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FRACKING POLITICS: Kamala Harris left “no question” during her presidential campaign that she favors banning fracking, and President Trump is leaving little doubt he will weaponize that stance now that the California Democrat is Joe Biden’s running mate.
“She is against fracking; she is against petroleum products,” Trump said of Harris during a press conference Tuesday. “I mean, how do you do that and go into Pennsylvania or Ohio or Oklahoma or the great state of Texas?”
Like clockwork, the Trump campaign is planning to run an ad targeting Harris’ fracking opposition in Pennsylvania, a key swing state and hub for the natural gas fracking boom.
The tricky thing for Trump and his campaign, however, is that they have already gone out of their way to associate Biden with banning fracking, despite his attempts in recent weeks to stress he won’t seek to curb it.
Trump has been running local television ads in Pennsylvania misleadingly accusing Biden of wanting to ban fracking, as Josh reported in a recent story focused on fossil fuel-heavy building trade unions in Pennsylvania.
Jim Cassidy, business manager of the Insulators Local No. 2 union just outside Pittsburgh, says his members’ views of Biden — and Trump — are already baked in, regardless of Harris’ addition to the ticket.
“All the picks he could’ve made with the women that he vetted, she was the best choice,” Cassidy, a Democrat, told Josh. “I don’t think it will do anything to sway our members one way or the other. Most of them have their minds made up.”
Cassidy, despite his misgivings about Biden’s clean energy agenda, plans to vote for Biden.
Indeed, there’s little evidence at this point that fracking will be a decisive issue in a race being defined by Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. A CBS poll this week found Biden leading Trump by 6 points in Pennsylvania, with voters almost evenly split, along party lines, on supporting or opposing fracking.
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WHAT HARRIS BRINGS TO THE BIDEN TEAM ON CLIMATE: Harris’ pick helps to further solidify support among the left-wing climate activists Biden has been trying to woo in recent weeks with more aggressive climate plans and a heightened focus on environmental justice.
Harris “is a true leader who recognizes that climate action does not exist without climate justice,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, which just recently endorsed Biden. He added the Biden-Harris duo is “the strongest environmental ticket ever.”
Just last week, Harris introduced the “Climate Equity Act” with Green New Deal author Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that would establish new administrative offices and positions to deal directly with the disproportionate effects pollution has on minority and low-income people. The bill would also require relevant legislation and regulations to undergo additional reviews to determine their effects on those people.
Harris could push Biden to go further in some areas: While Biden has wavered on whether he would eliminate the filibuster, Harris has said “decisively” that she supports doing so to ensure passage of aggressive climate legislation, Rapidan Energy Group noted in a report to clients Tuesday. (Harris, if elected VP, would also be president of the Senate and could be a deciding factor in the rare deadlocked vote.)
She could also prompt a more aggressive stance from Biden on prosecuting oil companies and other polluters, Rapidan Energy Group said. As attorney general of California, Harris secured a $14 million settlement with BP and helped negotiate the landmark more than $14 billion settlement with Volkswagen over its emissions cheating scandal. During her tenure, she was also reportedly probing whether ExxonMobil violated the law by lying to the public about climate change risks, but she never ended up filing a lawsuit.
ROSY OUTLOOKS FOR OIL DEMAND IN 2021: Two new analyses project oil demand to stay below normal for the rest of the year, but see consumption returning to near-regular levels by next year.
The Energy Information Administration forecast Tuesday in its short-term energy outlook that global demand for petroleum and liquid fuels will average 93.1 million billion barrels this year, down 8.1 million b/d from 2019.
But it sees demand picking up by 7.0 million b/d in 2021, to essentially its normal level of roughly 100 million barrels per day.
OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing nations, released a similar, but slightly less bullish outlook Wednesday. The group expects global oil demand to decline by 9.1 million b/d in 2020 to reach 90.6 million b/d, which is 0.1 million less b/d than it projected last month.
It says world oil demand will grow by 7.0 million b/d in 2021, an unchanged forecast from last month, hitting 97.6 million b/d in 2021.
“The forecast assumes that COVID-19 will largely be contained globally, with no further major disruptions to the global economy,” the OPEC forecast says, which seems like an optimistic view considering the well-documented uncertainties.
But: EIA did lower its forecast for U.S. oil production for this year and does not see a return to normal activity next year. The agency expects production to average 11.3 million b/d in 2020, down 370,000 b/d from its projection last month. EIA says production will average 11.1 million b/d in 2021, a ways off from 12.2 million b/d in 2019.
US OIL DEMAND ROSE LAST WEEK: In the U.S, EIA said in its separate Weekly Petroleum Status report Wednesday that oil demand last week increased to 19.4 million barrels per day from 17.9 million b/d the week prior.
Gasoline consumption rose to 8.9 million b/d after falling to 8.6 million b/d the week before.
Jet fuel demand remained down last week, and is still at less than half of normal levels.
