Amid the hours of granular policy and technical discussions at this year’s Energy Information Administration energy conference, one message from the private sector came through loud and clear: regulatory reform must happen.
The first pitch for this reform came from Tesoro president and CEO Greg Goff, who criticized the Obama administration for targeting the industry through burdensome regulations, and told the conference that “enough is enough.”
He added, “The all-out war on fossil fuels waged by this White House over the last eight years has reached tsunami proportions in terms of new regulations being proposed.”
Kinder Morgan CEO Steven Kean took to the main stage the following day with a similar message. Voicing concerns over protracted permitting processes and warning government agencies against rushing out ill-conceived regulations, he told the audience that “there is a tendency for bad events to make bad law.”
“My concern is there is a bit of knee-jerk reaction of ‘I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to do,’” he further cautioned, adding that rigid and prescriptive energy regulations could have unintended consequences.
While the policymakers and academics discussed the minutiae of energy topics, the message from the energy industry itself was simple: if you want economic growth, stop regulating us into the ground.
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