Overnight Energy: Trump set to sign offshore drilling order

OFFSHORE DRILLING NEXT ON TRUMP’S LIST: President Trump is due to sign an executive order on Friday aiming to expand offshore drilling in United States waters.

The order is expected to roll back extensive protections issued during the Obama administration, a change the oil and gas industry supports.

Obama took several controversial actions on drilling during his presidency.

In the final months of his tenure he finalized a five-year drilling plan for federal waters that didn’t include lease sales in the Atlantic or the Arctic Oceans. Those five-year plans are routine, but his December decision to entirely remove most of the Arctic Ocean — and pockets of the Atlantic — from the drilling program angered drillers.

{mosads}Trump is expected to order the Interior Department to write a new drilling schedule, as well as consider whether to undo Obama’s indefinite drilling bans, and it might also direct officials to look into changing some of Obama’s regulations on equipment to stop out-of-control wells and standards specific to Arctic drilling.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters Tuesday that nothing is off the table in the order.

“We’re going to look at everything,” Zinke answered when asked about Pacific drilling. “A new administration should look at the policies and make sure the policies are appropriate.”

The order will likely please the oil industry, which has called for the U.S. to open up new areas for drilling despite not actually tapping into the Arctic right now.

Environmentalists, who cheered Obama’s action on offshore drilling, are certain to resist the order.

Read our preview of the order here, and follow The Hill for more.  

PRUITT PULLS OUT OF OKLAHOMA GOP FUNDRAISER: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will not speak at a GOP fundraiser in his home state after objections from a Senate Democrat.

Pruitt told Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends” that he won’t attend the Oklahoma Republican Party fundraiser, where he was originally scheduled to be keynote speaker next week, due to ethics concerns.

That invitation yielded a complaint from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who told the federal government’s ethics enforcer that Oklahoma’s GOP improperly used Pruitt’s title, implying that attendees would be paying to meet with a federal official, which is illegal.

Pruitt said ethics officials approved his attendance at the event, but that the flyer, drafted after that approval, didn’t comply with ethics rules.

“What happened was the folks that invited me sent out an invitation, post that approval, that didn’t comply with federal law and federal ethics law so we’re not going to be able to attend because of the invitation,” Pruitt said.

“It was actually approved in advance by our EPA ethics office, but it was just what happened afterwards that prevented my attendance.”

Whitehouse said Pruitt’s attendance at the May 5 fundraiser could be a violation of the Hatch Act, which limits federal employees’ ability to participate in any campaign-related activities.

Whitehouse responded on Thursday by saying Pruitt’s decision not to attend the event is “this is the least he can do,” and called an Office of Special Counsel investigation into the invitation.

Read more here.

MERCURY RULE CASE ON HOLD: The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit late Thursday put on hold its case challenging the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS).

The action is a victory for the Trump administration, which had asked for the pause so that it could review the 2016 fix to the rule and see if it still supports it, wants to repeal it, or something else.

At issue is a rule the Obama administration wrote last year to fix a problem with the cost-benefit analysis regarding the landmark 2012 MATS rule, limiting pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

The Supreme Court decided against the underlying rule in 2015, but a lower court gave the EPA an opportunity to fix the cost-benefit analysis.

It’s unclear what that means for the underlying 2012 rule, and whether the administration is considering repealing that regulation.

The Environmental Defense Fund slammed Thursday’s decision and the EPA’s decision to review the rule.

“The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards have a rock-solid foundation in the law and science, and there is no basis to weaken them,” Graham McCahan, an attorney with the group, said in a statement. “We fully expect these critical health protections will continue to remain in place.”

Read more here.

SANDERS, DEMS HAVE TOUGH TALK FOR TRUMP ON CLIMATE: President Trump is “more wrong” on climate change than any other policy, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Thursday.

“Donald Trump is wrong about a lot of things, but there is no area where he is more wrong than on the issue of climate change,” Sanders said at a small renewable energy rally outside the Capitol.

“No, Mr. President, climate change is not a hoax. Climate change is real; climate change is caused by human activity. … Mr. President, your job is to listen to the scientific community that is virtually unanimous in telling us that we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”

Sanders, Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) spoke at the rally with climate activists to announce a bill that would require the United States produce 100 percent of its energy from renewable or clean sources by 2050.

The bill is dead in the GOP-controlled Congress, but the event gave the trio a chance to hammer Trump for his positions on climate change.

Markey called Trump’s executive orders to help fossil fuels “completely and totally unacceptable.” And Merkley said climate change is already having an impact on the environment in the U.S., adding that a switch to renewable energy would turn that industry into a jobs engine.

“The smart investment is in renewable energy, from every perspective,” he said. “Now is the time that we have to quit just looking at these facts and we have to act.”

Read more here.

ON TAP FRIDAY I: Trump will sign the executive order on offshore drilling. Read The Hill for more.

ON TAP FRIDAY II: Congress is expected to pass at least a short-term bill funding the government in order to avert a potential shutdown this weekend. The short-term bill is expected to fund miner health care benefits, an issue lawmakers are still planning to include in a final spending deal.  

AROUND THE WEB:

Australia is restricting gas exports amid a growing energy crisis, AFP reports.

Republicans in California are emerging as an unlikely ally in the quest to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program, the Los Angeles Times reports.

West Virginia’s governor stepped in to stop new fees at state parks from taking effect, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check out Thursday’s stories …

-Court delays EPA mercury rule case while Trump reviews
-Hundreds of former EPA employees blast Trump on climate change
-Sanders: Trump couldn’t be ‘more wrong’ on climate
-Pruitt drops out of GOP fundraiser after ethics complaint
-Trump wants to expand offshore drilling
-Patagonia threatens to sue Trump over national monuments order

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