Meanwhile, oil prices are on the upswing Wednesday as the EIA said U.S. crude oil inventories continued to decrease by 4.5 million barrels from the previous week to 514.1 million barrels, a sign of easing of the glut in the market.
CLEAN ENERGY JOBS RECOVERING VERY, VERY SLOWLY: The U.S. clean energy sector added back just 3,200 jobs in July, after the sector took huge employment hits earlier in the pandemic, leaving still more than half a million clean energy workers without jobs.
If the clean energy industry continued to recover at such a slow pace, it would take nearly 15 years to return to pre-pandemic employment levels, according to the latest analysis of monthly unemployment data from Environmental Entrepreneurs, BW Research, the American Council on Renewable Energy, and E4TheFuture.
Recovery has “pretty broadly stalled out” after the clean energy sector saw more than 100,000 jobs added back in June, said Phil Jordan, BW Research’s vice president. The lack of business relief and “truly stimulating” recovery packages, such as infrastructure legislation, is “problematic” for the clean energy sector, he told Abby.
A lot depends on what Congress and the virus do: “If we were to have a significant surge in the fall, it’s very likely we would see job losses in the sector,” Jordan said. A comprehensive recovery package with an eye to clean energy, as well as tax credit relief, on the other hand, could help put the sector back on track, he added.
Small businesses are taking a particularly hard hit: The clean energy sector is full of small businesses, from wind and solar developers to energy efficiency installers, that are typically growth engines for the economy, Jordan said.
“Most small business owners’ long-term planning is a couple of quarters,” Jordan said. “They can’t weather months and months and years of down economics the way that maybe some larger corporations can.”
DOE’S NO. 2 TO VISIT PETROCHEMICAL PLANT IN SWING STATE: Deputy Energy Secretary Mark Menezes, fresh off being confirmed by the Senate, is traveling to Eastern Ohio Thursday to tour a petrochemical complex being developed there.
The visit is the latest swing state stop for Trump administration officials in recent weeks, who are trying to demonstrate support for union jobs in the oil and gas industry. Also, Thursday, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler will visit the Pittsburgh area, in the heart of the Marcellus Shale, to announce the administration’s rescission of Obama-era methane limits.
BERNHARDT GETS HEAD START ON CONSERVATION BILL: Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Tuesday that he began taking steps to implement the Great American Outdoors Act, the bipartisan conservation bill signed by Trump last week.
Bernhardt said he created a task force to develop a strategy that ensures a timely project proposal and review process. The task force will identify an initial list of deferred maintenance projects that can be implemented in fiscal year 2021.
The conservation law provides $900 million annually in full and permanent federal funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which provides money to federal, state, and local governments for buying land and waters to improve national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public areas. It also creates a fund of billions of dollars to pay for a massive maintenance backlog in national parks and other federal lands.
2019 BREAKS MORE CLIMATE RECORDS: The year was among the three hottest on record, and greenhouse gas levels were their highest on record during 2019, according to a new international report released Wednesday and led by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Also in 2019, sea levels were highest on record, and the Arctic and Antarctic regions nearly broke warming records, according to the report, to which more than 520 scientists from more than 60 countries contributed. The Arctic saw its second highest surface air temperature in 2019, and the Antarctic experienced its second warmest year on record.
NORTH CAROLINA BLOCKS MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE EXPANSION: North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality on Tuesday denied a permit under Clean Water Act section 401 for the Mountain Valley pipeline’s 70-mile expansion into the state, citing in part uncertainty that the main pipeline project will be completed.
Several of the permits for the Mountain Valley pipeline, a 301-mile project that would carry natural gas from West Virginia through to Virginia, are under legal scrutiny. The North Carolina expansion of the pipeline would supply gas to Dominion Energy, which provides gas to 27 counties in the state.
North Carolina officials have never really been on board with the expansion: “This has always been an unnecessary project that poses unnecessary risks to our environment and given the uncertain future of the MVP Mainline, North Carolinians should not be exposed to the risk of another incomplete pipeline project,” DEQ Secretary Michael Regan said in a statement. “North Carolina’s clean energy future is not dependent on adding more natural gas infrastructure.”
The permit denial comes just one month after Dominion Energy and Duke Energy abandoned the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline, which was caught up in legal quagmires.
WIND SUPPORT IS BIPARTISAN: The American Wind Energy Association announced its “wind champion awards” on Wednesday, recognizing lawmakers of both parties for their support of an industry that is prominent in red states, but also growing offshore in eastern Democratic states.
Among those recognized are: Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Tina Smith of Minnesota, Republican senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, John Thune of South Dakota and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko of New York, and Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Darin LaHood of Illinois.
The wind energy group also recognized a handful of governors from both parties.
The Rundown
Washington Post Quoting ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ judge strikes down Trump administration rollback of law protecting birds
CNN Watchdog finds documents withheld during Interior secretary confirmation process
Reuters European banks face indigenous calls to end Amazon oil trade
Houston Chronicle Railroad Commission candidate at center of lawsuit over troubled oil and gas waste disposal site
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WEDNESDAY | AUG 12
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