GOP's comprehensive oil plan is likely to propose a lot more of these.
Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, the Republican chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has a reputation for working across the aisle, particularly when it comes to energy and environmental issues. That's so despite her 21 percent pro-environment voting score on the League of Conservation Voters' annual report card. She's also racked up 20 out of 20 anti-environmental votes on the league's just released
Special Senate Edition of its National Environmental scorecard. It's no surprise then that when it comes to energy, most of that bipartisanship is undertaken with fossil-fuel state Democrats, such as the defeated Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
She did, however, work with the ranking Democrat on the Energy committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell, on stage-managing the Keystone XL pipeline bill last month. The bill to circumvent presidential authority passed 62-36, not enough to override an expected veto from President Obama. Cantwell opposes Keystone XL and Murkowski, of course, supports it. But after the vote they both expressed optimism about a comprehensive energy bill Murkowski wants passed. John H. Cushman Jr. wrote at the time:
“Maybe it bodes well for a bigger, bipartisan energy bill,” said Cantwell, the ranking minority member on the Energy Committee chaired by Murkowski. Cantwell opposes Keystone and is a climate hawk, but saw glimmers of hope in the way a pair of energy-conservation amendments [to the KXL bill] were waved through on voice votes.
For her part, Murkowski marveled at how the Senate had brought to the floor 40 or so energy amendments during the Keystone voting frenzy—she’d lost count. “Boy, did we have a lot of ideas,” she said.
But as Cushman noted, it seems "wishful thinking" to believe that there is going to be Senate kumbaya on a comprehensive energy bill given that the KXL bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, has indicated he may try to attach a Keystone XL bill to other legislation, setting up more fights that could squelch other energy bills. No major energy legislation has passed Congress since the Energy Independence and Security Act in 2007 and, before that, the Energy Policy Act in 2005.
More analysis can be found below the fold.
Murkowski told reporters in January that she wants a "refreshed, re-imagined policy" on energy. The comprehensive package she wants would be filled with "clever ideas," she says. This would include a range of measures that includes support of clean energy and efficiency, crude oil exports, nuclear waste storage and upgrading the nation's electricity grid. She also has said that she doesn't want to avoid climate talk in the bill.
The problem is that what she is talking about doesn't sound a whole lot different than her
Energy 20/20: A Vision for America’s Energy. That is just another grab bag, an "all of the above," throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach rather than one that addresses our real need: a policy designed to get us off fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
Murkowski's 2-year-old plan pays considerable attention to renewables, but it mostly talks about their real-and-imagined problems. For instance, it downplays solar, saying the focus ought to be on niche roles like powering remote locations. And Murkowski makes a point of opposing broad subsidies that have been used to kickstart wind, solar and, to a lesser extent, geothermal sources. That presumably means the production tax credit that has helped give those three sources a boost will not be included in any package she proposes.
There is in her plan, however, plenty of support for coal, for more oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and offshore and for exploitation of the Bakken formation. She also proposed accelerating leases on the oil shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Those deposits have been the focus of three boom-and-bust cycles during which only minuscule amounts of oil have been produced from the kerogen locked in the rock of the Green River Formation.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, billions in public tax dollars were spent to develop that oil shale. Exxon predicted in 1980 that by the year 2000, 8 million barrels of oil would be produced each day from that formation. Instead, none was. That, in part, was due to falling oil prices that would made the extraction of that dirty oil unprofitable. Technical problems were also an issue.
Any energy plan that addresses climate change, as Murkowski at least gives lip service as important, ought to be founded upon keeping the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground. Any plan that maintains much less expands greenhouse gas emissions ought to get a thumbs down.
"All of the above" approaches, whether from the White House or Murkowski's committee, ought to get the heave-ho from Senate Democrats who are serious about their acceptance of the scientific evidence regarding global warming. As is obvious from the wrangling over Keystone XL, getting enough of those Democrats on board to curtail fossil fuel is going to be a close call at best.