FERC2

AGE OF TRUMP

TRENT MORSE PAL

see Pembina Coos

5 26

laura-v-swett-2838997

[Chairman Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Oct 2025 - Present · 8 mos](https://www.linkedin.com/company/15368/)

[Counsel Vinson & Elkins

Feb 2023 - Oct 2025 · 2 yrs 9 mos

Washington, District of Columbia, United States](https://www.linkedin.com/company/166808/)

[Of Counsel Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP · Full-time

Sep 2022 - Feb 2023 · 6 mos

Washington, District of Columbia, United States](https://www.linkedin.com/company/6627/)

[Of Counsel Steptoe & Johnson LLP · Full-time

May 2019 - Sep 2022 · 3 yrs 5 mos

Washington D.C.](https://www.linkedin.com/company/10756/)

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 5 yrs 1 mo

[Senior Legal and Policy Advisor to Commissioner Bernard L. McNamee 2018 - 2019 · 1 yr

Washington, D.C.](https://www.linkedin.com/company/15368/)

Advise the Commissioner on legal and policy issues pertaining to electric markets and oil.

[Senior Legal and Policy Advisor to Chairman Kevin J. McIntyre 2017 - 2018 · 1 yr

Washington DC-Baltimore Area](https://www.linkedin.com/company/15368/)

Advise Chairman and Commission on matters related to cyber security, bulk power system reliability, oil, LNG, enforcement/market manipulation, MISO and SPP matters.

[Attorney Advisor, Division of Investigations, Office of Enforcement Jan 2014 - Dec 2017 · 4 yrs

888 First St. NE, Washington, D.C.](https://www.linkedin.com/company/15368/)

Investigate and litigate alleged energy market manipulation and tariff violations; Enforcement Liaison to California Independent System Operator; drafted 2014 Annual Report on Enforcement.

[Energy Associate Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

2011 - 2014 · 3 yrs

Washington D.C.](https://www.linkedin.com/company/5734/)

Assist with representation of electric utilities and corporations who conduct business involving radioactive materials licenses on a variety of regulatory and litigation matters before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Labor; advise clients on licensing and enforcement proceedings, nuclear safety and environmental regulatory compliance, and internal corporate investigation associated with NRC and DOL whistleblower/employment discrimination claims; represent nuclear utilities in all aspects of applications to renew existing nuclear power plant operating licenses and subsequent associated litigation; draft responses to international requests for proposals associated with new nuclear reactor construction, regulation, development, and financing; represent pro bono clients on matters including child custody and veterans affairs.

[Division of Investigations, Office of Enforcement Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Aug 2010 - Oct 2011 · 1 yr 3 mos

Washington DC-Baltimore Area](https://www.linkedin.com/company/15368/)

Assisted with many stages of enforcement investigations, from preliminary non-public through active settlement negotiations involving violations of FERC’s policies and regulations, including alleged manipulation of natural gas and futures markets; wrote memoranda to support policy determinations; formulated legal research regarding regulation of energy markets and associated Commission precedent, legislative history, and policy; participated in division-wide strategic sessions and communications.

[Congressional Legislative Correspondent, Congressman Frank Wolf (VA-10) U.S. House of Representatives

2007 - 2009 · 2 yrs

Washington DC-Baltimore Area](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3921/)

Initiated co-sponsorship and tracking of bills, supporting senior legislative staff with meetings and research on: energy, environment, defense, agriculture, healthcare and education issues; authored floor statements and correspondence to federal agencies, other members, and constituents; Mastered Capitol Correspond constituent-tracking software; managed Intern and Congressional Page Program; participated in and helped prepare for district-wide initiatives, including teletown hall conferences.

[Legislative Intern, Rob Bell (VA-58) Virginia House of Delegates

Aug 2006 - May 2007 · 10 mos

Charlottesvile/Richmond, VA](https://www.linkedin.com/company/980465/)

[Congressional Intern, Congressman Rob Simmons (CT) U.S. House of Representatives

May 2006 - Aug 2006 · 4 mos

Washington DC-Baltimore Area](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3921/)

mckenna-skeeters-356520144

## McKenna Skeeters

Chief of Staff, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Contact info

Experience

[Chief of Staff Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Oct 2025 - Present · 8 mos](https://www.linkedin.com/company/15368/)

[Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel Executive Office of the President

Jan 2025 - Oct 2025 · 10 mos

Washington, District of Columbia, United States](https://www.linkedin.com/company/11004574/)

[Deputy Director of External Affairs 2024 Republican National Convention

Mar 2023 - Jan 2025 · 1 yr 11 mos

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States](https://www.linkedin.com/company/98746672/)

Republican National Committee 4 yrs 10 mos

Midwest Finance Director Feb 2021 - Feb 2023 · 2 yrs 1 mo
South Finance Deputy Director Jan 2019 - Feb 2021 · 2 yrs 2 mos
[South Regional Finance Coordinator May 2018 - Jan 2019 · 9 mos

Washington, District Of Columbia](https://www.linkedin.com/company/12189/)

Education

[The University of Texas at Austin Bachelor's degree, International Relations and Global Studies

2014 – 2018](https://www.linkedin.com/school/3162/)

[Sciences Po International Relations and National Security Studies

2016 – 2016](https://www.linkedin.com/school/203652/)

Interests

Biden:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21032022/ferc-natural-gas-pipeline-emissions/

doing EJ now?!

icn 1120

trump Demoted FERC Chairman Chatterjee After He Expressed Support for Carbon Pricing

BY: DAN GEARINO

“It was totally worth it and I would do it again,” said Chatterjee, who had been a steadfast supporter of fossil fuels..

ipaa conf 2019 while at FERC?!

wheeler (NERO)

amy cook

kudlow

infrastructure Challenges MODERATOR | Kurt Krieger, Steptoe & Johnson PLLC SPEAKER

Chairman Neil Chatterjee Chairman, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee was nominated to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May 2017 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August 2017. He served as Chairman from August 2017 to December 2017, and was again named Chairman on October 24, 2018. Prior to joining the Commission, he was energy policy advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

https://www.ipaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-IPAA-90th-Annual-Meeting-Schedule_members.pdf

420 drilled

fERC Fast-Tracks Requests for Regulatory ReliefWith _{a stated goal of}_ ensuring the "reliability of the nation's energy infrastructure" during the COVID-19 emergency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has shortened the review period for requests and petitions to waive some regulations or extend deadlines for meeting them. FERC regulates the nation's electricity and natural gas suppliers, as well as oil pipelines.Status: Effective April 7, 2020.

2 XO by trump allows override of local and STATE regs?! FERC assist? chatterje?

1219 icn

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19122019/ferc-pjm-grid-coal-subsidy-ruling-renewable-energy-nuclear-illinois-pennsylvania-climate-change

Federal energy regulators issued an order Thursday that likely will tilt the market to favor coal and natural gas power plants in the nation's largest power grid region, stretching from New Jersey to Illinois.

Critics say that it effectively creates a new subsidy to prop up uneconomical fossil fuel plants and that it will hurt renewable energy growth and, ultimately, consumers.

The new rules, approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, are designed to counteract state subsidies that support the growth of renewable energy and use of nuclear power. The rules involve what are known as "capacity markets," where power plants bid to provide electricity to the grid. The change would require higher minimum bids for power plants that receive such subsidies, giving fossil fuel plants an advantage.

the FERC order, passed 2-1, is a response to complaints from operators of coal and natural gas power plants who say that state subsidies have led to unfair competition in the grid region managed by PJM Interconnection.

Richard Glick, the panel's lone Democrat, cast the dissenting vote and said during the commission meeting that his Republican colleagues were trying to "stunt transition to a clean energy future that states are pursuing and consumers are pursuing."

In his written dissent, he called the order "illegal, illogical and truly bad public policy."

Environmental groups and clean energy advocates have long criticized PJM for rules that provide an economic lifeline to old fossil fuel plants, which produce greenhouse gases that drive climate change.

"Today's order erects a major new barrier to clean energy, undercutting efforts by states to slash pollution and address climate change," Tom Rutigliano, a senior advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council's Sustainable FERC Project, said in a statement. "Federal regulators are forcing customers to pay for dirty power they don't want or need."

Expect Court Challenges

The Trump administration has taken other high-profile steps to try to boost the coal industry, but many of them are tied up in legal challenges. The new FERC order accomplishes many of the same goals.

But FERC's action also is likely heading to court, where opponents will argue that the regulator has overstepped its authority and is now dictating state policy.

One issue going forward is that the order has a broad definition of "subsidy," saying this includes direct or indirect payments, concessions and rebates, among other things. Glick said the definition is so broad that it may end up affecting many more power plants than the other commissioners intended.

In the meantime, PJM has 90 days to say how it will implement the rules, and power plant operators will need to figure out what this means for them.

The vote on Thursday follows years of debate as some power plant operators have argued that state subsidies for renewable energy and nuclear had distorted the competitive balance with other power sources.

Calpine, a Houston-based power producer, was one of several companies that filed a complaint with FERC in 2016, which opened the docket that led to Thursday's order.

FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee, a former energy policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the result will be fairer competition.

"In my view, the choice we have before us is whether or not we allow increasing state subsidies to undermine the competitive capacity market," he said. "The majority today says no."

'The Major Loser Here Is Consumers'

Illinois's legislature in 2016 approved subsidies for two nuclear plants along with policies and programs to promote renewable energy and energy conservation. Other states followed with their own legislation to help nuclear plants, often accompanied with new targets and funding for renewable energy.

Ohio was an exception this year, passing a measure to subsidize two coal-fired power plants along with aid for nuclear and some money that could be used for solar development.

Those state programs are paid for by consumers through their utility bills. And, the FERC order—in response to the state programs—will lead to an increase in charges that utilities pay to PJM.

Ultimately, consumers will pay several times over, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

"The major loser here is consumers," he said.

Glick pointed to an estimate from a team of his advisers that puts the cost of the new rule at about $2.4 billion per year.

How It Changes PJM's Capacity Market

PJM, based in the Philadelphia suburbs, is a quasi-governmental organization that manages the flow of electricity in parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia.

With its status as the largest grid operator in the country, PJM often is at the center of controversy. Much of the conflict in recent years—including in this FERC case—has been tied to an annual auction in which power plant owners compete against each other to sell contracts to PJM for something called "capacity."

Capacity, at the regional scale, is how much power can be generated if every power plant is operating. A grid operator needs assurance that it will have enough capacity available to handle times of highest demand, which usually happens on the hottest days of summer. The capacity auction sets the price that power plant owners are paid for being contractually obligated to be available when called upon by PJM.

For those plants whose bids are low enough to be selected, PJM's system provides additional income that may be the difference between staying open and needing to close.

In recent years, the number of power plants and amount of capacity in the market has grown substantially as developers have built new natural gas plants, wind farms and solar arrays. The result is many more plants competing in the capacity auction, which increases the chances that some older plants will not be selected.

The new FERC rule says that subsidized resources will need to increase their bids in the auction, with the amounts specified in a formula in the rule. This makes it easier for other bidders to compete.

Opponents of this approach see it as hypocrisy that FERC is aiming to counteract subsidies while failing to recognize all the ways that old fossil fuel plants get government help.

"PJM is pretending there aren't subsidies in the markets they run, but the irony is they're everywhere," said Mike Jacobs, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement. "Now, FERC is rounding up the usual suspects—wind and solar power—but are ignoring the obvious ones under their nose."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

COAL

CLEAN ENERGY

REGULATION

Two coal companies just became even more influential over the Trump administration.

A new report reveals that Murray Energy andAlliance Resource Partners successfully lobbied to have a conservative nominee to the government’s energy regulator thrown out — simply because he opposed a plan to force taxpayers to bail out money-losing coal plants.

As Politico reported, thetwo coal companies — owned by two major Republican donors and Trump allies, Bob Murray and Joe Craft — teamed up with Energy Secretary Rick Perry to pressure the White House to drop the nomination of David Hill to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Hill had served as the Energy Department’s general counsel under President George W. Bush.

What was Hill’s undoing? He had previously said that Perry’s costly plan to raise consumer energy bills in order to subsidize uneconomic coal plants was “absolutely not the solution."

Last January, FERC unanimously rejected the coal bailout proposal.

Rick Perry’s plan to make taxpayers bail out coal and nuclear rejected by federal agency

Since then, Perry and Big Coal have been working overtime to stack FERC, which oversees the U.S. grid and regulates interstate electricity transmission, with cronies who will force Americans to buy costly coal and nuclear power. This vision would amount to a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout at the expense of cheaper renewable sources and natural gas.

The revelation also serves to further cement the relationship between the coal industry and the Trump administration. Not only has President Donald Trump tapped Craft’s wife as the next U.N. ambassador but under former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, Craft often met with the agency and he even gave Pruitt basketball tickets. Pruitt is reportedly now consulting for Craft’s coal company.

Meanwhile, Murray is well-known for his wish list of policy demands delivered during Trump’s first year in office; current EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler also used to lobby on behalf of Murray Energy.

All of this is to say that we now have the staggering hypocrisy of a Republican administration seeking to force American ratepayers to pay billions of dollars a year more in energy bills to prop up dirty energy — even as Trump and GOP leaders have been characterizing Democratic efforts to speed up clean energy deployment to save a livable climate as “socialism.”

Wyoming’s coal plants are so unprofitable Republicans turned to a ‘socialist program’ to save them

Indeed, when FERC killed Perry’s plan last year, they explained it would be unduly discriminatory against cheaper renewable energy sources. As Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur explained at the time in a concurring opinion, subsidizing the electricity dinosaurs was not FERC’s job: “I believe the Commission should continue to focus its efforts not on slowing the transition from the past but on easing the transition to the future.”

But in the past year, Big Coal has already succeeded in replacing one anti-bailout FERC commissioner, Robert Powelson, with a pro-coal crony, Bernard McNamee.

Former FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre’s untimely death in January means Perry and the coal industry will have a second pro-bailout commissioner if they can keep thwarting candidates who are more supportive of the cheap, clean energy of the future rather than the costly, dirty energy sources of the past. Those in favor of forcing taxpayers to prop up the coal industry would need only one more vote on FERC to pass Perry’s plan.

So it still remains possible that the Trump administration will be able to achieve its dream of a centrally-planned economy where consumers are forced to pay billions to keep coal plants running and spewing their toxic and climate-destroying pollution.

ref

https://thinkprogress.org/ferc-rejects-rick-perry-coal-bailout-7d361281760d/

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) unanimously rejected Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to raise consumer energy bills in order to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants — a major blow to the Trump administration’s effort to slow the growth of solar and wind power.

Back in September, Perry asked FERC, which oversees the U.S. grid and regulates interstate electricity transmission, to adopt a new federal rule that would require Americans to buy more coal and nuclear power, a taxpayer bailout at the expense of cheaper renewable sources (and natural gas).

To make the case for his new rule, Perry had to fabricate an economic threat to U.S. grid reliability from cheap renewables and then propose a rule to account for the supposedly undervalued reliability benefit of coal and nuclear power. That meant Perry also had to ignore his own grid study, which had made clear renewables were not a threat to power reliability.

Oops: Rick Perry may have stumbled upon the solution to going 100 percent renewable]

**But FERC, by a vote of 5-0 on Monday, didn’t buy that logic. The unanimous vote is especially notable since**3 of the 5 commissioners are Trump appointees, including the new chair.

The rule-making explains all of the measures FERC has been taking to maintain grid reliability — while also keeping electricity prices low through market competition. It directly rejects the notion that power prices needed to be tweaked to reward coal and nuclear, saying the Proposed Rule did not satisfy “the threshold statutory requirement of demonstrating” that the grid operators’ current pricing schemes “are unjust and unreasonable.”

