Trump energy future
The president-elect will unshackle the sector, a Chamber of Commerce leader expects.
Karen Alderman Harbert is the president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, a Washington-based policy nonprofit funded by energy companies.
Harbert worked in the U.S. Department of Energy under George W. Bush and is now being floated as a potential energy secretary under President-elect Donald Trump.
Q: You went to Rice University?
A: I came here from 1982 to 1987. I was here during the big oil market collapse. It was a completely different town than you’re seeing today. You can see in the aftermath of that oil collapse a serious and dedicated effort on behalf of the public policy leaders here in Houston to diversify the economy.
Then, everybody downtown left by 4 o’clock, before it got dark, because it was dangerous to be downtown. It was a crime zone. There was huge unemployment. The housing market collapsed. Nobody could sell their homes. They were underwater.
If you look at Texas now, the effect of this oil market downturn is felt really in the oil patch, rather than in Houston. It’s not pleasant, but it’s certainly not as profound.
Q: Where does the energy industry stand, and where does it need to go?
A: We have seen a regulation a week practically coming out from the Obama administration. On the oil and gas side, we have new regulations that have come out that are going to restrict where you can drill, where you can’t drill, what performance standards you have to meet. The White House just issued new guidance to all federal agencies that says, by the way, anything that requires a federal permit, you need to take into account greenhouse gas emissions.
That reopens everything; now we have several environmental (organizations) suing the Department of Interior saying you’ve got to go back and do it retroactively. That’s really frightening.
Q: What battles can the energy industry win in D.C.?
A: We have to build a lot more infrastructure in this country. If you can get it out of the ground but you can’t move it, it’s useless. Same for electricity. If I can produce an electron of wind in Texas, but I can’t get it to where it’s needed in the Northeast, it’s useless. The opponents of energy, whether it’s fossil fuels or any form of energy, are utilizing that middle space, the transmission of it, to stop projects.
You can’t win project by project. But you can make the process completely transparent and time-bound. Canada did it. From beginning to end, it’s two years. You get a thumbs up or thumbs down. Here, projects can go on eight, nine, 10, 12 years for a permit. And that is unsustainable.
Q: Opponents are using “that middle space” to win battles?
A: The keep-it-in-theground movement has found it far easier to stop the midstream projects than to get consumers to change their behavior. Stop driving — that’s not going to happen. Or to go to private landowners in Texas and say, “No drilling,” because that’s not going to happen. But if I want to get it up out of the ground and I want to get it to market, I have to move it. And that pipeline has to cross a lot of places — a lot of urban spaces, a lot suburban places, a lot of private land.
There’s more opportunities to find an Achilles heel in a pipeline and mobilize around it, as we’re seeing in the Dakota Access Pipeline. Here’s a pipeline that went through the permitting process, got all the required permits, got all the easements needed by the private landowners. It is paralleling an existing pipeline. It does not go through Indian land, and we have tribes that are now protesting that pipeline despite all the permits having been already reached.
The company that’s proposing it has the obligation to go explain it to communities. I’m not absolving them of that responsibility. You can’t go in and just
mowover people these days. What’s the alternative route? Can we build a baseball field? What is something your community would like that would improve your quality of life while we get this pipeline built? There are always workarounds.
Q: What does a Trump presidency mean for energy?
A: We should expect the president-elect’s policy to unshackle the energy industry, allowing it to operate more on a market-basis rather than on an ideology-driven basis. I think you will see him eliminate restrictions not only on the production of energy but on the use of energy, and stimulate investment without federal government outlay.
Q: If the Trump administration comes to you and asks for your top priority, what would it be?
A: Immediately, to send a signal that we’re not going to put the brakes on this sputtering economy, he should revoke the (Obama administration’s greenhouse gas consideration) guidance. Then he should turn to the regulations that have been put into effect very recently that he could reverse. The Department of Interior, for example, put out the latest five-year offshore leasing program. In that, they eliminated the Atlantic, the Pacific, two areas under current development in Alaska and areas in the Gulf of Mexico. That doesn’t look like a policy to support an energy superpower. Trump should immediately begin putting forward a different fiveyear plan, and, at the same time, begin to unravel the Clean Power Plan that dictates from Washington what every of our 50 states’ energy economy should look like.
Q: Some have floated your name as Trump’s secretary of energy.
A: I have a great job. And I love it here. I will do everything I can to make sure we get the right energy policy.
Q: Still, if you were given the right opportunity, would you consider it?
A: Unless and until I have any news — I have nothing to share right now.