E2-Wire

If Sen. Murkowski loses her GOP primary, Richard Burr is next in line to be the panel's ranking member.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who grew up in New Orleans, will play a big role in the suite of events marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

A White House schedule released Wednesday shows Jackson will participate in seven events between Aug. 26 and Aug. 29.

They range from delivering the keynote address Thursday at the Tulane University conference called "Fighting for Survival: The Vulnerability of America’s Gulf Coast and the Caribbean Basin" to attending an interfaith service Sunday and candlelight vigil in New Orleans.

President Barack Obama will head Sunday to New Orleans to speak at Xavier University.

If Joe Miller holds on and pulls a shocking upset of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in that state’s GOP primary, it will be a step toward growth in the Senate ranks of climate change skeptics.

Here’s Miller’s take on climate change, from his campaign website:

The science supporting manmade climate change is inconclusive. Nothing typifies that more than the metamorphosis in terminology being used. A few years ago, the dire warnings coming from Al Gore and others all spoke of “Global Warming.” The term “Greenhouse Gas” itself conjures up images of the unnatural heat found in a manmade environment. However, since the trend in more recent years has been towards cooler temperatures, those (like Senator Murkowski and others) pushing for cap and trade and other carbon emission reducing legislation have had to change their terminology to “Climate Change.” Should we take drastic measures to combat something that may not even exist, burdening our already struggling economy with billions in new taxes and regulations?

Murkowski, in contrast, has repeatedly noted that she’s concerned about the effects of global warming on Alaska, and several years ago, she signed on as a co-sponsor a moderate cap-and-trade bill.

But Murkowski hasn’t backed recent Senate climate bills and has spearheaded efforts this year to block EPA greenhouse gas rules that she alleges would be economically harmful.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a top GOP voice on energy, may fall in tight primary

The Hill’s Shane D'Aprile reports:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is in danger of becoming the third incumbent senator to lose in the 2010 election cycle.



Attorney Joe Miller appears on the verge of a stunning upset in Alaska's Republican Senate primary, but the race has not been officially called and could be headed for a recount.

The Tea Party-backed candidate leads Murkowski by less than 3,000 votes with 77 percent of precincts reporting. 
Click here for the full story.

Murkowski is the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee

She has been at the center of debates on drilling policy and climate change. Murkowski fears the effects of global warming on Alaska but has also pushed legislation — unsuccessfully thus far —to block Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate rules she calls economically harmful.

Murkowski has been a key voice in GOP messaging on drilling policy, alleging, for instance, Democratic plans to alter offshore liability rules would hinder development. 

But she has also forged a working relationship with Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). The two recently shepherded a bill through the committee to overhaul Interior Department offshore oversight and safety rules, and last year they worked together on a sweeping energy bill that cleared the committee with several GOP votes.

Drilling ban brings less economic pain than feared

Oil industry officials and Gulf Coast lawmakers said the Interior Department’s six-month deepwater drilling freeze would devastate the region’s economy and cut production. Republicans used it to bludgeon the White House.

But it hasn’t been nearly as bad as critics predicted, The New York Times reports Wednesday:

“[T]he worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields,” their piece states.

The White House press secretary was touting a study in Science that found bacteria are devouring undersea oil. Read more...

A senior State Department official said Tuesday that the U.S. boom in producing natural gas from shale rock formations could pave the way for other countries to expand development that allows displacement of carbon-heavy coal.

David Goldwyn, the coordinator for international energy affairs, was bullish about global shale-gas potential in remarks with reporters during a State Department conference in Washington, D.C., devoted to international coordination on the resource.

“The U.S. shale-gas phenomenon has transformed global energy markets. Because we have discovered and we have the technology to develop efficiently large quantities of gas from shale, global prices of liquefied natural gas have decreased. Gas has become cheaper. Gas is now competitive with coal on a BTU basis, which means that countries that might use coal can now not make an economic choice, but on a competitive basis choose gas for their next level of power generation,” he said.

The World Resources Institute has a created a nifty online tool that allows visitors to track climate aid pledges stemming from last year’s Copenhagen climate conference.

Developed countries together pledged almost $30 billion in “fast start” financing to help developing countries curb emissions and adapt to climate change.

Now WRI, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, is tracking whether countries are making good on the plans.

The administration says the money is helping expand technologies including solar power, “smart” electrical meters and advanced batteries.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell said Monday that cap-and-trade energy legislation is "dead" in the Senate.

On tap Tuesday: Biden, Chu headline the latest stop on the stimulus-is-working tour

Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu will unveil a report in Washington, D.C., with “new analysis on the impact of Recovery Act investments in innovation, science and technology.”

“The Recovery Act is investing over $100 billion in innovative and transformative programs that span industries from Energy to Health Information Technology. These investments are accelerating the pace of innovation, helping to establish the U.S. as a global leader in competitive, high-growth industries of the 21st century,” the White House said in announcing the event.

The Energy Department is defending the pace of its stimulus programs after recent reports from the agency’s inspector general provided mixed reviews of how quickly the money is being injected into the economy.

Interior: Drilling ban may be relaxed for some rigs

Michael Bromwich, the Interior Department’s top offshore drilling regulator, told a commission probing the oil spill Monday that the deepwater drilling ban could be relaxed before its scheduled late November expiration.

The bipartisan commission that President Obama created is meeting in Washington, D.C., Wednesday.

Bromwich, who heads Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said in a letter to the spill panel Monday that Interior prefers fully implementing “system-wide” rules to addressing rigs on a piecemeal basis. But he nonetheless left the door open to allowing some projects to proceed before the ban ends.

“[W]e believe that system-wide rules designed to enhance safety in specific ways is the best means to raise safety standards throughout the industry. We believe that this approach — rather than focusing on rig-by-rig inspections performed against the backdrop of shifting regulatory requirements — is a more coherent approach to improving the level of safety in deepwater,” he wrote.

Bromwich added, however, that as the agency’s review of drilling safety continues, regulators may determine between now and Nov. 30 that certain categories of rigs “present fewer risks than others and are sufficiently safe to allow the moratorium to be lifted with respect to those categories of rigs.”

Groups ramp up campaigns to spotlight oil industry lobbying, donations

The Center for Responsive Politics — a go-to group for tracking political money — launched a weeklong series of reports Monday that look at oil-and-gas industry lobbying.

The goal: Shine a light on the “evermore intimate relationship with the federal government and the people elected to make the nation's laws.”

The first conclusions: “The oil industry spent nearly $75 million between January and June —equivalent to the government budget of a mid-sized American city — lobbying the federal government.”