FERC goes even further, slapping down the core of Perry’s argument, namely that somehow cheap renewables (and natural gas) are forcing essential coal and nuclear plants to be shut down. They note that “the extensive comments submitted” by the grid operators “do not point to any past or planned generator retirements that may be a threat to grid resilience.”

The commissioners add, “It also has not been shown that the remedy in the Proposed Rule would not be unduly discriminatory or preferential.” If you remove the double negative, they are saying that Perry’s plan would be unduly discriminatory or preferential, which, of course, was the whole point of the plan.

FERC did announce it would start a new proceeding to “take additional steps to explore resilience issues” in the bulk grid system.

Commissioner LaFleur, in a concurring opinion, said that while grid reliability has always been his top priority, subsidizing the electricity dinosaurs was not the FERC’s job: “I believe the Commission should continue to focus its efforts not on slowing the transition from the past but on easing the transition to the future.”

https://www.ecowatch.com/mcnamee-climate-denier-ferc-2622689454.html

many lnx

'Conceivably the Worst': Groups, Lawmakers Blast Confirmation of Climate Denier to FERC

Bernard McNamee, a climate change denier who helped write the Trump administration's failed coal and nuclear bailout plan, was confirmed Thursday as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The Senate approved the nominee on a straight party-line vote of 50-49 after Sen. JoeManchin, the pro-coal Democrat of West Virginia, withdrew his support due to his concerns about McNamee's stance on climate change.

President Trump's nomination of the fossil fuel lawyer as one of the FERC's five commissioners was strongly opposed by environmentalists, public health groups and elected leaders.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Committee on Environment, noted McNamee's deep ties to the Koch brothers and called his appointment "conceivably the worst" out of Trump's energy appointments.

In a February video posted by Utility Dive, McNamee criticized renewable energy and environmental groups, called carbon dioxide "not a real pollutant" and described fossil fuels as "key to our way of life." He was speaking for the Koch-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation where he worked at the time.

Also during his speech, he said he told his son to "just deny" climate science in school. "I don't care if you get an 'F,'" he said.

As the executive director of the Office of Policy with the Department of Energy, McNamee was the architect of Energy Secretary Rick Perry's $34 billion coal and nuclear bailout proposal that was unanimously rejected by FERC last January. He has hesitated to recuse himself on issues related to the coal bailout scheme he engineered, the Sierra Club noted.

"At a time when consumers, businesses and forward-thinking utilities are embracing the clean energy revolution, we don't need a FERC commissioner who endorses the Trump administration's schemes to keep the dying coal and nuclear industries on life support," Kenneth Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said in a press release sent to EcoWatch.

FERC has historically been an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil but has moved more partisan thanks to Trump. McNamee, who will fill a seat vacated by Robert Powelson, has boosted FERC's partisan split to 3-2 in favor of Republicans.

"The Senate's reckless decision to place Bernard 'Coal Bailout' McNamee on FERC is a major threat to the Commission's independence and integrity," said Mary Anne Hitt, senior director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign in a press release. "From this day forward we will do everything we can to guarantee that he follows the law, treats clean energy sources fairly, and recuses himself from all matters pertaining to his failed coal bailout scheme. It's essential that we have a fair and lawful FERC moving forward."

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had only nice words to say about McNamee.

"This is an impressive nominee who has the right qualifications for this important job," said McConnell prior to a preliminary vote Wednesday, according to Natural Gas Intel. "In his career as a well-regarded lawyer on energy issues, he's represented clients and gained expertise all across the energy sector."

Industry groups also applauded McNamee's confirmation.

"He brings a wealth of legal and energy policy experience to the Commission, along with an appreciation of the benefits of competitive markets," said Natural Gas Supply Association CEO Dena Wiggins, according to Natural Gas Intel. "It's important for FERC's work to continue and that works best with a commissioner in every seat."

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Bob Murray drafted 6 orders on coal, climate for Trump ›

3 Reasons Bernard McNamee Is a Horrible Choice for FERC ›

Victims of Hurricane Michael are represented by climate deniers ... ›

There's No Power Grid Emergency Requiring a Coal Bailout ... ›

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/18/congressman-clay-higgens-gas-industry-three-percenters

Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana arrived at this year's Expanding Global Gas Infrastructure seminar with a message.

“Welcome to the war for the future of our planet,” Higgins said to the gathered officials from liquefied natural gas (LNG) firms and other fossil fuel companies.

“My role as your representative is to be not just your ally,” Higgins added, “but your warrior. Please allow the service of my office to represent the point of the spear that you wield. We'll knock down every bureaucratic wall. We'll kick down every federal barrier. We'll work with you. We'll work for you.”

Higgins, who represents Louisiana’s Third District in the U.S. House of Representatives, offered up a very specific idea of where the LNG industry, which exports gas from wells drilled and fracked in the U.S. to other countries, should fit into that planetary war.

“Some of you know, some of you perhaps do not, that the Revolutionary soldiers that gave birth to this nation, represented only three percent of the populace, the colonists,” he said. “Some of us refer to ourselves as 'Three Percenters.'”

“You, ladies and gentlemen, are the Three Percenters of the modern era,” he continued, “where wars are fought with monies and strategies and energy.”

He asked the crowd to “harken back to the courage and the faith represented by the three percent that you now join.”

What Higgins didn’t mention during his talk is that the Three Percenter ideology (sometimes written as 3%er or III%er) has its roots in a loosely organized right-wing militia movement with a troubling history of violent attacks and attracting white supremacists to its ranks.

The Three Percenter Movement and Its Ties to White Supremacy and Violence

The Three Percenter movement was founded in 2008, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which notes that claim that three percent of American colonists took up arms is “disputed” by scholars and historians.

Because the network is loosely organized, Three Percenter groups represent a range of beliefs which are at times contradictory. Some Three Percenter organizations appear to focus heavily on gun rights. Some have said they are preparing for civil war while others describe themselves as “true patriots” or say they’re “very pro-government, so long as the government abides by the Constitution.”

Some Three Percenter groups have publicly disavowed racist ideology, while an Alberta-based chapter has been labeled Canada’s “most dangerous” extremist group and a Georgia-based branch is considered an “anti-Muslim hate group,” according to CBS News.

Nationwide, Three Percenter adherents have engaged in self-appointed, heavily armed “border patrols,” attempted to detonate a car bomb outside a bank in Oklahoma City last year, and bombed a mosque in Minnesota in March.

Three Percenters also provided self-appointed “security,” via an armed presence, during the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.

Parts of the Three Percenter network sought to distance themselves from white supremacists following the deaths in Charlottesville last year. The Three Percenters National Council issued a “stand down” order, writing that while their group would “support and defend everyone's right to free speech, we will not align ourselves with any type of racist group.”

It’s not clear whether Rep. Higgins counts himself as a member of any particular Three Percenter chapter or organization. A spokesperson for Higgins had not replied to questions from DeSmog as of publication time. But it’s not the first time Higgins has been connected to the Three Percenter movement.

In May, Higgins drew scrutiny over t-shirts with what appeared to be a Three Percenter logo on the back. The shirts were distributed to participants in the “Redemption Ride,” a motorcycle and jeep ride featuring Higgins and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Registration payments were processed online as individual donations to Higgins’ congressional campaign.

Three Percenter logos commonly feature the roman numeral three surrounded by a circle of thirteen stars.

Higgins, a former police officer, resigned from the Opelousas, Louisiana, police department in 2007 while facing disciplinary action for “unnecessary force on a subject” and making “false statements during an internal investigation.”

He went on to work for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s office, but, as the Washington Post reported, “resigned after he appeared in a viral video calling a group of predominantly black gang members ‘thugs,’ ‘heathens,’ and ‘animals.’”

Rep. Higgins referenced his role in law enforcement — but not the reasons he’d resigned — during his talk to the gas exporting industry, held in Washington, D.C. on March 22. “Before I became a Congressman, I was a street cop, for twelve years,” he said. “It was a hell of a demotion from Captain to Congressman, I would like you to know. But I have embraced this path because I love my country and I serve my fellow man.”

Despite his law enforcement background and current role as a lawmaker, Rep. Higgins — who still refers to himself online as “Captain” Higgins— seemed to ignore the distinction between being suspected of wrongdoing and being guilty, and to connect being Muslim to crimes meriting death, when he wrote in a June 2017 Facebook post:

“Not a single radicalized Islamicsuspect should be granted any measure of quarter.Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”

He later told the Washington Post that he didn’t expect those comments to be controversial and that he stood by what he wrote.

The following month, Higgins released in which he narrated his walk through the Auschwitz-Berkenau Memorial and Museum, including inside the Auschwitz gas chambers — despite signs at the entrance requesting that visitors maintain silence in that building. The video concludes with an image of Higgins above the logo for his congressional campaign website.

The video drew international condemnation, including from the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, which called the video a “global disgrace.” Higgins subsequently issued an apology and retracted the video.

Fossil Fuel Industry Funds Higgins

Higgins’ record has not appeared to deter some companies in the gas industry from funding his political campaign.

Tellurian, Inc. plans to begin construction on the Driftwood LNG export terminal, sited in Higgins’ district, next year. The Driftwood terminal will have the capacity to export 3.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from the Gulf Coast, fed by pipelines connecting the terminal to the Permian and Haynesvilles shales in Texas and Louisiana.

In 2018, Higgins was Tellurian’s second biggest recipient of political contributions in the House of Representatives, just after Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, according to The Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org.

In April, Higgins signed onto a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), urging the commission to “review the [Driftwood LNG project’s] application as expeditiously as possible” and asserting that “the project enjoys substantial community and state support.”

“We're going to bring pressure at every opportunity,” Higgins said in a public statement accompanying that letter.

All told, Higgins received $51,850 from the oil and gas industry from 2017 to 2018, making the industry Higgins’ second largest source of campaign contributions after Leadership PACs, or political action committees run by politicians.

On his website, Higgins strikes a different tone than he did in his talk to the industry, when he pledged to be “not just your ally but your warrior” and to “kick down every federal barrier.”

“While unnecessary regulations will be removed,” his issues page says, “it is important that a balanced approach is taken that results in real economic benefits but also considers environmental impacts.”

Higgins has expressed doubts in climate science, telling PBS News Hour in August 2017: “Climate change has always happened, that's my argument, well before, you know, we had four-wheel drive trucks and boats and Suburbans rolling around or, you know, large industrial plants and whatnot.”

(NASA's website on the causes of climate change points out that “In its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet.”)

Paving the Path for LNG Exports

Last year, Higgins introduced a bill that would streamline the approval process for LNG export projects.

“While the United States has a strong and transparent regulatory process for the approval of LNG export terminals, there is no question that this process is expensive and time-consuming,” LNG Allies, the organization that sponsored the seminar where Higgins made his comments about the Three Percenters, said in a July 2017 statement commending Higgins and a Senate sponsor of the bill. “Thus, LNG Allies supports measures — such as the LNG Now Act — that would lessen the time and expense of securing LNG project authorizations.”

In September, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moved the Driftwood project one step further along by releasing an Environmental Impact Statement for the project, Higgins praised the commission. “Under President Trump’s leadership, FERC has demonstrated that it is determined to work past the bureaucratic barriers that have delayed project approvals,” Higgins said in a press release.

During the industry seminar in March, Higgins made his stance on exports of American fossil fuels clear.

“LNG exports must grow,” Higgins said. “The sun should not set upon the expansion of LNG.”

And he again sought to connect the gas industry to the Three Percenters.

“Because together, as the Three Percenters, we represent everything that's right about this world,” he told the industry representatives, “and we stand against everything that's wrong.”

Some of his listeners appeared receptive to Higgins’ message.

“I think we're all Three Percenters now, aren't we?” a panel moderator said as the Congressman from Louisiana left the microphone, to a smattering of applause.

wtf?

https://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/news/2018-10/two-offices-in-energy-management-nominated/

Two nominees have been assigned by President Trump for positions regarding energy.

Bernard McNamee has been nominated to become a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In his current role, McNamee is the Executive Director of the Office of Policy for the U.S. Department of Energy. He has a long history in dealing with Energy-related services, including practicing energy law.

Rita Baranwal has been nominated by the President to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy at the Department of Energy. In her current position, she holds the title of Director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy.

PHONE: 866-433-7729

FAX: 480-347-2691

MAILING: P.O. Box 4140

Scottsdale, AZ 85261

EMAIL: ppt-info@presidentialprayerteam.org

million$

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3 Reasons Bernard McNamee Is a Horrible Choice for FERC

By Sam Gomberg

President Trump's nomination of Bernard McNamee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) may not grab a lot of headlines but make no mistake—it's a blatant (and oft repeated) move by the Trump administration to pollute an independent regulatory body with political operatives intent on carrying out his crony capitalism. A hearing to consider McNamee's nomination is already set for Tuesday, October 16th—a clear sign that Trump's political allies are trying to ram through his appointment without thoughtful consideration. But here's three reasons McNamee is a horrible choice to be a FERC commissioner and why his potential confirmation should worry all of us.

But first, what is "FERC"?

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – or "FERC" – is an independent federal regulatory body that is organized as part of the Department of Energy and that oversees much of our modern energy infrastructure. From pipelines, to hydroelectric dams, to our interstate transmission system and wholesale electricity markets, FERC is tasked with ensuring "reliable, efficient and sustainable energy services at a reasonable cost". To put it simply: FERC's decisions impact our wallets, our environment, and our climate.

Now that we understand why it's important who our next FERC commissioner is, here are three reasons why Bernard McNamee is the wrong man for the job:

1. McNamee has serious conflicts of interest.

President Trump and the Department of Energy led by Rick Perry have been trying to bailout their buddies in the coal industry since they got to D.C. In his positions with the DOE, McNamee helped craft a previous proposal to provide subsidies to uneconomic coal plants. That proposal was unanimously rejected by FERC in January. We also know that DOE is still working to find the legal authority to order subsidies – with cost estimates of $34 billion or more – be paid to these same plants.

McNamee almost certainly had a role in crafting this latest proposal that is opposed by nearly everyone except the coal industry. To date he has not divulged exactly what role he's played, who he's worked with, or what communications he's had with FERC about the upcoming proposal. Working to craft a bailout proposal for the coal industry would create a serious conflict of interest if he were to then be appointed to FERC that would ultimately vote on the proposal.

Imagine if you were accused of a crime and, once the prosecutor had made his closing arguments, he was appointed to be the judge in your case. That is akin to what we're now facing with McNamee's potential appointment to FERC. Free and fair electricity markets, low-cost electricity, and our clean energy future are at stake.

2. He's horribly unqualified.

Bernard McNamee has no experience in the utility or natural gas utility industries and has no experience as a regulator of these industries. He was appointed to the Department of Energy (DOE) by President Trump, and before that worked for a conservative think tank in Texas and was an advisor to Senator Ted Cruz and the Texas Attorney General.

3. He would destroy FERC's standing as an independent regulatory body.

FERC has a long history of steering clear of the political fray, particularly in its responsibility to protect free and fair energy markets. In fact, FERC is specifically designed to be independent from political influence so that it can remain objective. To protect against undue influence at the Commission, no more than three of the five commissioners can be from the same political party, FERC is not funded by taxpayer dollars (and therefore not subject to appropriations battles), and FERC decisions are not reviewed in advance by the President or Congress.

