Capitol

Small oil and natural gas operators took their complaints about the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to Capitol Hill Thursday, blaming a slowdown of oil and gas activity on public lands on a sluggish approval process for applications for permits to drill (APD).

Capitol Hill lawmakers are calling on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to “immediately enact strong position limits” to curb excessive speculation in oil markets.

FERC’s doors were closed for a second day in a row Thursday due to a power outage that has affected the North Capitol Street corridor in Washington, DC, where the agency’s headquarters is located.

Capitol Hill reaction to President Obama’s blueprint for securing the nation’s future energy supplies has run the gamut from supportive to skeptical about whether his targeted goal to reduce foreign imports can be met. Republicans said there is a wide disconnect between what Obama said Wednesday and his anti-drilling policies.

President Obama Wednesday defended his energy policy from the ongoing attacks of industry and Republicans on Capitol Hill, and championed natural gas as a new source of energy. The threat of a cut in oil imports due to the political implosions of a number of Middle Eastern countries has added fuel to the verbal battle between the administration and the oil and gas industry over the de facto moratorium on Gulf of Mexico (GOM) drilling.

Water use in Marcellus Shale drilling “may not be as big an issue as we originally thought it was,” a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) official told a natural gas forum on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, last Wednesday.

Water use in Marcellus Shale drilling “may not be as big an issue as we originally thought it was,” a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) official told a natural gas forum on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, last Wednesday.

Federal regulators came under attack on Capitol Hill last Thursday for allegedly not carrying out extensive cost-benefit analyses of the rules that they are proposing to implement under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

Federal regulators came under attack on Capitol Hill Thursday for allegedly not carrying out comprehensive cost-benefit analyses of the financial regulatory reforms that they are proposing to implement under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.