Poll: Pennsylvania Voters Say, 'Drill, Baby, Drill'

- Poll: Pennsylvania Voters Say, 'Drill, Baby, Drill'

Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Brad Bumsted, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Pennsylvania voters, by a more than 2-1 margin, say the economic benefits of gas drilling in the Marcellus shale outweigh the environmental impacts, a statewide poll shows.

They also believe by a 69-24 percent margin that companies doing the drilling should be taxed, according to the poll of 1,277 registered voters by Quinnipiac University. The poll released today has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points

"'Drill, baby drill' is the call from Pennsylvania voters and 'tax, baby tax,' is the follow-up as voters see natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale as an economic plus more than an environmental negative," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the university's polling institute.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who advocates regulated drilling but opposes a tax, saw his still-low approval rating begin to stabilize in the poll. His approval rating was 39 percent with 23 percent undecided, the poll found. Thirty-eight percent disapproved.

There's a growing gender gap with women disapproving of the job Corbett is doing by a 43-30 percent margin, the poll said. He took office in January and has proposed budget cuts to make up a $4.2 billion state deficit.

"Gov. Tom Corbett gets a mixed overall approval rating, despite getting a negative approval rating for his handling of the budget. Voters like him personally more than they do his policies," Malloy said.

"The good news for the governor is that his numbers apparently stabilized after falling off sharply in our last poll in April. Also, he is not in the negative territory like other Republican governors such as Florida Gov. (Rick) Scott and Ohio Gov. (John) Kasich," Malloy said.

A May 25 Quinnipiac poll found just 29 percent of Florida voters approve of the job Scott is doing, compared to 57 percent who disapprove. Kasich has an approval rating of 38 percent, with a 49 percent disapproval rate, according to a May 18 Quinnipiac poll.

Copyright (c) 2011, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

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Walz, Other Lawmakers Say Drill and Dedicate

- Walz, Other Lawmakers Say Drill and Dedicate

Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Mark Fischenich, The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.

Congressman Tim Walz and a bipartisan group of other lawmakers are taking another shot at tackling America's looming energy crisis.

A Mankato Democrat, Walz and allies from Pennsylvania to California are pushing a proposal that would allow more oil drilling off the nation's coasts and dedicate some of the resulting trillions of dollars in drilling-rights royalties to energy independence programs.

The bipartisan group first offered the idea three years ago -- when gas prices were approaching $4 a gallon and leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties were locked into opposing positions on how to deal with the nation's long dependence on foreign oil.

After the summer of 2008, gas prices dropped dramatically, partisan gridlock derailed passage of a national energy policy, the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster unleashed the biggest offshore oil spill in American history, gas prices returned to $4 a gallon, and three years passed with no progress on a national energy plan.

On Tuesday, Walz told a group of business owners, labor representatives and energy researchers at Minnesota State University that continued inaction will cause great harm to the nation's economic outlook.

"(If) we don't anything about this, what does the future look like?" he asked.

The answer, according to Walz, is America sending more and more of its wealth to foreign oil producers. It's already nearly $400 billion a year going to oil-producing countries, some of which actively dislike the United States.

Failing to act now will also mean ceding the jobs and potential for exports that will be available to nations that lead the way in creating alternative energy technology.

"We have all our eggs in one economic basket," he said of the current reliance on fossil fuels. "We don't even own the basket, and it's a fragile basket at that."

No one in MSU's Minnesota Center for Automotive Research disagreed with Walz. The facility, which is doing research on alternative fuel vehicles, needs $480,000 to complete a dynamometer that would allow the testing of hybrid vehicles while they're running at highway speeds.

Federal and state funding was crucial in establishing the center, which moved into a new facility at MSU earlier this year, according to director Bruce Jones. Additional funding is likely to be harder to come by as Washington increasingly focuses on deficit reduction, but Walz made the case for continued -- and growing -- investment in alternative energy.

"We're preaching to the choir," said Joe Lorentz, a local highway contractor.

Lorentz pointed to the students and researchers across the table, urging them to talk to everyone they know about the importance of government investment in renewable energy and infrastructure improvements.

"Champion this bill," Lorentz said. "... Educate the public as best you can."

The bill -- called the Infrastructure, Jobs and Energy Independence Act -- would open up more of America's coastline to drilling for oil and natural gas. Royalties paid by energy companies for the drilling rights, which would total an estimated $2.2 trillion or more, would be dedicated to a variety of specific spending.

