In the Pipeline: 9/10/12

This is from the Democratic Party platform.  It is like the Keystone XL pipeline project was never proposed.  It is an unperson. DNC (9/12) reports: “In the last four years, President Obama and the Democratic Party have taken concrete steps to make us more energy independent. We’ve supported nearly 225,000 clean energy jobs and Americans are importing less oil, breathing cleaner air, and saving money on energy costs. Historic investments in clean energy technologies have helped double the electricity we get from wind and solar.”

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an ear (of corn). Rewire(9/6/12) reports: “Among the flurry of action — or inaction — on renewable energy bills in the last days of the state’s legislative session comes a striking but largely unheralded statement of policy from the state of California. Last week, Governor Brown signed into law a bill that excludes corn-derived ethanol fuel from the state’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program.”

As in so many other things (especially how he feels about Senator Frank Church) Senator Roberts is spot-on here. The Wichita Eagle (9/9/12) reports: “Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., introduced legislation last month to impose a “carbon tax” on the American people. We’ve been down this road before. It was a bad idea then, and it is now. A carbon tax is an additional tax on the essential fuels that power our economy – gasoline, diesel, natural gas and electricity. It would cause prices at the pump to increase, electricity rates to go up, and natural gas bills to rise. Because nearly everything we buy is transported by trains or trucks, or grown on farms that use diesel equipment, or derived from oil and gas, significant increases in energy prices will ripple throughout the entire economy.”

Everybody thinks they love wind… until they have to pay for it. Tulsa World (9/7/12) reports: “The numbers opting into those programs is far less than the positive response on the poll. American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s WindChoice program, which offers wind options at $1.72 extra per 100-kilowatt blocks, only has 669 takers so far out of approximately 530,000 customers.”

So, Secretary Salazar went to the convention and talked about how great he was doing.  But out here in the real world, the assessment is a little different. Anchorage Daily News (9/7/12) reports: “A Norwegian oil and gas company is delaying plans to explore for oil offshore in the Alaska Arctic until at least 2015 because of concerns about regulatory challenges faced by rival and sometimes partner Shell Oil Co., according to a company spokesman… The decision by Statoil came in August, before federal regulators decided to allow Shell to drill in the Chukchi Sea, but that development doesn’t change things, said Jim Schwartz, a Houston-based spokesman for Statoil… “The bottom line is, in light of the significant uncertainty regarding Alaska offshore exploration, we’ve decided to take what we believe is a prudent step of observing the outcome of Shell’s efforts before finalizing our own exploration decision time frame,” Schwartz said”