Overnight Energy: House passes Harvey aid | Irma slams Caribbean | Spicer to speak at energy conference

HOUSE PASSES HARVEY AID: The House voted Wednesday to approve a $7.85 billion aid package for Hurricane Harvey.

The Harvey aid was easily cleared in an overwhelming 419-3 vote. All three no votes came from Republicans.

During the vote, there were worries it would set up a showdown with the Senate, where Republican leaders backed tying Harvey aid to the debt ceiling bill.

Many House Republicans wanted to back relief for Harvey victims but not raise the debt ceiling without restricting future government spending.

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As the House debated the Harvey bill, though, President Trump met with congressional leaders from both parties: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Trump reached a deal with Democrats, to the disappointment of many Republicans. The deal would attach measures both raising the debt ceiling and extending government funding to the House-passed Harvey aid measure.

The debt and funding extensions will now run through Dec. 15, setting up another spending fight at year’s end.

Ryan earlier in the day had dismissed the idea of a three-month debt extension tied to Harvey aid as “ridiculous.“

The White House had backed merging debt relief and Harvey aid, a position first articulated by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on “Fox News Sunday.”

He said the costs for disaster relief may push up the deadline for the debt ceiling — a situation that could become more urgent if the Category 5 Hurricane Irma hits the Florida coast.

The bill passed Wednesday would provide $7.4 billion to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund, and $450 million for the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program, which provides loans to businesses and homeowners hit by disaster.

The disaster relief fund has run low on funding since Harvey unloaded 50 inches of water on some parts of Texas, including Houston, the country’s fourth largest city. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) estimated the damage may be as high as $180 billion.

Read more on the House passing Harvey aid here.

And read more on the Trump deal with Democrats here.

 

Trump: Drought-stricken North Dakota ‘better off’ than Harvey victims: President Trump on Wednesday told a North Dakota audience that the state was “better off” suffering through a drought than victims of Harvey’s severe flooding.

“I know you have a little bit of a drought. They had the opposite, believe me,” Trump said during a tax reform speech in Mandan, N.D.

“You’re better off. You are better off, they had the absolute opposite.”

Trump also said he was surprised that droughts could happen “this far north” and that his administration was working to fix the problem.

“We’re doing everything we can but you have a very serious drought. I just said to the governor, I didn’t know you had droughts this far north. Guess what: you have them,” he said.

“We’re working hard on it, and it will disappear, it will all go away.”

Parts of the high plains are experiencing a protracted drought. A federal drought monitor report issued last week said there were “long-term precipitation deficits” in parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Montana, where 41 percent of the state’s pasture and range conditions are rated “very poor.”

Read more here.

 

IRMA COULD KEEP PUERTO RICO IN THE DARK FOR MONTHS: Hurricane Irma passed over several Caribbean islands on Wednesday, devastating communities and potentially threatening Puerto Rico’s electric grid.

“There are going to be blackouts. Areas that will spend three, four months without electricity,” Ricardo Ramos, executive director of Puerto Rico’s energy agency, said ahead of the storm.

The Category 5 hurricane, packing 185 mph winds, is wreaking havoc in the Caribbean as it barrels toward the mainland U.S.

While the storm is not expected to directly hit Puerto Rico, Irma is predicted to bring heavy rains and winds when it passes the north of the island.

The government said it had set up hundreds of temporary shelters capable of housing more than 60,000 people, The Miami Herald reported.

The U.S. territory, which has a population of more than 3 million, is in the midst of a major economic crisis, with $74 million in debt.

Read more here.

 

EPA STAFFING TO DROP TO REAGAN-ERA LEVELS: The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) workforce is expected to dip to levels not seen since Ronald Reagan was president, an agency official confirmed Wednesday.

Between retirements and a buyout program the EPA instituted earlier this summer, the agency is expected to lose more than 500 employees by October.

The EPA employs about 15,000 people. The tally after the fiscal year ends at the end of the month could decline to 14,428 staffers. That’s a level not seen since the 1988 fiscal year, when the EPA employed 14,440 people.

Nearly 3,000 other employees are eligible to retire, as well.

Read more here.

 

SPICER TO SPEAK AT ENERGY CONFERENCE: Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer got one of his first paid speaking gigs Wednesday: a keynote address at a Pittsburgh natural gas conference later this month.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition announced Spicer’s appearance Wednesday, a day after the WorldWide Speakers Group announced that it would be exclusively representing Spicer for paid speaking arrangements.

The appearance at the annual Shale Insight conference is one of Spicer’s first paid gigs since leaving the White House at the end of August.

It’s the same conference where then-candidate Donald Trump spoke last year to outline his energy agenda and how he believed it would benefit the natural gas industry.

“Mr. Spicer’s closing keynote will provide an inside perspective of now U.S. President Trump’s administration and policy plans regarding the U.S. energy revolution and our new-found wealth of natural gas, particularly in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia,” conference organizers said.

“Mr. Spicer will touch upon how we are poised to strengthen our nation’s geopolitical position, create manufacturing opportunities here at home and jobs for all Americans while continuing to protect our environment.”

Read more here.

 

ON TAP THURSDAY: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing for four Trump administration nominees.

The committee will hear from Trump’s two remaining picks for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Richard Glick and Kevin McIntyre, Trump’s nominee to lead the panel.

Joseph Balash, Trump’s nominee to be the assistant secretary for land and minerals management at Interior, and Ryan Nelson, the Interior solicitor general nominee, are also on the agenda.  

 

AROUND THE WEB:

Contractors for Sunoco Pipeline are taking on residents who are trying to get in the way of building the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Pennsylvania, StateImpact Pennsylvania reports.

A Delta flight from New York landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico — and turned around for its return trip — just as Hurricane Irma was approaching the island. Twitter has the play-by-play.

Two Florida nuclear power plants are prepping for Irma, the Miami Herald reports.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check Wednesday’s stories…

-US pushing to cut off oil to North Korea with UN resolution

-Trump: Drought-stricken Dakotas ‘better off’ than Harvey flood victims

-Parts of Puerto Rico could be without power for 6 months after Irma

-House approves Harvey aid as debt wrangling begins

-Chocolate manufacturer Mars promises $1B to fight climate change

-Sean Spicer to speak at gas industry conference

-EPA: Agency staffing on pace to dip to 1980s levels

-Sophisticated hacking campaign has targeted US energy sector since 2015

-DHS reviewing report on Russian-linked energy hackers

 

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