American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014 - 44

Federal Legislation

Senate Stymies Keystone End-Around
WASHINGTON-Offered what some
Washington observers characterized as a
win/win proposition for the GOP, the
U.S. Senate handed Republicans an apparent political victory instead of a policy triumph in mid-May, when an energy efficiency bill sank and pulled down with it
an initiative that sought to bypass the Obama administration and approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
According to media reports, leaders
from both parties bandied about the blame
when S 2262, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2014,
fell short of the Senate's 60-vote cloture
requirement. According to press accounts,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, DNv., claimed Republicans' kept changing
the conditions of their cooperation. Meanwhile, the reports indicate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said
he and most of his Republican colleagues
voted against cloture because Reid denied
them a vote on a handful of amendments.
"This is hardly obstructionism," McConnell is quoted. "It's laughable to say
it's obstructionism to allow the minority
to have five or six amendment votes."
An assessment common throughout
the media suggests that the developments
weaken Democrats' election-year efforts to
maintain their Senate majority during a cycle in which the party must defend seven
more seats than Republicans. Blocking S
2262, conventional wisdom says, denies an
accomplishment on which the legislation's co-sponsor, Senator Jeanne Shaheen,
D-N.H., can campaign in her race against
former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown.
Furthermore, failing to pass language to
greenlight Keystone XL offers Republicans
a silver lining, some say, since it highlights
the inability of Democrats representing oil
and gas producing states to make any
headway on the matter with their party leadership, which largely opposes the project
out of concerns over climate change.
Reid was the only Democrat to vote
against cloture on S 2262, published reports
indicate, but they say he did so only after
switching his vote to preserve his right under Senate rules to return the bill to the floor.
Energy Efficiency Measures
According to the congressional website,
S 2262 seeks to update national model
building energy codes for residential and
commercial buildings while also encouraging and supporting state and local governments to adopt building energy codes
that meet or exceed the national codes.
44 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Along with seeking to initiate a number of
studies and create grants to fund numerous energy efficiency undertakings, other measures in the legislation seek to:
* Promote and finance energy efficient
school buildings;
* Have the government conduct onsite technical assessments at the request of
a manufacturer to identify opportunities for
maximizing the energy efficiency of industrial processes and cross-cutting systems;
* Establish rebate programs for expenditures associated with energy-efficient
motors, industrial equipment and transformers;
* Require each federal agency to collaborate with the Office of the Management
and Budget to develop a strategy for maintaining, purchasing, and using energy-efficient and energy-saving information technologies, while requiring OMB to set
goals for agencies and evaluate their efforts;
* Revise numerous federal standards,
including those associated with the federal Energy STAR program and green buildings;
* Repeal a standard on fossil fuel-generated energy use in federal buildings; and
* Amend the Energy Independence
and Security Act of 2007 to reduce appropriations for the Zero Net Energy Commercial Buildings Initiative.
Reid insisted that S 2262, which also
was sponsored by Senator Rob Portman,
R-Oh., should receive a "clean vote"
without amendments, published reports
say. Senator John Hoeven, R-N.D., authored the language that would have
transferred to Congress from the State Department the authority to approve Keystone. Press accounts note that the House
of Representatives passed an energy efficiency bill in March by a 375-36 vote.
The House also saw some Keystone-related efforts in May when the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced
legislation to require the federal government to make permitting decisions for
cross-border oil pipelines within 120
days, while also removing the president's
role in the process, media reports say. The
proposal comes from representatives Fred
Upton, R-Mi., and Gene Green, D-Tx.
ESA Efforts
Other Capitol Hill happenings this
spring important to American oil and gas
companies include some efforts by the
House to amend the Endangered Species
Act. The House Natural Resources Committee approved a series of ESA reform

bills, which the National Ocean Industries
Association describes as a piecemeal
strategy on the part of Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wa.
"There is widespread support for conserving endangered species, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement," Hastings says. "This is a 40-yearold law that was last reauthorized in
1988; certainly there are ways to bring this
law into the 21st century and make it work
better for both species and people. These
are four common-sense bills that are very
narrowly focused and make targeted improvements to the law in the areas of transparency and species recovery."
The committee notes that it passed four
pieces of legislation:
* HR 4315, the 21st Century Endangered Species Transparency Act, requires
federal agencies make data they use for
ESA listing decisions publicly available
and accessible through the Internet.
* HR 4316, the Endangered Species
Recovery Transparency Act, requires the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to track, report to Congress, and make available online the funds expended to respond to ESA
lawsuits; the number of employees dedicated to litigation; and attorneys' fees
awarded in the course of ESA litigation
and settlement agreements.
* HR 4317, the State, Tribal and Local Species Transparency and Recovery
Act, requires the federal government to disclose to affected states all data used prior to any ESA listing decisions, and requires that the "best available scientific and
commercial data" used by the federal government include data provided by affected states, tribes and local governments.
* HR 4318, the Endangered Species
Litigation Reasonableness Act, which
passed 27-15, prioritizes resources toward
species protection by capping attorneys'
fees and making the ESA consistent with
The Equal Access to Justice Act, which
limits the prevailing rate for attorney fees
to $125 an hour.
"I am very pleased to see that our thorough investigation and thoughtful legislation is making headway for both species
and people," comments Representative
Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., the sponsor of
HR 4316. "These common-sense bills are
modest updates to the ESA."
National Ocean Policy
In another development, the Independent Petroleum Association of America
American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014

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