This independence has already been thrown into question by FERC's chief of staff, Anthony Pugliese – another unqualified political operative inserted at FERC by President Trump. The appointment of McNamee to be a FERC commissioner would double down on Trump's efforts to make FERC a pawn to his political agenda. Everyone should be concerned about the erosion of independent decision making and the precedent that would set.

Before any hearing is scheduled on his nomination, a full accounting of his activities since joining the DOE, including his communications with the coal industry and his role in the ongoing effort to bailout uneconomic coal plants, should be made public. Then it's up to the Senate to ask serious questions about how he plans to fulfill his duties at FERC given his lack of qualification and his apparent conflicts of interest. If we can't get acceptable answers to these questions, then it's painfully clear that McNamee has no place at FERC.

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One of the Most Important Agencies You've Never Heard of Is Being Taken Over by Trump

By Kim Smaczniak

Most Americans probably don't know that an independent—and up to now nonpartisan—government agency has played a key role in our nation's transition to cleaner energy technologies. Under the radar and hidden beneath a layer of technical jargon, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has shepherded changes to electricity market rules that have gradually allowed the superior economics of clean energy technologies to out-compete clunky, old fossil fueled power plants. And it has done this for decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Now the Trump administration is poised to tip FERC's balance by appointing a fossil fuel advocate as one of five commissioners—putting all that bipartisan clean energy progress under threat. However, because few people have heard of the important work done by this small, technocratic agency, this potential appointment could move forward without much opposition. This has to change. A healthy, livable climate depends on it.

Bernard McNamee is the Trump administration's pick to fill Robert Powelson's recently vacated seat on FERC. McNamee currently leads the Office of Policy at the Department of Energy, where he helped to roll out Energy Sec. Rick Perry's failed attempt to bail out the coal and nuclear industries.

His resume reads like a who's who in the fossil fuel industry and the far-right political crowd.

McNamee has deep ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Koch-funded organization that has provided a pipeline of Trump nominees, including the former nominee to the Council For Environmental Quality that even Republicans agreed was unqualified for the job. It was there that McNamee spearheaded "Life: Powered," a project launched by the group in 2015 "to combat the Obama-era Clean Power Plan," according to TPPF's 2017 annual report. He also served as a senior advisor and counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). This past Earth Day, he authored a love letter to fossil fuels that implored Americans to remember how "the responsible use of America's abundant resources of natural gas, oil and coal have dramatically improved the human condition."

By all accounts, he's decidedly political and unabashedly an advocate for dirty energy.

Up to this juncture, FERC's work to keep the grid running at fair rates hasn't been a "red" or "blue" issue. Although FERC's five commissioners are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, no more than three of its commissioners may belong to the same political party in order to maintain its tradition of careful bipartisanship. Under this bipartisan approach, clean energy progress has marched forward: Year after year, regional grids have hit higher and higher proportions of renewable energy. FERC has eliminated barriers to new energy technologies whether chaired by a "D" or an "R." Even under the initial slate of Trump appointees, FERC unanimously rejected the Trump coal bailout.

That bipartisan tradition now appears to be under threat.

If McNamee were confirmed as a FERC commissioner, Trump would gain a decisive vote on a commission that's currently split 2-2. With critical matters looming ahead on FERC's agenda, this is dangerous. As executive director of the Office of Policy at the Department of Energy, McNamee played a central role in an attempt to undermine wholesale energy markets for the benefit of the coal industry – an attempt FERC has blocked to date.

FERC recently issued a ruling that has the potential to undercut state policies that level the playing field for renewable resources.PJM Interconnection runs the nation's largest regional grid, which stretches from Illinois to New Jersey and down to North Carolina. FERC's ruling would effectively block state-supported renewables from participating in one of PJM's electricity markets. The ruling is poorly conceived, and Earthjustice is working to reverse it. FERC could right its own course with a pending case that provides another way for the impacted renewables to receive payment for their services. Without McNamee, FERC's two Democratic commissioners could potentially negotiate a compromise solution that respects state renewable energy programs. However, with McNamee, FERC's fellow Republican commissioners could be swayed toward a hardline position and produce a 3-2 pro-fossil fuel vote.

FERC also is considering a request from a gas-fired power plant in California that could have dangerous implications for the state's recent historic decision to achieve 100 percent clean energy electricity by 2045.

It just so happens that this gas-fired plant, La Paloma in Kern County, was purchased last year by Daniel Andrew Beal, a large donor to Trump's presidential bid who also served as a campaign adviser. La Paloma is asking FERC to order California to put a mandatory capacity market into place—which would explicitly prevent renewable energy sources supported by state policies from earning money in the market. The results would be devastating for a state that has been a pioneer in sourcing its electricity from clean energy. If McNamee were confirmed, it is far more likely that Beal will get his way.

Together with our advocacy partners, Earthjustice is paying close attention to these and other matters that could be threatened by a McNamee confirmation. We will continue to fight to keep politics from getting in the way of progress at FERC. But we need your help. Call your senators today and ask them to oppose the appointment of Bernard McNamee to FERC. Our clean energy future is at stake.

Kim Smaczniak is a staff attorney with the Clean Energy Program. She helps shape legal strategies to ensure a fair playing field for clean energy in federally-regulated electricity markets. Kim is based in Washington, DC.

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3 Reasons Bernard McNamee Is a Horrible Choice for FERC

By Sam Gomberg

But first, what is "FERC"?

Now that we understand why it's important who our next FERC commissioner is, here are three reasons why Bernard McNamee is the wrong man for the job:

McNamee has serious conflicts of interest.

He's horribly unqualified.

He would destroy FERC's standing as an independent regulatory body.

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One of the Most Important Agencies You've Never Heard of Is Being ... ›

UCS: Independent Science, Practical Solutions | Union of ... ›

Atlantic Coast Pipeline Work Restarts as Opponents Decry 'Rushed Decisions'

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled Monday that work could resume on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which opponents call "unnecessary and a boondoggle," the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

Work on the controversial pipeline halted last month after a federal appeals court vacated two permits required for the project to complete its 600 mile route from West Virginia, through Virginia, to North Carolina.

7 States Urge Pipeline Regulators to Pay Attention to Climate Change

BY: PHIL MCKENNA

FERC is considering revising how it approves natural gas pipeline projects. These states want it to focus more on the costs to the environment and to consumers. Read more

grid security bs coal nuke

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12062018/ferc-no-power-grid-national-security-emergency-trump-perry-coal-subsidy-energy-regulators-congress

top regulators of the nation's power grid told Congress on Tuesday that they see no immediate national security emergency to justify propping up coal and nuclear power plants with a government order, as the Trump administration is considering.

All five members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, weighed in at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a debate that has been roiling the industry and its regulators for months. It was the first time in many years that the whole commission had appeared before the committee together.

Even though most of them were appointed by President Donald Trump, they seemed ambivalent or even hostile to his repeated attempts, along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to require grid operators to buy power from uneconomical coal and nuclear power plants.

Trump political supporters and influential fossil fuel companies, including the coal company Murray Energy and utility FirstEnergy, have pushed for a government-ordered bailout, while a diverse mix of environmental advocates, major grid operators and some public utility companies and natural gas suppliers have argued strongly against it.

The administration wants to keep coal and nuclear generators from being driven out of business by cheaper natural gas or carbon-free wind and solar. A few months ago, FERC rebuffed Perry's attempt to subsidize plant operators who keep 90 days of fuel on hand. Now, the White House has told Perry to use his own emergency powers under two laws to bail the industry out on grounds that plant closures are presenting a national security emergency.

But the idea that the grid is currently so frail as to present an urgent military crisis has received little support, and next to none at the commission.

FERC's chairman, Kevin McIntyre, reading a formal statement aloud, spoke of the deliberative approach the commission has adopted: opening a docket to solicit the views of all parties, especially the grid operators with the fingertip control of electricity supply. To Trump and his allies, this is bureaucratese for kicking the can down the road and risks providing too little assistance too late.

Vigilance, but No Rush to Intervene

Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Kentucky native and former energy advisor to pro-coal Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was the most receptive to some kind of action, if not on an emergency basis.

"In my view, 'no action' is like driving your car without a seat belt," he said.

Other commissioners echoed Chatterjee's call for "vigilance." But while they said it was important to keep the grid resilient during storms, heat waves, cold snaps or market upheavals, they looked askance at emergency federal intervention that would favor one fuel or another.

That, said Commissioner Robert Powelson, a former member of Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission and past president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, would be "a real step back" from the benefits that have accrued to competing fuel suppliers and to consumers alike.

It would also retreat from the climate and other environmental benefits from wind and solar, as well as from storage technologies and smart metering that are helping to clean up the grid.

Commissioners Richard Glick, a former official with energy company Iberdrola, and Cheryl LaFleur, a former executive at National Grid USA who was appointed to FERC by President Barack Obama in 2010, were most hostile to the Trump plan.

"We cannot try to stop the natural evolution of this industry by claiming that there is a national security emergency unless there is evidence that suggests that an emergency actually exists," Glick said.

GOP Senator also Skeptical of Emergency Claim

After more than an hour of testimony, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked the question directly:

"Do any of you believe that in the wholesale power markets we are facing an actual national security emergency at the moment?"

"I do not," said LaFleur, the most outspoken of the commission's opponents of intervention.

"Would anyone answer that with a yes?" Heinrich inquired.

Nobody did.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the committee's chairwoman, also said she was skeptical.

"As with many controversies, with so much at stake in such a heavily regulated industry such as energy, the various interests are locked in," she noted. "This is battle, this is mortal conflict for some."

Murkowski is closely aligned with the oil and gas industry. Its lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute, has joined renewable energy advocates to strongly oppose the administration's efforts on behalf of coal and nuclear.

'FERC Does Not Pick Winners and Losers'

The committee's ranking Democrat, Maria Cantwell of Washington, said she found the idea of intervening in markets "mind-boggling."

The commissioners, in more measured words, seemed to agree with her.

"FERC does not pick winners and losers in the market," Powelson said. "Instead we create an environment where the market can pick the winners and losers." He called it a "moral hazard" to do otherwise.

"We need to be wary of people using the situation or a potential situation as a way to achieve market changes that they haven't been able to achieve otherwise," Glick said.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

REGULATION COAL

DONALD TRUMP DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY RICK PERRY

desmog COI

Ethics officials at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — the agency responsible for approving energy infrastructure such as interstate oil and gas pipelines and overseeing utilities — recently gave the OK for its new chairman, Kevin McIntyre, to be involved in decisions concerning two of his former clients and previous firm, DeSmog has found.

According to a document filed with the Office of Government Ethics, in December 2017 and January 2018 FERC provided McIntyre with a special authorization to participate in discussions and rulings related to two large utility companies, Ameren and American Electric Power (AEP), as well as his former legal and lobbying firm, Jones Day.

The document does not specify which matters McIntyre participated in for these utilities, and whether he was involved with specific Jones Day clients. A search of current FERC dockets reveals that Jones Day represents several clients before FERC.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/19/exclusive-here-are-energy-companies-and-utilities-represented-trump-s-nominee-head-ferc

President Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has, as a corporate attorney, personally represented a host of energy and utility companies, many of which do business that is directly impacted by FERC’s decisionmaking. According to Kevin McIntyre’s financial disclosure — obtained by DeSmog and published here for the first time — these include major utilities, fracking companies, pipeline builders, and international energy corporations.

McIntyre is a lawyer who co-leads the global energy practice for the legal and lobbying firm Jones Day, and is currently awaiting final Senate confirmation of his appointment to the nation’s top energy regulatory body. That confirmation may come as soon as this week.

McIntyre’s financial disclosure, submitted recently to the Office of Government Ethics, reveals that in the past two years alone he has represented various energy and utility companies. Some of these companies are regulated by FERC or have projects seeking FERC approval.

The list includes the following entities:

Ameren Corporation, a St. Louis, Missouri-based utility and power generation company. Ameren delivers electricity and distributes gas to over 1 million customers in Missouri and Illinois. The company owns several power-generating plants running on coal, gas, and oil. It also operates nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewable facilities.

American Electric Power Service Corporation (AEP), a large Columbus, Ohio-based electric utility supplying customers throughout the Midwest and Southwest US. The company owns about 60 power generating facilities, of which coal-fueled plants account for approximately 47 percent of AEP’s generating capacity, while natural gas represents 27 percent and nuclear 7 percent.

Lakeside Energy LLC, a Chicago-based energy holding firm that targets independent power generating and renewables industries.

Navajo Transitional Energy Company, a Farmington, New Mexico-based coal mining company owned by the Navajo Nation. The company supplies coal to the nearby Four Corners power plant.

SCANA Corporation, a Cayce, South Carolina-based energy holding company engaged primarily in electric and gas utility operations in the Carolinas and Georgia. The company also owns nuclear, hydroelectric, coal, and renewable power generating facilities.

TECO, a Tampa-based electric and gas utility providing services to customers in Florida and New Mexico. TECO is a subsidirary of Canadian energy and services giant Emera, which owns $29 billion in assets in North America and the Caribbean.

Traverse Midstream Partners, an Edmond, Oklahoma-based pipeline company with stakes in the Rover pipeline and Ohio River System pipeline. In both pipelines, Traverse partners with Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline.

Ascent Resources, an Oklahoma City-based oil and gas exploration and production company that focuses on fracking in the Utica and Marcellus shales in Ohio and West Virginia.

Enable Midstream Partners, an Oklahoma City-based oil and gas gathering, processing, and transmitting company with operations in Oklahoma and Arkansas. One of Enable’s current proposed pipeline projects, the Central Arkansas Pipeline Expansion (CAPE), will require FERC approval.

EDF Energy Services LLC, a Houston-based subsidiary of French utility EDF, the company provides electricity, natural gas products and services to large-scale, energy-intensive commercial and industrial consumers in the US and Canada.

PT. Xintia Indonesia, an Indonesian company providing drilling equipment and services to the oil and gas industry.

SOCAR Trading S.A., a Geneva Switzerland-based company which is the marketing and development subsidiary of SOCAR, the state oil company of Azerbaijan. SOCAR Trading markets the bulk of Azeri crude exports.

Total Petrochemical & Refining USA, Inc., a Houston-based subsidiary of French oil and gas major Total involved in the production of various petrochemical materials with facilities in Texas and Louisiana.

Iberdrola Renovables Mexico S.A. de C.V., a Mexican subsidiary of Spanish electric utility giant Iberdrola, focusing on renewable energy investments in Mexico.

Screenshot from McIntyre's financial disclosure.

Concern Over Industry Ties

After a number of resignations and term expirations, as of this past June the FERC's bench had dwindled down to one single commissioner. The Trump administration has nominated four new candidates to restore the quorum needed for FERC to make key decisions.

Industry representatives lauded the reestablishment of a quorum on the commission, which can now approve the logjam of pending energy projects.

Critics, however, have sounded the alarm about some of the new appointees’ industry ties. Protesters with the group Beyond Extreme Energy had disrupted two Senate confirmation hearings in recent months.

They’ve pointed out that the newest FERC appointees Neil Chatterjee and Rob Powelson have ties to fossil fuel companies and utilities. While Chatterjee previously worked as an energy policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Powelson developed a close relationship with the industry as a state utilities regulator.

As DeSmog recently reported, Powelson received gifts from industry in his previous regulatory position.

Kevin McIntyre’s financial disclosure adds fuel to these concerns. McIntyre did not respond to a request for comment.

Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the government watchdog group Public Citizen, says the disclosure is cause for further concern. “I do think FERC has had problems of not accommodating the public interest as much as is spelled out in its statutory requirements,” Slocum says. “And McIntyre's list of clients does not appear to include public interest clients, whereas today there is much opportunity for lawyers to represents such clients as well.”

