E2-Wire

President Obama’s former climate czar is confident the administration will limit carbon-dioxide emissions from the nation’s existing coal-fired power plants.

A proposed mine near Alaska’s coast that’s garnered Capitol Hill attention would harm a habitat that houses nearly half the world’s sockeye salmon, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Friday.

The EPA’s revised draft assessment of the Pebble Mine project’s potential impact on the aquatic ecosystem in Bristol Bay, Alaska determined the mine would destroy 90 miles of streams and up to 4,800 acres of wetland salmon habitat.

New Senate legislation to implement a U.S.-Mexico energy accord omits House language that exempts oil companies operating under the pact from controversial regulations that force them to disclose payments to foreign governments.

The bipartisan leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee introduced legislation Thursday to enable the Interior Department to implement the Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement.

The accord, which U.S. and Mexican officials signed in 2012, is designed to enable cooperation in development of oil-and-gas along a maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mexico.

The United States is planning to drop gray wolves from the endangered species list.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service intends to strip protections for the species in the Lower 48 states, save for about 75 Mexican wolves roaming Arizona and New Mexico.

A federal appeals court has dismissed an oil industry challenge to Securities and Exchange Commission rules that require petroleum and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign governments, ruling that the case belongs in a lower court.

The Friday ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit doesn’t wade into the substance of the controversial SEC rule and doesn’t end the legal battle over the regulation.

Instead the appellate judges agreed with Oxfam America, which intervened in the case to defend the SEC rule, that the industry challenge belongs in federal district court. The appellate judges dismissed the case “for lack of jurisdiction.”

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups had already filed suit in district court alongside the appellate challenge, and Friday’s ruling notes, “Their caution proved prescient.”

The Atlantic asks, “What If We Never Run Out of Oil?”

The Wall Street Journal takes stock of Exxon’s first quarter earnings report. From their story:

Exxon Mobil Corp.'s ... first-quarter profit rose slightly compared to last year but its production of oil and natural gas fell, as the energy giant continued to struggle in a world where large oil-and-gas fields are harder to find.

The Irving, Texas, energy company's oil and natural gas production dropped for the seventh consecutive quarter on a year-over-year basis, falling 3.5% from the same period last year, to 4.4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a dispatch from Thursday's House hearing on climate science.

Domestic Fuel reports on rocker Neil Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental that runs on cellulosic ethanol.

The New York Times explores how electric cars could add power to the grid.

ON TAP FRIDAY: A House committee will look at Obama administration research into hydraulic fracturing, the controversial oil-and-gas development method that’s enabling a U.S. production boom while creating concerns about pollution.

The Science, Space and Technology Committee will hear from officials with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department, the Interior Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The hearing will examine what has happened since an April 2012 White House executive order that required new inter-agency collaboration on “safe and responsible” development of so-called unconventional natural-gas resources.

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A Democratic lawmaker says he intends to strengthen “toothless” regulations surrounding plants that process large amounts of dangerous chemicals.

In the wake of a fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, that killed 14 people and left hundreds more injured or homeless, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduced a bill that would make avoiding chemical reporting requirements a federal crime.

“The chemical reporting laws on the books today are toothless and do little to help us protect communities from chemical explosions. Facilities that break the reporting rules today essentially get away with just a warning,” he said.

The blast at the plant last week caused a tremor in the earth equivalent to a 2.1 magnitude earthquake.

A House GOP bill to implement a U.S.-Mexico offshore energy accord exempts oil companies operating under the pact from controversial federal rules that force energy producers to disclose their payments to foreign governments.

The provision could become a sticking point in enacting the Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement, a 2012 accord to enable cooperation in development of oil-and-gas along a maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I don’t see how that provision can be taken out,” said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), the chairman of a House subcommittee that reviewed the bill Thursday.

A Senate Finance Committee white paper on possible federal tax code changes for energy suggested establishing a carbon tax in place of most or all energy tax incentives.

The paper offered the carbon tax with a range of other policy options to help chip away at a Congressional Budget Office-estimated $16 billion of foregone energy-related tax expenditures in fiscal 2013.

The paper, released Thursday, came with the disclaimer that the policy suggestions “do not necessarily have the endorsement” of committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) or ranking member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).