Congress was unable to pass an oil spill bill in response to the Macondo well blowout last year, and now policymakers are eager to return to the issue. The largest outstanding issue is undoubtedly the oil spill liability or the secondary costs that stem from offshore oil and gas accidents. The law currently caps liability at $75 million, with up to an additional $1 billion available from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund paid for by a per-barrel tax on imported and domestic oil. Both Republicans and Democrats offered knee-jerk …
Congress isn’t the only entity that knows how to pick winners and losers for energy sources and technologies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing its best to follow suit by imposing new rules on the natural gas industry and providing exemptions to the biomass industry. For natural gas, the EPA evasively posted a new rule on hydraulic fracturing, requiring a company to obtain permits if the company uses diesel when fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, a long-proven process by which pressurized water and other substances are injected into wells to extract …
Gas prices are nearly 40 cents per gallon higher than what they were last year and show no sign of falling any time soon. Although there are plenty of ideas that could help lower prices, the Obama Administration is doing much more harm than good. We’ve written in great detail about the Obama Administration’s attack on offshore drilling. They announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will not be part of the government’s 2012–2017 Outer Continental Shelf program, effectively banning drilling in those areas …
President Obama’s seven-person Oil Spill Commission released its long-awaited final report this morning and includes details on the “before, during and after” of the Macondo well explosion that occurred on April 20 last year. The commission’s site also has a “Recommendation for Decision Makers” section that has drawn much of the media attention. This post will largely draw from that section as well. The bipartisan report predictably calls for tougher regulations and more government control with regard to offshore drilling and continually refers to systemic flaws of the oil and …
The American people didn’t want it and Congress couldn’t do it, but don’t let that stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Despite Congress’s inability to pass cap-and-trade legislation that would have increased energy prices dramatically, the EPA is moving forward with its own regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2). The EPA will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse gas emitters and set the schedule for the next two years: By midyear 2012, refineries and fossil-fuel-fired electric utilities will be …
Money is a powerful incentive. When it comes to global warming, governments all over the world have created policies that intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but have led to fraud, scams, black markets, and increased emissions. Mark Schapiro of Reuters reports on the unintended consequences of European companies offsetting their carbon dioxide emissions by paying the Chinese to destroy a much more potent contributor to warming: In order to offset their own greenhouse gases, companies and utilities in Europe that are subject to the emission limits of the Kyoto …
With cap and trade out of the realm of possibilities, Members of Congress have turned their attention to mandating so-called clean energy. Some Members hoped for a lame duck vote on a renewable electricity standard (RES), which would require that a certain percentage of our nation’s electricity production come from wind, solar, biomass, and other government-picked renewable energies. With that looking less likely, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu mentioned a clean energy standard that includes other carbon-free sources of energy as a possible compromise between Democrats and Republicans next …
As the rest of the world continues to drill off its respective coasts, the United States is heading in the opposite direction. The Obama Administration announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will not be part of the government’s 2012–2017 Outer Continental Shelf program, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years. The decision is a reversal from the President’s announcement in March in which he opened access to waters for offshore drilling in the Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico. …
International climate change talks kick off yesterday in Cancun, Mexico, and the expectations aren’t nearly as high as they were last year at the summit in Copenhagen, where no country committed to any legal binding agreement. This year in Cancun, leaders from nearly 200 countries will come together at the 16th Conference of the Parties to be held under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. But the climate summit has much less hype than last year, because the reasons Copenhagen failed still apply this year: the economic costs …
What is the Obama Administration thankful for, or at least hopeful for, this Thanksgiving? That controversial Thanksgiving Eve announcements won’t receive any media attention. While most Americans were in transit Wednesday afternoon, the Department of Interior was finalizing its polar bear habitat protection, which sets aside 187,000 square miles of sea ice off the coast of Alaska as critical habitat. The announcement does not prohibit economic activity in these areas, but it could make it much more difficult for oil and gas development, since the designation requires federal officials to …
