Top Interior official who pushed to expand drilling in Alaska to join oil company there
Juliet Eilperin & Steve Mufson, The Washington Post, September 4, 2019
Last summer, Scott Pruitt left his job heading the Environmental Protection Agency and within a few months had started consulting for coal magnate Joseph W. Craft III. Three weeks after leaving the Interior Department, energy counselor Vincent DeVito joined Cox Oil Offshore, which operates in the Gulf of Mexico, as its executive vice president and general counsel. Now, Joe Balash — who oversaw oil and gas drilling on federal lands before resigning from Interior on Friday — is joining a foreign oil company that is expanding operations on Alaska’s North Slope. Balash, who had served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management for nearly two years, confirmed in a phone interview Tuesday night that he will begin working for the Papua New Guinea-based Oil Search, which is developing one of Alaska’s largest oil prospects in years.
Our Take: Great news for Oil Search and for Alaska!
California raises the caution flag on ‘green jobs’
Debra Kahn, Politico, September 4, 2019
California’s mixed record of using public investments and environmental mandates to create “green jobs” raises serious questions about the promises of some Democratic presidential candidates to use economy-transforming investments in environmentally friendly technologies to put millions of people to work. Many of the initiatives touted by the candidates in their environmental plans are already in place in California, and some of them having been promoted as important engines of job creation. But California stopped counting green jobs in 2013, struggling to separate truly new jobs from existing employment growth.
Our Take: Markets, not mandates. Be wary of promises made…
US blacklists oil shipping network allegedly run by Iran Revolutionary Guards
Reuters, September 4, 2019
KEY POINTS
- The sprawling network of firms, ships and individuals allegedly directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps supplied Syria with oil worth tens of millions of dollars in a breach of U.S. sanctions.
- The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control action froze any assets in the United States of the designated entities.
- The department said that the Qods Force and Hezbollah profited financially by supplying Iranian oil and petroleum products that this spring alone were worth more than $750 million.
