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Oil refiners are simply dusting off the old playbook — get renewable fuel supporters and lawmakers to buy into a “fuel neutral” standard.
Climate change lawsuits face uphill battle, but could have radical implications.
Does a trio of new lawsuits aimed at forcing the world’s largest oil companies to pay for the projected effects of rising seas along California’s coast have a fighting chance?
Does a trio of new lawsuits aimed at forcing the world’s largest oil companies to pay for the projected effects of rising seas along California’s coast have a fighting chance?
The litigation is perhaps the boldest attempt so far to test a broad legal strategy — holding corporate America accountable for cashing in on products that have hurt large swaths of the public — on issues pertaining to climate change.
“We’re in uncharted territory here pretty fundamentally,” said Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the UCLA law school’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “The theory behind it is an interesting one: that essentially, petroleum products should be considered defective when used as directed because of the harms that they cause.”
The three lawsuits, which were filed Monday by the city of Imperial Beach and San Mateo and Marin counties, will likely face significant legal obstacles, according to both critics and legal scholars sympathetic to the municipalities’ cause. And similar efforts to go after large industries for alleged damage to the public, including cases against makers of lead paint and tobacco products, have seen mixed results in the courts.
Product-liability and public-health experts said the new climate-change cases are extremely ambitious in scope, having the potential to set wide-ranging precedent concerning financial liability for forecasted impacts of global warming.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they modeled their legal tactics after past efforts to hold accountable cigarette businesses, makers of cancer-causing agents and gas and chemical companies that used methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive that has contaminated groundwater across the country.
While many industries have won in court and avoided costly payouts, those high-profile cases have brought negative publicity for various companies or even helped change overall public sentiment about a highlighted issue.
If Imperial Beach and the two counties prevail, household names such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell could be liable for billions of dollars in mitigation costs and punitive damages in coming decades.
The leading industry groups for oil and coal conglomerates — the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Oil & Gas Association — declined to comment for this story.
A decisive victory for the plaintiffs could trigger an avalanche of similar lawsuits nationwide. Other local governments could feel emboldened to sue fuel companies for a host of expenses related to global warming, including flood and storm damage, drought-related wildfires and steep increases in air-conditioning bills.
“How to deal with sea-level rise and, in particular, how to pay for it has been a growing concern for communities,” said Victor Sher, an attorney with Sher Edling LLP, a law firm that specializes in environmental cases and is representing Imperial Beach and Marin and San Mateo counties. “There’s nothing that makes this unique to California. I would not be surprised if there are other communities that are interested in this approach.”
The law firm is working on contingency. Neither the local governments involved in the climate change cases nor the law group would say who came up with the legal strategy or which group initiated the collaboration.
“We cannot discuss communications between the county and Sher Edling, including pre-litigation conversations,” said Paul Okada, chief deputy county counsel for San Mateo County. “The county and its board of supervisors have been working on sea level rise issues for years. Our office has also known and worked with Matt Edling, a county resident, for nearly a decade.”
The three new lawsuits are largely based on public nuisance law, meaning the local governments have to prove that fossil-fuel companies have caused special harm to their residents — in this case, costs associated with adapting to sea-level rise. The plaintiffs are also seeking punitive damages.
The most compelling precedent is perhaps a public nuisance lawsuit by 10 California cities and counties against several manufacturers of lead paint.
In 2014, a Santa Clara Superior Court judge order three companies — ConAgra Grocery Products, NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams — to pay a collective $1.15 billion into a fund to clean up old homes that suffered exposure to lead paint. The case was appealed and has been in the courts for 17 years now.
A similar effort involving more than half a dozen cities along the West Coast has taken Monsanto to court to help pay for the costs of cleaning up polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a global contaminant linked to cancer, neurological damage, thyroid problems and reproductive complications.
Such cases are largely predicated on the idea that corporations knew about the harms of their products but still sold them to continue making profits.
