Do you approve of Mary Landrieu replacing Ron Wyden as Chair of the Energy Committee? [View all]

[cali]

Chair.


New head of Senate Energy Committee has environmentalists seeing red

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) will bring a sharply different outlook to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee now that she has taken the gavel from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has moved over to chair the Senate Finance Committee.


Landrieu favors building the Keystone XL pipeline, protecting tax breaks or incentives for oil drilling, and placing limits on the power of federal agencies to set mercury or carbon dioxide guidelines for coal-fired power plants. Wyden takes the opposite position on all those issues.

Landrieu supports giving oil companies the right to export crude oil as well as natural gas, while Wyden supports giving natural gas export permits on a case by case basis and does not have a public position on crude oil exports.


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Does any of this matter in a Congress hard-pressed to pass any legislation? Maybe. Landrieu could try to obstruct some Obama administration initiatives, especially on coal plants. She could work with committee Republicans to fashion legislation closer to the oil and gas industry interests. And she can make her voice heard more clearly than ever.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Energy Department Tuesday gave conditional approval to another liquefied natural gas project, this one in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, and owned by San Diego-based Sempra Energy. It would export 1.7 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas. Just one day earlier, on Monday, Landrieu, who already had a lock on the new chairmanship, sent a sharply worded letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz saying that the delay in issuing a permit was “simply unacceptable” and that “we must not sit on our hands and let this great opportunity go by.”

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/02/12/as-energy-panel-chair-landrieu-marks-a-major-shift-from-wyden/

9 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Hell, yes. Time to stop liberals from persecuting big oil, coal and gas!
	0 (0%)
	No, I think her ties to big energy producing companies are a conflict
	8 (89%)
	Duh. I dunno
	0 (0%)
	Waaah. This poll is weighted. (No shit)
	1 (11%)
	A Republican would be worse (True, but not an option at the moment)
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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