Friday, July 01, 2011
The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
by Bruce Henderson
Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed legislation on offshore drilling and environmental rule-making, delighting advocacy groups that had fought both.
Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, was a primary sponsor of the Energy Jobs Act. It directed the governor to form an offshore-energy compact with South Carolina and Virginia and prescribed how to use oil and gas revenues the state might get.
The Obama administration has banned offshore drilling on the Eastern seaboard until at least 2018, although the president has hinted he might soften that position.
Perdue, in vetoing the energy bill, called it an unconstitutional infringement on the governor's powers.
"We applaud the governor's decision to keep North Carolina's coast open to beach balls but not tar balls," said Derb Carter of the Southern Environmental Law Center. The bill, he added, tied state energy policy to fossil fuels and away from renewable fuels.
Along with her veto, Perdue issued two executive orders on energy.
One creates a task force on offshore wind, which Rucho's bill had largely ignored. The shallow waters of the mid-Atlantic coast, including North Carolina, hold some of the nation's highest wind-energy potential, federal agencies have reported.
The task force is charged with assessing the costs and risks of growing a wind industry and is to report by next March.
A second executive order reauthorizes a science panel to examine land-based energy sources, including natural gas locked in underground shale formations. That panel is to report at the end of 2012. Rucho's bill had also called for study of the gas issue.
Drilling techniques called hydraulic fracturing, which breaks open shale to release gas, and horizontal drilling have boosted estimates of U.S. gas reserves by 40 percent. Those techniques are now illegal in North Carolina, but exploration companies have bought up leases in Lee and Chatham counties.
Perdue also vetoed a regulatory-reform measure that prohibits, in most cases, new state environmental rules that are stronger than federal standards. The bill gives administrative law judges, not state agencies, the final say when violators appeal state fines.
The governor cited the state attorney general saying such a change would violate the state constitution.
Copyright (c) 2011, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
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