| | | | |  | | By Matthew Choi | | | With help from Ben Lefebvre Editor's Note: Morning Energy is a free version of POLITICO Pro Energy's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
| | | — Putin ordered Russian troops into parts of Ukraine, prompting the U.S. and other nations to push ahead with sanctions. — The Biden administration is challenging a judge's ruling that blocked its social cost of carbon, saying the decision threw it's work into disarray — including for the oil and gas industry. — FERC Chair Rich Glick defended the commission's contentious gas pipeline policy decision that updated the energy regulator's process on new projects for the first time in more than two decades. WELCOME TO TUESDAY. I'm your host, Matthew Choi. NRG's Robert Gibbs gets the trivia for knowing Menelik II was emperor of Ethiopia when the Titanic sank. For today: What was the original name of the Australia Zoo? Send your tips and trivia answers to mchoi@politico.com. Find me on Twitter @matthewchoi2018. Check out the POLITICO Energy podcast — all the energy and environmental politics and policy news you need to start your day, in just five minutes. Listen and subscribe for free at politico.com/energy-podcast . On today's episode: The fight to electrify the Postal Service fleet.
| | | | | | | | A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API): American energy leadership helps solve many challenges our nation faces. U.S. natural gas and oil are an input for practically everything else in the economy. With supply-chain challenges and inflation on the minds of many Americans, the last thing anyone wants to see is more upward pressure on energy costs that are felt by every family and business. Learn more about how federal policies impact energy supply, demand, and, ultimately, American progress. | | | | | | RUSSIA GOES IN: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two separatist parts of Ukraine on Monday after he recognized their independence — a move that could portend a wider incursion into the country. The order comes after weeks of desperate attempts at finding a diplomatic solution to Russia's military buildup and hours after National security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Sunday on NBC that military conflict "will not simply be some conventional war between two armies. It will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them." The European Union and the U.S. made it clear at this weekend's Munich Security Conference (which Russia didn't attend) that they were ready to go all out on sanctioning Moscow if it invades. The White House announced Monday a new sanctions executive order that would "prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons" in the two breakaway regions of Ukraine. Energy Anxieties: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Saturday that the continent could survive the rest of the winter if Russia's state-owned Gazprom "deliberately" shut gas supplies, since countries including the U.S. had worked to provide alternatively sourced gas. And she pressed the need for Europe to reduce their dependency on Russian energy by replacing foreign fossil fuels with domestic renewables. Von der Leyen even said the infrastructure exists to send energy resources to Ukraine if need be. The country still relies heavily on Russian energy imports, namely coal, diesel and natural gas, POLITICO's Sergei Kuznetsov reports, with its politics bungling past attempts to build out its renewable sector. But despite von der Leyen's optimism, the continent is still hurting from high energy prices. POLITICO's Aitor Hernández-Morales and Zia Weise report that the commission is working on a new plan likely to be released early next month to help alleviate high energy prices and speed up the rollout of renewables. Meanwhile, everyday people are resorting to some very old-school methods to offset costs, including wood and coal burning furnaces, The New York Times reports. Oil prices climbed on the tensions, with the benchmark Brent crude futures reaching $99 a barrel in Tuesday morning trade, while U.S. WTI crude futures climbed to $96 a barrel. Related: "The global climate attention crisis," via POLITICO's Karl Mathiesen, and " As Putin sends troops into Donbas, White House avoids the 'I' word," via POLITICO's Paul McLeary and Andrew Desiderio
| | | | JOIN THURSDAY TO HEAR FROM MAYORS ACROSS AMERICA: The Fifty: America's Mayors will convene mayors from across the country to discuss their policy agendas, including the enforcement of Covid measures such as vaccine and mask mandates. We'll also discuss how mayors are dealing with the fallout of the pandemic on their local economies and workforce, affordable housing and homelessness, and criminal justice reforms. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | COLLATERAL DAMAGE: The Biden administration isn't happy about a federal court's injunction that blocked its social cost of carbon, warning the judge in a petition that it's already messing up a massive array of agency projects and regulations — including oil and gas operations on federal lands. As POLITICO's Alex Guillén reports, the Feb. 11 ruling by Judge James Cain called the administration's draft tool used to gauge the greenhouse gas implications in rulemakings an overreach, and it halted it from further employing the tool. Already, the administration wrote in a request to stay the ruling, the court's move has disrupted pending regulations at DOE, EPA, DOT and DOI, froze billions of dollars in grants, and disrupted an international collaboration with Canada to harmonize the two countries' SCCs. The administration is also saying that the ruling, which was intended to curb environmental reach, will force it to once again put a pause on oil and gas lease sales. And a DOI spokesperson said Saturday the injunction would have an even deeper impact, causing a slowdown in issuing permits to drill given that the department had been incorporating the social cost of carbon into its process per a Bureau of Land Management notice in October. This is sure to anger industry officials and Republicans, who had been irked with the department's previous moratorium on lease sales that was ended by a federal court. The sector had also benefited from the speedy drilling permit approvals the