11-16-15 Canada Waits For Political Winds To Shift In Favor of Keystone XL – and – Ak-LNG Update On the Kenai Peninsula

TODAY'S  relevant energy links, courtesy: Consumer Energy Alliance:

Steel on Steel: News Radio with John Loeffler 
President Obama rejected the Keystone Pipeline permit this week, handing green activists a victory and dealing the oil industry and Canada a loss. Michael Whatley (NGP Photo), Executive Vice President for Consumer Energy Alliance, examines how thousands of jobs and dollars will not find their way into our economy, and how Canada is waiting for the political winds to shift in America before revisiting the project. 
 

Washington Examiner: Senate expected to hold votes to roll back Obama's climate agenda
The Senate could hold votes as soon as this week on resolutions opposing President Obama's climate rules for power plants, ahead of an international meeting on global warming in Paris at the end of the month that he is set to attend.
 
Fox News: Dem senator says EPA power plant regs based on failed Canadian project
An outspoken Democratic senator is challenging the EPA's controversial power plant regulations by alleging they are based on a failing Canadian project, saying it makes “no sense” to force U.S. coal-fired plants to meet new standards using unproven technology.
 
Associated Press: Obama climate plan puts squeeze on coal state governor
Democratic governors are being squeezed by the mandate in President Barack Obama’s climate change plan to cut carbon-dioxide emissions – perhaps none more than Montana’s Steve Bullock, the one governor in a coal-producing state who faces re-election next year.
 
Politico: Liberal donors double down on climate change
At a closed-door gathering next week in Washington, influential liberal donors and operatives plan to double down on their efforts to make climate change a central voting issue in 2016, despite disappointing returns on a similar campaign in 2014.
 
Houston Chronicle: Could replacing nuclear with natural gas be bad?
Replacing nuclear power plants with combined cycle natural gas generators could increase carbon emissions, according to a new study by the Rhodium Group. The study raises questions about how the Clean Power Plan and competitive wholesale power markets will impact generation sources.
 
NPR: Wis. Tanker Derailments Revive Debate over Safest Way to Transport Crude
Some worry the Obama administration's decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline will lead to a significant increase in the amount of crude being shipped by rail. It can also be shipped by truck.
 
Heartland Institute: Study of Premature Births Fails to Show Fracking Connection
Serious methodological errors render unreliable the findings of a recent study titled “Unconventional Natural Gas Development and Birth Outcome in Pennsylvania, USA,” which suggested pregnant mothers living near hydraulic fracturing sites could be at a higher risk of giving birth to premature babies.
 
World Oil: $38 million awarded to study effects of oil on Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) Research Board will award nearly $38 million to individuals and teams studying the effects of oil on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and public health. A total of 22 research proposals are being funded under this most recent GoMRI program.
 
Alaska Dispatch News: Forget steel, Alaska's gas line forever being built with wishes and dreams
Thirty-five years ago, laborers old and young gathered in the Fairbanks union hall hoping for jobs on the trans-Alaska natural gas line. The oil pipeline from the North Slope to Valdez had been completed, and oil was flowing. The men who built the oil line were no longer needed. They were unemployed.
 
Associated Press: More Repairs Ordered for Pipe after California Oil Spill
The operator of an oil pipeline that ruptured and spilled more than 100,000 gallons of crude on the California coast this year was ordered Friday to purge a neighboring line and make repairs so it doesn't fail. Federal regulators said the line owned by Plains All American Pipeline was constructed and operated in the same way as the line that brokeMay 19 outside Santa Barbara and the agency had found inspections of both pipes had underestimated corrosion inside.
 
Associated Press: Only 1 Californian got custom oil map: Brown
State officials have defended Gov. Jerry Brown’s request to have regulators map and study his family’s ranch for oil, gas and mining potential — arguing that the work by the state was nothing the agency wouldn’t do for other members of the public.
 
Las Vegas Review-Journal: Six reasons why president was wrong to reject Keystone
This month, after stalling for a ridiculous seven years, President Barack Obama officially rejected the construction of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. The announcement was anticlimactic and hyper-political. The president repeatedly has downplayed Keystone's economic benefits and sided with environmentalist donors who claim the "dirty" and "unsustainable" pipeline would be too risky for the environment.
 
