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OVERNIGHT ENERGY: GOP seeks political price for Obama’s Keystone pipeline delay
State of play: Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill are taking steps this week to impose a political price on the White House for delaying a final decision on the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline until after the 2012 election.
Senate GOP leadership on Wednesday promoted new legislation that would force a much faster decision on TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $7 billion Alberta-to-Texas pipeline.
They argue the bill (which E2 covered here and here) will help create jobs quickly, and alleged the recent administration delay was a political decision to appease green groups.
The pipeline puts the White House in a bind by splitting President Obama’s base — green groups loathe the project while a number of unions want it to proceed without further delay.
The split isn’t lost on House Republicans.
“We want to make it more difficult for the president to delay this, so we want these labor union people to come up here and tell him to create jobs. [Obama] talks about jobs all the time, so he has a chance to do something about it,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Energy and Power subcommittee, told reporters in the Capitol on Wednesday.
The hearing will also include a senior TransCanada executive, the head of the anti-pipeline group Bold Nebraska, and others. Whitfield said he expects new House legislation to speed up the federal decision on the pipeline to be introduced soon.
Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) is expected to take the lead on the legislation.
UPDATE: An Energy and Commerce Committee aide said Wednesday that the upcoming House bill would take the decision on the pipeline out of the State Department’s hands by moving final approval to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
From committee spokeswoman Charlotte Baker:
The bill gives FERC the power to approve the construction permit and any modifications to it, along with a 30-day deadline for a decision, after which the permit is granted. Nebraska recently passed a law making the environmental review subject to the Governor's approval, and consistent with that law, our bill ensures collaboration between the state of Nebraska and FERC on the Nebraska reroute and its environmental review.
“The Keystone approval process has been yet another example of the president’s inability to make big decisions," Terry said in a statement. “Because he and the State Department weren’t able to decide on Keystone, even three years after the initial application, we’re now drafting legislation to put the decision in more capable hands.”
NEWS BITES:
Oil industry invites unlikely guest to lunch
American
Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard invited an unlikely guest to an
upcoming event hosted by the trade group: Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.),
one of the most vocal critics of the oil industry in Congress.
Gerard
and Markey have been sparring in recent weeks over API’s claim that the
oil industry can create more than 1 million jobs in the coming
years if policymakers opened wide new areas to drilling, among other
policies.
Markey, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources
Committee, has blasted Gerard’s claim (which can be found in
API-commissioned studies), arguing that the powerful industry group has
cooked its numbers.
But Gerard hit back Wednesday, accusing
Markey of misunderstanding “important facts” about the oil-and-gas
industry in a
letter to the lawmaker.
In an unexpected twist, Gerard
then invited Markey to sit at the head table at API’s upcoming State of
American Energy lunch in Washington.
“We are willing to work
with you, the committee, and others on a non-partisan basis to ensure
the benefits of increased oil and natural gas accrue to our country,”
Gerard said in the letter.
There’s no word from Markey’s office
about whether he’ll attend the event. But if Markey’s statement
Wednesday is any indication, the chances are slim.
“We must focus
on creating jobs for the American people, but serving up America’s
treasures for Big Oil and lavishing the industry with billions in
special tax breaks aren’t the answers,” he said. “It’s time to set the
record straight.”
A brief look at the latest Solyndra documents
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a slew of Solyndra-related documents Wednesday.
Republicans referred to the documents during the Nov. 17 hearing of the committee’s investigative panel when Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified on the $535 million loan guarantee to the now-failed California solar panel company.
Some of the documents had been previously released, while others were new.
E2 combed through the documents Wednesday. Here are some highlights:
The documents include a June 2010 plan by McBee Strategic Consulting, which lobbied for Solyndra, to press the federal government for “deeper support for the broader [solar] industry, as well as directly to Solyndra.”
McBee proposed performing “quiet and surgical outreach to both company supporters and though leaders on Capitol Hill and in the Administration to lay the groundwork for a broader assault by the company.”
The goal, as McBee proposed it in the plan, was to promote both Solyndra and the solar industry as a whole by underscoring the threat posed by Chinese investment in its renewable sector.
“[W]e’ll be most successful if we position this as an industry problem for which Solyndra, as a frontier company, is the bellwether and is taking the initial and at present most acute pain,” the plan said.
Another set of documents show Energy Department Loan Programs Executive Director Jonathan Silver suggesting that the General Services Administration meet with Solyndra official to discuss working together to install rooftop solar projects on government buildings.
“Solyndra makes an advanced solar rooftop array for large commercial facilities and is now installed in locations all over the United States and Europe,” Silver wrote in a July 2010 email to a GSA official. “Members of management will be in DC next week and would like to come talk with you about government buildings. Would you be willing to meet briefly with them?"
Silver announced his intentions to step down as DOE loan chief in September.
A separate set of emails suggests that Chu met with President Obama in the summer of 2011, just months before Solyndra declared bankruptcy.
A June 27, 2011, email from a senior adviser in DOE’s loan office asked said he planned to brief Chu (referred to as “S-1”) “in advance of his meeting with POTUS.”
The email continues: “Topics will likely include: [redacted], Solyndra (current status — in light of yesterday’s WashPo article).”
You can read the documents here.
Green-energy groups push Congress to extend grants
Green-energy advocates are urging Capitol Hill GOP and Democratic leaders to provide a one-year extension of an expiring program that offers federal grants for renewable electricity projects.
A broad group of trade associations and companies sent a letter Wednesday to Capitol Hill leaders touting the continued need for the so-called 1603 program.
The initiative, created in the 2009 stimulus law, provides federal grants in lieu of traditional tax credits for wind farms, solar installations and other projects.
It was created at a time when availability of traditional tax credit financing had collapsed with the economic downturn that battered banks and other project backers.
The letter says the program has been a success (it notes that the Treasury Department grants have “leveraged over $22.8 billion in private sector investment to support over 22,000 projects”) and remains necessary.
It states:
The tax equity market modestly improved in 2010, but still has not recovered to pre-recession activity. A July 2011 survey of the major tax equity investors by the U.S. Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance estimates expiration of the program would shrink the total financing available for energy projects by 52 percent in 2012. This would stifle job creation and severely restrict the market’s ability to leverage private sector capital to finance new domestic energy projects.
Groups such as the Solar Energy Industries Association, the American Biogas Council, the U.S. Clean Heat and Power Association, Cape Wind and scores of other associations and companies signed the letter.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...
Here's a quick roundup of Wednesday's E2 stories:
— Sens. Lugar, McConnell hope for Dem backing on Keystone pipeline bill
— Bingaman to float 'clean energy standard' early next year
— Green groups blast Clinton’s strategy in climate talks
— EPA: New rules limiting pollution will not cause power outages
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