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Murkowski launches push for expanded drilling, green-energy policy revamp
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top GOP member of the Senate’s Energy panel, is spelling out her priorities in a sweeping blueprint that ranges from opening more federal lands and waters to oil drilling to launching a new green-energy “trust fund.”
The ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is launching the “Energy 20/20” blueprint with a PR push that includes a speech Monday morning to state energy regulators and a briefing with Beltway reporters later in the day.
The blueprint — which Murkowski hopes will launch a broad discussion of energy and resource policy direction in coming years — includes some proposals that are extremely unlikely to advance any time soon, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
But the blueprint also contains an array of other ideas, such as expediting liquefied natural-gas exports to U.S. allies; promoting use of small modular nuclear reactors and creating a new quasi-federal agency for nuclear waste management; and bolstering energy storage R&D, to name just a few.
E2-Wire will have more on the plan — which also aims to thwart restrictions on coal, boost hydropower, and more — and its reception later on Monday.
