E2 Roundup: Offshore drilling in the spotlight

On tap: Senior Interior official, spill panel on the record

Anyone seeking clues about the future of offshore oil-and-gas drilling will want to pay attention this week.

Michael Bromwich — who heads Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — will chat with reporters Tuesday at a forum hosted by the energy news service Platts.

Drilling ban in the spotlight

Bromwich, almost two weeks ago, gave Interior Secretary Ken Salazar a set of (still not public) recommendations about the federal deepwater drilling moratorium, which could pave the way for easing the limits.

Interior is under heavy political pressure from Republicans, Gulf Coast lawmakers of both parties and the oil industry to lift or scale back the ban before its scheduled Nov. 30 expiration.

Also look for Bromwich to face questions about Interior’s new rules that toughen safety requirements for offshore wells. The industry — while acknowledging lapses laid bare by the BP spill — is warning that drilling will migrate to other countries if Interior cracks down too hard.

“There is a potential tipping point where it would discourage activity here in the United States,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, in a TV interview broadcast Sunday on Platts Energy Week. “We are working closely with ... regulators to find that key balance,” he said.

Spill bills: Wait till next year

Interior is overhauling regulations with its existing powers, but Gerard doesn’t see Congress putting its stamp on the matter any time soon.

The Senate has yet to follow the House in passing legislation to overhaul Interior’s drilling oversight and expand industry liability for offshore spills.

“The partisan divide is so large right now it is going to be very difficult to get anything substantive done in a lame-duck session,” he said.

Spill commission gets down to business

Members of the presidential commission probing the BP spill will hold several hours of public discussions Wednesday in Washington.

Staff for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling already had plenty to say last week.

Draft staff “working papers” attacked key aspects of the federal response to the spill, including the low-balled early estimates of how much oil was flowing, prompting heavy pushback from the White House.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs took pains last week to note that the papers aren’t the views of the commissioners themselves. Look for some of those views to start surfacing this week, although the panel’s final report to the White House isn’t due until January.

White House aide to climate activists: Build the movement to press Congress

A senior White House aide said “real-life examples” of action will help push Congress on climate and energy.

Jon Carson — the chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality — spoke to climate activists on a conference call Saturday evening organized by 350.org.

The advocates will be a “crucial part of showing this new Congress that this issue has to be at the top of their priority list,” said Carson, who was the national field director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

His remarks came ahead of Sunday’s “Global Work Party” — thousands of small-scale events worldwide aimed at demonstrating local action and pressuring policymakers. Events in Africa, the U.S., the Middle East and elsewhere ranged from tree planting to bike fixing to rallies and lots in between.

'Clear lesson' in showing examples, Obama aide says

“One clear lesson that I think we will be taking forward, that all of you have learned and are making happen tomorrow, is we need to create real-life examples, so it is not just the theory of a clean energy economy, not just the rhetoric of a clean energy economy, but people are seeing on the ground that this is actually going to work and that this is something that can get done,” Carson said.

“That is the heart of what we are going to need to both win the fight to keep EPA’s ability to deal with carbon pollution” and to eventually pass a broad climate and energy bill, he said.

Carson’s pep talk and Sunday’s Global Work Party come at a tough time for the climate movement.

Efforts to craft a global emissions-cutting treaty have sputtered, and carbon-capping legislation collapsed in the Senate with low prospects for revival in the new Congress. The biggest looming U.S. battle is over legislation that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) power to regulate greenhouse gases.

McKibben: Force the political door open again

350.org founder Bill McKibben spoke to E2 Sunday as the Global Work Party it launched with various partners was under way. He was taking stock of photos coming in from events around the planet.

“It is that kind of amazing sense of whatever the other differences are in the world, this is one thing that people are coming together on. It is just magnificent,” he said.

But McKibben said the political landscape for climate policy has worsened in the U.S.

The November elections are expected to expand GOP power, and a number of Republican candidates are climate-change skeptics and strongly oppose emissions caps. Internationally, nobody expects the big United Nations Summit in Mexico late this year to end with a global deal on emissions cuts.

McKibben is hopeful that Sunday’s event will build momentum for near-term fights — like preserving EPA’s power and blocking a ballot effort in California to kill that state’s climate law — while keeping an eye on Congress in the future.

“The political situation in the United States is going to get worse before it gets better for environmentalists,” he said.

“Frankly, I don’t think we are likely to get significant legislation in the next two years out of Congress, and without that I don’t think we can make significant international progress,” he said.

“I do think we can spend those two years building the kind of movement to get something done the next time politics gives us an opening,” McKibben said.

Disputing the New Yorker piece

Back to Carson for a moment: Elsewhere on the call with the advocates, Carson said he “wholeheartedly” disagreed with aspects of a recent New Yorker story that implicated the White House in the collapse of climate legislation in the Senate.

The New Yorker story calls the White House political effort underwhelming, and says the administration blundered by proposing increased incentives for nuclear power plants and expanded offshore drilling — policies that lawmakers pushing carbon caps had hoped to use as bargaining chips.

Carson said President Obama has been strongly engaged on energy and climate, noting the president’s (very) frequent claim that low-carbon energy will drive the economy.

“He has hit this theme over and over and over again,” Carson said, later adding, “No matter what happens this November, you are going to continue to see the leadership that President Obama has shown so far.”

Carson also used the call to tout steps the administration has taken, such as tens of billions in stimulus dollars for low-carbon technologies, and final rules that toughened auto mileage standards.

In case you missed E2 Wire yesterday 

Check out our weekend posts and Friday’s coverage:

Interior Secretary Salazar returns home to campaign for Markey

U.S.-China bickering mars climate talks

Constellation pulls plug on nuke reactor and $7.5 billion DoE loan

Republican seeks House hearing on shallow-water drilling permits

Manchin: Obama ‘dead wrong’ on climate

Report: Feinberg's firm paid more than $2.5M to administer spill fund

Safety violations led to 11 closure orders at Massey mine

House Dems push for more ANWR protection

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