2008 promises to be an exciting and challenging year in Washington for the oil and gas business. But before it gets too far under way, let's revisit some of 2007's more entertaining moments and properly recognize their instigators. The Watchies, named for the "Watching Government" column I write for Oil & Gas Journal, salute the past year's most amusing moments in government.
As in previous years, most of the winners are members of Congress. Roger W. Sant, who chairs the Smithsonian Institution's board of regents, is not.
He still receives this year's Good Will and Enlightenment Watchy for questioning the museum's acceptance of $5 million from the American Petroleum Institute to help underwrite a major oceans exhibit. API, which senior Smithsonian staffers had approached earlier in the year, quietly withdrew the gift before it could come to a vote before the regents.
Sant reportedly felt that ocean life preservation and petroleum industry activity are incompatible. In addition to being a former chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, he also founded and chaired AES Corp., which is encountering opposition to its planned liquefied natural gas terminals near Baltimore and Boston.
As part of his Watchy, Sant is warmly invited to stop by the 2008 Offshore Technology Conference May 5-8 at Reliant Center in Houston, where several thousand engineers will be happy to set him straight.
On to Congress
We move now to the 110th Congress, where members railed against alleged price gouging amid the oil and gas industry's supposedly obscene profits. While many contended, the Let's Not Mince Words Watchy goes to Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) for declaring that "the oil companies are celebrating in their boardrooms" on Dec. 13 after a cloture motion failed by one vote, dooming the 2007 energy bill's punitive tax provisions.
The many runners up in the House and Senate were merely tuning up their rhetoric for the coming year's elections. There's not enough space to discuss what's at various presidential candidates' websites. Let's just say that competition will be fierce for this Watchy in 2008.
Committee hearings also were entertaining. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) wins a Déjà Vu Watchy for his May testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee urging incentives to stimulate marine renewable energy development. It was reminiscent of calls in the early 1990s to suspend royalties for initial deepwater oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
Cultural relevance
Finally, Rep. Stevan Pearce (R-N.M.) wins the first Cultural Relevance Watchy for his maneuver during a May 23 Natural Resources Committee hearing. It's not certain whether he was aware that singer-composer Paul Simon was in town to receive the first George and Ira Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress.
Pearce nevertheless asked a panel of federal resource managers from the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, Minerals Management Service, Bonneville Power Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which provisions in HR 2337 would lead to increases in domestic oil and gas production. Then he sat back and awaited their responses.
That's right. It was the Sound of Silence.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