At the heart of the new litigation is a similar narrative that has to a certain extent been bolstered by scientific research as well as recent investigative reporting: Plaintiffs allege that executives of large oil and coal companies knew going back decades that their fossil fuels would warm up the planet — and possibly concealed that evidence. They sold their merchandise anyway and as a result, communities are today bracing for the worst consequences of chronic flooding driven by rising tides from melting glaciers, the plaintiffs said in their lawsuits.
“The notion is you have large corporations with highly developed research-and-development capacities and actual knowledge, frequently by the scientists within the organizations,” said Sher at the law firm. “They advise management and then management decides to ignore what they’re saying.”
Reporting by the nonprofit journalism group Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times found that ExxonMobil and other industry players conducted internal research going back to the 1980s that found ties between fossil fuels and climate change.
At the same time, the state attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts have been investigating whether ExxonMobil improperly concealed this knowledge. The company has sued to block those inquiries, and that case is being heard in federal court.
Depending on how far the cases get, the world could learn substantially more about what oil and coal businesses knew and when.
To get the ball rolling, plaintiffs will have to prove that these corporations were a substantial factor in the alleged harms. This process could be trickier than it sounds, as the defendants may argue that complicity in climate change is shared globally by other large industries as well as anyone who drives a gas-powered vehicle or flies in an airplane or flips on the lights.
“The defendants can say, ‘Look, we may have emitted a bunch of (carbon dioxide), but if the only CO2 in the world were ours, there’d be no global climate change, so we’re not a substantial factor,’” said Greg Keating, a professor with the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, who has written about climate change.
Lawyers for Imperial Beach and Marin and San Mateo counties said they’ve gone to significant lengths to quantify the greenhouse gases they said are attributable to the fossil fuel companies in question. It could eventually be up to a jury to decide how compelling those figures are, but the quantification strategy is a key part of efforts to get judges to take the lawsuit seriously.
Specifically, they calculate that the defendants are collectively responsible for more than 20 percent of all carbon dioxide and methane emitted between 1965 and 2015. This is a period in time referred to by scientists as the “great acceleration” when a fossil fuel production ramped up, accounting for roughly 75 percent of all historic emission from industry.
Because of recent advances in science, lawyers for the plaintiffs believe they can draw a convincing line from industry activities to seaside communities.
There are a whole host of other highly technical legal arguments that could hamstring the case before it even gets started. But if it clears a few key initial hurdles, the lawsuits could fundamentally restructure the way the country looks at corporate liability.
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Ascendant Schumer seen as green-tinted pragmatist.
As Americans head to the polls today, perhaps no member of Congress will be following the results as closely as Sen. Chuck Schumer.
As Americans head to the polls today, perhaps no member of Congress will be following the results as closely as Sen. Chuck Schumer.
The New York Democrat's own re-election bid isn't in doubt; he's expected to cruise to a fourth Senate term against GOP challenger Wendy Long. But as the heir apparent to retiring top Senate Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, Schumer should know in the next 24 hours whether he's being promoted to majority leader — or whether he will spend the next two years serving as chief antagonist to Republicans if the GOP holds on to control of the upper chamber.
Following Reid's 2015 announcement that he would retire at the end of this Congress, Schumer quickly locked down the support to ascend into the Democratic leader slot, leapfrogging the chamber's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, in the process.
While environmentalists praise Reid as an "absolute rock" on environmental and clean energy policy during his 10-year tenure as Senate Democratic leader, Schumer has played a less visible role on these issues.
However, environmentalists say they're not concerned that their priorities will fall to the back burner in a Schumer-led Democratic caucus, noting that the New Yorker's lifetime League of Conservation Voters score is 91 percent — 10 points higher than Reid's.
Additionally, the environmental portfolio has always fallen to Schumer's New York Senate colleagues — Democrats Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Hillary Clinton and Kirsten Gillibrand, all of whom held seats on the Environment and Public Works Committee, as Reid did for many years.
Schumer "hasn't been as much in the day-to-day on those issues, but he gets it, he understands," LCV President Gene Karpinski told E&E; News. "He's made it clear he cares deeply about it, and in his record as a member of Congress, he's voted right over 90 percent of the time."
