E2-Wire

Over the past several years, reports by the Government Accountability Office, the Interior Department’s inspector general and others have highlighted problems with Interior’s oil-and-gas royalty collection practices.

A major part of the system is still a mess, GAO said in its latest study made public Wednesday.

The report finds that regulators lack “reasonable assurance” that oil and natural gas produced on federal leases is being accurately measured. That’s important because such measurements are needed to ensure that producers are paying what they owe.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA) released a list of 48 mines that federal mine safety officials said last August warranted increased oversight but did not receive it because of unresolved appeals by mine operators. Here's the list.

The list includes the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia where 29 miners lost their lives in an explosion on April 5, Miller’s office said in a release. Miller is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, which oversees the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The issue of mine companies appealing safety citations has gained greater prominence since the mine disaster, the deadliest in 40 years. Miller’s office said there is a backlog of 16,000 operator appeals.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) campaign on Wednesday bashed the League of Conservation Voters in response to LCV’s decision to work against her in the 2010 election cycle.

Here’s a statement her campaign released:

The League of Conservation Voters further cements its status as an ultra-liberal group obsessed with arcane restrictions that do little to help the environment and a great deal to harm the economy.

As a member of the Energy Solutions Working Group in the House, Congresswoman Bachmann is dedicated to an ‘all of the above’ approach that will increase the supply of clean, affordable, American-made energy today and encourage investment for newer, more efficient energy technologies for the future. In fact, she has already introduced the Promoting New American Energy Act that would accelerate tax depreciation to 3 years for investments in newer, cleaner, more efficient energy technologies, including solar, wind, and geothermal investments. She will continue to fight against energy tax increases as proposed in the Democrat’s energy proposal and stand up for Minnesotan families and small businesses.

The League of Conservation Voters announced Wednesday that it will work to defeat Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) this year.

The group named Bachmann to its “Dirty Dozen” list of targets for the 2010 cycle, but with a twist – LCV said she won 60 percent in an online vote LCV hosted to select a “people’s choice” addition to the list.

“Representative Bachmann’s landslide win as the ‘People’s Choice’ clearly shows voters are fed up with her over-the-top, anti-science rhetoric in which she continually parrots the talking points of Big Oil and other corporate polluters,” said Tony Massaro, LCV’s senior vice president for political affairs, in a statement.

House Democrats pressured coal company executives Wednesday to drop opposition to climate legislation as the industry faces greater congressional scrutiny following the mine explosion last week that killed 29 miners.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, urged executives from Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and Rio Tinto to, “cease efforts to deny the science of global warming” and stop “misleading the public as to the true science behind climate change.”

The focus of the select committee’s hearing Wednesday was on the future of coal, but Markey also asked the executives if the number of safety violations reported at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia prior to the blast was unusually high, in effect launching what is likely to be weeks of congressional inquiry into the industry's safety practices. 

The American Petroleum Institute announced Wednesday that public relations veteran Linda Schoumacher Rozett, who is also a former journalist, will be the powerful trade group’s new vice president of communications.

Rozett has for several years been running the media consulting firm FirstWord Strategies. In 2007, she was communications director in the early days of former Sen. Fred Thompson’s (R-Tenn.) failed campaign for the GOP White House nomination.

Prior jobs included stints as a communications executive for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and  work with two energy trade groups: The Edison Electric Institute and the Natural Gas Supply Association.

The U.S. EPA and the Energy Department on Wednesday announced an overhaul of the Energy Star appliance labeling program aimed at preventing products that don’t meet the program’s efficiency requirements from receiving the Energy Star label.

The agencies said the revisions speed up several changes that were already underway to bolster product verification, testing and enforcement.

But they also follow a recent Government Accountability office audit that found the popular program is “vulnerable to fraud and abuse.” The congressional auditors were able to obtain Energy Star certifications for bogus products, including a gas-powered alarm clock.

Over at our On The Money blog, my colleague Jay Heflin has a piece about the Treasury Department defending Obama administration efforts to repeal billions of dollars worth of oil-and-gas industry tax breaks.

“If Henry Ford had decided not to build the Model T based upon the availability of gas stations, where would be today?” he said.

The “Climate-gate” scandal isn’t tarnishing global warming research the way that climate skeptics – including several Capitol Hill lawmakers – might have hoped.

Scores of emails among scientists connected to the UK’s Climatic Research Unit made public last year prompted allegations that the researchers were squelching information that undercut evidence of global warming.

But an independent review commissioned by the University of East Anglia – which houses the CRU – has concluded that scientists did not attempt to manipulate data as the climate skeptics had alleged.