Treasury

The House Friday passed legislation that would open more federal waters to oil and natural gas exploration and production, but the bill has next to no chance of advancing in the Senate and being signed into law by President Obama.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead last Friday announced new heads of the state’s environmental and treasury departments. Both new Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Director Todd Parfitt and Treasurer Mark Gordon hold key roles for the oil/gas industry in the state. In replacing DEQ Director John Corra, who retires Wednesday, Parfitt will be involved in issues touching everything from water quality to fossil fuels, said Mead, while thanking Corra for his nine years of heading DEQ. New Treasurer Gordon, who fills a vacancy created by the death of Joe Meyer Oct. 6, faces a state budget deficit of more than $30 million in the next two years, exacerbated by continuing low natural gas prices (see Daily GPI, Oct. 24).

Days after visiting natural gas operations in the Marcellus Shale, Poland’s treasury minister said commercial shale gas production may begin in his country in 2014.

While companies that are primarily financial traders — i.e., speculators — are the main target of U.S. Treasury Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulatory reform efforts by the Obama administration, hedgers seeking to manage commodity price risk could get caught in the regulatory crossfire, according to an analysis of proposed reforms by Deloitte & Touche LLP.

While companies that are primarily financial traders — i.e., speculators — are the main target of U.S. Treasury Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulatory reform efforts by the Obama administration, hedgers seeking to manage commodity price risk could get caught in the regulatory crossfire, according to an analysis of proposed reforms by Deloitte & Touche LLP.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last Thursday proposed a sweeping expansion of federal regulatory authority over large financial firms and markets that he said pose systemic risks to the economy, including over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, credit default swaps (CDS) and hedge funds. His plan calls for the broadest reform of federal financial regulatory system since the New Deal, “not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game” that are “simpler and more effectively enforced and produce a more stable system.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Thursday proposed a major expansion of federal regulatory authority over large financial firms and markets that he said pose systemic risks to the economy, including over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, credit default swaps (CDS) and hedge funds. He called for comprehensive regulatory reform, “not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game” that are “simpler and more effectively enforced and produce a more stable system.”

In an effort to spur development of clean coal-fired power plants and coal gasification technologies, the U.S. Treasury and Energy departments (DOE) last week awarded $1 billion in federal tax credits to nine companies. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) authorized the incentives to help move advanced coal technologies into the marketplace.

While small increases in energy prices are expected, spikes to last year’s record high levels are unlikely, according to a new survey of treasury and finance professionals conducted last week at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) annual conference.