Rounds

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has undertaken five case studies in the Marcellus, Barnett and Bakken shales and the Raton Basin on the impact of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on drinking water sources as part of its multi-year review of the well stimulation technique used in unconventional plays.

Reports that President Obama may shake up his energy cabinet are making the rounds in Washington, DC, but it’s unlikely there will be any major change in energy policy if this occurs.

In a classic David vs. Goliath struggle, small oil service companies in Louisiana last week won the first two rounds of the court battle over the enforcement of the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). But while the Interior Department may have been defeated, the fight is far from over.

Two major pieces of legislation are likely to become law before members of this Congress go home for the closing rounds of their reelection campaigns, and neither of them is climate change. “DEAD, that’s D-E-A-D,” is how a veteran lobbyist described the legislation to a Process Gas Consumers (PGC) post-GasMart luncheon in Chicago Wednesday at the same time the latest climate change version was being introduced in the Senate (see related story).

Two major pieces of legislation are likely to become law before members of this Congress go home for the closing rounds of their re-election campaigns, and neither of them is climate change. “DEAD, that’s D-E-A-D,” is how a veteran lobbyist described the legislation to a Process Gas Consumers (PGC) post-GasMart luncheon in Chicago Wednesday at the same time the latest climate change version was being introduced in the Senate.

Just when you thought you could forget about Washington, DC for a while, the resources industry’s political representatives are rallying the troops for successive rounds in the public arena involving, among other things, putting holes in the offshore drilling moratorium, ensuring funding and implementation of oil and gas programs in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and reforming two 30-year-old laws, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

A draft bill currently making the rounds in the Senate would give federal regulators the power to select a “registered futures association” to uncover and investigate abuses of rules for trading of over-the-counter (OTC) energy derivatives, and would significantly raise civil and criminal penalties for violators.

As Gov. Gray Davis made the rounds in Washington and New Yorkseeking support for California’s plan to buy and run powertransmission lines, Moody’s sounded a warning that the plan couldfalter if consumers balk at the price tag at the same time powershortages hit this summer. “Absence of progress on the state’sproposed solutions to the California power crisis could worsen thepower crisis and begin to seriously threaten the health of theeconomy,” Moody’s said in a report issued after the market closedTuesday.