OVERNIGHT ENERGY: European climate chief, nuke waste officials in focus

Click here for more info, including the commissioners’ testimony.

Shell CEO looks into crystal ball

{mosads}Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser will be in Washington, D.C., to launch the oil-and-gas giant’s latest look into the future, called the “New Lens Scenario.”

“Shell’s latest scenarios consider economic, political and social developments over the coming decades, with consequences for energy developments over half a century. Together these shape ecological outlooks to 2100, and form the New Lens Scenarios for the 21st Century,” states an advisory for his remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Acting EPA chief to Keynote climate conference

Bob Perciasepe, the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will give the opening address at the Climate Leadership Conference that’s sponsored by the agency and several outside groups.

Other speakers include Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. Click here for more.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check out these stories that ran on E2-Wire on Wednesday …

– Chamber study claims to debunk EPA figures on job-creating regulations
– Aide distances White House from Keystone pipeline decision
– Sen. Wyden expects draft nuclear waste bill ‘shortly’
– Shell pauses Arctic drilling effort
– EU climate chief to huddle with White House, State officials
– House Dem bullish on ‘major’ energy efficiency bill
– NYC Mayor Bloomberg: ‘Coal is a dead man walking’
– Murkowski on Obama’s rumored energy nominee: ‘That could work’

NEWS BITES:

A strong sign McCarthy will get EPA nod

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has deep ties to the White House.

And on Wednesday they mistakenly sent reporters a statement from Carol Browner, Obama’s former energy czar, praising the White House decision to nominate Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Just one problem: McCarthy, EPA’s top air regulator, hasn’t been nominated. Not yet, anyway. CAP quickly pulled back the release.

But CAP’s gun-jumping is a further sign that McCarthy will indeed get the nomination to replace former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. She’s widely considered to be the nominee-in-waiting.

Browner, a senior fellow at CAP, is hardly the only person at the liberal think tank with good White House contacts. John Podesta, CAP’s founder, co-chaired Obama’s transition team after his 2008 election.

Expert: BP misled regulators about doomed well

Bloomberg reports from day three of BP’s trial over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill:

BP Plc (BP/) officials misled federal regulators about conditions at the Macondo well and forged ahead with “unsafe and dangerous” drilling operations before a fatal explosion that killed 11 rig workers and sent oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, an expert witness said.

BP’s internal records for the Macondo project conflicted with numbers sent to drilling regulators and established a pattern of “consistent misreporting” of well pressures, Alan Huffman, a Houston-based petroleum geophysicist, testified for the U.S. government in a trial over claims tied to the 2010 Gulf spill. The fudged numbers allowed BP to continue drilling for oil, he said.

Click here for the whole story.

Think tank floats energy ideas

A think tank founded by former Senate majority leaders offered a slate of energy policy recommendations Wednesday in a major report titled “America’s Energy Resurgence: Sustaining Success, Confronting Challenges.”



Among the Bipartisan Policy Center’s suggestions are expanding oil-and-gas production, including off the currently closed Atlantic Coast; investing in carbon capture and storage projects; and boosting renewable energy through improved permitting on federal lands, tax incentives and Defense Department contracting.



Former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) co-chair the center’s Energy Project. Retired Gen. James L. Jones, a former National Security Adviser under Obama, serves as its energy security chair. William Reilly, the EPA administrator under former President George H.W. Bush, is its energy and environment chair.

The Wall Street Journal has more on the report here.

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