Emphasize market-driven climate approach, API urges administration

When Obama administration representatives arrive in Paris for upcoming global climate discussions, they should emphasize the successful market-driven approach that helped the US lead the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while increasing its oil and gas production, the American Petroleum Institute urged.

“There should be no place for dogmatic adherence to ideology,” API Pres. Jack N. Gerard told reporters in a Nov. 16 teleconference. “The US has an opportunity to show how it has reduced greenhouse gas emissions even as it has increased energy production. Our success is driven by investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit.”

He noted that a new analysis by API, using US Energy Information Administration and World Bank data, finds states could reach goals more efficiently under the administration’s new Clean Power Plant using more natural gas instead of wind and solar.

Gerard also cited US Environmental Protection Agency figures showing methane emissions from domestic oil and gas operations are plummeting, with the largest reductions coming from hydraulically fractured natural gas wells.

“The fact is that the nation’s 21st century energy renaissance, which has made domestically produced natural gas cheap and abundant, has helped us achieve substantial and sustained emissions reductions without command and control style regulatory intervention,” said Gerard. “By contrast, the administration continues to hew to last century’s thinking that increased energy production and achieving climate goals are mutually exclusive, pursuing costly government mandates to detriment of the American consumer and our economy.

“Our message is we’re achieving true emissions reductions in the real world without government directives,” he maintained. “The key point we’re making that the US has shown it is the leader in carbon emission reduction around the world. This administration needs to remember this success story. The US model, as evidenced by recent history, clearly works.”

Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].