Biden Interior Department had been issuing, which may now be threatened. It will even take time to discern whether the administration is bluffing, given that the administration plans to appeal Cain's decision. The administration's move adds another level of drama to what's become a three-way-fight between industry, the Biden administration and environmental groups' desire to end oil and gas development on public land, said Kevin Book, director of consulting firm ClearView Energy. "The Administration halting the activities that producer states were effectively suing to expand—because the states prevailed—is a form of 'juris-jujitsu,'" Book said in an email. ON GLICK'S MIND: Rich Glick offered some insights into his thinking to POLITICO's Catherine Morehouse, who interviewed the FERC chair a day after the energy regulator led the commission to overhaul its approach to examining and approving new gas infrastructure by putting a greater emphasis on environmental justice and climate considerations. The decision garnered some fierce criticism from the right and Senate Energy Chair Joe Manchin, who said it was "reckless." But Glick told Catherine that he and Manchin have since had a "really good discussion" on the matter. "What I said to him and what I'll say to everybody — and I didn't use these exact terms — but people need to take a deep breath," Glick said. "I think that the proof is in the pudding about how we actually implement this policy statement and how we're actually going to process the applications for pipelines. This is not the end of the world." Glick and Catherine also talked about the commission's new authority under the bipartisan infrastructure package to overrule states in greenlighting critical transmission. Glick said he believes the "vast, vast majority of transmission projects are still going to be sited at the state level." It echoes comments from Democratic Commissioner Allison Clements, who also said last month FERC isn't looking to wield the new authority with imperial might to bulldoze transmission through the states. Read more from Glick and Catherine's conversation here.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | A 180 AT 350: Few environmental activist organizations have seen their star rise as quickly as 350.org. The group, with its dramatic protests and recruitment of young activists, catapulted the Keystone XL to the national stage, and eventually brought about the pipeline's demise. But the group faced its own internal strife, with budget constraints and staffing cuts in 2019 fraying trust in its commitment to empower activists of color, POLITICO's Zack Colman reports. The group recognized that layoffs had "serious impacts on staff morale, and our retention" and said it would increase efforts to alleviate pay and equity disparities. 350.org's difficulties mirror those of numerous other environmental organizations, which have had to reckon with their own commitments to equity in a movement that has long been overwhelmingly dominated by affluent white activists. Read more from Zack's deep dive. FRESH CHALLENGE FOR LINE 5: Environmental group Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of several Tribal nations in Michigan against Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline replacement project currently being considered by the Michigan Public Services Commission. The complaint states that the project, which would bury two pipelines in a tunnel under the Great Lakes as a replacement to the current Line 5 lines that run along the lake floor, would violate Michigan's environmental laws by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change and therefore endangering the tribes' agriculture and hunting. "For example, the fishery and wild rice resources are threatened by climate change, which, in turn, threatens the Tribal Nations' abilities to preserve their traditional lifeways and economies," the complaint states. "The Tribal Nations bear the brunt of the pollution and risk associated with Enbridge's experiment." Earthjustice and Enbridge are scheduled to make formal responses in court on March 11. Enbridge, for its part, said it in a statement that it isn't its pipeline that would contribute to climate change, but people's continued use of fossil fuels: "Emissions from the ultimate consumption of oil transported on Line 5 do not result from the Tunnel Project, but instead from the continued demand for crude oil to produce refined products used by consumers," the company said in a statement. "Our priority is to move the project forward in compliance with all state and federal regulatory and environmental requirements."
| | | | A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API):   | | | | | | — "Israel presses U.S. on Iran nuclear deal terms, to keep talking afterward," via Reuters. — "Frackers Push Into Once-Dead Shale Patches as Oil Nears $100 a Barrel," via The Wall Street Journal. — " Texas GOP revolts against Trump's favorite cowboy," via POLITICO. — "Soaring Energy Bills Deepen Crisis for Turks, and Erdogan," via The New York Times. — " Wary of Being Left in the Dark, Americans Produce Their Own Power," via The Wall Street Journal. — "How a floating trash fire in New York exposes a threat to national recycling efforts," via POLITICO. THAT'S ALL FOR ME!
| | | | A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API): Energy is foundational to our nation's success – from excellence in manufacturing, defense, and aerospace to technology breakthroughs that unlock innovation and better protect our environment. In everything we do, Americans benefit from the U.S. as the world leader in producing natural gas and oil to among the highest environmental and safety standards in the world.
Smart U.S. energy policies can help extend progress. Some short-term actions to ensure American energy leadership include: releasing a new five-year plan to develop American energy off our shores, prioritizing consumer costs in fuels and transportation policies, approving pipeline projects and other infrastructure, advancing smart and transparent regulations, ensuring equitable tax treatment, and advancing trade and climate policies that strengthen U.S. competitiveness in global markets. Learn more. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
Comments
Post a Comment