A taste for confrontation

William Blaine Richardson does not approach the top job at the U.S. Department of Energy with a record for antagonism toward the oil and gas industry. To the contrary, as a Democrat from New Mexico in the House of Representatives during 1982-96, Richardson frequently took industry positions that put him at odds with members of his own party.

June 29, 1998

3 min read

Veteran congressional observers remember his challenging antipetroleum Democratic leaders over issues important to oil and gas producers. On environmental matters, Richardson clashed with a Tennessee representative who also has found other work: Vice-President Al Gore.

Problem-solving

Since 1997, Richardson has been the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, the diplomatic niceties of which seem not to have rounded his edges. If anything, his U.N. record has added to his reputation for problem-solving in international trouble spots. Before becoming U.N. ambassador, for example, he negotiated the release of an American pilot and two others captured by rebels in the Sudanese desert. While ambassador to the U.N., he has dealt with problems in places like the former Zaire, Uzbekistan, and Croatia. He also has confronted Security Council members to sustain the hard U.S. position on economic sanctions against Iraq.

Richardson thus seems admirably disinclined to flinch in a fight. The quality will serve him well in the administration of Bill Clinton. Unless he has softened on energy issues or things turn sour during confirmation hearings, Richardson is strutting into a rumble.

The Clinton administration is predisposed to turn the wrong way wherever the political road forks over energy. It is fundamentally activist, asserting on behalf of government a large role in human matters ranging from computer education to cigarette-smoking by teenagers. And it is overpopulated with environmental grenade-throwers, from Gore to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner to Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt.

These people are on a crusade against consumption of energy, especially energy from hydrocarbons. And being activists, they do not shrink from the responsibility-a moral one, in their view-of making energy choices for otherwise free people who would surely falter without their learned intervention. Activists always know better than everyone else.

A fundamentally activist government dedicated to aggressive environmentalism doesn't often breed wise energy choices. Sure, there have been exceptions on Clinton's watch. One high moment was support for royalty relief for oil and gas production from deep waters of the Outer Continental Shelf. Another occurred early in 1996, when former Energy Sec. Hazel O'Leary refused to act on demands by high-profile Democrats for federal meddling in gasoline markets.

Against those triumphs, however, must be contrasted an ill-fated BTU tax weighted against petroleum, an ill-fated ethanol mandate for reformulated gasoline, a questionably fated raising of standards for air pollution by ozone and fine particles, a similarly fated treaty on climate change, and staunch refusal to allow leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain.

Energy conflicts

If confirmed, Richardson will inherit a creaky product of these tensions: a draft energy policy that can't bring itself to suggest the U.S. promote energy supply without insisting that the exertion be devoid of environmental risk. And as though to underscore how conflicted his administration is over energy, Clinton, just days before appointing someone with a record of supporting domestic production to head DOE, announced a 10-year extension of the ban on oil and gas leasing off most of the U.S. The purpose: "protecting our oceans from offshore oil drilling."

The industry should welcome Richardson's nomination. But it ought to wonder why, other than a taste for confrontation, he wants the job.