Politics

It’s Not DOE That Drives Energy Policy

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With Secretary of Energy Steven Chu set to depart his post in the coming weeks, many are watching for clues as to who President Obama will pick to be his successor. Some hope for a more industry-friendly pick, such as Duke Energy’s CEO Jim Rogers. Environmentalists have been pulling for names like Tom Steyer, billionaire investor and cleantech enthusiast, or John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress. Considering Secretary Chu’s struggles with Congress, many want a more politically-adept pick like former Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND).

Whomever President Obama chooses, the nominee will be critical in laying out the energy agenda for the next four years. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 23, 2013 at 8:30 AM

Biofuels Business: Accelerating History

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The development cycles for projects using established technology are famously lengthy in the energy sector, while the length of time it takes for new technology to be developed and brought to commercial scale runs to decades, if not longer.

The advanced biofuels business, lent a generous mandate by US politicians against the background of fears over energy security and rising oil prices in the middle of the last decade, has managed to accelerate the development cycle to a degree that would have been unimaginable a decade ago, representatives for the industry said on a call with reporters recently. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 22, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Venezuela Crisis: What Should Energy Companies Expect?

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It appears increasingly likely that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will not return to power following his latest cancer treatment in December and analysts are considering the implications of a post-Chavez regime for one of the largest crude oil producers in the world.

Venezuela holds some of the world’s largest oil reserves and is the second largest Opec oil exporter to the US. Oil revenue accounts for a bulk of the government’s income and has largely been used to fund Chavez’s wide-ranging social programs. But the country’s oil industry – which is essentially state-owned company PDVSA – has been struggling with declining production rates at mature fields, along with other problems. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 17, 2013 at 11:00 AM

New York Governor Cuomo Proposes Tougher RGGI Carbon Cap

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New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, in his State of the State address, proposed a tougher carbon cap for states covered under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) cap-and-trade program. The proposal underscores RGGI’s opportunity for achieving even greater emissions reductions in future years, as its current carbon cap remains significantly higher than actual emissions produced in the nine member states.

Laying out an energy- and climate-intensive policy agenda for New York, in his address on January 9, 2013, Governor Cuomo proposed a tougher RGGI carbon cap as part of efforts to address climate change and clean energy development in the state. RGGI, the nation’s first carbon cap-and-trade program, has helped reduce CO2 emissions levels by 30% across member states since inception in 2008. However, RGGI’s current carbon cap of 165 million tons of CO2 per year is now much higher than actual emissions produced in member states – only 91 million tons (expected total) in 2012. With a cap this high, RGGI states may have emitted 45% more carbon last year and still met program compliance. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 17, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Guns and the Energy Sector: Risk Awareness Grows

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Six months ago two Louisiana sheriffs were shot to death and two more injured in the parking lot of a Valero oil refinery. Six years ago Saudi police halted a pair of armed terrorist attacks on the world’s largest refinery, in one case opening fire on a car that exploded near the facility’s gates.

Guns are more than a theoretical issue for the energy business, which controls much of the world’s most vital – and most vulnerable infrastructure. As the US contends with a public debate given new urgency by a series of high-profile shootings, the issue of security and gun control in and around key energy infrastructure is once again front of mind for many of the bodies charged with monitoring energy security and devising responses to potential threats. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 16, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Breaking the Oil Monopoly With Renewable Fuel

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The oil industry has taken aim at the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in a self-interested bid to retain dominance over America’s transportation fuel sector. Our dependence on oil is stifling consumer choice and jeopardizing our national security. Fixing those issues means diversifying our fuel supply; that means breaking the oil monopoly.

We are a nation addicted to oil and until the RFS was created in 2005, we had no infrastructure to break that addiction. The RFS increases consumer choice and energy security, while simultaneously decreasing the overall negative impacts that oil dependence has on our economy and environment. That benefit –consumer choice – is exactly why the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which spent over $1.6 million lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2012 alone, is funding efforts attacking the policy. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 15, 2013 at 4:00 PM

Mandated Ethanol-Gasoline Blending: Good or Bad?

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There is a contentious debate underway regarding mandated ethanol blending into gasoline that touches on issues like food versus fuel and the sanctity of free markets. The severe drought that hit the US this past summer reduced corn crop yields – a major ethanol feedstock – and sparked calls for a waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standard that reportedly uses some 40% of the US corn crop to produce ethanol.

When Breaking Energy recently sat down with two industry analysts and asked them about mandated ethanol blending, we received decidedly anti-RFS viewpoints. In this video, David Rewcastle, Senior Energy Analyst with Source Capital Group and Michael Lynch, President and Director of Global Petroleum Service with Strategic Energy Economic Research explain why government-mandated ethanol blending into gasoline is flawed and suggest how the system might be improved. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 15, 2013 at 11:00 AM

California Could Be Next Oil Boom State

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California is sitting on a massive amount of shale oil and could become the next oil boom state. But only if the industry can get the stuff out of the ground without upsetting the state’s powerful environmental lobby. Running from Los Angeles to San Francisco, California’s Monterey Shale is thought to contain more oil than North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’s Eagle Ford — both scenes of an oil boom that’s created thousands of jobs and boosted U.S. oil production to the highest rate in over a decade.

 /  Published January 14, 2013 at 11:45 AM

Ethanol Mandates Come Under Renewed Attack Over Costs: Infographic

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The unintended consequences of energy policy have been the focus of widespread public discussion in recent years, with everything from solar bankruptcies to the ethanol business coming under fire for receiving government funding that critics said makes the energy source a source of disruption in markets.

The unintended consequences can filter into unlikely areas, with rising costs for inputs into government-mandated fuels driving up costs to competing industries and contributing to the breakdown of established supply chains. The analysts at Smarter Fuel Future, an advocacy group that counts the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers among its members, have laid out some of the unintended consequences they say Americans face as part of the country’s efforts to comply with the 2007-era Renewable Fuel Standard. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 11, 2013 at 3:45 PM

Post-election US Energy Policy Considerations

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Numerous factors are set to influence US energy policy under the second Obama Administration and during the new Congress, including a leadership change at the EPA, tax code reformation, fracking, the Keystone Pipeline and Alaskan oil exploration, just to name a few.

In this video, Breaking Energy discusses important energy policy considerations for the administration, the 113th Congress and energy companies with Ian Nathan, Manager of Global Gas and LNG at Energy Intelligence Research & Advisory, a consultancy and publisher. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 10, 2013 at 3:00 PM
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