Obama

President Obama is scheduled to make a two-day trip across New York and Pennsylvania later this week, traversing two states that so far have taken very divergent paths over Marcellus Shale development.

President Obama’s tilt toward accepting the economic opportunities from U.S. natural gas abundance may have been in fits and starts, but the right-leaning oil and gas industry is finding a lot to praise today, industry officials said Wednesday.

J. Christopher Giancarlo, executive vice president of the brokerage firm GFI Group Inc., has been nominated by President Obama to fill an opening on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the White House said.

President Obama has tapped former Colorado regulator Ron Binz to sit on the five-member FERC, succeeding Jon Wellinghoff.

The news preceded President Obama’s call last week for more action to address climate change, but executives at NRG Energy Inc. and Tenaska Inc. may have been reading between the lines after announcing over the past two weeks that because of abundant U.S. natural gas, coal is going to play a much smaller role in their generating schemes going forward.

President Obama has tapped former Colorado regulator Ron Binz to sit on the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, succeeding Jon Wellinghoff.

The news preceded President Obama’s call on Tuesday for more action to address climate change (see Daily GPI, June 26), but executives at NRG Energy Inc. and Tenaska Inc. may have been reading between the lines after announcing within the past few days that because of abundant U.S. natural gas, coal is going to play a much smaller role in their generating schemes going forward.

Virginia’s senators, both Democrats, on Wednesday introduced legislation to provide an alternative to the Obama administration’s proposed 2012-2017 offshore oil and gas leasing plan, which excludes Virginia. According to the Energy Information Administration, “resource assessments show that substantial oil and gas reserves could underlie the land beneath Virginia’s offshore waters, which are part of the federally administered Mid-Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf.”

Ten days after President Obama signed the “National Strategy for the Arctic Region,” the state of Alaska announced a plan to assess oil and natural gas resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) 1002 Area.