Week ahead: GOP takes aim at offshore drilling plans

Republican lawmakers are planning a slew of hearings and votes to criticize President Obama’s environmental policies, with targets including his plan for offshore drilling and employee conduct at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A Thursday hearing by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is scheduled to look at Obama’s latest proposal concerning lease sales for offshore oil and natural gas drilling rights from 2017 to 2022.

{mosads}Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the panel’s chairwoman, along with most of the GOP and the oil industry, think Obama was wrong to remove drilling off the Atlantic coast from his proposal earlier this year. Murkowski also wants more lease sales in the Arctic Ocean, where two have been proposed, and in the Gulf of Mexico, the main area for the country’s offshore drilling industry.

But Democrats and environmentalists applauded the more restrictive plan, and some want Obama to go even further..

The Senate Energy Committee plans to also meet on Tuesday to discuss advanced nuclear energy technologies, bringing in numerous representatives from industry and research stakeholders.

The panel’s subcommittee on power and water is set to meet that day to discuss five bills in its jurisdiction.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday for a vote on a bill to delay the Obama administration’s ozone rule and change how future ones are written. Lawmakers also plan to examine a bill meant to encourage development of advanced nuclear energy technologies.

The committee’s energy and power subcommittee passed both bills this week. The ozone bill passed along party lines, with Democrats accusing the GOP of trying to gut the Clean Air Act. The nuclear bill passed by voice vote.

The House Oversight Committee is scheduled to hold a Wednesday hearing on allegations of employee misconduct at the EPA.

That committee has examined EPA misconduct allegations in numerous hearings in the past, including charges of sexual harassment and theft. The committee has not yet announced details of that hearing or the witnesses.

The House Natural Resources Committee is also scheduled to hold hearings on Obama policies.

A Tuesday hearing is slated to look at the administration’s national ocean policy, a multi-agency effort to reform how the federal government oversees oceans and other waterways.

On Thursday, a subpanel of the committee is scheduled to look into transparency issues at the Department of the Interior. The panel has not announced specific details about the hearing, but in the past, Republicans have complained that the department and its divisions, like the Fish and Wildlife Service, have not been responsive to congressional oversight requests.

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