Slocum adds that as co-lead of Jones Day's energy practice, McIntyre is probably privy to other kinds of key information about energy clients, beyond those entities listed as the ones he personally represented at the firm.

“This complicates the question of potential conflicts beyond the list he provided in the disclosure since there's uncertainty as to that kind of information he may hold,” Slocum says.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/09/ferc-revolving-door-mcguirewoods-top-lawyer-perkins-fossil-fuel-lobbying-firm

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the main regulatory agency that oversees the interstate transmission of natural gas, oil, and electricity. Made up of five commissioners and a staff of lawyers and other officials, FERC holds significant power over the approval and regulation of — among other things — proposed oil and gas pipelines that cross state lines or that will transmit fossil fuels from out of state.

FERC has also been a regular stopping point in the revolving door between the fossil fuel industry and the regulatory apparatus that overseas that industry. This trend continues, now, with the appointment of a top FERC attorney to McGuireWoods, a major lobbying firm.

John P. Perkins III has been a top litigator at FERC since 2013. According to McGuireWoods, he was a “lead trial lawyer and acting branch chief in FERC’s Office of Administrative Litigation in Washington” and “directed a team of lawyers and support staff in rate proceedings for electric transmission projects, natural gas pipelines and oil pipelines, led settlement negotiations and litigated administrative hearings.”

In other words, Perkins has close ties to and experience with FERC’s inner-workings around utilities and oil and gas projects. Indeed, he even served on FERC’s Oil and Liquid Committee and authored its 2014 legal handbook on market-based rates for oil pipelines.

In joining McGuireWoods, Perkins will be teaming up with a lobbying giant that has been lauded by the energy industry for its effective advocacy. The firm’s clients from 2017 included such fossil fuel industry powerhouses as the American Petroleum Institute, Dominion, Exelon, ExxonMobil, Murray Energy, and Southern Company.

One of McGuireWoods’s partners is Richard Cullen, who, as we previously noted, is the brother-in-law of Dominion Energy’s powerful CEO, Tom Farrell. Cullen is also the former Attorney General of Virginia and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

At McGuireWoods, Perkins will represent the firm’s energy clients in FERC rate cases and “[support] the firm’s transactional lawyers on federal regulatory matters related to mergers and acquisitions,” according to the firm.

Prior to joining FERC in 2013, Perkins was in private practice for eight years. He was an associate at Haltom & Doam (based in Texas) from 2004 to 2008 and a partner at Shults & Brown (based in Arkansas) from 2008 to 2012.

Perkins’s flight from FERC to the fossil fuel industry — to litigate and lobby for the corporate entities he used to regulate while he personally profits from the ties and experience he developed as a public servant — is not unusual. A few other recent examples of FERC’s revolving door include:

Colette Honorable, who served as a FERC Commissioner from 2014 to June 2017, joined the lobbying firm Reed Smith LLP just a week after she left FERC. Reed Smith lobbies for energy clients such as Dominion Energy. As we reported last year, Honorable was cozy with the Edison Electric Institute, a major lobbying group for big utilities corporations and the fossil fuel industry.

Kevin J. McIntyre has been the FERC chairperson since November 2017. Prior to being nominating to this position by Trump, McIntyre was a top lawyer in the global Energy Practice of Jones Day, a law firm that has close ties to the Trump administration. Jones Day’s energy clients have included Chevron, FirstEnergy, Southern Company,and several others — as well as private equity firms like Goldman Sachs and Carlyle Group who have fossil fuel holdings. While we don’t know the full range of clients that McIntyre personally represented, a 2010 document shows he represented Macquarie Energy LLC, which described itself as “an importer of LNG, a marketer of natural gas, and a holder of LNGterminal capacity.”

Anthony T. Clark was a FERC Commissioner from 2012 to 2016. After leaving FERC, he became a Senior Advisor at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, a DC law firm. Clark now works with the firm’s energy clients. At the time of the announcement of his new gig, Utility Dive remarked that Clark’s move “follows a rich tradition of federal regulators heading into the energy law and lobbying sector.”

Philip D. Moeller was the second longest-serving FERC commissioner ever, with a tenure that lasted from 2006 to 2015. After he left FERC, Moeller joined the utilities lobbying powerhouse Edison Electric Institute, whose members include a range of fossil fuel industry giants. Moeller serves as EEI’s Executive Vice President of Business Operations Group and Regulatory Affairs.

See Perkins’ and other FERC officials revolving door ties below in our slideshow map (or go see the map at LittleSis.org).

[map]

...

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/02/15/powelson-ferc-commissioner-calendar-fossil-fuel-industry

In his first few months at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), commissioner Rob Powelson scheduled the great majority of his meetings with fossil fuel energy companies and utilities, his work calendar shows. The calendar, obtained by DeSmog through an open records request, can be viewed below.

Nominated to FERC by President Trump, Powelson began serving on the commission last August. He previously served on the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

A review of his FERC calendar shows that between September 4 and December 10 2017, Powelson had a total 76 work meetings scheduled with various stakeholders. Of those meetings, 62 (82 percent) were with fossil fuel and pipeline companies, utilities, and trade groups predominantly representing those industries. The remaining 14 meetings were with regional transmission organizations (RTOs), government agencies, public utilities, and renewable energy companies and their trade groups.

According to his calendar, Powelson did not have scheduled meetings with representatives of other stakeholders potentially affected by FERC’s decisions, such as environmental organizations, public interest groups, and everyday citizens.

[docs]

From the calendar, meetings with major fossil fuel companies and utilities include:

September 6: Williams Companies, Talen Energy, Tellurian/Driftwood LNG

September 12: Jordan Cove LNG

September 21: Exelon, PG&E

September 26: Colonial Pipeline Company, Excel Energy

October 3: Invenergy, NextEra

October 12: TransCanada, Southern California Edison, Eversource

October 18: NRG

October 19: Convata Energy, Southwestern Energy

October 23: New Jersey Resources, LS Power

October 24: Calpine Corporation

October 25: Avangrid

November 7: Shell Pipeline Company

November 30: Con Edison

December 5: LNG Limited

December 7: Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG)

These are all FERC-regulated entities, several of which currently have projects pending the commission’s approval. For example, when New Jersey Resources met with Powelson, it was seeking FERC’s authorization for the PennEast pipeline, of which the company owns a 20 percent stake. FERC went on to approve the controversial 115-mile gas pipeline in January this year.

Powelson also met with FirstEnergy, a coal-based utility which at the time was trying to convince FERC to adopt Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s industry-led proposal to support coal and nuclear power plants. FERC has since objected to the plan.

In addition, one of the only projects FERC has rejected is Oregon’s Jordan Cove LNG (liquefied natural gas) export terminal and Pacific Connector gas pipeline. However, after the CEO of the company behind Jordan Cove met with the Trump administration in early 2017, the project was resurrected, despite local and state resistance. Powelson met with Jordan Cove on September 12 and roughly a week later, on September 21, the company announced it was filing new FERC applications for the export terminal and pipeline.

The commissioner’s calendar also shows meetings scheduled with a number of industry and utilities trade groups, including:

September 21: Electric Power Supply Association

September 26: Edison Electric Institute

September 27 and December 4: Natural Gas Supply Association

October 5: Utilities Technology Association, Advanced Energy Management Alliance

October 19: New England Power Generators Association

October 24: Association of Oil Pipelines

October 26: American Forest & Paper Association

October 30: Retail Energy Supply Association

November 1: Energy Storage Association

November 6: Americans for a Clean Energy Grid

December 5: Process Gas Consumers Group

December 7: Nuclear Energy Institute

Additionally, during this period, Powelson had 20 scheduled one-on-one meetings and lunches (excluding those with FERCpersonnel). Of these, 13 meetings were with fossil fuel company representatives and lobbyists. They include:

September 18: Marty Durbin, executive vice president at the American Petroleum Institute. Durbin is lobbying FERC on a slew of energy-related issues, including legislation for infrastructure projects.

September 18: Lunch with Mike Krancer, former head of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection who is currently a lobbyist with Blank Rome LLP and his own lobbying shop, Silent Majority Strategies

September 26: Kevin Sunday, lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry

October 2: Martin Silverstein, attorney for the legal and lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig

October 10: Colin Hayes, until recently staff director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources who co-founded his own lobbying shop, Lot Sixteen, which lobbies for NRG.

October 18 and November 6: Joe McGinn, former lobbyist with Energy Transfer Partners who recently opened his own lobbying company, McGinn Public Strategies

October 25: Larry Gasteiger, a former FERC official who is now director of federal regulatory policy at PSEG

November 16: Lunch with David Lynch, lobbyist for the Texas-based utility Energy Future Holdings

November 29: David Urban, a senior operative during the Trump presidential campaign and a lobbyist for American Continental Group. Urban lobbies for CONSOL Energy.

December 4: Jeffrey Kupfer, former Chevron executive and current director for Atlas Energy

The other seven one-one-one meetings were with state utility commissioners, former RTO chiefs, an academic, and members of congress or their staff.

Powelson’s calendar also displayed several scheduled industry conferences and events, including:

September 13: The Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce event at the Washington, D.C. restaurant Bullfeathers

October 3: Filming a video for the Midstream PA oil and gas conference

October 26: American Gas Association’s annual Energy Market Regulation Conference in Washington, D.C.

October 31: The Communications and Energy Committee of the Southern New Jersey’s Chamber of Commerce event at the Westin Mount Laurel Hotel

November 2: Chester County Chamber of Business and Industry event at the Longwood Gardens in Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania

November 4: Edison Electric Institute’s Financial Conference in the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort near Orlando, Florida

November 7: Speaking at the Industrial Energy Consumers of America meeting at the Le Méridien Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The IECA is a fossil fuel advocacy group run by the energy lobbying company Carbonleaf LLC

November 9: Speaking at the Blank Rome LLP conference in Pittsburgh

November 15: Speaking at the Association of Oil Pipelines meetings at the Madison Hilton in Washington, D.C.

November 20: Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce event

December 1: The Pennsylvania Society’s Blank Rome LLP/GT Power Energy Summit in New York City

December 6: Southern Company’s Holiday Reception in Union Station in Washington. A FERC spokesperson said Commissioner Powelson did not attend this event. Southern Company did not provide comment.

DeSmog asked FERC why Commissioner Powelson does not balance his meetings to include a greater variety of stakeholders affected by FERC’s decisions. Craig Cano, a spokesperson for the commission, said: “Commissioner Powelson’s office takes meetings with anyone who requests them, subject to availability and ex parte concerns.”

Powelson also had a cozy relationship with the energy industry during his days at the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission. As DeSmog previously reported, this included receiving from NRG two tickets to an NFL game.

Yet calendars for other past and present FERC commissioners show that Powelson is certainly not alone in taking a majority of meetings with the industry he regulates. As E&E News recently reported, commissioner Neil Chatterjee’s work calendar reveals a similar trend.

Environmental organizations opposing the extensive oil and gas pipeline buildup around the country have in recent years targeted FERC for what they see as a clear industry bias within the agency. Activists, who call for reforming FERC, point out that in its 40 years of existence, FERC has rejected only two projects while approving countless others.

https://www.ecowatch.com/doe-coal-nuclear-bailout-2491308467.html

DOE Proposes Outrageous, Massive Coal and Nuclear Bailout

By Miles Farmer

Department of Energy (DOE) Sec. Rick Perry just proposed a massive bailout for coal and nuclear power plants. The radical and unprecedented move is couched under a false premise that power plants with fuel located on site are needed to guarantee the reliability of the electricity system. The proposal relies on a mischaracterization of DOE's own recent study of electricity markets and reliability (discussed here), which if anything demonstrated that this kind of proposed action is not justified.

If adopted, the proposal would essentially ensure that coal and nuclear plants in regions encompassing most of the country continue to run even where they are too expensive to compete in the energy market. It would saddle utility customers with higher costs, while posing obstacles to the electricity system integration of cleaner and less risky energy sources such as solar and wind.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is still carefully analyzing the proposal, but below is a very preliminary take:

The proposal would bail out expensive and uncompetitive coal and nuclear plants

The proposal asks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to take action within 60 days that would financially prop up "fuel-secure resources," which must have "a 90-day fuel supply on site enabling [them] to operate during an emergency, extreme weather conditions, or a natural man-made disaster." This requirement is aimed squarely at coal and nuclear power plants, which would generally be able to satisfy these criteria.

Many coal and nuclear units are very expensive and are having trouble competing in the wholesale electricity market (as discussed here). So the proposal asks FERC to bail out these power plants by essentially guaranteeing them profits and insulating them from competitive market forces. The proposal amounts to a massive subsidy that would ensure the plants continue to operate, rather than being economically retired when they are more expensive than other units (including wind and solar) that sell electricity at lower cost.

The proposal would radically reshape electricity regulation for most of the country

The rule would have a massive scope, covering regional wholesale markets where electricity is bought and sold to serve most of the nation's customers. It would apply to areas where the electricity system is operated by regional entities known as Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs) or Independent System Operators (ISOs), which administer competitive markets for electricity. The RTOs tell the more expensive plants not to operate when there's cheaper electricity available from other plants.

....

https://www.ecowatch.com/sabal-trail-pipeline-2479133796.html

In Major Climate Decision, DC Circuit Rejects Federal Approval of Sabal Trail Pipeline

By Elly Benson

Last week, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) attempts to downplay the massive climate impacts of the Southeast Market Pipelines Project, a $3.5 billion project that includes the 515-mile Sabal Trail pipeline. FERC and the pipeline companies argued that even though the project's purpose is to transport fracked gas through Alabama and Georgia to Florida power plants, FERC nonetheless could ignore the greenhouse gas emissions from burning the gas at those plants.

It's Not Just the Journey, It's Also the Destination

In a 2-1 decision, the court agreed with the Sierra Club and its partners that FERC's refusal to analyze these "downstream" emissions—an entirely foreseeable result of constructing the pipeline—violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The court vacated FERC's approval of the project and remanded to the agency with instructions to prepare an environmental impact statement consistent with the court's opinion.

Once the court officially returns the matter to FERC, the pipeline should cease operations while FERC undertakes the new analysis. (Despite the shoddy environmental review, the pipeline was allowed to start operating in June).

Noting that "[i]t's not just the journey, ... it's also the destination," the court rejected each of FERC's many excuses for ignoring the emissions from burning the gas. The court found:

FERC is the "legally relevant cause" of the climate-altering emissions because it has the power to deny a pipeline based on harm to the environment.

FERC has estimated that the pipeline will transport 1.1 billion cubic feet per day of gas, and can use this number to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

FERC's vague assertions that "some" emissions may "potentially" be offset by coal plant retirements were so devoid of meaningful information that the environmental impact statement "fail[ed] to fulfill its primary purpose."

Even if the power plants are subject to state or federal greenhouse-gas regulations in the future, such requirements cannot substitute for a proper NEPA analysis (citing a landmark NEPA case from 1971).

The court concluded that FERC "should have either given a quantitative estimate of the downstream greenhouse emissions that will result from burning the natural gas that the pipelines will transport or explained more specifically why it could not have done so." The court further noted that the environmental impact statement needed to include a discussion of the significance of the downstream greenhouse gas emissions, as well as their cumulative impact. Finally, the court directed FERC to explain, in its new environmental impact statement, whether it still maintains that the "social cost of carbon"—a valuable tool that places a dollar value on the harm caused by each ton of carbon emitted—is not useful for NEPA purposes, and why....

dominion reed smith _ llp

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/07/12/week-after-leaving-ferc-former-commissioner-honorable-joins-firm-lobbying-company-behind-atlantic-coast-pipeline

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/15/trump-ferc-commissioner-rob-powelson-accepted-gifts-energy-industry-state-regulator

Robert Powelson, President Donald Trump’s newly appointed commissioner to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), received both gifts and reimbursements for travel, lodging, and hospitality from the energy and utility sectors in his previous position as a state regulator. He will now regulate those sectors at the federal level.