Industry officials also expect Schumer to continue the green-leaning policies of the Democratic Party but see the incoming leader as a pragmatist willing to consider the overall impacts of fossil fuels to the economy when setting policy.
"Schumer represents Wall Street, right? So Schumer is going to have a perspective on the economy and what it takes to drive the economy that is born of his back-and-forth, his conversations on a regular basis with Wall Street," said one oil and gas lobbyist. "Wall Street obviously recognizes the importance of a viable energy industry to overall economic growth. So I think for that reason alone, Schumer is not going to be one of these guys that just willy-nilly, kneejerk attacks the fossil fuel industry."
'About the deal'
While Schumer's profile on energy and environmental issues is lower than some fellow Democrats', environmentalists say he's worked quietly behind the scenes to push back against the multitude of anti-environmental riders Republicans have pressed for years in the annual appropriations process.
They also note that Schumer played a major role in securing passage of a roughly $60 billion relief package to help the East Coast rebuild from Superstorm Sandy in 2013, and credit him specifically for ensuring the funds be spent to boost the resilience of infrastructure from extreme weather events.
"He's been a leader on those issues," said one longtime environmental lobbyist of Schumer.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks out against the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline on the Senate floor last year, with a sign showing the number of jobs Democrats said the project would have created. Photo courtesy of Sen. Schumer’s office via YouTube.
Among the environmental accomplishments noted by his office are Schumer's successful filibuster of a House-passed energy bill that would have shielded manufacturers of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) — a groundwater pollutant found in many areas of New York and elsewhere around the country — from product liability claims.
Schumer's office also noted his work to clean up drinking water, polluted air and contaminated land across New York, as well as his efforts behind the scenes to boost funding for water infrastructure improvements. He's pushed to increase funds to restore the Great Lakes and Long Island Sound, and supports U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan and the Paris climate agreement.
Schumer has called for stronger rules for transporting crude oil by rail, and has long advocated for canceling billions of dollars of "Big Oil" tax breaks.
But Schumer also gave environmentalists fits in 2014 when he commented that hydraulic fracturing has "worked quite well." He also led an early, unsuccessful effort to strip the renewable fuel standard from energy legislation before its creation and, according to one oil and gas lobbyist, was the first member of the Democratic leadership to signal interest in what became the landmark deal enacted at the end of last year that lifted the decades-old crude oil exports ban in exchange for extensions of key renewable energy tax breaks.
"He's the one who opened the door," said the lobbyist of the crude exports for green tax breaks agreement that environmentalists widely opposed. "He didn't reject it out of hand, he said, 'OK, come talk to me and let's talk about what we get in return' — 'we' being the Democrats."
That's the pragmatism that industry groups and their congressional allies hope will be a hallmark of Schumer's reign as Democratic leader.
"I like Schumer," the oil and gas lobbyist added. "Not everyone in my industry likes him, but I think Schumer is an honest broker. You will always know where Chuck Schumer is coming from. You may not like it, but you will not have to guess. And Mr. Schumer is about the deal. If he says he will do this, and you do that, you can count on his word."
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), who teamed up with Schumer earlier this year to push legislation into law allowing the families of Sept. 11 victims to pursue litigation against Saudi Arabia over that nation's alleged involvement in the attacks, said he'll be looking for similar opportunities to collaborate with the Democrat when he becomes leader.
"We get along," Cornyn told E&E; News earlier this year of Schumer. "He's a worthy adversary. We fight like cats and dogs when we need to, and when we find areas we can work together constructively, we look for that. I actually appreciate that."
Electoral pressures
Should Democrats take back the Senate, it's likely to be with a slim majority, limiting the prospects for major legislative initiatives.
However, the environmental lobbyist predicted that Schumer will work with committee chairmen to "create a narrative" around clean energy that will bolster the electoral prospects of Democrats up for re-election in 2018.
"Schumer will be looking already, from Jan. 4, 2017, he will be looking to Election Day 2018," said the lobbyist. "And he will understand how this issue is used in a way that's helpful."
