil Verleger several years ago first brought up the likelihood that the refining industry might need to promote the sale of E85 as a way around the Gordian knot of a 10% ethanol blendwall combined with a rising mandate for the use of renewable fuels plus a decline in gasoline demand in the US.

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Thoughts from Boca: not a lot of hostility on display

By Christopher Tremulis | March 15, 2013 03:30 PM Comments (0)

Three long days and very late nights with 1,004 registrants at the annual Futures Industry Association Conference in Boca Raton, Florida, certainly had its moments of industry optimism and gossip. Exchange executives and regulators were in abundance, but although being tasked with finding energy and regulatory news, it would have been easier to work for a gossip website.

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Paul Ryan’s energy argument may have false premise

By Brian Scheid | March 15, 2013 03:00 PM Comments (2)

In the budget proposal he released this week, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan made a rather convincing case for why the federal government needs to stop funding renewable energy sources like wind and solar at the expense of fossil fuels, pointing to the Obama administration’s trend of bankrolling failed projects.

While you may have only heard about the fallout from Solyndra, the bankrupt solar startup that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, highlighted two other “failed” solar projects the Obama administration continues to waste money on.

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Could sequester delay Keystone XL pipeline even more?

By Brian Scheid | March 4, 2013 01:56 PM Comments (1)

Early Friday evening, just hours before $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts went into effect, the State Department released its 2,000-page draft environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Fundamentally, the pipeline and the sequester have little in common outside of the controversy and bipartisan vitriol they have attracted, but the fate of one issue may ultimately influence the other.

In theory, and I should stress that this is only a theory, the sequester could further delay the already-delayed decision to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, or at least give the Obama administration, facing staunch opposition from environmental groups, a reason to put it off.

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