Powelson, a Republican, began his tenure at FERC last week. Documents and emails recently uncovered by the Energy &Policy Institute, a watchdog monitoring attacks on renewable energy, indicate that he maintained a close relationship with industry groups as a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

In addition, earlier this year, Powelson said pipeline opponents are engaged in “jihad,” a statement which drew criticism from activists and further solidified his pro-industry image.

NFL Game and Industry Conferences

DeSmog has found that according to Powelson’s financial interest disclosures at the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission, in September 2013 he accepted two tickets from NRG Energy to attend a football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and San Diego Chargers. Each ticket cost $105. Powelson attended the game with James Steffes, a senior vice president at NRGEnergy, a large energy company operating numerous power generating stations throughout the U.S.

Rob Powelson's financial disclosure from 2013 shows two NFL football game tickets gifted from NRG Energy

From Powelson’s 2013 disclosure to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

That year, Powelson also received several reimbursements to participate in industry conferences. In June, the Edison Electric Institute, a powerful national utility trade group which has fought distributed solar power, funded Powelson’s attendance at the institute’s convention in San Francisco. Three months later the Florida Natural Gas Association paid for Powelson to attend its conference in Orlando. Powelson was keynote speaker at both events.

The same year, Powelson attended two energy and utilities investment conferences paid for by the organizers. In January the investment firm Boenning & Scattergood funded his participation in its Investor Energy Conference, and in March Morgan Stanley paid for his attendance at its Utilities Conference. Powelson was again keynote speaker at both events.

According to Powelson’s 2014 disclosure, GEE Strategies, an energy and utilities consulting firm, funded his attendance at its Energy Leadership Forum in Falls Church, Virginia. Emails recently uncovered by UtilitySecrets, a joint watchdog project by the Energy & Policy Institute and Center for Media & Democracy, indicate that GEE Strategies has close ties to the Edison Electric Institute, which funded the firm’s Energy Leadership Forum meeting last year.

Other emails show that Edison Electric Institute invited Powelson to speak at its board’s winter meeting in January this year. The meeting was held in Palm Beach, Florida. Also in 2017, Powelson served as president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

The Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission considers gifts and reimbursements for travel, lodging, and hospitality as different categories, requiring public officials to report them separately.

Reached for comment, a FERC spokesperson told DeSmog that Commissioner Powelson followed all applicable Pennsylvania state rules with regard to travel and reimbursement while he was a member of the public utility commission (PUC). The spokesperson added:

“For the meetings that you listed, he was a speaker or a panelist. In those roles, Commissioner Powelson’s participation was a customary and necessary part of the performance of his duties, and reimbursement was not a gift to him or the PUC.

The 2017 EEI meeting, which he attended as a speaker and in his capacity as President of NARUC, has not yet been filed because it is still 2017. It will be on the 2017 listings when those are all filed.”

Powelson’s “jihad” Remark

Powelson is one of four Trump nominees to FERC, which shrank this summer to only one commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur. The pipeline industry recently boosted its pressure on the administration to restore the commission’s quorum, absent since February, which is required to approve interstate oil and gas projects. Powelson and Neil Chatterjee, a former energy policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), were sworn in last week. Two other nominees — Richard Glick and Kevin McIntyre — are pending Senate approval.

Opponents of fossil fuel infrastructure protested Powelson and Chatterjee’s nominations, arguing that the two are likely to maintain FERC’s bias toward pipeline buildup.

They pointed out that during a gas industry conference in March this year, Powelson described protests by anti-pipeline activists as a “jihad.”

“The jihad has begun,” Powelson told the audience. “At the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission groups actually shown up at commissioners’ homes to make sure we don’t get this gas to market. How irresponsible is that?”

Powelson later apologized for that particular phrasing, saying “I recently made an inappropriate choice of words while characterizing the actions of a small group of individuals who engage in threatening and disruptive behavior.”

As a FERC commissioner, Powelson will participate in various decisions to permit and approve interstate pipeline projects, which includes taking into account public comment as well as impacts to private landowners and the environment.

FERC Releases 'Utterly Insufficient Review' for Mountain Valley Pipeline

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released its Final Environmental Impact Statement Friday for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a controversial 303-mile pipeline that would carry two billion cubic feet of fracked gas per day from West Virginia through Virginia.

As has been the pattern at FERC, the review fails to adequately assess whether the pipeline is needed in the first place, while sweeping aside the project's serious threats to water resources, the safety of communities and the climate.

Oil Change International research analyst Kelly Trout had the following response to FERC's deeply flawed climate assessment:

In this utterly insufficient review, FERC ignores both science and economics to sweep aside the Mountain Valley Pipeline's significant climate impact. FERC severely undercounts climate pollution by ignoring methane leakage across the gas supply chain, which makes gas as dirty or dirtier than coal, and by omitting emissions from upstream fracking. FERC also wrongly assumes that gas supplied by the project is likely to replace coal, when it's just as likely to lock out the clean energy and efficiency alternatives we urgently need.

If FERC was doing its job, it would find the Mountain Valley Pipeline will cause an unacceptable increase in climate pollution and reject this dirty project. A proper analysis shows that this pipeline will cause as much climate pollution as 26 coal plants per year. This project is the last thing we need in the face of worsening heatwaves and flooding, and when clean alternatives are readily available now.

Concerned residents continue to fight this dirty pipeline because it's a clear threat to local livelihoods, clean water and our climate. It's time for FERC to completely overhaul its pipeline review process to prioritize the safety of communities and our climate, not the profits of corporate polluters.

In a recent study, Oil Change International found that the Mountain Valley Pipeline will cause nearly 90 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution per year, which is the equivalent of 26 coal plants or 19 million vehicles on the road. The study applied a gas pipeline climate methodology that is based on the latest analysis of the lifecycle pollution of fracked gas from the Appalachian Basin.

https://www.ecowatch.com/rover-pipeline-climate-change-2435656584.html

Another Reason to Halt Rover Pipeline: It's a Climate Disaster

As controversy swirls around a string of spills and air and water violations caused by Energy Transfer Partners' construction of the Rover gas pipeline, a study released Wednesday underlines another reason federal regulators should halt the project: It will fuel a massive increase in climate pollution.

A new analysis by Oil Change International finds that, if the Rover Pipeline is built, it will cause as much greenhouse gas pollution as 42 coal-fired power plants—some 145 million metric tons per year. The study slams the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for using chronically outdated assumptions to sweep this significant climate impact under the rug in its environmental review of the project.

"As the biggest new pipeline being built to carry fracked gas out of the Appalachian Basin, the Rover Pipeline is the biggest climate disaster of them all," said Lorne Stockman, senior research analyst at Oil Change International and the lead author of the study.

"After Trump's malicious pullout from the Paris climate accord, challenging each new pipeline is all the more important," he added. "While FERC remains in a state of denial, it's increasingly clear that gas pipelines are a bridge to climate destruction. They increase access to gas that we can't afford to burn and stall the transition to clean energy and efficiency solutions we need."

The climate findings bolster mounting calls for federal regulators to shut down all construction of the Rover Pipeline and revisit its permit decision by conducting a supplemental environmental review. The project would carry 3.25 billion cubic feet of gas per day from Pennsylvania and West Virginia through Ohio and Michigan, and link up to hubs that service export markets.

In early May, FERC ordered a partial stop of horizontal directional drilling activities in Ohio after Energy Transfer Partners—the same company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline—spilled millions of gallons of drilling waste into fragile wetlands. Ohio regulators have already fined the company for violations, which now exceed two dozen. Last week, FERC confirmed it is investigating the presence of toxic diesel fuel in the spilled waste. Michigan and Ohio groups have filed a formal motion urging FERC to reopen the permit case, and more than 100 organizations sent a letter urging the agency to do the same.

"The Rover pipeline is another disaster brought to you by Energy Transfer Partners," said Cheryl Johncox, fossil fuels organizer with the Sierra Club. "ETP has shown that they will use the most loathsome tactics to bully agencies and citizens to get what they want, destroying drinking water in the process. It is past time for regulatory agencies to shut the project down."

Wednesday's study calls on FERC to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Rover Pipeline that includes a credible analysis of the project's lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impact, along with a thorough examination of the safety hazards of horizontal drilling techniques being used to construct the pipeline.

"Energy Transfer Partners threatens the very air we breathe and the waters we drink," said Elaine Tanner, organizer with the Ohio River Citizens' Alliance. "Day after day, the company gets away with dumping their slop and their slurry onto our wetlands, flowing into our rivers and streams. These construction techniques are obviously not working, yet the pipeline continues to grow across four states. We are fighting for survival here and the gas has not yet begun to flow."

Laura Burns, Ohio organizer with Moms Clean Air Force, agrees. "It is important that we understand the actions we take now will impact our children for years to come," she said. "What kind of a legacy do we leave for them when we ignore the march of climate-destroying infrastructure across our state?"

The Rover study is the fourth in a series of briefings by Oil Change International calculating the full climate impact of gas pipelines proposed in the Appalachian Basin. In total, the briefings show FERC has dismissed the pollution equivalent of more than 100 coal-fired power plants in reviewing the Atlantic Coast, Mountain Valley, PennEast and Rover projects alone.

The analyses show that FERC habitually ignores the impact of methane leakage, which makes reliance on gas for electricity as dirty as coal, and ignores the economic reality that gas increasingly displaces clean energy, not coal. In contrast to FERC, Oil Change International's methodology reflects the evolving analysis of methane leakage and fully adds up the lifecycle greenhouse gas pollution from gas fracking and processing, pipeline operation, gas combustion at power plants and methane leaked across the gas supply chain.

no link

https://www.ecowatch.com/ferc-reject-rover-pipeline-2423146874.html

etp

Phil Suter, the spouse of Maggie Suter, a high-ranking official at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) who led the review for two gas pipeline projects by Spectra Energy, is a paid consultant for Spectra on a related pipeline project.

Experts on ethics in government regulatory bodies told DeSmog this case raises serious red flags, amounting to what appears to be a conflict of interest.

“Suter should have, at the least, disclosed to FERC the conflict, and recused herself from these projects,” says Neil Gordon, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group monitoring money in politics. Read more.

Following DeSmog’s Revelations on Spectra Pipeline, MA Senators Demand More Answers from FERC on Alleged Conflict of Interest

In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Massachusetts Senators...

http://www.ecowatch.com/firstenergy-bailout-puco-2043994096.html

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUCO) approved a scheme Wednesday that will force FirstEnergy's customers to hand over approximately $200 million annually to the company and its shareholders for the next 3-5 years. Customers will receive virtually nothing in return for this massive subsidy, which could ultimately reach $1 billion.

Under Wednesday's order, FirstEnergy will begin to receive hundreds of millions of dollars, with effectively no strings attached. Although characterized as a "distribution modernization rider," nothing in the commission's order requires that these customer dollars be invested in modernizing Ohio's electrical grid or in any way be spent to benefit Ohio customers. Instead, the dollars can be siphoned off from FirstEnergy's Ohio utilities and used to bail FirstEnergy Corp. out of its poor coal investments while boosting the profits of corporate shareholders.

"Today's decision takes hundreds of millions of dollars out of customers' pockets in order to create a massive slush fund for FirstEnergy Corp. and its shareholders," said Shannon Fisk, attorney at the non-profit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

"And the fact that FirstEnergy asked for billions more does not make this decision any less unreasonable. Rather than forcing customers to prop up profits for a corporation that made a bad bet on aging coal plants, the commission should be looking after customers and ensuring investments in job-creating renewable energy, energy efficiency and smart grid initiatives."

Through Wednesday's decision, the commission has aided FirstEnergy's efforts to sidestep a recent order of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that raised serious questions about FirstEnergy's previous bailout proposal. Under that proposal, customers would have directly assumed all of the financial risk of financially struggling coal and nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy Corp.'s unrelated competition generation business.

In late April, FERC ruled that FirstEnergy's previous bailout proposal—which PUCO had approved a month earlier—may violate federal safeguards concerning transactions between public utilities and their unregulated affiliates. FERC blocked FirstEnergy's bailout scheme pending a federal review. Rather than submit its proposal for FERC review, FirstEnergy concocted a new scheme intended to bypass the FERC order. Although the bailout ultimately approved by PUCO is structured a bit differently and Wednesday's order mentions grid modernization in passing, the fact remains that this bailout poses the same risk to customers that the FERC order sought to prevent.

"In this long-awaited and complicated decision, PUCO missed a critical opportunity to seriously focus FirstEnergy on the more diversified, cleaner energy future that tens of thousands of customers wrote the commission asking for," said Dan Sawmiller, senior representative for Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign in Ohio.

"A few months ago, FirstEnergy took an important step in moving beyond coal when it announced closure of four units at its Sammis coal plant. With PUCO's decision now issued, we hope to be able to work with FirstEnergy to accelerate its path beyond coal and nuclear and toward new investments in clean energy, energy efficiency and other modern grid initiatives like infrastructure for electric vehicles."

Wednesday's order marks the latest development in a more than two-year effort by FirstEnergy to obtain a customer-funded bailout. Throughout that time consumer groups, industrial customers, independent power producers and environmental non-profits have united in challenging FirstEnergy's efforts as contrary to law and bad for customers. Challenges before the Ohio Supreme Court and FERC to the commission's approval of the bailout are expected.

OR LNG sierra club

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/12/ferc-denies-jordan-cove-lng/

COI

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/08/21/revealed-ex-ferc-commissioner-s-multiple-rulings-favored-energy-companies-his-wife-lobbied

Numerous rulings by a former Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) favored energy companies his lobbyist wife worked for at the time, a DeSmog investigation can reveal.

Philip Moeller left FERC in late 2015 after nearly ten years on the Commission.

Throughout his entire tenure, Moeller’s wife, Elizabeth Moeller, was employed as a lawyer and lobbyist for the WashingtonDC-based firm Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw & Pittman LLP (Pillsbury Winthrop).

According to internal FERC documents obtained by DeSmog, the Commission’s counsel repeatedly authorized Moeller to rule on matters concerning companies represented by his wife or others at Pillsbury Winthrop.

Elizabeth Moeller’s Timely Move to Pillsbury Winthrop

A month before Moeller was nominated by President George W. Bush to FERC in March 2006, Elizabeth Moeller, a veteran Capitol Hill lobbyist, moved from the firm of Squire Patton to Pillsbury Winthrop.

One of her first clients at the new firm was Puget Sound Energy (PSE), a FERC-regulated utility providing electricity and gas to more than a million costumers in the Northwest.

According to congressional disclosure documents, Elizabeth Moeller had consistently lobbied for PSE from April 2006 to April 2014 on various issues relating to climate change, energy policy, and taxation. During the same time span, Commisioner Moeller sat on many FERC rulings involving PSE, where he ruled in favor of the company.

In 2007, Moeller and the Commission approved the upgrade and expansion of a PSE storage facility.

A year later, they approved PSE’s merger with a consortium led by the investment firm Macquarie.

Soon after, Moeller was involved in approving PSE’s purchase of Sumas Pipeline Company’s natural gas import facility in Whatcom County, Washington.