However, energy may be a double-edged sword for Democrats during the 2018 midterms, when 25 Democratic seats will have to be defended, compared with eight for Republican senators. That's nearly the inverse of this year, where Republicans have 24 seats to defend and Democrats 10.
With Senate control once again up in the air, Schumer may have to temper his party's green leanings to help protect Democrats from oil-, gas- and coal-producing states, including West Virginia's Joe Manchin, Indiana's Joe Donnelly, North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, Montana's Jon Tester and Pennsylvania's Bob Casey.
One area of possible agreement in the next Congress may be tax reform — an issue that Schumer and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have discussed in the past.
Assuming Clinton wins the White House, Schumer told CNBC's John Harwood last month, there may be an opening to tackle international tax reform, with repatriated funds being used in part to fund a "large infrastructure program."
"If you can get overseas money to come back here, even if it's at a lower rate than the 35 percent it now comes back at, and you can use that money for a major constructive purpose such as infrastructure — if you did an infrastructure bank, for instance, you could get $100 billion in equity in the bank and get a trillion dollars of infrastructure," Schumer said.
Repatriation of overseas profits to pay for infrastructure is an idea Schumer collaborated with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on last year, although a deal never materialized.
Schumer's focus on raising revenue through changes to the tax code remains a hurdle for broader cooperation with Republicans.
"That in my book isn't tax reform because that's just a way to get some more money, not to fix the tax system at all, but to pay for something," Cornyn said of the Schumer-Portman proposal. "I don't blame him for trying, I just didn't think it was what I would call tax reform."
Schumer has also made clear that he considers billions of dollars in tax breaks enjoyed by major oil and gas companies as fair game to pay for other priorities, although Democrats have had little success on that front for the past decade.
Asked about Schumer's Big Oil rhetoric, American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard told E&E; News earlier this year that he hopes to build a working relationship with the incoming leader similar to what he has with Reid. While Gerard and Reid were often at odds on policy matters, the two have known each other for years, dating back to Gerard's days as head of the National Mining Association, where the pair's views were aligned on hardrock mining issues, a major contributor to the Silver State's economy.
"We don't always agree on the policy, but he has been willing to hear our views," Gerard said of Reid, adding that he plans to deliver the same argument about the economic benefits of oil and gas production to Schumer. "As he comes into leadership, we'll continue to reach out to educate, and our hope is that all sides will listen."
Join us live on Facebook Nov. 9 at 1 p.m. EST for E&E; News reporters' postmortem on what election 2016 means for energy and environment issues.
Twitter: @geofkoss Email: gkoss@eenews.net
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Murkowski urges Dems not to bury conference committee.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is looking to convince wary Democrats against blocking the first energy bill conference committee in a decade.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is looking to convince wary Democrats against blocking the first energy bill conference committee in a decade.
The Senate could vote as early as next week on whether to launch a conference with the House to seek compromise on energy reform legislation. The House voted before the Memorial Day recess to begin talks.
Lawmakers and aides are looking to the conference that produced the landmark Energy Policy Act of 2005 for guidance. But first they have to secure enough buy-in from both parties for the process to begin.
Sierra Club policy advocate Radha Adhar said yesterday that there was significant opposition among Senate Democrats to the House's revised energy package. The chamber included multiple bills that the White House has threatened to veto. Leaders wanted to counterbalance the Senate's more robust legislation, S. 2012.
Adhar said about Senate backers of going to conference: "It seems pretty clear that they don't have the support they need to meet the 60-vote threshold."
Additionally, lobbyists say Democrats are growing increasingly optimistic that they'll regain control of the Senate next year, strengthening their hand in producing energy legislation.
Murkowski acknowledged Democrats' wariness in an interview before the recess.
"I think there has to be a little bit of trust on how we're going to proceed," she told E&E; Daily. "And I think the advantage that we have with the Senate bill is that we did demonstrate that trust and good faith in working with the other side -- and really trying to build something that could gain really significant support."
Murkowski said her goal was "not to jam the other side; it's not to put a target on something that the president is going to veto. I'm really seeking to update and modernize our energy policies. I want to get to a final product."
