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MURKOWSKI SAYS DRILLING IN ARCTIC REFUGE CAN RAISE $1 BILLION: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, expressed confidence Thursday morning that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a longtime Republican goal, could raise $1 billion over 10 years to help pay for tax reform.
“The first 10 years are just the start of a 40-year period where responsible production raises billions of dollars in revenues for our country every year,” Murkowski said at the opening of a three-panel hearing to discuss the topic. “We will see the benefits over decades, not just over the10-year budget window.”
Committee to consider legislation: The Energy and Natural Resources Committee could vote to advance legislation achieving that as early as next week, with a markup scheduled for Wednesday.
‘Not a choice’: Democrats for decades have successfully blocked Republican efforts to permit drilling in the refuge, arguing that doing so would harm native species such as caribou and polar bears.
Murkowski sought to downplay the environmental risks.
“We are not asking to develop all of the 1002 area,” Murkowski said. “We are asking for 2,000 acres, about one ten-thousandth of ANWR. We have waited nearly 40 years for the right technology to come along for a footprint small enough for environment to be respected. This is not a choice between energy and the environment. We are past that.”
‘Caribou for millionaires’: Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, said she doubted Republicans could raise $1 billion over 10 years.
“We are here today because someone came up with the ludicrous idea to take a sliver out of the wildlife refuge to pay for tax reform,” Cantwell said. “I almost want to call this ‘caribou for millionaires.’ I find it hard to believe there will be an economic incentive to drill in the refuge. There is no new science that says we don’t have to worry about this wildlife, no new science to say oil will take up a smaller footprint. I am disturbed.”
Republicans united: Greg Sheehan, the principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the Trump administration supports the Republican push to open the refuge.
“If production is authorized by Congress, the administration believes this will bolster our nation’s energy independence and national security, provide economic opportunity for Alaskans and provide much-needed revenue to both the state of Alaska and federal government,” Sheehan said.
HOUSE FOCUSES ON ‘HUMANITARIAN CRISIS’ AFTER HURRICANES: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Sen. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the panel, sent a strong message Thursday that the situation in Puerto Rico is a humanitarian crisis and the federal response needs to be bolstered.
Walden said the hurricane season has been the “worst in recent memory” leading to a “humanitarian crisis” in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where there is a “real serious situation we all care deeply about,” Walden said at a hearing to review the hurricanes’ impact on energy.
“We’ve already passed initial funding .. [but] understand much more is needed,” Walden said, speaking about hurricane relief funding. He said the hearing will inform how funding is used to restore electricity to “recover and to rebuild.”
“We want to make sure the agencies under our jurisdiction are prepared,” he said.
Pallone took a more critical tone, focusing on why Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority did not respond to requests for information on its $300 million deal with Whitefish Energy to help rebuild a 100-mile stretch of transmission lines. The no-bid contract was canceled after stoking controversy over the company being based in the same hometown as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Whitefish contract: “We need to learn more about how these contracts are awarded,” Pallone said. Also, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had no involvement in the Whitefish contract. “My question is ‘why not?’”
“The Trump administration needs to be doing more,” he said. “This is a humanitarian crisis.”
Taxpayers ripped off: Walden said federal funds should be coordinated to benefit taxpayers and “that the taxpayers aren’t ripped off.”
House to probe environmental hazards: Walden said he plans to hold a hearing examining the “environmental hazards” resulting from the hurricanes. Thursday’s hearing is focused on fuel supply and electricity grid.
PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR SAYS ARMY CORPS FAILURE FORCED UTILITY TO HIRE WHITEFISH: Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello on Thursday said officials on the island signed the Whitefish deal only after the Army Corps of Engineers was failing to make any progress.
“Corps of Engineers, it’s unacceptable what has happened,” Rossello said on MSNBC.
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TRUMP’S NOMINEE FOR TOP USDA SCIENTIST WITHDRAWS: Sam Clovis, Trump’s controversial choice to become the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist, withdrew from the post Thursday morning, the White House said.
The decision comes after environmental scientists launched a campaign highlighting his ties to Russia to kill his nomination.