Infrastructure improvements -- including highways and bridges -- would get 20 percent. Research, development and production of alternative energy and energy efficiency would receive 15 percent. Another 8 percent would be aimed at cleaning up coal-fired power plants, and 5 percent would go to nuclear and carbon-free energy production.

Smaller amounts would go to environmental restoration, energy conservation, water clean-up and heating assistance for low-income Americans.

States where the additional oil drilling would occur would get 30 percent of the total proceeds, and 10 percent would be applied to reduction of the national debt.

Even as he makes his second attempt at getting the ambitious proposal off the ground, Walz said he thinks it has a genuine chance to become law. Some parts of it could be implemented sooner, but he expects the 2012 presidential election -- including a serious debate about America's energy future -- will have to run its course before the bulk of the proposal could be implemented.

Copyright (c) 2011, The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.

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Witnesses Say Gulf Drilling Ban Was A Harsh Blow

- Witnesses Say Gulf Drilling Ban Was A Harsh Blow

Friday, June 03, 2011
Houston Chronicle
by Jennifer A. Dlouhy

The Obama administration's reactions to last year's BP oil spill did more damage than the crude itself, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Gulf Coast employers told a House committee Thursday.

Barbour said little oil reached Mississippi's shores, but the administration's May 2010 decision to impose a five-month ban on most deep-water drilling has left a lasting impact.

The moratorium "not only cost jobs in all the Gulf states, it hurt the economy nationally by reducing domestic oil production," Barbour told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Barbour, a Republican who recently ruled out a presidential bid, added that the government is still moving too slowly in approving deep-water projects.

"This will have a lasting impact on an already out-of-balance oil trade deficit," Barbour said. "Great jobs are being lost."

But Obama's top offshore drilling regulator -- Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement -- testified that the post-spill priority was boosting the safety of oil and gas operations near U.S. coasts.

The ocean energy bureau has approved 55 permits for shallow-water wells since new safety rules were imposed last June.

The agency also has permitted 15 deep-water drilling projects for which applicants were required to prove they could contain oil if an underwater well blew out as BP's Macondo well did.

After the resulting explosion on April 20, 2010, killed 11 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig workers and unleashed a 5-million-barrel oil spill, the administration overhauled the government's oversight of offshore drilling to eliminate possible conflicts of interest.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said those bureaucratic changes and a subsequent slowdown in the permitting of offshore drilling projects exacerbated economic damage from the spill.

"Much of the suffering and loss from the spill was made worse by poor decisions of administration officials," said Issa, the panel chairman. "When the administration did act, its major accomplishment was a hasty bureaucratic reorganization" and an offshore drilling shutdown that has caused "a paralyzing loss of jobs."

Cory Kief, president of Larose, La.-based Offshore Towing, said his tugboat company -- once hired to tow dozens of shallow-water rigs monthly -- has been hit hard by the drilling decline.

"We understand that precious lives were lost, and that an environmental disaster that was some 60 years in the making should not be ignored," Kief said. "However, there was a governmental agency that had a hand to play in this along with the others."

But Bromwich, the ocean energy bureau director, said that even if it takes more time for oil companies to satisfy new safety rules and for regulators to verify their compliance, that's better than the alternative.

"Our new regulations to strengthen drilling safety and protect the environment have required operators to work to make sure they drill safely, and our drilling engineers have to work to ensure compliance with the expanded set of requirements," Bromwich said. "That takes more time than the process that existed previously, when the rules were inadequate and some of our reviews were insufficiently exacting."

"This may be frustrating to some in the industry, but the additional rules and heightened scrutiny are completely appropriate and in the best interest of the nation."

The presidential commission that investigated the Deepwater Horizon disaster found that oil companies lost control of Gulf wells 79 times from 1996 to 2009, Bromwich noted.

"That's 79 near-misses -- 79 almost-Deepwater Horizons," Bromwich said.

It's impossible to reduce risk to zero, he said, "but we have to work constructively to try to manage those risks in a balanced way so we don't impose inappropriately high costs on industry and yet we do raise the bar on safety."

Bromwich added that he "would not have been comfortable" relaunching deep-water drilling after the spill without first strengthening offshore safety rules.

But Barbour argued that the government overreacted -- especially given a history of more than 31,000 oil wells drilled in the Gulf without devastating spills.

Barbour likened the deep-water drilling ban and subsequent safety regulations to outlawing left turns "because they're a little more dangerous."

U.S. economic needs and the urgency of domestic energy production outweigh the risk, Barbour said.

"The risk of one in 31,000 is worth taking when you're talking about something that is so important to the economy of the United States of America," he said.

Copyright (c) 2011, Houston Chronicle

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