14 item(s) were returned.
On the fourth day of his administration, President Trump signed multiple executive actions designed to advance the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, since related memos specifically invited project developers to re-submit applications for permits and approvals to begin or continue construction. Many view these decisions as a signal the president intends to fulfill campaign promises promoting the oil and gas industries, as described in his America First Energy Plan. Pipeline opponents, however, are already preparing for legal battles seeking to block these projects. Keystone XL proponents have consistently argued the pipeline will create thousands of good paying jobs while… [more]
View Insight
On February 24th, President Obama vetoed legislation that would have authorized construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline as it “conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest.” It is still possible that President Obama will approve construction of the highly controversial pipeline. In fact, a number of outcomes for the executive review are still possible and a district court judge in York County, Nebraska, just granted local landowners a preliminary injunction against TransCanada’s use of eminent domain for the proposed pipeline in a move that further complicates the… [more]
View Insight
On Tuesday, January 20th 2015, President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address (SOTU), and energy and climate will likely play a prominent role. In last years’ SOTU, President Obama outlined an all of the above strategy: increasing domestic oil and gas production, cutting red tape, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and addressing climate change. However, a lot has changed in the last year. Republicans now control both chambers of Congress, oil prices are at their lowest point since 2009 and the Clean Power Plan has impacted the policy landscape both domestically and abroad. The administration just announced… [more]
View Insight
Director, Stakeholder Relations/External Affairs
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Keystone XL has been called the world’s best known pipeline that has not been built. Controversy over the pipeline itself has largely subsided but this project linking the oil sands of Northern Alberta to the large refineries of the Gulf Coast has become a rallying point for an “off oil” campaign. A presidential permit for import facilities is the sole remaining requirement before construction can begin. KXL would be the 82nd major pipeline in the US, and is the safest and most technologically advanced. It would provide diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands and Bakken crude from Montana and North Dakota to… [more]
View Insight
Last week Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, published a blueprint for energy policy, titled “Energy 20/20: A Vision for America’s Energy Future.” The blueprint offers ideas to “align federal policy with… our national interest to make energy abundant, affordable, clean, diverse, and secure.” Among the main ideas in Sen. Murkowski’s blueprint are: Establishing a national goal to become independent of OPEC imports by 2020 by increasing domestic oil, biofuel and synthetic fuel production. Approving the Keystone XL pipeline. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling and… [more]
View Insight
Last week Governor Dave Heineman of Nebraska approved the Keystone XL pipeline along a revised route, “which avoids the environmentally-sensitive Sand Hills region of Nebraska.” The final decision now rests in the hands of President Obama, who last year rejected the previous route on grounds that construction of the pipeline and the possibility of a spill could contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer in the Sand Hills region. For many environmentalists and opponents of the Keystone XL project, however, this revised route doesn’t address the bigger climate argument: Due to the high level of greenhouse gasses emitted during production of oil from… [more]
View Insight
Over the past month, as oil prices have climbed, rumors of a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have circulated. This week, the G7 released a statement indicating the group’s readiness “to call upon the International Energy Agency to take appropriate action to ensure that the market is fully and timely supplied.” Hurricane Isaac makes a release seem more likely, as it has suspended operations of Gulf refineries with a combined refining capacity of 1 million barrels of oil per day, according to the St. Louis Post. Dan Kish of the Institute for Energy Research said on Fox Business… [more]
View Insight
Senate Republicans recently unveiled the “Domestic Energy and Jobs Act,” an energy bill intended “To approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, to provide for the development of a plan to increase oil and gas exploration, development, and production under oil and gas leases of Federal land, and for other purposes.” Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), who drafted the bill, has said that Romney would offer similar legislation if elected. Provisions of the bill would: Suspend U.S. EPA rules on refineries, pending a gas prices study Impose a minimum threshold on the amount of oil and gas leasing each year Reverse a Bureau… [more]
View InsightThe Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has released a report titled “Keystone XL: A Tar Sands Pipeline to Increase Oil Prices,” arguing that the Keystone XL pipeline will increase gas prices in the United States. The report argues that the pipeline would take Canadian crude oil that has historically gone to Midwest refineries – which produce gasoline sold to U.S. consumers – and divert it to refineries in the Gulf Coast of Texas, which historically have produced diesel that is exported internationally. Diesel fuel has over the past few years become more expensive in non-U.S. markets, providing an incentive for… [more]
View Insight
A paper by researchers at the University of Alberta, Edmonton found that the impact of Canadian oil sands mining, and subsequent land restoration, on carbon release has been significantly underestimated. This is due to the mining process’s destruction of peatland – bogs, swamps, etc. that host partially decayed organic matter – which, when destroyed, releases high levels of carbon. From the paper’s abstract in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science: “We quantified the wholesale transformation of the boreal landscape by open-pit oil sands mining in Alberta, Canada to evaluate its effect on carbon storage and sequestration. Contrary to… [more]
View Insight