Clovis, former co-chairman of the Trump campaign, encouraged George Papadopoulos, the campaign foreign policy adviser, to travel to Russia for off-the-record meetings with government officials, according to multiple news accounts. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents over his ties to Russian foreign nationals.
“Now, emerging evidence of Clovis’ potential involvement with the Trump campaign’s Russian connections should be the final nail in the coffin for his confirmation,” Mike Lavender, a senior official with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said earlier this week.
“At virtually every point in his career, Clovis has failed to display the judgment needed to manage the responsible investment of billions of dollars in taxpayer money in a safe, sustainable, productive food system.”
The scientists also criticized Clovis for his opinions on climate change and the fact that he wasn’t a scientist.
PERRY: FOSSIL FUELS CAN PREVENT SEXUAL ASSAULT: Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who just returned from a trip to Africa, said people are dying there because the lack of access to fossil fuels, pointing out that the lack of electricity leads to safety and health issues.
Perry said fossil fuels will have a “positive” effect on people’s lives both in Africa and in the United States.
GOODLATTE LEADS BIPARTISAN PRODDING ON FUEL MANDATE: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and more than 60 other lawmakers voiced strong opposition to the nation’s ethanol mandate on Wednesday in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.
“The combined effects of this ethanol mandate have created a hidden tax on every American,” the Virginia Republican and dozens of other lawmakers from both parties wrote. “Simply put, in its current state, the [Renewable Fuel Standard] has run out of gas.”
Key opponent: Goodlatte has been a key congressional opponent of ethanol and the Renewable Fuel Standard. Backed by the oil industry and refiners, he has called for significantly reforming or repealing the EPA program and has introduced bills over the years to eliminate the program or change it to limit the use of corn-based ethanol.
Counterpunch: Goodlatte’s letter follows a big push by Democrats and Republicans from corn states to pressure Pruitt to reconsider a proposal to reduce the size of the biofuel targets in the next two years.
Pruitt’s promise: Pruitt sent a letter to the senators, including Iowa Republican Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, assuring them that he would act within the confines of the law that mandates that refiners blend 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels into the nation’s gasoline and diesel fuel by 2022.
TRUMP LOOKS TO MINE URANIUM AROUND GRAND CANYON: The Trump administration is proposing reopening areas around the Grand Canyon to uranium mining.
The Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, released a report Wednesday that recommended rescinding the 20-year uranium mining moratorium around the Grand Canyon installed by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
‘Took away jobs’: Republicans and industry groups opposed the move, calling it a power grab that would harm economic opportunity.
“Uranium mining would have brought in nearly $29 billion to our local economy over a 42-year period,” the board of supervisors of Arizona’s Mohave County wrote in June to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. “This ban took away much-needed growth and jobs from our area.”
‘No boundaries’: Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat of the House Natural Resources Committee, criticized the Trump administration’s bid to review the policy.
“President Trump wants to turn one of the world’s greatest natural wonders into a strip mine,” Grijalva said. “There are no boundaries to his need to spite President Obama’s legacy and everyone he perceives as his enemy.”
HOUSE PASSES REPUBLICAN WILDFIRE MANAGEMENT BILL: The House approved legislation Wednesday night intended to reduce the risk of wildfires, as the government struggles to respond to the most expensive year ever for the natural disasters.
The Resilient Federal Forests Act, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., a licensed forester, passed by a vote of 232-188.
The Forest Service then could more quickly pursue what are known as “forest management projects,” in which the agency removes dead or dying timber and sells it to mills, and then can use the proceeds to care for the forests and make them more resilient to wildfires.
Burning debate: Westerman’s bill passed the Natural Resources Committee in June, and a previous version of it passed the full House with the support of 20 Democrats before dying in the Senate.
Going too far: Some Democrats and environmentalists say that approach weakens environmental reviews too much and encourages litigation against the Forest Service.
Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, had previously said he might be willing to support a more narrow bill, meant as a compromise, proposed by a bipartisan group of senators.
It’s likely the two chambers will work something out between them.