In 2011, FERC approved PSE’s rate increase. Two years later, Moeller approved PSE’s new service agreements with Morgan Stanley Capital.

FERC Allows Moeller to Sit on Rulings

When first nominated to FERC, Moeller disclosed to the Commission the conflict relating to his wife’s work.

In a letter to FERC’s Designated Agency Ethics Official, Moeller stated he would “not participate personally and substantially, if confirmed, in any particular matter that will have a direct and predictable effect on my spouse’s employment interest in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.”

Office of Government Ethics rules strictly forbid public officials from working on matters where they have a personal financial stake, unless authorized in writing by the agency’s Ethics Official.

Excerpt from Commissioner Moeller disclosure statement, March 2006

Internal FERC memoranda show the Commission’s legal staff repeatedly authorized Moeller to participate in rulings involving companies represented by Pillsbury Winthrop.

In February 2007, only months after his appointment to FERC, Moeller asked the Commission's Ethics Official for a blanket waiver to participate in matters involving companies represented by his wife or Pillsbury Winthrop. The waiver was on the condition that neither Elizabeth Moeller or Pillsbury Winthrop was participating directly in the issue before the commission.

The official granted the waiver, arguing “[I] believe it is highly unlikely your Commission decisions in matters that involve your wife’s or Pillsbury’s clients, when represented by other counsel, would have any affect on the financial interests of either your wife or of Pillsbury.”

The Ethics Official also cited Moeller’s unique role in the regulatory process. “As a result, your role cannot be performed by another Commission employee and you should not be recused unnecessarily.”

Soon after, in early 2008, Moeller asked FERC’s counsel to participate in several rulings concerning PSE.

Even though Elizabeth Moeller was already lobbying for PSE at the time, FERC allowed him to participate after verifying that neither she nor her firm was directly participating in the specific matters before the Commission concerning PSE.

FERC’s counsel wrote, “in my view, these matters will not have any direct and predictable effect on the Moeller’s finances.”

In one of the rulings concerning PSE, Moeller stated: “Transparency in the Commission's process is necessary in light of our significant enforcement authority.”

In late 2009 Moeller asked FERC for a waiver to participate in pending settlement rulings relating to California’s energy crisis of 2000-2001, where one of the parties in the matter, Chevron, was being represented by Pillsbury Winthrop.

Oddly, at the time Moeller told FERC’s counsel he was unaware his wife had become an equity partner at Pillsbury Winthrop 11 months earlier. This means Elizabeth Moeller automatically benefited financially with every increase in her firm’s total income.

Still, FERC granted him the waiver to participate in the settlements, saying: “Mrs. Moeller stands to benefit only in an indirect and attenuated way from the resolution of the Settlements.”

The Commission also cited the need to maintain a quorum of commissioners in such matters. ....

10 yr anni:

http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/10-years-later-fracking-and-halliburton-loophole

This past Saturday, marked a notable 10th anniversary. But it was certainly nothing to celebrate. Ten years ago, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The giant energy bill included massive giveaways for the fossil fuel, nuclear [3] and ethanol industries and provided only token incentives for renewables [4] and improved energy efficiency. But the most infamous piece of the law was what is now commonly known as the “Halliburton Loophole [5],” an egregious regulatory exemption that ushered in the disastrous era of widespread oil and gas fracking that currently grips our nation.

Fracking [12]— the extreme oil and gas extraction method that involves blasting millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals underground at enormous pressures to break apart subterranean rock — has exploded in the last decade. More than 270,000 wells have been fracked in 25 states throughout the nation. More than 10 million Americans live within a mile of a fracking site. This means that 10 million Americans — and truly many more — have been placed directly in harm’s way. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have connected fracking to serious human health effects, including cancer, asthma and birth defects.

For this we can thank the Energy Policy Act of 2005 [13], the law that holds the Halliburton Loophole. Named after Dick Cheney and the notorious corporation he led before becoming vice president, the law (championed by Cheney and disgraced Enron founder Kenneth Lay, among others) explicitly exempted fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. These exemptions from one of America’s most fundamental environmental protection laws provided the oil and gas industry the immunity it required to develop a highly polluting process on a grand national scale.

[vid]

One of the most troubling repercussions is how fracking companies hide the contents of their toxic water and chemical solutions pumped into the ground. Contamination of underground drinking water sources from fracking fluids is a glaring threat to public health and safety. Yet even doctors responding to fracking-related health complaints can’t access data on what particular chemicals their patients may have been exposed to.

But the Halliburton Loophole wasn’t the only fracking enabler in the Energy Policy Act. The act granted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC [14]) sweeping new authority to supersede state and local decision-making with regard to the citing of fracked gas pipelines and infrastructure. It also shifted to FERC industry oversight and compliance responsibility for the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, another key law. This was akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

As it stands, FERC is entirely unaccountable to public will [15]. It is unaccountable to Congress and even the White House. Commissioners are appointed to five-year terms and can do as they please. Until a law reigning in FERC is passed, the commission will continue to act as a rubber-stamp for the fossil fuel industry.

Additionally, the Energy Policy Act repealed an important anti-monopoly law, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). PUHCA safeguarded consumers from the overreach of the oil and gas industry and banks that did business with those companies. It prevented the formation of giant state and regional energy cartels that could manipulate energy costs, engage in profiteering and exert undue influence over political debate. The Energy Policy Act transferred most of this oversight to FERC. Since then, the largest American energy companies have grown significantly more powerful and spent almost a billion dollars on federal lobbying, according to OpenSecrets.org [16].

The 10th anniversary of the Energy Policy Act is indeed a sad occasion, but it provides us with a ripe opportunity to reexamine our nation’s disastrous policy of doubling-down on fossil fuels over the last decade, thanks to the extreme process of fracking. For the sake of countless Americans who are currently suffering health effects caused by fracking and the countless more who will suffer in the future, we must immediately curtail our dependence on oil and gas and turn decisively toward a truly clean, renewable energy future.

We Will Not Be Silent: Beyond Extreme Energy Continues Actions Against FERC

With climate change, we are at a moment when as humanity we cannot remain silent. 4/15

http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/23/protesters-distrupt-ferc-meeting/

ast week at the monthly meeting of the five Commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, DC, a group of 20Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) activists took action. Two people, myself and Ellen Taylor, attempted to read the statement below just before the meeting began, but as Ellen began to speak FERC security moved on the two of us and moved us out of the room and out the front door of the building.

But BXE wasn’t done.

Several minutes later, right after the pledge of allegiance, a dozen other red-shirted BXE’ers scrambled from their seats up to the front of the room, right next to the table where the commissioners sit. They sat down, locked arms and began chanting, “Stop construction at Cove Point.” As the FERC Commissioners hastily got up and left the room, the people chanting were also moved by security.

When we were all back together outside the front of the building, we walked down to the part of the building closest to where the meeting was being held and chanted once more for several minutes as loudly as we could.

The statement below explains why we took this action.

As has been true for every one since their November, 2014 meeting, we will be at their April meeting and then, in very large numbers, at the one on May 21, the first day of our nine days of action and getting organized in DC.

Beyond Extreme Energy statement at March 19, 2015 FERC Commissioners Meeting

FERC Commissioners:

Here we are again—Beyond Extreme Energy at your monthly meeting. We are here about thepermit you granted on Sept. 29 last year to Dominion to build facilities for the liquefaction and export of natural gas at Cove Point in Lusby, Maryland.

On Oct. 15 FERC’s granting of this permit was appealed administratively, as it was necessary to do. By then Dominion had begun construction of their planned LNG export terminal, with FERC’s approval and blessing, and they have been doing so ever since.

By law, you were required to answer the administrative appeal within a month. You did so by giving yourself an extension of time to give an answer to this appeal, as you have done many, many times with other gas infrastructure expansion projects. And as has been true for those projects, it is now going on half a year of your coming to a decision on this appeal, and Dominion just keeps building and building.

As you know, the Cove Point residents cannot go to court to challenge the granting of this permit until you rule on the appeal. You also know that, to the best of our knowledge, you have rarely, if ever, in recent years certainly, decided to overturn your initial granting of a FERC gas infrastructure expansion permit.

And by the way, this issue was raised almost two years ago in a meeting Ted Glick took part in with then-Chair Jon Wellinghoff, and it was raised in meetings with Chair LaFleur last June and just two weeks ago, and nothing has changed.

Efforts have been made by the use of peaceful, nonviolent direct action at the construction sites to address this situation; 27 people who took action in this way last November and December were convicted and sentenced last month, and just last week they received a nasty letter from Dominion telling them that if they step onto Dominion property anywhere in the USA, they could face criminal prosecution.

You are continuing to allow Dominion to proceed with construction while simultaneously asking for a lot of new information from them—why didn’t you ask for this before you granted the permit in the first place? You are taking months to rule on local residents’ request for a rehearing. You are refusing to rule on a request from their legal team to stay all construction while FERC considers their request for a rehearing. The combined result of this is that Dominion gets to construct for many months before the case gets heard before the Court of Appeals. As has been true with other projects, that could make for a prejudicial situation when it finally gets into court.

We are here to demand that you do what is right by the people of Lusby, Md. and order Dominion to stop construction. We demand that you amend your agenda for this meeting to include that item. FERC, stop construction at Cove Point!

11/14 update http://www.alternet.org/activism/protesters-block-federal-agency-five-days-straight

http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/07/beyond-extreme-energy-ferc

As the participants in the Great March for Climate Action ended up in Washington, DC, on Nov. 1 after a six-month trek across the country, they joined with other environmental groups to launch a week of action under the banner Beyond Extreme Energy. The actions revolved around a series of blockades at the DC headquarters of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with more than 100 people arrested.

Despite ongoing opposition from area residents, the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) has approved the conversion of the Dominion Cove Point liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in southern Maryland from an import to an export facility. The decision also authorizes the installation of additional compression at Dominion’s Pleasant Valley Compressor Station and related facilities in Northern Virginia.

Twenty five people were arrested this morning protesting outside the FERC building in Washington, DC, including Michael Zambrano (shown above) who was part of the Great March for Climate Action. Photo credit: Popular Resistance ?@PopResistance Twitter feed

“We walked 3,000 miles across the country and heard firsthand from families and communities the hardships they are facing due to extreme energy extraction,” said Faith Meckley, one of the climate marchers who lives in New York state.

Meckley said she’s participating in these actions because FERC rubber stamped a methane gas storage facility on the shore of New York’s Seneca Lake that allows methane storage in unstable salt caverns that threatens her community.

Other people who took part in today’s action said they have had enough of FERC rubber stamping fracking infrastructure projects in their communities, including pipelines, gas storage under lakes, compressor stations and fracked gas export facilities.

Today’s action used a massive portrait of families from Maryland and New York whose homes and communities are threatened by fracking infrastructure that has been approved by FERC. A model town was erected as part of the action which blocked the entrance to FERC preventing employees from entering the building.

“The object of the blockade art is to give FERC no other option but to destroy the town and families in order to get to work,” said Kim Fraczek of Sane Energy Project of New York. “The destruction of the art serves a metaphor of reality.”

Coal Interests Aim To Defeat Obama's Nominee To Key Energy Post

Posted: 08/22/2013 2:42 pm EDT | Updated: 08/22/2013 3:57 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- The coal industry is working to defeat a key energy nominee in a battle that has fractured the fossil fuel coalition and threatens to derail the president's climate action plan. Oil and gas interests have formed an unusual alliance with environmentalists who are rallying to back Ron Binz to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

But even an alliance of oil, gas and green groups might not be enough for Binz. The chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), warned the White House that Binz would face an uphill climb in his committee, according to a person familiar with the exchange. The administration went ahead with the nomination. (A Wyden spokesman denied that the chairman had cautioned the White House against Binz.)

Democrats hold a 12-10 membership advantage on the panel, but coal has one key ally: Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from the coal state of West Virginia. An 11-11 tie would block Binz. Sources inside the debate say that Manchin has made it clear that he is firmly opposed to Binz's nomination, meaning that a united GOP opposition would sink him. A spokesman for Manchin declined to comment.

Manchin's opposition shifts the focus to Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Landrieu hopes to chair the committee should she win reelection in 2014, but would have a tough time winning the gavel if she sinks the president's key nominee. Operatives on both sides said she is expected to vote yes; a Landrieu spokesperson said she has yet to declare a position.

Murkowski, the ranking minority member of the committee, is a "wild card," as one coal advocate put it. She has been outspoken about her climate change concerns, and her home state is already living with the consequences of a fast-warming planet. And while fossil fuels are king in Alaska, oil and gas are the major players, rather than coal. Robert Dillon, a Murkowski spokesman, said that her staff is still reviewing Binz's record and the senator is undecided at this point.

Murkowski has signaled that she'll be tough on Binz during his confirmation hearing, said a K Street source working on the issue. Murkowski, though, owes little to party leaders, having won as a write-in candidate in 2010 against a GOP-backed insurgent.

Longtime K Street operatives, Hill staffers and regulators say they have never seen a fight of such intensity over as obscure a position as head of FERC. The battle, in short, is over the administration's plans to address climate change.

"It's a microcosm of the larger ideological conflict between Congress, and specifically House Republicans, and the president's climate plan," Ben Cole, a spokesman for the Koch-funded American Energy Alliance, told The Huffington Post. "It's a perfect storm right now for the administration, one they didn't see in their political meteorology," he added of the intensity of the opposition.

The stage for the fight was set when The Wall Street Journal ran a scathing editorial headlined "Ron Binz's Rules for Radicals," a reference to community organizer Saul Alinsky, whom the right believes is Obama's ideological mentor. Such WSJ editorials don't typically generate themselves and suggest that at least one major industry group has a vested interest in the outcome of the fight.

As the top energy regulator in Colorado, Binz made enemies in the coal industry by pushing utilities to switch to natural gas, which emits far less of the greenhouse gases associated with climate change. Several Binz allies in Colorado assume the coal campaign against Binz is payback, but Cole said that opponents of the president's climate change plan see the FERC panel as an increasingly important link.

FERC regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil -- including interstate power lines, wholesale prices and pipelines -- which means it plays a fairly important role in shaping the country's overall energy policy. Among the biggest expenses for solar and wind is transmission, as the energy must be transported from the desert or plains to populated areas. The coal industry worries that FERC could tip the balance in favor of renewable energy transmission.

"In order to deal with the transmission issues related to renewables, the president must have a FERC commission that will buy into the plan. He has to have those three votes, and he has to have a FERC chairman who sets the agenda," Cole said.

Several industry groups representing the coal industry declined to comment on the record on the Binz nomination, but neither are they keeping their position a secret. "I certainly get the impression that a number of companies are concerned that [Binz] might use his position at FERC to disadvantage coal-fired generation, given the role he played in Colorado," said Jeff Holmstead, a partner at the law firm and lobbying group Bracewell & Giuliani, which represents coal and other energy interests. "I think envisioning somebody like that at FERC makes people nervous."

"If Binz was nominated to the FERC chairmanship to raise electricity rates and advocate for one-sided, pro-renewable policies, then yes, he does appear to be uniquely qualified to do that," wrote Travis Fisher, a policy associate at the fossil fuel-backed research organization Institute for Energy Research, last month.

But the oil and gas lobby has issued more tepid public statements. "As senators consider Mr. Binz's nomination, we hope they keep in mind the game-changing impact America's oil and natural gas renaissance is having on our economy and energy security," said Brian Straessle, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute.

