Yesterday’s Report On Mackenzie Delay.

Representative Charisse Millett and Paul Seaton Outline Energy Alternatives

Fairbanks News Miner by Joshua Armstrong.  Presentations for state and commercial natural gas pipeline projects were met with concern Monday at the Tanana Chiefs Conference convention.  After state energy adviser Gene Therriault (NGP Photo) and Denali Pipeline representative Rick Solie spoke about their respective projects, they were peppered with questions and strong feelings from Native leaders and convention attendees.  “There’s a lot of promises across the country and across the state about how well (a pipeline) is going to have an effect on our people,” TCC president Jerry Isaac (NGP Photo) said, “but the bottom line is: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”  …  “Right now, you’re all concerned about taking this thing to market, but … we need help at home,” Fairbanks Native Association executive director Steve Ginnis said.  In the case of the in-state pipeline, Therriault said its ability to transport gas directly to villages will depend on the type of gas going through the pipeline. If the pipeline transports “wet” gas — which still has compounds such as butane — the gas could be deposited by the Yukon River and transported. With purified, or “dry,” gas, that would not be plausible.  Either way, the influx of natural gas into state markets would bring prices down for all Alaskans, he said.  “I appreciate the response, but I’m talking more about a commitment than just a possibility,” Ginnis replied. …  “The oil has been flowing for 33 years now, and a lot of villages have been abused,” said Doyon Ltd. vice chairman Walter Carlo, whose family has allocated land north and south of the Yukon River bridge on the Dalton Highway. … “Tell me how we can be assured that you’re really going to work with the local corporations, the tribal governments and the people,” he said. “I’m all for development.”

Lacrosse (Wisc.) Tribune by Michael Whatley, Consumer Energy Alliance. “Richard Mial’s March 8 story about efforts to

impose a statewide low-carbon fuel standard, or LCFS, in Wisconsin should be considered required reading for anyone interested in assessing the true impact that this policy would have on energy consumers across the state. Sold to the public as a plan to defy the laws of science by forcing a reduction in the carbon content of fuel (which the Environment Protection Agency says is constant), Mial ‘s reporting rightly calls out the LCFS for what it actually is: an attack on Wisconsin consumers and manufacturers by denying Wisconsin’s chief source of secure and affordable energy from crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. … Unfortunately, even as legislators from both parties have started to wake up to the harsh realities of an LCFS, the Midwestern Governors Association continues down the road of implementation at breakneck pace. Later this year, the association expects to produce a final LCFS plan that states like Wisconsin will be asked to endorse in full. But that proposal won’t get far if more folks in the state take the time to read news items like this one. Read the original story from March 8 here.

Oil & Gas Journal (3/15) reports, “Although the shale gas formation stretches across several states, the new Marcellus Shale Coalition president and executive director thinks Pennsylvania is its "sweet spot." "New York’s regulatory regime has made it less desirable to invest there. Our members still spend time in Albany, but Pennsylvania has been more hospitable," Kathryn Z. Klaber said during a visit to Washington. The group’s 37 producers and 40 associate members operate 96% of the Keystone State ‘s rigs. Pennsylvania’s not having a severance tax also has helped producers sink 1,100 Marcellus wells so far, 700 of them in 2009, she said. Counties already are collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in property and income taxes as a result, she said. "It’s absolutely creating jobs, 110,000 this year. We’ve also formed a workforce committee to quantify information from anecdotes, such as an engineering company’s opening a new department and increasing its staff for Marcellus work," she said. Producers like Jeffery F. Kupfer, a senior vice-president for Atlas Energy Inc., which has drilled thousands of wells in southwestern Pennsylvania, are helping her learn more about water management, for example.

Washington Examiner, by Mark Hemmingway.  “Few things were as damning to the Obama administration’s green jobs efforts as a study last year that showed that Spain lost 2.2 jobs for every "green job" created by that country’s investment in wind power. The Competitive Enterprise Institute did a Freedom of Information Act request and found that the Department of Energy was engaged in a largely political campaign to discredit the study, coordinated with wind power lobbyists and liberal think tanks. Sean Higgins at Investor’s Business Daily has the story: The e-mails show the wind lobbyists shared their concerns with DOE employees, who agreed the study needed to be refuted. In August, DOE produced a white paper specifically attacking the study. For example, e-mails show the lobbyists requesting to know when the report would come out and DOE employees hustling to get it published because it was late.

The Washington Examiner (3/14) editorializes, “They don’t want to talk about the fact that there’s another extraordinarily plentiful and much cleaner energy source — natural gas — that can readily replace coal and lower energy costs more effectively than any alternative source. In fact, the same environmentalists who are shutting down coal plants are also opposing increased natural gas production. In other words, it’s their green way, or nothing. President Obama and Ken Salazar, his Interior Department secretary, are following right along with the environmentalist playbook on these matters. Salazar recently announced that his department will issue no permits for off-shore natural gas exploration and production before 2012, at the earliest, even though experts agree there are trillions of cubic feet of natural gas waiting to be harvested. Salazar thus short-circuits the 2008 lifting of presidential and congressional bans on such activities.