The Biden administration recently announced a temporary pause on new natural gas exports as part of its climate agenda. The announcement, which came in January 2024, was met with a mixed response. Those in favor, largely Democrats, applauded the administration for its work to protect the environment as well as for the potential to lower fuel costs for American consumers. Conservatives, however, argued that the move could make it harder for other countries to replace dirtier fuel supplies with cleaner natural gas from the U.S. and that it could be a threat to American jobs. “President Biden’s politically motivated ban…

U.S. consumer advocates could be moving to limit the use of gas stoves in Americans’ homes in order to protect children’s health. This winter, members of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) began floating ways to stop indoor use of gas stoves, citing research linking them with an increased risk of childhood asthma. For example, the CPSC pointed to a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health that said gas stoves are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. “When gas stoves are turned on and burning at a hot temperature,…

President Joe Biden wants oil companies to share the wealth as they reap historic profits — or at least use the revenue to boost domestic energy production and help American consumers at the pump. Amid rising gas prices this fall, the president announced plans for an oil and gas windfall tax if domestic energy producers do not invest some of their profits back into the economy to bring prices down. American oil companies saw profits increase after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which made the world more reliant on U.S. energy supplies due to embargoes on Russian fuel. “It’s time for…

With gas and fuel costs rising for most of 2022, members of Congress are looking to take action against oil-producing countries they accuse of artificially raising the price of oil. The bipartisan No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC) would specifically target the group of countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which includes Russia and Saudi Arabia. The bill would adjust U.S. antitrust law to allow the U.S. attorney general to bring lawsuits against OPEC countries and their state-owned oil companies for price fixing, which is illegal in the U.S. In October, OPEC announced it…

A new proposal by the Trump Administration would significantly expand offshore oil and gas lease sales to tracts off the Atlantic, Arctic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts. The draft five-year (2019 to 2024) plan is a major departure from the current 2017 to 2022 plan approved by the Obama Administration that limits lease sales to 10 tracts off the Gulf of Mexico and one off Alaska’s southern coast. In announcing the new policy, Interior Secretary Ryan Zincke said: “Responsibly developing our energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in a safe and well-regulated way is important to our economy and energy…

The controversy over a planned 1,100-mile pipeline, originating in North Dakota and stretching across four States to Illinois, came to Capitol Hill in September, when Senator Bernie Sanders (VT-I) attempted to add an amendment to a water projects bill to slow its development. The Dakota Access Pipeline, as it is called, would carry up to 570,000 barrels of domestically produced oil each day. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, which opposes the project, says that a spill from the pipeline near their reservation could pollute the water and that construction would destroy sacred sites and burial grounds. Dallas-based…

In a recent speech on the Obama Administration’s approach to rural poverty, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack focused on the use of biofuels in manufacturing as a way to address persistent high unemployment in rural communities. Secretary Vilsack said that such communities — defined as areas where 20 percent of the population has been poor for three decades or more — might rebuild their local economies by producing renewable fuels. According to the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, an estimated 353 counties are in this category. In 2010, the Agriculture Department created five Regional Biomass Research Centers to help establish…

Federal subsidies for wind production began under the Administration of President Jimmy Carter with passage of the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act and the Energy Tax Act. When these subsidies failed to make the industry competitive, Congress, in 1992, created the Production Tax Credit (PTC) to give it a boost. The PTC gives wind energy producers a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity generated. Although originally intended as a temporary measure, the PTC has been continually extended by Congress under pressure from the wind industry and renewable energy advocates. A setback occurred on January 29, 2015,…

Republicans in Congress are following through on their pledge to make approval of the Keystone XL pipeline an early item on their agenda as they take control of both the House and Senate. On January 9, the House easily approved a bill (H.R. 3) authorizing the pipeline’s construction; however, the vote, which was 266 to 157, fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. On the same day, the Nebraska Supreme Court, after months of deliberation, reached a decision that allowed a route for the pipeline to cross the State. The case focused on whether the…

A coalition of nine environmental and open government groups filed a lawsuit on January 7 in an effort to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to collect information on chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. Fracking involves the injection of water, chemicals, and sand below ground to extract oil and gas from shale formations. Opponents say that the process is environmentally dangerous, especially to drinking water supplies, while the energy industry maintains that fracking and water contamination have never been definitively linked. Meanwhile, the increased use of fracking has driven U.S. natural gas production to new heights….