Congress

Although President Obama and the participants in a town hall meeting at Binghamton University in New York on Friday devoted most of their discourse to education, energy was mentioned once, with the president acknowledging the rise of natural gas but calling for further investment in alternative energy not derived from fossil fuels.

Although President Obama and the participants in a town hall meeting at Binghamton University in New York on Friday devoted most of their discourse to education, energy was mentioned once, with the president acknowledging the rise of natural gas but calling for further investment in alternative energy not derived from fossil fuels.

One of Colorado’s richest local jurisdictions, Weld County, with extensive oil/natural gas and agricultural operations, in June launched discussions with a number of other counties in the northeastern part of the state about a move to secede and form a new state.

Citing “intense pressure” from industry and its allies in Congress, a New Jersey congressman said Wednesday that the Interior Department appears to be making its proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas wells on public lands weaker, not stronger.

America’s energy security risk is bad and getting worse under current policy and regulatory framework, according to a report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.

More than 60 members of Congress Tuesday wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar protesting the inclusion of Arctic sales in the federal government’s proposed five-year leasing plan for the Outer Continental Shelf.

The head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) told Congress Tuesday that it and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are close to issuing a final rule further defining the terms “swap” and “securities-based swap,” which would trigger a rule establishing limits on speculative positions in the futures and swaps markets.

Investor guru and natural gas proponent T. Boone Pickens Wednesday blamed President Obama, Congress and Koch Industries for the lack of a comprehensive energy policy in the United States, although not necessarily in that order.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received more than 4,100 comments on its proposed standards to reduce air pollution from oil and natural gas drilling operations, especially operations employing hydraulic fracturing (fracking), by the time the public comment period closed Wednesday.