Alex Mills
By Alex Mills
Federal energy policy took a turn to the right last week as the House passed a budget bill, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Interior got sued, and the Senate went on a marathon voting session.
Passage of the House GOP budget overcomes the first—and likely the highest—hurdle in Republicans’ quest to clear a unified spending blueprint through both chambers of Congress.
The House passed its budget in a 228-199 vote, with 17 Republicans voting against it. No Democrats voted for the GOP budget.
To secure the support of a large bloc of defense hawks, lawmakers altered the blueprint from Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R., Ga.) through an unusual vote on a pair of GOP budgets offered as dueling amendments Wednesday. The budget was amended to increase military spending and remove restrictions around a portion of its funding.
DOI Sued
The U.S. Department of the Interior released on March 21 its regulations governing hydraulic fracturing activities on federal lands, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America filed suit immediately.
“This federal mandate has long-been expected from the Obama Administration and IPAA has been engaged in opposing this effort at every stage of the process,” IPAA President Barry Russell said. IPAA and the Western Energy Alliance filed the lawsuit in federal district court in Wyoming. They characterized the federal government’s rulemaking as “unsubstantiated and duplicative of states’ efforts.”
“Hydraulic fracturing has been conducted safely and responsibly in the United States for over sixty years, Russell said. “Every energy area has different needs and requirements, which is why the states are far more effective at regulating hydraulic fracturing than the federal government. This new rule is simply another regulatory overreach by the Obama Administration that will hurt America’s oil and natural gas producers.”
EPA Sued
Meanwhile, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, under the leadership of Texan Lamar Smith of San Antonio, subpoenaed the cellphone records and emails of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy when the committee did not receive the information it had requested.
Smith stated in a letter to McCarthy that indicated his disbelief that the Administrator has been truthful when she apparently sent more than 5,000 text messages and only one was deemed to have been business related, and that came just days after the committee had alerted the EPA it may be breaking rules.
Oil Exports
A House subcommittee was to begin writing legislation that would repeal the ban on crude oil exports last week, but it was delayed until April. A group of independent oil producers were in Washington to educate members of the House and Senate about the problems the ban is creating for the oil and gas industry, including a huge oversupply of crude oil that set another record last week when oil stock increased another 8.2 million barrels.
Rice University released its study on March 25 in Washington that states ending the nation’s four-decade-old ban on exporting domestic crude would provide notable economic and energy security benefits even during a period of depressed oil prices.
Marathon Voting Session
After six years of the Senate conducting very few votes on the floor, Republicans, who finally gained a majority in January, were conducting a marathon voting session as this column was being written.
The Senate voted 52-46 to adopt its budget resolution that featured many votes on a variety of issues that included energy, climate change, health care, and foreign policy issues.
Alex Mills is President of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. The opinions expressed are solely of the author
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