IPAA Archives

In Democratic primary, fossil-fuel bans rule — even for centrists

February 11, 2020 by Justin Williams

Houston Chronicle | James Osborne | February 10, 2020

WASHINGTON - The prospect of the federal government enacting bans to limit oil and gas production is becoming more real going into Tuesday night’s New Hampshire Democratic Primary as climate change takes up increasing bandwidth in American politics.

Both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who placed first and third respectively in Iowa’s caucus last week, have pledged to ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing if elected president. And before you label them extremists, consider that almost every Democratic candidate, including avowed centrists Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg, has pledged to stop leasing federal lands for extracting of oil, natural gas and coal.

“In these debates, there’s been a real focus on doing away with fossil fuels and oil and gas,” said Dan Naatz, senior vice president of government relations and political affairs at the trade group Independent Petroleum Association of America. “I don’t think there’s ever been about this amount of rhetoric in the Democratic primaries.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: Evangelicals see the light on climate change

Just banning hydraulic fracturing on federal land would seriously hamper oil and gas production across New Mexico, Wyoming and North Dakota, three of the country’s largest oil and gas producing states. For instance, in one of New Mexico’s largest oil and gas fields, the Delaware Basin, between 63 and 82 percent of the well completions by Occidental Petroleum, Devon Energy and Concho Resources were on federal land, according to an analysis by the research firm Rystad Energy.

But the effects of such a ban pale in comparison to the outright ban proposed by Warren and Sanders, extending to private lands in states such as Texas.

“If fracking is banned in the whole country, we will see a full collapse of the U.S. (shale production),” said Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad. “The pace of depletion will result in a massive shock for global energy markets with OPEC, Russia, US conventional and other supply sources struggling to replace the loss from the U.S.”

To be fair, Sanders has said his fracking ban would not, “happen overnight.” Legislation he introduced last month with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., proposes to ban fracking beginning in 2025.

Read the full story here.

Russell: Growing America’s Energy Future

March 13, 2018 by Justin Williams

Morning Consult | Barry Russell | March 6, 2018

America’s energy producers are the backbone of our nation’s security and economic growth. Yet, as our country faces the considerable challenge of meeting our future energy needs, companies working day in and day out to provide these vital energy resources need a streamlined federal regulatory system to keep powering America.

As an industry, independent oil and natural gas companies are responsible for 54 percent of U.S. oil and 85 percent of U.S. natural gas production, supporting new job growth and economic development through critical capital investments and tax revenues in towns and states across the nation.

This economic activity has also propelled the United States to become a world leader in oil and natural gas production. As the International Energy Agency recently projected, “This year promises to be a record-setting one for the United States,” outpacing Russia and Saudi Arabia in production levels.

The United States is also on track to become a net energy exporter four years earlier than originally projected, according to the Department of Energy. This new paradigm gives us the opportunity to deliver reliable, affordable and clean-burning energy to our allies while supporting the economy here at home and strengthening our energy security.

Our country’s leading position among the world’s energy leaders is being amplified by officials in the Trump administration, who recognize the tremendous impacts independent producers are making and have encouraged continued economic growth within the energy sector by promoting infrastructure investment, streamlining permitting and re-evaluating production potential. But much of our nation’s energy potential remains untapped.

The economic resurgence of America’s oil and natural gas industry today is made possible by responsible, highly regulated exploration and production of our vital natural resources – development that occurs hand-in-hand with the protection of the environments we operate in. Be it offshore or on, America’s independent producers work every day to mitigate impacts on the land, invest in conservation and restoration, and implement new technological methods such as horizontal drilling that enables a softer footprint on the surface. This development needs sound oversight, not regulatory obstruction, and today in Washington, there is still much red tape to cut.

Read the full op-ed here.

Barry Russell is president and CEO of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the leading national trade association of independent oil and natural gas producers and service companies in the United States.

Oil and Gas Groups Seek Additional Information and Transparency on New Financial Assurance Requirements for Offshore Producers

November 7, 2016 by Justin Williams

For Immediate Release: Monday, November 7, 2016
Contact: Nicolette Nye, (202) 465-8463, nicolette@nullnoia.org

Oil and Gas Groups Seek Additional Information and Transparency on New Financial Assurance Requirements for Offshore Producers
NOIA, IPAA, LMOGA & GEST Submit Joint FOIA Requests to BOEM and DOI

Washington, D.C. – The National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association (LMOGA), and the Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST) today submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to both the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) seeking information related to the recent drastic changes to the financial assurances and bonding required of offshore oil and gas producers.

The four industry trade groups—which collectively represent the entirety of the offshore oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico – have joined together to press for immediate consideration of these FOIA requests and continue to urge BOEM, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and DOI to be responsive to industry concerns regarding its Notice to Lessees (NTL) No. 2016-N01, which dramatically changed the existing framework for securing decommissioning liability for the offshore oil and gas industry.