‘Die in the Senate: That’s because Senate Democrats are unlikely to support the Westerman bill as it is.
“This bill is a shameful waste of everyone’s time. It isn’t even designed to pass the Senate — it’s designed to pass the House and die in the Senate, and that’s what we’re about to see happen,” Grijalva said.
DEMOCRATS PRESSURE COMMERCE DEPT. TO ISSUE CLIMATE PLAN: A group of Democratic senators is calling on the Trump administration to refrain from “political interference” and not suppress a national climate change report that was the subject of controversy several months ago.
Report expected any day now: The public release of the Climate Science Special Report is expected in the coming days. The report is part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress to be issued every four years. Ross oversees the agencies in charge of organizing and publishing the climate assessment.
“The most recent draft that was obtained by the New York Times in August incorporated input from independent expert reviewers at the National Academy of Sciences,” the letter stated. “This draft report provides yet more confirmation that human activities are dramatically changing our climate. Unless serious action is taken to rapidly reduce emissions, the United States will continue to warm several degrees over this century, with damages to infrastructure, ecosystems and human health.”
U.N.: BLEAKER FUTURE FOR PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT: A new report by the United Nations paints a bleak picture for the success of the Paris climate change deal, especially given President Trump’s decision to leave the agreement in three years.
Mind the gap: The U.N.’s “Emissions Gap” report issued late Tuesday showed that the countries that signed onto the deal are not doing enough to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Why now?: The U.N.’s environment program has been issuing gap reports since 2010 to point out the effect of countries’ actions toward the goal of limiting emissions that are raising the temperature of the Earth. Most climate scientists say global warming caused by human activity is raising the Earth’s temperature, causing more floods, drought and ocean acidification.
California pledge won’t be enough: The eighth edition of the report found that national pledges would reduce emissions by one-third of the required levels needed to meet the climate Paris targets by 2030. It said additional private-sector actions, with state and local emission pledges, are “not increasing at a rate that would help close this worrying gap,” according to a summary of the report. A number of states and cities, led by California and Washington state, have pledged to meet the U.S. commitment now that Trump has decided to withdraw from the deal. But based on the gap report’s finding, their plans wouldn’t be enough.
Not nearly enough: “One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future,” said Erik Solheim, the head of the U.N.’s environment agency.
RUNDOWN
New York Times An Alaska senator wants to fight climate change and drill for oil, too
Axios FERC chairman tells energy industry executives he may “cast a lifeline” to coal and nuclear
Washington Post Trump’s EPA finds the Clean Power Plan it wants to scrap could save thousands of lives every year
Bloomberg California doesn’t have enough charging stations to meet its electric car goals
CNBC Energy security in Asia ‘may be fatally compromised,’ Saudi’s energy minister says
Washington Post Stanford professor files libel suit against leading scientific journal over clean energy claims
Calendar
THURSDAY, NOV. 2
10 a.m., 2123 Rayburn. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee hearing on “The 2017 Hurricane Season: A Review of Emergency Response and Energy Infrastructure Recovery Efforts.”
10 a.m., 366 Dirksen. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds hearing on GOP plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
10 a.m., 2123 Rayburn. House Energy and Commerce Committee Energy Subcommittee hearing on “The 2017 Hurricane Season: A Review of Emergency Response and Energy Infrastructure Recovery Efforts.”
10:15 a.m., 2322 Rayburn. House Energy and Commerce Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on “Concerns Over Federal Select Agent Program Oversight of Dangerous Pathogens.”
10 a.m., 1324 Longworth. House Natural Resources Committee’s Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee hearing on the “Hydrographic Services Improvement Amendments Act,” the “Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act” and amending the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Quantification Act of 2010 to clarify the use of amounts in the WMAT Settlement Fund.
Noon, 618 H St. NW. The National Economists Club holds a luncheon discussion on “Unconventional Oil and Gas and the U.S. Economy.”
thenationaleconomistsclub.shuttlepod.org/
2 p.m., 2154 Rayburn. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Interior, Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing on “Examining the Regulation of Shark Finning in the United States.”
