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Mark Green
Posted October 10, 2017
With talks between the U.S., Canada and Mexico on modernizing NAFTA heading for a fourth round this week, our negotiators can help ensure the global competitiveness of U.S. energy companies by working to retain strong protections for U.S. investments abroad through the agreement’s investment protections and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision.
ISDS sounds a little wonky, but its basic mission is pretty straightforward: It helps protect U.S. investors from being treated unfairly by host nation governments. Conversely, there’s potential jeopardy if the U.S. allows ISDS to be weakened or removed in the current talks. It could undermine ISDS provisions globally in other treaties and agreements.infrastructure natural-gas-pipelines oil-pipelines economic-growth jobs investments
Mark Green
Posted May 16, 2017
Energy is opportunity. Energy infrastructure allows opportunity to become reality by bringing the benefits of natural gas, oil and refined products to consumers – individuals, businesses and industrial users. Last week API released a new study detailing the extent of the many positives resulting from developing needed U.S. natural gas and oil infrastructure, out to the year 2035. These are measured in more than a trillion dollars in investments and economic growth, potentially generating more than 1 million jobs. This supports a vision of growth and prosperity that can touch every state in the union, not just those that are big energy producers.
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Mark Green
Posted March 9, 2017
air-quality fuels environmental-expenditures investments gasoline diesel technology-innovation refineries
Mark Green
Posted November 5, 2015
To a large degree, cleaner air in the United States results from innovations and improvements in transportation fuels over the past four decades. This is important, because the freedom to travel has been ingrained in the American psyche since the days when waves of westward migration began spanning the continent.
Today, Americans are used to free and independent movement, with the average person traveling more than 13,600 miles a year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Meanwhile, Americans’ modern lifestyles depend on freight haulers that deliver commercial goods to the places where they live. The 4 million miles of highways and roads that make up a large portion of the U.S. transportation network serve as the country’s arterial system – and energy makes it go. Refineries supply more than 130 billion gallons of gasoline and 60 billion gallons of diesel a year to power trucks, barges, ships and trains connecting consumers with consumable goods.
The oil and natural gas industry is meeting the challenge of fueling America’s transportation needs while advancing air quality goals that benefit all Americans – by investing in cleaner, safer fuels and next-generation technologies for the future.
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Mark Green
Posted October 9, 2015
We’re still more than a year from the next presidential election, but already we’re hearing attacks on energy company earnings, rhetoric calibrated for the sole purpose of riling up the party base. It’s bad political theater that misleads the American public to score political points, distracting from a substantive debate on the right energy path for the country. This has come up most recently in the debate over lifting the 1970s-era ban on U.S. crude oil exports -- which was advanced with bipartisan U.S. House passage of a bill ending the export ban.
Yesterday, we looked at problems with the White House’s opposition to lifting the ban. Goodness knows, export opponents on Capitol Hill have their own faulty reasons. We’ve covered most of these before, including consumer impacts, national security and the oil imports vs. exports muddle.
Some of the biggest confusion comes from those who find it convenient to flay the oil and natural gas industry. Certainly, running around and repeating “Big Oil” over and over again plays well with people who don’t like fossil fuels and/or progress in general. Unfortunately, in their rush to attack those who supply products that the American people actually want and demand – products that power our economy and modern way of life – it’s the American people who take the hit.
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Mark Green
Posted September 29, 2015
U.S. oil and natural gas companies continue to lead in investing in the domestic economy, with five companies among the Progressive Policy Institute’s top 25 in 2014 U.S. capital expenditures.
ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum and Hess lead an energy production/mining sector that invested $43.6 billion in 2014, closely following the $48.7 invested by telecom/cable.
That’s great news for the U.S. economy which, as the PPI report details, needs investment to expand. PPI calls the top 25 its “investment heroes” because “their capital spending is helping to raise productivity and wages across the economy.”
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Mark Green
Posted September 22, 2015
Today, API released a new report on investments in greenhouse gas-mitigating measures that illustrates the oil and natural gas industry’s leadership in innovating the technologies and efficiencies to keep improving air quality. We conclude a series of posts on the intersection of energy development and climate/environmental goals (here, here and here) with a look at the new report.
Key numbers from T2 and Associates’ new report on investments in mitigating greenhouse gases (GHG) by industry include $90 billion in zero and low-carbon emitting technologies from 2000 through 2014.
news infrastructure investments energy-exports hydraulic-fracturing california chevron exxonmobil natural-gas-development epa34 renewable-fuel-standard ethanol
Mark Green
Posted June 3, 2015
The Hill: House Republicans have found reasons to agree with some parts of the Obama administration’s energy infrastructure proposal.
GOP leaders in the House Energy and Commerce Committee told Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz that they are largely in agreement on the need to improve pipelines, electric transmission lines, energy storage and other pieces of infrastructure.
Moniz testified at the hearing to promote the Quadrennial Energy Review, which the administration released in April to call for comprehensive infrastructure improvements worth billions of dollars.
“Many people are even asking — not surprisingly — is there enough common ground between our efforts and the Obama administration to enact meaningful energy legislation,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the energy and power subcommittee, said at the Tuesday hearing.
encana analysis shale-energy oil-and-natural-gas-development unconventional-oil unconventional-gas canada hydraulic-fracturing horizontal-drilling economic-growth investments technology-innovation
Mark Green
Posted May 12, 2015
Encana President and CEO Doug Suttles participated in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s CEO Leadership Series last week with a luncheon address and a Q&A session with Linda Harbert of the Institute for 21st Century Energy. Highlights of the conversation below. Suttles joined Alberta-based Encana as president and CEO in June 2013. He has 30 years of oil and natural gas industry experience in various engineering and leadership roles. Before joining Encana, Suttles held a number of leadership posts with BP, including chief operating officer of BP Exploration & Production and BP Alaska president.
Q: You opened your talk by saying I’m a North American energy company. … Can you shed a little light on the differences and similarities between operating in Canada and the U.S.?
Suttles: They’re not as big as many people would think. First of all, in the places we operate – Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and then Alberta and British Columbia – these are all natural resource states, and they understand that and I think the people and political leaders understand the importance, too. Both countries have high environmental expectations.
Probably the biggest difference you’d really see between them is the remoteness of operations, which creates a unique challenge in Canada. Many of our operations are away from large towns and cities … But you have an environment where I think people understand the benefits of our industry. They promote the industry, they support it.
news investments pension-plans epa34 gasoline-prices energy-exports oil-and-natural-gas-production
Mark Green
Posted April 29, 2015
Rigzone: For every $1 that public pension funds allocated to oil and gas assets in 2005, investors saw a return of 130 percent in 2013, about double their returns on other investments, according to a new study from the American Petroleum Institute and Sonecon LLC.
“The lesson, frankly, from this analysis is that pension plans would be in better shape if they increased the share they invest in oil and gas,” said Robert Shapiro, a co-author of the report, said during a conference call with reporters.
Shapiro found that the funds invested an average of 4 percent of their assets in oil and gas, which yielded 8 percent of the returns. The study reviewed the returns of the two largest funds — those owned by public school employees and state workers in every case — for each of 17 states, which included California, Florida, New Mexico and West Virginia for the eight-year period from 2005 to 2013.
“All of these pension plans have been under serious economic stress since 2008. Thirty-five states have enacted changes that will change benefits,” Shaipro said, adding that when the plans’ returns are higher, there is less pressure on them to reduce benefits.
