House tackling Keystone XL & gas exports in pre-election debate

Fuel Fix
By Jennifer Dlhouhy
September 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — Gasoline prices have tumbled to four-year lows, but that isn’t stopping lawmakers on Capitol Hill from exploiting concerns about high energy costs ahead of the mid-term elections.

Republican leaders are scheduling votes this week on a package of more than a dozen bills designed to highlight Obama administration decisions and federal policies they say are holding back the nation’s energy potential.

In the mix: disputes over the Keystone XL pipeline, natural gas exports, hydraulic fracturing and offshore drilling.

The House has passed many of the measures in the broad energy package before, and the chamber is expected to do the same this time around. But with few legislative work days left before the current Congress adjourns, the bill is likely to die without seeing any action in the Senate.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told his GOP colleagues in a Sept. 4 memo that the measure is a “single, common-sense energy plan . . . focusing on production, infrastructure, reliability and efficiency.”

“With gas prices still hovering near $3.50 per gallon and energy costs siphoning too much out of families’ paychecks, we must enact policies that encourage an American energy revolution,” McCarthy said.

The bill will also give its supporters fodder for debates, speeches and campaigning ahead of the Nov. 4 election as proof that they want to expand domestic energy development and the jobs that go along with it. The legislation up this week is dubbed the “American Energy Solutions for Lower Costs and More American Jobs Act.”

Some congressional Democrats say the measure is nothing more than a “messaging bill” that is consuming time better spent on other legislative priorities. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., has called the repeated House energy debates a kind of congressional “Groundhog Day.”

The legislation, expected to come up for debate as early as Wednesday, includes bills to:

essentially approve the Keystone XL pipeline, by declaring a presidential permit is not necessary to approve the controversial project and saying existing environmental analyses are sufficient to satisfy federal requirements. The House passed a similar bill last year.
force the Obama administration to accelerate permitting of proposed natural gas export projects. The measure, like one the House passed in June, is designed to hasten federal regulatory reviews of the multi-billion-dollar projects planned to convert natural gas into a liquid so it can be shipped overseas. So far, the government has fully permitted three natural gas export projects, including two last week, but roughly two dozen more are pending review.
block the Interior Department from regulating hydraulic fracturing anywhere states already have rules governing the process. Modeled on a measure that passed the House last year, the bill is designed to head off new rules that would apply to oil and gas wells drilled on Indian and federal land.
streamline permits for border-crossing energy projects, including gas pipelines and electric power lines. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston played a lead role developing the measure, which passed the House in June.
expand oil and gas development on federal lands and waters by requiring the U.S. government offer at least a quarter of eligible federal land for oil and gas leasing each year, accelerate the permitting of drilling onshore and immediately sell new leases along the coasts of California, Virginia and South Carolina. The House passed a similar measure in June.
prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing new mandates if the Energy Department says they will adversely affect the U.S. economy. A similar measure advanced last year.
thwart the EPA’s bid to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The House passed similar legislation in March.

It’s not all oil and gas. Republican leaders also folded in bills to boost hydropower and insulate coal from regulations governing strip-mining.

Notably absent from the package is anything having to do with oil exports. Although Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, is working on legislation that would relax the decades-old ban on exporting most U.S. crude, the idea divides congressional Republicans, partly because of gas price fears.