The Green Tech Action Fund is backing a PR effort to get Binz confirmed, working with the consulting firm Venn Squared to rebut attacks on Binz and help shape his public image, a rarity for a relatively obscure position. GTAF is a project of the Energy Foundation, a California-based philanthropy that supports clean energy advocacy groups. One of the Energy Foundation's biggest supporters is Tom Steyer, the billionaire clean-tech investor (the group said Steyer is not personally involved in this particular effort). "GTAF is very committed to fostering clean energy markets and clean energy policy," said a GTAF spokesperson. "[Binz] is a candidate they feel furthers that goal, so that's why they've gotten involved."

Renewable advocates are enthusiastic about Binz. "He's being mislabeled as an extremist," said John Jimison, managing director of the Energy Future Coalition. "He's a very reasonable, consensus building kind ... he was that way as a regulator, and I'm sure he'd be the same as a commissioner."

Venn Squared put HuffPost in touch with a number of Colorado energy players who had warm things to say about Binz, including Skip Arnold, an executive at a utility that was acquired by Xcel Energy. "My experience with him is he's balanced. He looks at the views of the constituencies he's charged with looking at. He doesn't pay attention to one over the other," said Arnold.

That there's even a fight over FERC has surprised many observers in Washington. A bipartisan group of 12 former FERC commissioners wrote to The Wall Street Journal in support of Binz in the wake of the paper's editorial opposing his nomination. The former commissioners say that FERC has traditionally worked across party lines to find consensus on regulatory issues and should not be the subject of partisan squabbles in the Senate.

"I'm frankly outraged by the process that these appointments have become," said Nora Mead Brownell, a George W. Bush appointee who served as a FERC commissioner from 2001 to 2006. "They've become political battlegrounds where good people are torn apart because someone doesn't agree with their policies. The role of the Senate is to approve based on whether they're qualified or not, not whether they agree with that appointee."

"The president gets to appoint," said Brownell. "Sorry you don't like it, but that's the way the rules work."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/senate-obama-ferc-coal-binz_n_3796736.html?ir=Green

ivins bushwacked

sec harvey pitt recuse 27x p5

Ferc guy fired for good ol boy from Pt arthur tx

baker botts Patrick Wood FERC bush recount?

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), according to its website, "is an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil." Also, "the Energy Policy Act of 2005 gave FERC additional responsibilities as outlined in FERC’s top priorities and updated Strategic Plan."

Contents

[hide]

1 On nuclear power

2 Coal and transmission

2.1 Role of FERC

3 Commissioners

3.1 Former Commissioners

4 Contact details

5 Articles and resources

5.1 Related SourceWatch articles

5.2 References

5.3 External resources

5.4 External articles

On nuclear power

Obama administration FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff caused concern among the coal and nuclear industries in April 2009, when he said, "I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism. ... We may not need any, ever." He also said, about nuclear power plants, "I don't see anybody building these things ... until costs get to a reasonable level." [1]

In May 2009, Nuclear Energy Institute President Marvin Fertel asked Wellinghoff about his remark, that "you didn't see a need for baseload, either coal or nuclear, if we could just get distributed generation and renewables." Wellinghoff responded that his point was that "renewable energy, energy demand management, new technologies and other strategies could create 'a new paradigm'. ... 'It is conceivable in this scenario that you may not need large central station plants,' he said. 'That's one scenario. That doesn't mean that scenario is in fact going to occur. But it is a scenario that is rational. There may be other scenarios that are rational, as well, including incorporating significant nuclear and coal into our system. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter what might be a rational or irrational scenario. What matters is what the markets will do.'" [1]

Coal and transmission

Role of FERC

According to the Institute for Local Self Reliance, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) creates barriers for local use of renewable energy, as FERC sees its primary goal as accelerating and enabling the long distance transmission of electricity, while many states and cities see their primary goal as maximizing in-state production of energy and the economic benefits that derive from that. FERC has asserted that it has preemptive powers to impose new, high-voltage transmission lines on states, although this has so far been denied by the courts. FERC's claim came from a section of the 2005 Energy Policy Act that gave FERC the authority to approve transmission lines in Department of Energy designated “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors” if states did not act on proposals within one year. FERC took this to mean that it could approve any transmission line, even one that a state had rejected. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in February 2009, ruling that FERC had overstepped its authority.

FERC has also encouraged a shift in the locus of transmission planning from local and state, to regional and national bodies, and has prohibited states from setting prices above the utility’s avoided cost – the price the utility says it must pay to get an additional kilowatt-hour of power – generally too low to attract investment in all but the least expensive renewable energy sources.

The Institute for Local Self Reliance also argues the grid system is a black box and developers only learn about potential interconnection costs once they initiate the slow interconnection process and have sunk significant money into site development.[2]

Commissioners

"The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is composed of up to five commissioners who are appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate. Commissioners serve five-year terms, and have an equal vote on regulatory matters." [1]

The Obama administration FERC, as of May 2009, is led by: [3]

Chairman Jon Wellinghoff

Suedeen G. Kelly

Philip D. Moeller

Marc Spitzer

Former Commissioners

The following are recent former Commissioners. A full list is available on the agency's website.

Joseph T. Kelliher

Nora Mead Brownell

Patrick Henry Wood III

William Lloyd Massey

Contact details

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

888 First Street, NE

Washington, DC 20426

Phone / public inquiries: 202-502-6088 or toll-free: 1-866-208-3372

Email: customer AT ferc.gov

Website: http://www.ferc.gov/

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

Obama administration

United States and Post-Kyoto Protocol negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions

U.S. Department of Energy

Julia Bovey

References

? 1.0 1.1 Peter Behr, "Markets will decide nuclear's future, says FERC chairman," Greenwire / New York Times, May 19, 2009.

? John Farrell,"Why Developing Better Renewable Energy Isn’t Enough: Five Non-Technology Roadblocks to Faster Growth" Climate Progress, Sep 22, 2011.

? "About FERC: Commission members," Federal Energy Regulatory Commission website, accessed May 2009.

External resources

External articles

Marcy Gordon, "Enron Chairman Gave List of Favored Names to White House; Bush Named Two as Energy Regulators," Associated Press (Common Dreams), February 1, 2002.

Peter Behr, "Markets will decide nuclear's future, says FERC chairman," Greenwire / New York Times, May 19, 2009.

Categories:

U.S. government

United States

Jason Leopold | Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis

Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis

By Jason Leopold

t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

Thursday 19 July 2007

In-depth investigation shows how Vice President Dick Cheney pressured federal energy regulators to conceal evidence of widespread market manipulation by energy companies during the California electricity crisis in 2001.

In March 2001, while California's two largest utilities were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the state's electricity crisis was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned Curt Hebert, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to his office next to the White House for a hastily arranged meeting.

Cheney had just been informed by his longtime friend Thomas Cruikshank, the man who handpicked the vice president to succeed him at Halliburton in the mid-1990s, that federal energy regulators were close to completing an investigation into allegations that Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Companies and AES Corporation of Arlington, Virginia had created an artificial power shortage in California in April and May of 2000 by shutting down a power plant for more than two weeks.

Cruikshank was a member of Williams's board of directors, and perhaps more importantly, had been one of many energy industry insiders advising Cheney's energy task force on a wide-range of policy issues, including deregulation of the nation's electricity sector, that would benefit Williams financially.

Cruikshank informed the vice president he had learned about the preliminary findings of FERC's investigation during a Williams board meeting earlier in March 2001. FERC, Cruikshank told Cheney, was in possession of incriminating audio tapes in which a Williams official and an AES power plant operator discussed keeping a Southern California power plant offline so Williams could continue to receive the $750 per megawatt hour premium for emergency power California's grid operator was forced to procure to keep the lights on in Southern California.

AES was the operator of two power plants in Los Alamitos and Williams marketed the electricity. The power plants were designated by the California Independent System Operator (ISO), the agency that manages the state's power grid, as crucial in order to ensure a reliable flow of electricity in the Southern part of the state. To stave off the potential for blackouts, the ISO was given the authority to pay top dollar for power if the power plants operated by AES, as well as power plants operated by other companies, were not in operation.

California's electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers in the state between 2000 and 2001. The crisis resulted in widespread rolling blackouts and forced the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market in an effort to provide consumers with cheaper electricity and the opportunity to choose their own power provider. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $30 billion.

According to a copy of the March 2001 Williams transcript, Rhonda Morgan, a Williams official, told an AES power plant operator "it wouldn't hurt Williams's feelings" if the power plant that was down for repairs was kept offline for an extended period of time so the company could continue to be paid the "premium" for its emergency energy supplies from the ISO. In a separate conversation with Eric Pendergraft, a senior AES official, Morgan said, "I don't wanna do something underhanded, but if there's work you can continue to do ..."

Pendergraft responded to Morgan, saying, "I understand. You don't have to talk anymore."

The collusion between Williams and AES allowed Williams to earn an extra $10 million over a period of 15 days and set in motion a series of events that resulted in the California power crisis between 2000 and 2001, a crisis that was based almost entirely on manipulative practices by energy companies.

This story is based on a two-month investigation into Cheney's energy task force; how the vice president pressured cabinet officials to conceal clear-cut evidence of market manipulation during California's energy crisis, and how that subsequently led Cheney to exert executive privilege when lawmakers called on him to turn over documents related to his meetings with energy industry officials who helped draft the National Energy Policy and also gamed California's power market. Truthout spoke with more than a dozen former officials from the Energy Department and FERC as well as current and former energy industry executives all of whom were involved in personal discussions with Cheney relating to the National Energy Policy.

In addition to Hebert, the FERC chairman, the other senior cabinet officials who attended the March 2001 meeting in Cheney's office included Andrew Lundquist, the former executive director of Cheney's energy task force, now an energy industry lobbyist, White House political adviser Karl Rove, President Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, according to former Energy Department and FERC officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they were not authorized to disclose details of their secret meetings with Cheney or information about the energy task force meetings.

Joe Allbaugh, another adviser to the vice president’s energy task force, had heard of a similar situation involving an energy company his wife was involved with. Allbaugh told Cheney that Reliant Energy also shut down a power plant in California in June 2000. That caused wholesale power prices in California to reach levels that exceeded "just and reasonable" rates, a violation of the Federal Power Act. FERC apparently had audio tapes of Reliant employees discussing the scheme.

"[We] started out Monday losing $3 million ... So, then we decided as a group that we were going to make it back up, so we turned like about almost every power plant off. It worked. Prices went back up. Made back about $4 million, actually more than that, $5 million," the Reliant trader says in a tape-recorded conversation on June 23, 2000.

Allbaugh's wife, Dianne Allbaugh, was a lobbyist for Reliant, TXU and Entergy, who was paid at least $20,000 a month by those corporations, and told her husband what she had learned from executives at Reliant. Allbaugh then informed Cheney.

Cruikshank and Allbaugh did not return dozens of calls or respond to emails seeking comment. Devona Greenstone, a spokeswoman for Hebert, was sent a detailed list of questions for Hebert to answer and was given more than one week to respond to the queries. But neither Greenstone nor the former FERC chairman replied despite numerous follow-up phone calls and emails sent to Hebert and Greenstone. A spokesperson for Cheney also failed to return 16 messages left for comment over the past month.

If You Were "King" or "Il Duce"?

Joseph Kelliher, a former Energy Department official, had been soliciting advice from Williams, Reliant, El Paso, Enron and other energy companies on natural gas issues on behalf of Cheney, another area those companies were accused of gaming, particularly in California.

In a March 10, 2001 email, just a week or so after Cheney was briefed by Cruikshank about the Williams scheme, Kelliher emailed energy lobbyist Dana Contratto, asking Contratto if he was "King or "Il Duce, what would you include in a national energy policy, especially with respect to natural gas issues?", according to energy task force documents.

Contratto responded with a three-page list of ideas, many of which were included in the final version of the energy policy.

On another occasion, Kelliher sought out Stephen Craig Sayle, an Enron Corp. lobbyist, to make similar recommendations. Sayle, former counsel for the House Commerce Committee, sent Kelliher Enron's "dream list." The list included a recommendation that the administration commit to market-based emissions trading, which was also used in administration's National Energy Policy.

Sayle wrote Kelliher about the energy policy, saying, "a multi-pollutant regulatory strategy should be estimated for the power generation sector including: Gradually phased in [mercury, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide emissions] reductions; reform/replacement of NSR; use of market-based/emission trading programs; inclusion of both existing and new plants and equal treatment for both. The last bullet is the critical one to ensure that: a) we encourage the new generation that is required; b) we ensure that the new technologies developed through DOE programs can come into the market.

"Obviously, this is a dream list," Sayle said in the March 23, 2001 email he sent to Kelliher. "Not all will be done. But perhaps some of these ideas could be floated and adopted."

Sayle also provided Kelliher with a PowerPoint presentation on behalf of his other energy clients in the so-called Clean Power Group, a consortium made up of a handful of the country's biggest energy companies, including NiSource Inc., Calpine Corp., Trigen Energy Corp. and El Paso Corp, whose mission, according to the group's web site, is to "streamline requirements under the Clean Air Act for electric generating facilities while at the same time making major reductions in air emissions."

The PowerPoint presentation, A Comprehensive Multi-Pollutant Emission Control Strategy for Power Generation, summarized the Clean Power Group's support of a "cap and trade" method in addressing emissions of mercury, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide from power plants, but included a proposal for a voluntary cap on carbon dioxide. The Clean Power Group stood to benefit from the initiative it urged Kelliher to get the White House to adopt in that the companies could release more emissions under its proposed plan than under the more restrictive rules the Clinton administration had put in place.

After receiving Sayle's email and supporting material, Kelliher recommended that President Bush "direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to propose multi-pollutant legislation that would establish a flexible, market-based program to significantly reduce and cap emissions; provide regulatory certainty to allow utilities to make modifications to their plants without fear of new litigation; provide market based incentives, such as emissions-trading credits to help achieve the required reductions," all of which the president approved and was eventually incorporated into the National Energy Policy.

In fact, President Bush's "Clear Skies" initiative consists of many of the bullet points laid out months earlier in Sayle's email to Kelliher.

In addition to Kelliher's correspondence with Sayle, he also met with oil and gas industry lobbyists who helped draft language that Kelliher passed on directly to the White House. Two months later, the president issued executive orders nearly identical to those Kelliher received from the lobbyists months earlier, according to energy task force documents.

Kelliher now chairs FERC, the agency that is entrusted with keeping a close eye on wholesale energy markets, ensuring that companies like Williams and Reliant refrain from engaging in the type of manipulative practices they were caught doing during the spring and summer of 2000 in California.

Cheney Orders FERC to Seal Evidence

But the documentary evidence of widespread market manipulation that FERC obtained in March 2001, while Kelliher was soliciting energy industry officials to assist in writing the National Energy Policy, and when Cruikshank and Allbaugh disclosed to the vice president the manipulative tactics Williams and Reliant had engaged in, was sealed by FERC on direct orders by Cheney because it would have been a political nightmare for the Bush administration and would have derailed a recommendation of one of the cornerstones of the vice president's National Energy Policy: deregulation, and perhaps scuttle the policy altogether if evidence about the energy companies behavior in California was made public, according to half-a-dozen former FERC officials and former Energy Department officials.

So in May 2001, just days before Cheney unveiled his long-awaited National Energy Policy, FERC entered into confidential settlements with Williams in which the company forfeited $8 million it was owed by California's grid operator for power Williams sold into the marketplace at inflated prices. Williams did not admit any guilt for the power plant shutdown and, on orders from Cheney, FERC agreed to keep details of the settlement sealed. FERC later entered into a similar settlement with Reliant. The company agreed to forfeit $13.8 million it was owed by California's grid operator, did not admit to any wrongdoing, and FERC kept the details of the settlement confidential.

