So much for cooperation

Feb. 2, 2015
Congressional majority leaders and the Obama administration came into 2015 pledging to at least try to be less combative and more cooperative in running the federal government.

Congressional majority leaders and the Obama administration came into 2015 pledging to at least try to be less combative and more cooperative in running the federal government. Their New Year resolutions didn't even last until Groundhog Day when it came to oil and gas.

Republicans, who hold majorities in both chambers for the first time in years, decided to test the White House's commitment first. They announced that legislation approving the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline's crossborder permit application would be considered first (the Senate bill is S. 1) and sent to US President Barack Obama once both houses pass it.

Not too surprisingly, the White House said the president would veto such a measure because it would bypass the US Department of State's review process. This has been under way for only 6 years.

The most refreshing change came when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) kept his promise to allow more floor debates than his predecessor and quickly brought Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alas.) Keystone XL bill.

The array of proposed amendments ran from North Carolina's two senators seeking to include US Outer Continental Shelf acreage off Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states' coasts in the US Department of the Interior's next 5-year OCS program, to Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) renewed call to repeal the Jones Act.

Sen. Edward J. Markey's (D-Mass.) proposal, which would have required that crude oil moving through Keystone XL and products refined from it stay in the US, was tabled on Jan. 20. "On the first amendment, to the first bill, in the first days of the Republican-controlled Senate, they are siding with the oil industry and blocking a vote on my amendment to keep oil and gasoline here in America," Markey said following the 57-to-42 vote.

Obama's emphasis

Obama essentially signaled what he plans to emphasize during his final 2 years in office in his 2015 State of the Union address that night, where he barely mentioned the US oil and gas renaissance's contribution to the general economic recovery since 2008, and emphasized the need to dramatically address global climate change.

The White House had announced a series of steps to curb methane emissions from oil and gas operations a week earlier. Five days later, it said it would propose making the rest of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge-including the Coastal Plain-wilderness areas. There were reports that Obama would withdraw the Chukchi and Beaufort seas indefinitely when Interior made its next 5-year OCS program announcement.

So much for cooperation. Washington is in for more than 6 weeks of a governing deep-freeze.