Republican aides say Murkowski is committed to running a conference committee, which she would lead, in the same bipartisan and inclusive manner that she has used to run the Energy Committee since taking the gavel last year.
They note that Murkowski and Energy ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) conducted extensive staff meetings with outside interests from across the political spectrum for writing S. 2012, which passed the chamber in April.
The measure, as introduced, contained 50 bills from members of both parties. It now includes a host of amendments from the extended floor debate.
"All we can do is run a conference the same way we ran the development of the bill," one aide said yesterday when speaking on background about the process.
Should a conference launch, the aide said, lawmakers would tackle the negotiations in "fairly manageable chunks." Staff would discuss issues and then present potential compromises to members for a vote.
Both House and Senate versions, for example, contain provisions to address the National Park Service Centennial and energy workforce issues. Lawmakers could find a compromise on those relatively noncontroversial sections before moving on to tougher debates, with an eye toward settling "resolvable" policy questions first, said the aide.
Should the bid for a formal conference fall short, the aide said, Murkowski would look for other ways to advance energy bill priorities.
"We're prepared for any outcome," the staffer said.
Asked about informal bicameral negotiations rather than a formal conference committee, Murkowski said she hoped to avoid that outcome.
"It may be that what we have to do is put together a framework that we agree to that gives perhaps greater comfort not only to the Dems but to the House guys, as well, so everybody kind of knows what the rules are, how we're going to be operating on this," she said.
Looking to 2005
Lawmakers and staff members who were part of the last energy conference in 2005 say that experience demonstrated what members can do when they roll up their sleeves. Murkowski was part of that conference, but as a more junior lawmaker.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which created the Energy Department's loan guarantee program and the federal renewable fuel standard, and contained more than $11 billion in energy tax breaks, came on the heels of two failed attempts by the previous two Congresses to enact broad energy legislation.
Former Sen. Jeff Bingaman. Photo by the Senate, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Former Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who was a stickler for regular order during his five terms in the Senate, said he sees no reason why a formal conference couldn't produce a bill that the president would sign, even in an election year.
"The big advantage they have this year, as we had in 2005, is the same party controls both houses," he said in a recent phone interview. "And the reported bills are pretty comparable in substance. I would think they could go through a conference, get a bill out and pass it before the election. I don't see a problem with that."
As ranking member on the Energy panel that year, Bingaman was the top Senate Democratic negotiator in the conference, with then-Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) taking the lead for Republicans.
In the House, former Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) served as head of the conference, while retired Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) was the fourth main negotiator as ranking member of the House panel.
In an interview last month, Barton credited the four principals for the successful outcome. Other key House and Senate lawmakers contributed, as well, he said.
"We created what we called a big four working group -- Dingell, myself, Domenici, Bingaman -- and we would meet and decide which issues we could agree on, how we would bring them up," he recalled.
"And we actually had conferences where we took votes in front of the public. And the result was a bill that's really still the basic energy policy for the country, and I believe all the conferees signed the conference report."
Getting to that point was no small feat, Bingaman said.
"We had a lot of subjects that we disagreed about, obviously, most of the negotiations that I recall. We spent a lot of time trying to resolve issues, the four of us. And I think that process worked reasonably well," he said.
"We approached it with a positive attitude, and there were things in the bills that were important to each of us and we wanted to get a bill," said Bingaman. "And so I think it worked how conference committees on large, complex bills are supposed to work."
Bingaman ultimately had to walk away from a long-sought policy goal: language in the Senate bill to create a renewable portfolio standard to require that 10 percent of U.S. electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.
The final conference report also included a provision he opposed to secure some exemptions for hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The final product, however, included $11.5 billion in energy tax breaks, with $4.5 billion of those steered toward renewables -- a policy wish that Bingaman cultivated from his seat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Barton, in turn, had to drop a provision from the House-passed bill that would have opened Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling.
Also omitted from the final bill were efforts to help shield manufacturers of the gasoline additive methyl tert-butyl ether, or MTBE, from liability -- a longtime priority of Barton and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
House vs. Senate
The presence of Dingell, a master legislator who was a fixture on Energy and Commerce for decades, was a major asset, Barton recalled.