Houston Chronicle: State says it's a power grab, but some Texas generators like Obama's plan
Thad Hill, in a split with many fellow power company executives, flatly opposes the lawsuits that Texas and 25 others states have filed to block the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. The plan, which the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled in the summer, seeks to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions at existing power plants.
 
Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Obama’s Keystone decision was a gift to Republicans
Sacrificing economic opportunity, jobs, national security, the environment, energy independence and more for the objective of “global leadership,” President Obama has handed voters another reason to choose a Republican successor for the job he holds. It couldn’t come too soon.
 
Bloomberg: Oil Producers Hungry for Deals Drool over West Texas `Tiramisu'
The worst oil market in decades would be hard to spot in West Texas, where two-lane county roads are still jammed with trucks and energy companies are on the prowl for deals. The Permian Basin, the biggest of the shale-oil regions that ignited the U.S. energy boom, is also the only one where production is increasing even as drillers idle more than half the rigs in the country during the longest price slump since the 1980s.
 
Financial Times: Clues to future of US shale lie in Permian basin
The desert of west Texas was in the Palaeozoic era covered by an inland sea, teeming with life. That rich ecosystem is playing a crucial role in the world economy 250m years later. Over the course of millennia the abundant flora and fauna of that sea were transformed into the oil reserves of the Permian basin, which is both the most prolific and most resilient of the US regions that produce tight oil.
 
The Columbus Dispatch: ‘Hard-hit’ industry keeps increasing investment
Statehouse lawmakers have been resisting Gov. John Kasich’s call to institute a modest and fair tax increase on oil and gas drilling for Ohioans. One of the primary arguments of legislators and their industry backers is that, with the downturn in oil prices in the past year, raising taxes would drive the industry out of Ohio.
 
The Plain Dealer: Voters love wind and solar, may vote for like-minded political candidates
The public prefers wind turbines and solar arrays over power plants that burn coal and oil — or even new natural-gas-fired plants. Yet only about half of Ohio's registered voters know anything about President Obama's Clean Power Plan, a survey released Friday revealed.
 
The Intelligencer: Sen. Jeff Kessler Supports Federal Funding for Coal Towns
West Virginia Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler says he is encouraged that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has announced a $30 billion plan to help coal mining communities adapt to new climate change policies – and he thinks it sounds familiar to one of his own ideas.
 
Philadelphia Inquirer: Budget deal best for now
Not even a historic boost in funding for Pennsylvania schools can completely wash away the bad taste left by the regressive taxation included in the framework for a budget agreement that Gov. Wolf and Republican lawmakers have crafted to end a five-month stalemate.
 
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Pa. DEP ready to write first draft of plan to meet feds' rules
Pennsylvania is one of just six states that has not joined either side of the legal battle over the Obama administration's marquee regulation aimed at limiting carbon pollution from the power sector. Don't confuse that with inaction. After months of conducting hearings and a public comment period that ended Thursday, Pennsylvania is close to writing a first draft of its proposal to meet the requirements of the Clean Power Plan, the state's top environmental regulator said.
 
Natural Gas Intelligence: Pennsylvania's Wolf Vows to Keep Pushing NatGas Severance Tax in Future Budgets
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has confirmed that a deal to end a more than four month state budget impasse doesn't include a severance tax on unconventional natural gas production, but he added that he won't give up on that proposal in future negotiations.
 
Standard Speaker: New study indicates gas drilling could impact rivers, streams
Depending on where and how it’s done, natural gas drilling does have the potential to impact Pennsylvania’s waterways, an independent study reveals. Kenneth M. Klemow, professor of biology and environmental science and director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research at Wilkes University, was one of the contributors to a new study examining how natural gas development affects surface water, such as creeks, streams and rivers.
 
Savannah Morning News: Hunter Hopkins: Georgia's energy opportunity lies offshore
Georgia’s energy industry is primed for a major expansion. With a recent decision from federal regulators, we may finally have an opportunity to develop oil and natural gas off our Atlantic coast. That could drive investment and job growth throughout Georgia — and bring the United States even closer to true energy security.
 
The Post and Courier: Environmentalists, S.C. coastal Republicans agree on Atlantic drilling — don’t
Proposals to allow testing for oil and gas off the Eastern Seaboard and possibly open the Atlantic to offshore drilling have made for unlikely allies among environmentalists and conservative Republicans. U.S. Reps. Mark Sanford and Tom Rice, Republicans who represent the South Carolina coast from North Carolina to the Georgia state line, have come out publicly against exploration off the state’s shores.