MCCORMICK VERSUS CASEY ON ENERGY: Dave McCormick, the leading GOP candidate vying for Sen. Bob Casey’s seat in Pennsylvania, gave a speech in Pittsburgh Friday outlining his energy platform and taking several jabs at President Joe Biden for his decision to pause LNG exports. But McCormick also took the chance to hit Casey on his record, arguing the incumbent hasn’t done enough to advance oil and gas production – a notable line of attack, considering Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas after Texas.
Here’s a snippet of what was said: “Oil and gas production is rising in spite of, not because of, the policies that Senator Casey has supported. He has consistently voted against expediting oil and gas leases on federal lands. After previously supporting the project, Casey voted in lock step with President Biden against approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have made us less reliant on the Middle East. And when the Administration announced it would stop approving terminals to export American natural gas to the world, a decision that will actually hurt, not help, the environment, Senator Casey put out a statement expressing concern about the decision but has done nothing to take concrete action. That’s weakness, not leadership.”
Let’s fact-check those statements.
Voting against expediting oil and gas leases on federal lands: Casey’s record on oil and gas leases is a mixed bag. He did vote for the Inflation Reduction Act – which had provisions that would allow for the federal government to hold oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and the Cook Inlet in Alaska. However, the incumbent senator voted with his party in 2022 against GOP Sen. John Barrasso’s amendment to the IRA requiring additional oil and gas leases in additional states. Casey has also voted with his party against GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s measure to expedite leases for oil and gas projects.
Keystone Pipeline project: Casey has flip-flopped over the years, previously supporting bills to approve the 2,000 mile long pipeline. However, in 2021, he was one of four Democrats to switch their support and vote against an amendment approving the pipeline project.
LNG fallout: Casey – along with his state counterpart Sen. John Fetterman – split with the Biden administration on the decision to pause LNG exports, releasing a joint statement that expressed “concerns about the decision” and threatened to push the administration to reverse the pause if it risked the state’s energy jobs.
However, McCormick does have a point arguing that the statement is the furthest action Casey has done to push back on the LNG pause.
But: Hailing from the energy state of Pennsylvania, Casey has broken with Democrats a number of times on the issue – voting for multiple amendments to prohibit the White House and EPA from banning hydraulic fracking in the U.S., and opposed a nationwide fracking ban bill proposed by House progressives.
McCormick’s platform: Along with advocating for more oil and gas production, the Republican candidate is also embracing an “all-of-the-above” energy approach that embraces nuclear, and is against supporting renewable energy supply chains that are based in China. More on that here.
Also: McCormick posed a couple of questions for the senator: “First, will Casey oppose President Biden’s stated goal of removing fossil fuels from the power sector, which would raise electricity costs for Pennsylvania families? Second, will he oppose President Biden’s electric vehicle mandates that will put the jobs of autoworkers in Pennsylvania and across the country at risk? Third, will the Senator stop making America even more dependent on lithium batteries and solar panels imported from China?”
Casey’s campaign did not directly answer the questions imposed by the Republican candidate.
TaNisha Cameron, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, deflected the questions with more questions for McCormick himself.
“It’s time for McCormick to answer some questions: Did you come to Pittsburgh on your private jet from Connecticut?” Cameron said in a written statement. “If you care about jobs in Western Pennsylvania, why are you invested in foreign competitors to U.S. Steel? When will you answer for the millions you’ve invested for the Chinese Communist Party?”
The takeaway here: Natural gas and energy will likely be a defining issue in the purple state of Pennsylvania, in the races for both the Senate and White House. Republicans like McCormick will be looking to hit Democrats on actions they say inhibit the state’s natural gas production, while Democrats will be looking to shore up their defense on protecting traditional energy jobs while advancing on the renewable energy sector.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment writers Breanne Deppisch (@breannue_dep) and Nancy Vu (@NancyVu99). Email bdeppisch@washingtonexaminer dot com or nancy.vu@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
UAE TO HOST CLIMATE FINANCE LEADERS, WITH AN EYE TOWARD COP29: The UAE will host a group of national representatives and global financial leaders this June for a climate finance summit, in an effort to lay the groundwork for this year’s COP29 climate summit and ensure countries can meet the ambitious climate finance targets envisioned by leaders in Dubai.
Though a firm target has not yet been set, leaders noted at COP28 that investments of at least $7 trillion annually will be “crucial” to meeting the climate targets outlined under the Paris climate accord. But it’s unclear whether governments will back that number, after narrowly securing the much smaller, $100 billion annual commitment, from leaders in December.
As Bloomberg notes, securing the higher investment is the primary goal of this year’s COP summit, and comes at a time when inflation and demand have sent clean energy prices soaring.
“We must continue to build the right international financial architecture that can incentivize private investors,” Sultan Al Jaber, the oil CEO who also headed up last year’s COP28 summit, told country delegates of the climate finance goals in a letter obtained by Bloomberg. “There is still a lot of work to do.”
OIL EDGES HIGHER ON NEWS OF OPEC+ PRODUCTION CUTS: Oil prices increased this morning on the news that OPEC+ will extend its voluntary production cuts through the second quarter in a bid to push prices higher and avoid an oversupply.
The cuts, which the cartel described yesterday as “precautionary,” currently total 2.2 million barrels per day, putting OPEC+ output at a combined 9 million bpd, according to Reuters.