"Dingell and I, we worked together," he said. "We were good friends, we had differences. He helped me a lot. That was my first big conference."
Barton said, "It was the House against the Senate as much as it was Republicans against Democrats. But the whole group was good. Domenici and Bingaman. We didn't have a lot of tension and animosity."
Rep. Joe Barton. Photo by the House of Representatives, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The climate changed debate had not yet become such an intractable political issue. That also helped make the 2005 conference relatively smooth.
"I think that the reality was that climate change was not the driving force or such a large factor in our calculations about what we needed to do on energy," Bingaman said. "We wrote that bill, and when we wrote the 2007 bill we were getting more of a recognition that we needed to factor in climate change."
The 2007 energy law, also signed by President George W. Bush, was notable for the first congressionally mandated increase in federal fuel economy standards in three decades. The final text emerged from informal negotiations between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress, rather than the formal conference process.
Bingaman last week said he couldn't remember exactly why Democratic leaders chose to bypass a conference, which he would have led. The House and Senate generally rotate conference committee chairmanships.
"I think Speaker [Nancy Pelosi] at that point thought we could work out the differences," Bingaman said. "We went through various contortions there. I don't recall all the give and take."
Another key difference between 2005, 2007 and the current political environment is the occupant of the White House. As a senator from Illinois, Barack Obama ultimately voted for the 2005 conference report.
White House role
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz helped shape provisions of both the House and Senate bills to address recommendations included in DOE's Quadrennial Energy Review. The administration has also lobbied on language to put a deadline on applications for exporting natural gas. But the White House is at odds with the GOP on numerous other issues.
Bud Albright, Barton's staff director on the Energy and Commerce Committee during the 2005 conference, said support from the Bush White House helped the conference push through extensive deliberations that often dragged on through the weekend.
"I remember the president got us all together one day, it was a Saturday," Albright, now a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations, said last week. "We were working, and they said that the president is going to call at 11. And sure enough, President Bush called and said, 'I just want to thank you guys.' He didn't have an agenda; he said, 'I know you're working hard to get to a solution; I hope you can get there. If there's anything I or my team can do, I'm here to help.'"
Albright said: "That's helpful. And his congressional staff was always there to say, 'You know we can do this; you can't do that.' They were very helpful. I don't think you'll find that with this administration."
Albright, who later served as a top DOE official during the Bush presidency, also said political considerations were secondary for conferees.
"It was hard, in that it was hard work," he said. "You have to remember that this was a comprehensive bill, hadn't been done in 10 years, really. But as hard as it was, I think what made it doable was everyone at the table was trying to get a product that would better serve America's energy situation, with politics being the second thought."
Albright said, "If we knew something couldn't be done, we didn't throw it in anybody's faces ... or walk away from the table. So I don't think there was any magic to it. ... The mindset of the principals was, 'We're going to get this done because it's good for America.'"
Albright also noted that the 2005 conference benefited from the previous two Congresses' having spent considerable time debating energy legislation. The House in 2003 passed a comprehensive energy conference report, but the Senate failed to move past a key procedural vote.
"We had lots of work to do, and we did it, but I think the work of earlier Congresses certainly helped our thinking," Albright said. "It gave us a path that had been cleared and graded, and we had to come in and pave it. I think it helped, showed us direction, showed us what was possible."
While former Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) was House Energy and Commerce chairman during those earlier debates, the difficulties involved in legislating comprehensive energy bills made Barton wary when he took the helm of the powerful committee during the 109th Congress.
Barton recalled visiting then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to discuss the committee's agenda.
"I said one thing I'm not going to do is an energy bill -- I'm tired of messing with it," Barton recalled. "And Denny said, 'Well, I want you to make one more shot at it.' And I said, 'Well, Mr. Speaker, if that's what you want, but we failed the last two Congresses.' But I gave it another shot, and with a lot of help from John Dingell, we got it done."
Twitter: @geofkoss Email: gkoss@eenews.net
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