TPT January 2016

Global Marketplace

Total (19 October), “Never before had so many of the industry’s stakeholders assembled to work together to shrink their climate footprint.” Elsewhere in oil and gas . . . › Residents of New York are increasingly dependent on natural gas produced in other states to heat their homes, according to new data from the US Census Bureau cited by Scott Waldman and Bill Mahoney of Politico (5 October). Ready supplies of natural gas mean that heating prices are expected to be 30 per cent cheaper in upstate Buffalo this season, the lowest in two decades. Central New York will likely see a similar drop. New Yorkers are also becoming more reliant on natural gas for the production of electricity. While both trends can be seen throughout the country, they are especially notable in New York, which has both a huge deposit of shale gas and a ban on the production of natural gas through fracking. According to the Politico reporters, polls show that most New Yorkers support the fracking ban, in effect since late 2014, and opposition to new natural gas pipelines is fierce. However, they wrote, “When it comes to staying warm and keeping the lights on, gas fracked in other states is a growing part of daily life in New York.”

The Times ’s Jeremy WPeters and Coral Davenport noted drily, “If his words left any doubt about the intended beneficiaries of his energy plan, the setting he chose spoke volumes: a company that makes equipment used to drill and refine fossil fuels – BOC Water Hydraulics.” The reporters observed that the Rubio plan seemed explicitly intended to weaken Mr Obama’s hand in advance of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Paris from 30 November to 11 December, at which the president would strive to negotiate an international accord to combat climate change. They wrote, “While Mr Obama hopes that such a deal will be a cornerstone of his legacy, the ultimate success of the accord hinges on whether his successor will actually carry it out – and Mr Rubio’s plan makes clear that a President Rubio would not do so.” › Whether he would or not is a moot question since at the time of the Salem speech some dozen candidates were vying for the Republican nomination, and Mr Rubio was not the front-runner. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who leads a much smaller field of Democratic aspirants, has pledged, if elected, to fully carry out and expand on Mr Obama’s climate change initiatives. It is worthy of mention that, also on 16 October, in Paris, the ten companies in the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative unanimously voiced their support for an international agreement to limit global warming. As reported by the French oil “supermajor”

Dorothy Fabian, Features Editor (USA)

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J anuary 2016