But Russia went even further—announcing yesterday that it planned to further cut its oil production and exports by an additional 471,000 barrels per day beginning in Q2. That move was a surprise to analysts, and—coupled with a rise in attacks on ships in the Red Sea—threatens to add volatility to markets.
Brent crude climbed 2% to $83.55 per barrel—an 8% gain compared to the start of the year—while U.S.-based West Texas Intermediate was also trading slightly higher this morning, at $79.73 per barrel.
“The decision sends a message of cohesion and confirms that the group is not in a hurry to return supply volumes, supporting the view that when this finally happens, it will be gradual,” analysts from Jefferies bank said in a report.
APPROPRIATION BILLS ARE OUT: Top appropriators released six fiscal 2024 spending bills on Sunday, including the Energy and Water, and the Interior and Environment bills.
Hundreds of millions of dollars would be cut from funding for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. However, the bills exclude many of the policy riders conservatives fought to include, which would overturn many of the Biden administration’s climate policies and cut further into spending levels.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s statement on the bills: “Even with divided government and a historically small House majority, House Republicans have worked hard to successfully move the policy and spending priorities of the federal government away from the previous Pelosi-Schumer FY23 appropriations, and American taxpayers will benefit from it.”
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ statement, in contrast: “We continue to maintain that extreme, partisan policy riders have no place in a bipartisan spending agreement.”
Read the House Republican and Democratic breakdowns of the bills here, along with the Senate’s.
CHINA IS FAILING TO HIT ENERGY TARGETS, PROMPTING POTENTIAL POLICY REASSESSMENT: A new report found that China is under-performing on a key energy target — a shortcoming that will likely dominate conversations at the National People’s Conference that kicks off this week in Beijing.
Under the five-year plan published in 2021, China committed to a raft of energy and emissions reductions targets, including, crucially, to reduce the amount of domestic energy used for each additional unit of output by 13.5%.
But new data obtained by Bloomberg shows that the country has fallen well short of those targets: In 2023, energy consumption jumped by 5.7% while the country saw a more than 5% growth in GDP, according to government data. Even with a laxer methodology for calculating intensity that excludes renewables and other forms of energy, China reported a 0.5% drop—well below the country’s targets.
This indicates the need for “sharp reductions” from China on emissions reductions if it hopes to achieve its 2025 targets, the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air said in a report—which in turn has major implications for China’s economic growth targets.
Chinese leaders are expected to announce their updated 2024 growth target, and their latest energy strategy, later this week. Read more on that here.
KERRY’S LAST WEEK AS CLIMATE CZAR: Outgoing climate envoy John Kerry is using his last days in office before he retires Wednesday to ramp up pressure on world leaders to accelerate the transition to clean energy and work more urgently to reduce emissions, stressing the necessity for leaders to take action.
In a few recent interviews, Kerry both reflected on the achievements on his watch—among them, the agreement from world leaders to include text to “transition away” from fossil fuels in the final COP28 global stocktake agreement—to the challenges that lie ahead, including the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency.
“No one person can reverse what the world is doing now” on climate, Kerry told the Associated Press of the upcoming U.S. elections. “Why? Because the marketplace writ large all around the world, presidents, prime ministers, monarchs, kings, leaders of countries have all decided they’re moving in this direction, some at a different pace.”
Still, he said the increase in temperatures—and the real risk that the world will fail to limit warming to the 1.5C threshold set under the Paris agreement—should be a wake-up call for any future leaders.
“If you can’t take that as a message,” he told E&E News of the extreme weather, “God forbid that you’re near any decisionmaking of any kind whatsoever on something as critical as this.”
In each discussion, Kerry cited the urgent need to rapidly scale up spending to counter climate change—somewhere he said should be in the ballpark of $2 trillion to $5 trillion a year for the next 30 years.
“That’s one of the reasons why I am so focused on the private sector,” Kerry said of the need for more climate financing. “The private sector does have — manages — trillions of dollars.”
He also reflected on what he sees as one of his biggest victories: the global stocktake text transitioning away from fossil fuels. “We now have an agreement globally that we have to transition away from fossil fuel, that we have to do it with urgency, immediately in this decade, beginning now, and that we have to do it by including all greenhouse gases,” Kerry said. That, he said, was a “major breakthrough.” Read more here.
NEARLY 50 MILLION AT RISK OF DANGEROUS WEATHER THIS WEEK, NOAA SAYS: Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. could be at risk for a severe weather event this week, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, which cited the potential for dangerous storms, flash floods, and tornadoes stretching through the Gulf Coast to the Midwest.
The storm risk is expected to stretch throughout the week, NOAA said, bringing the potential for large hail and dangerously high wind gusts.
Residents living in Arkansas, Texas, Illinois, Louisiana, and Missouri were all cited as at risk today, while the weather system should begin tracking closer to the Northeast later in the week, which could collide with a low-pressure system in the Carolinas, according to Fox News forecasters.
“The next three days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, are kind of sloppy because we’re tracking the energy again coming from the Midwest,” the channel’s meteorologist, Britta Merwin. “But then this lifts up to the north as well,” bringing flash flood risks and as much as 3-5 inches of rain. Read more from their weather team here.
RUNDOWN
Bloomberg Qatar’s gas boost will bring energy dominance — and lots of cash
Washington Post What John Kerry’s exit means for the global climate fight
