The US will need to equally address global climate change and other substantive trials if it expects to benefit from promising energy opportunities worldwide, speakers at the US Energy Association’s annual meeting and public policy forum generally agreed on May 23.
“If we know we’ve been responsible for contributing to civilization’s growth, we need to speak up and take responsibility for climate change,” US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Minority Member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said. “We need to break issues down to terms people understand, but we’re not going to break out of fossil fuels just yet.”
Manchin said the US is leading the world in using less coal as more plants approach the end of their operating lives, but it needs to deploy its technology and investments to help other countries. “I look at India and realize they’re about where the US was in the 1930s when so much of the country didn’t have electricity,” Manchin said.
“We have an ocean of energy in the Mid-Atlantic and Appalachian states which can be an effective backup for this country,” he said. “Right now, China is trying to buy every drop of that energy. It shouldn’t be allowed to do that.” Political leaders in Washington will need to be less partisan and more cooperative if they expect the nation to meet these challenges, Manchin said.
US LNG heads to Europe
The US still needs to fully embrace the improved technology that has turned the country from a net oil and gas importer to exporter, said Undersecretary Mark W. Menezes, who oversees research and development at the US Department of Energy.
“We have become economic energy competition to [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] and Russia. Those two countries don’t know how to react to such a big change which we accomplished while leading the world in actual emissions reductions,” Menezes said. “In the last two quarters, Europe has become the main destination for US LNG exports. We are developing the infrastructure and completing the necessary plant reviews on time.”
US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew R. Wheeler said, “Our natural resources are extracted and produced in a more environmentally conscious manner than any other nation. Those who oppose US fossil fuel production are taking this off the table.”
Wheeler said, “We are doing this with the ingenuity of the private sector and not the heavy hand of government. Rather than cede market share to Russian natural gas or Chinese coal, we want to export these environmentally produced forms of energy. There are still more than 1 billion people in the world who don’t have access to reliable energy. That’s not acceptable.”
Backs supply diversification
Russia and China pose potential energy and geopolitical threats in Eastern Europe that the US needs to address, a fourth speaker suggested. “We can’t fix in one generation what took three generations to destroy there. The Kremlin wants to isolate these countries. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative would trap them in debt and make them vulnerable to Beijing,” warned Brock Bierman, the US Agency for International Development’s assistant administrator for Europe and Eurasia.
Eastern European nations are willing to become part of a European Energy Common Market, Bierman said. “We support diversification of natural gas supplies, so these countries don’t need to rely on Russia. We’re already seeing green chutes on this. The trust we have built demonstrates we are ready to stand with them.”
USAID is looking for more ways it can engage more US companies in opportunities overseas, but the effort faces a lot of hurdles, Bierman said. “It’s time we push back on [Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin] and his opportunism.”
EPA is examining how long it takes to evaluate applications for permits related to energy projects and ultimately wants to get the process down to 6 months, Wheeler said. “They won’t always be approved, but they will be timely,” he said.
Wheeler said EPA’s revised methane emissions rule will save a projected $480 million in regulatory costs. The agency also intends to develop a national water reuse action plan and change its enforcement program to focus on specific areas. “We’re also examining whether the entire oil and gas industry should be treated as a single entity or if regulations should be tailored for each segment,” Wheeler said.