Moreover, FERC kept California officials in the dark about the nature of the state's claims that its wholesale electricity market was being manipulated. Hebert is now the vice president of external affairs for Entergy in New Orleans.

For former Governor Gray Davis, the illegal behavior by energy companies like Williams that federal energy regulators discovered, then covered up, during a time when the former governor had said publicly he believed such behavior had taken place, is beyond disturbing.

Instead of protecting the interests of consumers, FERC's primary job, Hebert toed the White House line and together with Cheney, Hebert had come out publicly to say that Davis should immediately order the California Public Utilities Commission to relax environmental restrictions on the permitting process related to power plant construction and raise electricity rates to keep utilities Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison from becoming insolvent. The insolvency issue was due to the fact that the utilities were paying higher prices for power than it was legally allowed to charge its customers under the state's deregulation law.

In an interview, Davis, now an attorney with Loeb & Loeb in Century City, California, said he never saw the evidence FERC had obtained implicating Williams in shutting down power plants in the state.

"If I had hard evidence that this was happening, I would have stood out in front of the Congress until they did something," Davis said. "I thought there was something rotten going on but I never believed that these energy companies would outright steal from us."

"This was an absolute outrage and was based on pure greed," Davis added. "I clearly didn't know this was happening with Williams. I think FERC perpetrated a fraud on the American public and California consumers by sealing the findings of this investigation while I was out there saying that this type of manipulation was happening. I think that if the results of this investigation were made public in March 2001, when FERC knew this was taking place, it would have stopped energy deregulation in America in its tracks. This admission in effect by Williams would have been the death knell for energy deregulation."

Davis had a tumultuous relationship with the federal agency that appeared to be based on partisan politics. Just three months before Cruikshank and Allbaugh provided Cheney with details that the energy companies they were affiliated with had gouged California consumers and violated the state's market rules, the vice president, and FERC's chairman, railed against Davis, blaming the energy crisis on him and said the governor's claims that energy companies were acting like a "cartel" were baseless.

"The basic problem in California was caused by Californians," Cheney said, adding that he would resist calls by lawmakers to allow price caps to be placed on wholesale energy prices in the Western United States.

Even after Hebert had secured evidence showing that Williams manipulated the power market, he continued to pin the blame for skyrocketing power prices squarely on the shoulders of Davis and the state's Democratic leaders.

"I went to FERC and laid out our problems and was promised they would look into it. Nothing happened," Davis said. "My experience with FERC during the energy crisis was wholly unsatisfactory. I did not ever feel that they believed their job was to act in the public interest. I always believed they were acting in the interests of the energy companies. They operated as if they were a wholly owned subsidiary of the energy companies."

Hebert, however, fell out favor with the Bush administration when he privately opposed a recommendation by Ken Lay, made to Cheney, to open up the country's transmission lines to corporations such as Enron. Lay requested Cheney and Bush replace Hebert, which they did in the summer of 2001.

PG&E Files for Bankruptcy; Rove Orchestrates Political Spin Campaign

In a televised speech to California residents on April 5, 2001, Davis resisted Cheney's and Hebert's calls to increase electricity rates for average consumers to keep the state's public utilities afloat, opting instead to increase electricity rates of the state's largest power customers such as manufacturing plants. The next morning PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Davis publicly railed against the Bush administration's refusal to launch an investigation into wholesale energy companies trading practices, and its position on price caps. Davis's rhetoric started to impact the Bush administration's approval ratings. Rove, working closely with Cheney, entered into discussions on how the White House would respond to criticism by Davis that the Bush administration was turning its back on California.

"Karl [Rove] started to talk about using the resources of former Republican National Committee staffers to put together an attack campaign against Davis, and pin the power problems on the governor and his administration," according to one former high-level Energy Department official who was privy to the conversation between Rove and Cheney.

Rove enlisted the help of former RNC staffers Ed Gillespie, then a lobbyist who was working for Enron and other energy companies, and Scott Reed, who used to work for the RNC and was the former manager of Robert Dole's presidential campaign, to start devising a strategy to attack Davis and lead people to believe that the energy crisis was entirely his fault. Gillespie was recently tapped by President Bush to replace Dan Bartlett as White House counselor.

Reed and Gillespie, who was doing double duty advising Cheney's energy task force on behalf of Enron, advised Rove and the vice president that the PG&E bankruptcy left Davis vulnerable and the best course of action for the White House was to take advantage of Davis's vulnerability by stating that Davis single-handedly, in refusing to raise electricity rates, caused one of the largest bankruptcies in American history. Gillespie went a step further, according to Energy Department officials familiar with his conversations with Rove and Cheney, by suggesting that the White House start courting Republican gubernatorial candidates to replace Davis in the 2002 election.

At the White House in April 2001, Rove met with Brad Freeman, President Bush's California finance chairman during the 2000 presidential campaign, and Gerald Parsky, an investment banker, who was Bush's top adviser in California. The discussion centered on Parsky and Freeman's interest in courting actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to discuss his bid for governor in 2002.

"That would be nice," Rove said about the possibility of Schwarzenegger, a Republican, to replace Davis as governor, according to people who were briefed about the meeting. "That would be really, really nice."

Davis said he could see now see how the energy crisis created a political opportunity for the White House in California.

"In retrospect I could see how that happened," Davis said. "There's no question that the energy companies saw me as an adversary when I wouldn't buckle under their demands. I was vulnerable and the [energy companies and the White House] took advantage of it. This crisis took place in the early days of the Bush administration. I figured these guys are too busy picking out furniture for their offices. I didn't think they [the Bush administration] were spending their days in office involved in some full-scale conspiracy. But it turns out they were."

Cheney Takes Aim at Davis

Meanwhile, Cheney continued to meet with energy company officials who were instrumental in drafting key aspects of the National Energy Policy. At the same time, the usually reclusive vice president was granting interviews to numerous reporters discussing his take on the California energy crisis which continued to spiral out of control.

In May 2001, the PBS news program "Frontline" interviewed Cheney who was asked by a correspondent whether energy companies were acting like a cartel and using manipulative tactics to cause electricity prices to spike in California.

"No," Cheney said during the "Frontline" interview, even though he was personally briefed about energy companies manipulating the state. "The problem you had in California was caused by a combination of things - an unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn't really deregulate. Now they’re trapped from unwise regulatory schemes, plus, not having addressed the supply side of the issue. They've obviously created major problems for themselves and bankrupted PG&E in the process."

The same month, May 2001, Davis met with Bush at a Century City hotel, not far from the offices he now works at as an attorney. He pleaded with Bush one last time to put price controls in place. Bush refused.

Behind the scenes, while Bush and Davis discussed the state of the energy crisis, Gillespie was emailing Enron officials on the status of Cheney's energy policy. He alerted Enron executives to the exact language that would appear on one of the hot-button issues revolving around price caps in California and the west and allowing energy companies free access to the nation's transmission lines.

"I believe this is the exact language that will appear under the 'energy supply' section of the report," Gillespie wrote. "Recommends that the President encourage the FERC to use its existing statutory authority to promote competition and encourage investment in transmission facilities," which Enron was lobbying heavily for. "Please keep this under wraps. We do not want to circulate this beyond the folks listed on this email. Please let me know any concerns. As we have known for several weeks, the report is not as explicit as we would want, but the White House, vice president, and [Department of Energy] have repeatedly but verbally assured us that they are making clear to FERC exactly what this means."

Another email Gillespie forwarded Enron officials, dated May 17, 2001, came from Cheney's spokeswoman, Juleanna Glover, who told Gillespie "you're really relied upon around here ... hear your name all the time in connection w. tough issues, but you know that already."

On May 21, 2001, five days after unveiling his energy policy, Cheney told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" that Davis was to blame for the energy issues in the state.

"They knew over a year ago they had a problem, and Gray Davis refused to address that problem," Cheney said. "[They] kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, with the notion that somehow price caps could be maintained. Now, today, where are they in California?"

GOP Front Group Attacks Gray Davis, Shields Bush, Cheney

At the same time, Reed informed Rove and Cheney that his nonprofit, the American Taxpayers Alliance, a Republican front organization, would begin to air a series of scathing radio commercials taking aim at Davis's failure to tame the energy crisis in June 2001. The ads, Reed said, were aimed to shift attention away from Republicans in Washington and "back to Sacramento where it belongs." Reed added that the ads would leave Davis "bleeding like a stuck pig."

The ads, which began to air in June 2001, did in fact make an impact:

"He's pointing fingers and blaming others. Gray Davis says he's not responsible for California's energy problems; after all, the Public Utilities Commission blocked long-term cost-saving contracts for electricity. But who runs the PUC? The people Gray Davis appointed - Loretta Lynch and other Davis appointees who left us powerless. That's why newspapers say he just ignored all the warning signals and turned a problem into a crisis. Grayouts on Gray Davis."

The ads and the negative press Davis received helped set in motion a chain of events that would lead to a historic recall campaign and put Schwarzenegger in office.

What the public didn't know, however, is that Cheney and Rove recommended that Reed approach Reliant Energy, the firm that one of Cheney's energy task force advisers, Joseph Allbaugh, was affiliated with via his wife's lobbying for the company, to fund the radio spots, according to former Reliant executives involved in the matter. Reliant donated nearly $2 million of Reed's $3.2 annual budget, yet the company only reported spending a total of $340,000 on government lobbying in apparent violation of the law, according to the company's public records.

Gillespie also launched a public relations campaign against Davis. He took ads out in print publications attacking Davis. The ads were paid for by Gillespie's 21st Century Energy Project, which he formed in close coordination with Karl Rove less than a month after the National Energy Policy was released in May 2001, according to former Enron executives who worked closely with Gillespie. Enron funneled at least $75,000 to Gillespie to pay for the ads through Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, according to documents obtained by Truthout.

Russ Schriefer, who worked with Gillespie on Bush’s presidential campaign and formed Mosaic Media with Quinn Gillespie in February 2001 to produce advocacy ads for Republicans, wrote the Davis ads. The ads aired on ABC, Fox and CNN.

Norquist, a longtime friend of Cheney's, was personally tapped by Rove to assist Gillespie with the ad campaign. Norquist may be best known for his close relationship with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. One of Abramoff's clients, Raul Garza, chief of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, donated $25,000 to Norquist's organization in order to obtain an invitation to a reception with President Bush on May 9, 2001. Norquist and Abramoff were also in attendance and a photograph of Garza standing alongside Bush with Abramoff in the background was kept from public view when the Abramoff scandal blew up. Bush had denied publicly that he ever met Abramoff.

At the time, Gillespie said the ads were necessary "because Davis put all his time and energy into trying to shift responsibility and President Bush spent all his time and energy trying to accept responsibility. The president is trying to change the tone, but others of us have to point out that the crisis developed on the watch of Governor Davis and President Clinton."

Executive Privilege

Immediately following reports that Cheney relied upon the recommendations of 400 energy industry executives to draft the National Energy Policy, lawmakers began to demand that the vice president turn over documents regarding his task force meetings to Congress. The vice president vehemently refused.

With White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales weighing in on the issue, the administration exerted "executive privilege" as the reason it refused to turn over task force documents to Democratic lawmakers. The issue reached the Supreme Court that ruled in Cheney's favor. As Attorney General, Gonzales still refuses to publicly release audiotapes from 2000 and 2001 in which other energy companies were also found to have discussed ways in which to manipulate the California energy market. Some of the heads of those companies implicated in the crisis also provided Cheney with input on the National Energy Policy.

In 2004, Reliant became the first energy company that was indicted for its role in manufacturing the California energy crisis. A year later, the company refunded California $453 million.

Last month, two power companies agreed to pay California $84 million to settle charges stemming from the 2000-2001 California energy crisis.

PacifiCorp, a unit of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., paid the state $27.9 million to resolve claims that it manipulated the California and Pacific Northwest electricity markets in 2000 and 2001. MidAmerican Energy Holdings is a subsidiary of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

In a second case, a subsidiary of Houston-based El Paso Corp. paid California $56 million.

Joseph Kelliher, the chairman of FERC, and the man who, on behalf of Cheney in March 2001, lobbied these very companies to help write the National Energy Policy, helped negotiate the settlements.

Davis feels vindicated in light of the refunds paid to California consumers, which, to date, have totaled about $6 billion. He said that he believes he would likely never have faced a recall if FERC publicly released details of its investigation into Williams in March 2001. But despite what he knows now Davis doesn't hold a grudge against the individuals responsible for using the energy crisis to have him recalled.

"No one ever said life is fair," Davis said.

William Massey has a broad-based energy regulatory and government affairs practice in the Washington, DC office. He has extensive experience with regulatory issues before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and with energy legislative matters before Congress and state general assemblies. Most recently, he served as Commissioner at FERC for more than ten years. Mr. Massey advises investment firms, utilities, independent power producers, pipelines, project developers, customers, marketers and energy companies on a wide variety of energy matters including mergers and acquisitions, market structure, competition policy, transmission and infrastructure investment, enforcement and investigations, and legislative strategy.

Drawing on over 25 years as a Washington insider and counselor, Mr. Massey understands the intersection of policy, legislation and regulation. He offers a highly effective combination of strategic, legal and policy skills to his clients. He practices successful regulatory and legislative advocacy in Washington and in state capitals.

Representative Matters

KKR and TPG in obtaining FERC approval to acquire TXU Corp. in the largest leverage buyout in US history.

Seven major energy associations (EEI, NGSA, AGA, IPAA, EPSA, INGAA, and PGC) in preparing and presenting a FERC Enforcement White Paper evaluating the implementation of FERC enforcement policy.

PSEG in obtaining a favorable FERC Declaratory Order with respect to the Cross Hudson Project.

A major energy company in a formal investigation by FERC in connection with alleged market manipulation, and a number of other energy companies in non-public and internal investigations.

COMPETE, a coalition of major electricity market participants, including Exelon, Constellation Energy Group, Sempra, Reliant, TXU, PPL, PSEG, Safeway, and Wal-Mart on legislative and policy matters related to electricity competition.

Texas Genco in obtaining FERC approval to sell $5.4 billion in generation assets to NRG.

Previous Experience

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Commissioner (1993-2003)

U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers (D-Ark), Chief Counsel (1980-1989)

Central Arkansas Legal Services, Executive Director (1976-78)

Honors and Rankings

Chambers, Energy/Electricity (2008-2013)

Chambers, Energy/Oil & Gas (2009-2013)

Chambers Global, Energy - Electricity: Regulatory & Litigation (US) (2012)

Best Lawyers in America, Energy (2007-2013)

Washington D.C. Super Lawyer, Energy & Natural Resources (2013)

Recognized by the Legal 500 US for Energy: Litigation and Regulatory (2012-2013).

Memberships and Affiliations

Georgetown University Law Center, Adjunct Professor of Law

Energy Bar Association, Board of Directors (since 2005)

American Bar Association, Section on Public Utility, Communications, and Transportation (since 2000)

Publications and Speeches

"CFTC Issues Final Cross-Border Exemptive Order and Proposed Further Guidance Regarding Cross-border Application of Dodd-Frank Swap Provisions," Covington E-Alert (1/2/2013), Co-Author

"FERC Reports on 2012 Enforcement Activities, Modifies Policy on Transmission Investment Incentives, and Addresses Transparency Requirements," Covington E-Alert (11/20/2012), Co-Author

"FERC Approves Enhanced Wholesale Electricity Market for the Southwest Power Pool," Covington E-Alert (10/25/2012), Co-Author

More Publications and Speeches