This comes on the heels of NOIA’s recent FOIA request to BSEE seeking information related to the agency’s revised estimates for future well plugging and abandonment and platform decommissioning costs in the Gulf of Mexico, which varied wildly from actual and current decommissioning costs and BSEE’s own previous cost projections.

Today’s FOIA requests augment continued industry efforts to gain greater clarity into how BOEM and DOI determined that new financial assurance requirements were necessary and the considerations underpinning and informing their decision-making process.

Combined, these efforts represent our industry’s commitment to understand how DOI and BOEM determined that changing the rules via the NTL guidance was appropriate rather than undertaking a formal rulemaking process, a much more transparent and equitable process.

Remarkably, transparency typically afforded to companies under normal circumstances with NTLs has been at a premium with BOEM in this instance, as information central to the rationale of NTL No. 2016-N01 has not been released to the public or to companies attempting to meet the new financial assurance and bonding requirements.

The new rules are a solution in search of a problem, as the existing framework has protected taxpayers for decades. Moreover, offshore operators made significant investments based on the existing regulatory framework and BOEM has now changed the rules in a manner that threatens to trigger the very risk it is trying to protect against, as these new burdensome bonding requirements will tie up capital that would otherwise be available for exploration, development, jobs, revenues to states and the federal government – and most ironically – for actual plugging and abandonment work.

On behalf of our members, NOIA, IPAA, LMOGA and GEST stand ready and committed to work with BOEM, BSEE, and DOI to ensure a robust future of responsible development in the Gulf of Mexico for the benefit of taxpayers in the form of royalties, severance tax revenues to the state and federal government, jobs, and additional capital investment.

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ABOUT NOIA
NOIA is the only national trade association representing all segments of the offshore industry with an interest in the exploration and production of both traditional and renewable energy resources on the nation’s outer continental shelf. NOIA’s mission is to secure reliable access and a fair regulatory and economic environment for the companies that develop the nation’s valuable offshore energy resources in an environmentally responsible manner. The NOIA membership comprises about 300 companies engaged in business activities ranging from producing to drilling, engineering to marine and air transport, offshore construction to equipment manufacture and supply, telecommunications to finance and insurance, and renewable energy.

ABOUT IPAA
The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) is a national upstream trade association representing thousands of independent oil and natural gas producers and service companies across the United States. Independent producers develop 90 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas wells. These companies account for 54 percent of America’s oil production, 85 percent of its natural gas production, and support over 2.1 million American jobs. Learn more about IPAA by visiting www.ipaa.org.

ABOUT LMOGA
Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, founded in 1923, is a trade association exclusively representing all sectors of the oil and gas industry operating in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. LMOGA serves exploration and production, refining, transportation, marketing and mid-stream companies as well as other firms in the fields of law, engineering, environment, financing and government relations. LMOGA’s mission is to promote and represent the oil and gas industry operating in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico by extending representation of our members to the Louisiana Legislature, state and federal regulatory agencies, the Louisiana congressional delegation, the media and the general public.

ABOUT GEST
GEST is a Louisiana-based, grassroots advocacy organization advocating for safe and robust offshore oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico. Visit our website at www.GulfEconomicSurvival.org,

Oceana does little to further an important and complex discussion

September 30, 2016 by Justin Williams

The Hill | September 29, 2016 | Lucas Frances

Yesterday the environmental group Oceana authored a piece in these pages which attacked the Arctic Energy Center and Arctic Coalition as fronts for the oil and gas industry. We at the AEC welcome a discussion about Arctic energy development; it is a complex and multi-faceted topic, which deserves greater exploration.

But we also believe that that discussion must be rooted in fact and should acknowledge the views of experts who understand the issue best. Unfortunately the article, like others before it from many in the environmental community, shows a regrettable lack of understanding of either point, misrepresenting our message and the broad coalition of Alaskans who directly understand what’s at stake in the Arctic.

Oceana’s piece implies that the Arctic Coalitioncampaign is solely the work of the AEC and thus the oil and gas industry. As the group’s name suggests, that is simply not the case. The Arctic Coalition is made up of 20 different organizations, including Native groups, labor, industry, the Alaska Chamber of Commerce and academia. While it is true that AEC is (transparently) sponsored by IPAA and AOGA, the other members are not and have very different mandates and objectives.

The point, as the advertisement makes clear, is that offshore energy development is about much more than just energy, it touches on every facet of life in the Arctic. That, ultimately, is why such a broad collection of organizations with different perspectives support offshore energy. Simply writing them all off as the oil industry is at best a lazy misrepresentation, and at worse a deliberate distortion of their different and varied viewpoints.

It also touches on a second point however. Unlike Oceana, 16 of the 20 Coalition members are from Alaska. There is great irony in a DC based organization attempting to save the Arctic on behalf of the Alaskans who actually live there. This is a point that Native community leaders have made on no fewer than six occasions in recent months, repeatedly asking the environmental community not to appropriate their voice to further their own agenda.

Read the full op-ed here.

Lucas Frances is a spokesperson for the Arctic Energy Center, a joint initiative of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.