Watching Government: Still waiting in the wings
Federal oil and gas regulatory reforms continue at the US Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency, and similar agencies under the Trump administration. An obvious question is whether they will affect comprehensive energy policy reform legislation introduced in 2017 by US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee leaders.
Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alas.) and Ranking Minority Member Maria E. Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced S. 1460 after its 2015 predecessor, which included priorities from 80 senators and passed the Senate with 85 yes-votes, fell short of approval in a conference with the House near the end of 2016. Murkowski and Cantwell used it as a starting point as they drafted a new bill, which they introduced on June 28, 2017.
The committee held a hearing on it the following September, but nothing seems to have happened with it since. That’s unfortunate since it’s a double congressional rarity: comprehensive legislation that has solid support from both Republicans and Democrats.
The bill’s 11 titles cover efficiency, infrastructure, supply, accountability, federal land management, national park system management, sportsmen’s access, water systems, natural hazards, and Indian energy.
Oil and gas are most heavily affected by federal land management, which reflects 22 bills affecting BLM and the US Forest Service. The infrastructure section includes a provision to facilitate LNG exports, which bills in both the Senate and House this year try to address.
But agencies already are trying to reform federal oil and gas regulations. EPA proposed changes it issued in 2016 limiting emissions from oil and gas operations on Oct. 15, while BLM issued a reworked version on Sept. 18 of a 2016 venting and flaring, or waste prevention, rule that Deputy Interior Sec. David Bernhardt called “a radical assertion of legal authority that stood in stark contrast to the longstanding understanding of Interior’s own lawyers.”
Other outmoded rules
That should not be an excuse for Congress’s not trying to even work on a comprehensive energy reform bill, let alone pass one. There are several parts of the federal code that have become outmoded and burdensome because of technological breakthroughs (although it’s obvious that fixing the federal Renewable Fuel Standard will require specific, focused legislation that seems no closer than it did 2 years ago).
Murkowski and Cantwell’s bill, by its very breadth, is a reminder that policies that are too tightly focused can have unfortunate impacts in seemingly unrelated areas.
Prospects weren’t good for S. 1460 to move further in 2018 with Senate and House elections scheduled for early November. Once those are past, however, federal lawmakers should consider suppressing their partisanship and give the bill the closer attention it deserves.