A group of energy-intensive and trade-sensitive industry groups have “considerable concerns” that a recent cost analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a draft climate bill offered by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) does not take into account how the plan would affect their industries.
The American Materials Manufacturing Alliance, in a letter to the two senators Wednesday, said the EPA analysis “relies on previous interagency analyses of other climate change legislation that had used significantly flawed assumptions.”
The “unfortunate result,” they wrote, is that it “is incomplete and draws faulty conclusions.”
A Democratic senator wants Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to investigate whether abandoned offshore oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico pose any dangers.
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is asking his former Colorado Senate Democratic colleague to look into an AP report Wednesday that more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf have not been checked for leaks.
Offshore oil-and-gas drilling supporters have begun a new campaign aimed at distancing the overall industry from BP’s troubles in the Gulf
of Mexico oil spill.
Save U.S. Energy Jobs — a venture by the
American Energy Alliance (AEA), the advocacy arm of the conservative Institute
for Energy Research (IER) — launched a website over the July 4 weekend that argues that BP’s actions are not the industry norm.
“BP is a victim of its own carelessness; the rest of us
should not be,” headlines a recent blog on the site by IER President
Thomas Pyle.
“Helping ease fears that a wave of spilled crude is heading this way, Coast Guard investigators said Tuesday they have identified five vessels they believe may have carried tar balls from BP’s gushing oil well off Louisiana to Galveston and other parts of the Texas coast,” the Houston Chroniclereports. “Some feared the first confirmed reports of oil reaching Texas might represent an advance guard of an oil assault on the Texas coast, which had been spared until now as the worst oil spill in U.S. history tainted shorelines in other Gulf Coast states.”
BP eyes possible foreign sales to help spill costs
“BP PLC’s Chief Executive Tony Hayward met this week with Abu Dhabi’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and would be open to seeing the oil-rich sheikdom buy a stake of up to 10% stake in the U.K. oil giant,” the Wall Street Journalreports.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed updating Tuesday of a Bush-era interstate clean air rule for electric utilities would establish a model for future Obama administration air quality rules and possible implications for efforts in the Senate to reduce heat-trapping and other pollutants from power plants.
The proposed Clean Air Transport Rule was needed after a federal appeals court in December 2008 struck down an earlier 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) after the state of North Carolina and several utilities successfully argued that parts of the program were illegal under the Clean Air Act.
But perhaps more importantly, EPA air quality chief Gina McCarthy said Tuesday the new standard “tees up” a new model for upcoming EPA rules aimed at further limiting smog-causing and other pollutants.
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