Washington Times reporter Sean Salai pursues the Montgomery County, Maryland imminent natural gas ban story. With a population of 1.1 million, Montgomery County is Maryland’s largest county and adjacent Washington, DC. In December 2022 and seeking to mitigate GHG emissions, the County Council unanimously passed legislation to ban natural gas heating in new buildings beginning in 2026.
EPRINC Fellow Tristan Abbey has written this open letter titled “Did Biden Break the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?” The letter was sent on October 27, 2022 to Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso, chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The letter calls for a bipartisan investigation into the operational impacts of the White House’s “historic 180-million-barrel drawdown” focusing on the following quetisons:
- Have maintenance requirements — well remediation, cavern closure, pipeline and pump replacements, etc. — increased as a result of the drawdown?
- Have any caverns collapsed or been closed temporarily or permanently as a result of the drawdown? Does the administration intend to close down any caverns or sites as a result of the SPR’s depletion? If so, which ones and over what time period?
- What is the current status of Life Extension II, the long-awaited $1.4 billion modernization program? Has it fallen further behind schedule?
- If the administration does refill the SPR, will the construction of new caverns and other infrastructure be required? Will an equal volume of oil be bought that was sold?
EPRINC President Lucian Pugliaresi has co-authored an article published on October 25, 2022 in RealClear Energy entitled “Bad Energy Policy Ideas Never Die“. In it, they discuss their concerns with recent public policies related to energy that have been proven to be major issues that will be difficult to recover from. A quote from the article with their proposed solution is below:
“To the fearful leaders in our country: step out on your turf and support the domestic oil and gas industries in ways that will build investor confidence and calm markets. There simply is no other way to meet the future without a strong domestic base for energy and materials. Others will take note, including troublemakers we face now and those we’ll face in the future.”
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/10/25/bad_energy_policy_ideas_never_die_860905.html
Colonial Pipeline Hack Highlights Growing Energy Security Risks:
Infrastructure Cyberattacks are a Threat to National Security
The recent hack of the Colonial Pipeline computer systems, which disrupted gasoline supplies to the Northeast has raised a new set of energy security concerns. Although the attack was presumably not the actions of a state entity, it is hard not to view it as an act of terrorism given its potential for widespread disruption. This is not a new threat. In the late 1990s, President Clinton issued Presidential Directive 63 which recognized that growing threats to critical infrastructure had become “increasingly automated and interlinked.” The Directive mandated that within five years (by 2003) critical U.S. infrastructure would be hardened to cyberattacks. Despite the Directive, measures to protect infrastructure from growing cyberattacks have not kept up.
This report was published on RealClear Energy, but the full PDF version of the report can be found here.