Remember the Gulf of Mexico transboundary treaty glitch that was the subject of Watching Government's Oct. 14 column? There are growing indications now that it might not be a problem after all.
Back then, it looked as if a US Senate-House conference would be necessary for the 2012 treaty between Mexico and the US to be congressionally ratified in time for it to be implemented.
A bill approving the treaty passed by the House included a provision that waived a Dodd-Frank law requirement that US companies disclose payments to foreign governments. The version the Senate approved had no such provision, making a conference likely and possibly jeopardizing the treaty's timely ratification.
But a July 2 decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia stopped the US Securities and Exchange Commission's implementation of the provision, Section 1504, after the American Petroleum Institute and other business groups sued over what they considered an anticompetitive requirement.
"Since the SEC's original rule has been thrown out and the SEC is working with all stakeholders on a new rule, we'd like to see the House and Senate work together to expedite approval of the transboundary agreement," an API spokesman told OGJ on Oct. 28.
That doesn't necessarily mean that every discrepancy between the Senate and House versions has been overcome. "We have other differences that may need to be addressed," House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said following his appearance at a North American Energy Security Dialogue Oct. 23 at the Canadian Embassy.
Pipeline safety precedent
But energy leaders on both sides of the US Capitol from the two major political parties may be poised to work together in a manner not seen since the federal pipeline safety reauthorization act in 2012.
That measure was among the 2% of bills introduced in Congress that year that actually passed and was signed into law, Pete Sheffield, vice-president of energy policy and government at Spectra Energy, observed during DLA Piper's 2013 Global Energy Summit on Oct. 22.
A similar urgency may drive Congress to agree on the Mexico-US transboundary agreement since it affects not only deepwater portions of the Gulf of Mexico, but also onshore oil and gas tight-shale formations that cross the two countries' border. The prospect of Mexico's undertaking its first significant energy sector reforms in decades and providing opportunities for outside investment are a further inducement for US lawmakers to act.
The idea that energy might provide a way for an otherwise gridlocked 113th Congress to begin working together might seem overly optimistic. But it happened with pipeline safety reauthorization in 2012, and could recur now.