TPT January 2016

79 / 106

Global Marketplace
January 2016 77
Bül tmann GmbH
Hönnestr. 31
58809 Neuenrade
Germany
Phone: +49 2394 180
Fax: +49 2394 18171
E-Mail:
www.buel
The Times’s Jeremy WPeters and Coral Davenport noted drily,
“If his words left any doubt about the intended beneficiaries
of his energy plan, the setting he chose spoke volumes: a
company that makes equipment used to drill and refine fossil
fuels – BOC Water Hydraulics.”
The reporters observed that the Rubio plan seemed explicitly
intended to weaken Mr Obama’s hand in advance of the
2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held
in Paris from 30 November to 11 December, at which the
president would strive to negotiate an international accord to
combat climate change. They wrote, “While Mr Obama hopes
that such a deal will be a cornerstone of his legacy, the ultimate
success of the accord hinges on whether his successor will
actually carry it out – and Mr Rubio’s plan makes clear that a
President Rubio would not do so.”
› Whether he would or not is a moot question since at the
time of the Salem speech some dozen candidates were
vying for the Republican nomination, and Mr Rubio was not
the front-runner. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton,
who leads a much smaller field of Democratic aspirants,
has pledged, if elected, to fully carry out and expand on Mr
Obama’s climate change initiatives.
It is worthy of mention that, also on 16 October, in Paris, the
ten companies in the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative unanimously
voiced their support for an international agreement to limit
global warming. As reported by the French oil “supermajor”
Total (19 October), “Never before had so many of the
industry’s stakeholders assembled to work together to shrink
their climate footprint.”
Elsewhere in oil and gas . . .
› Residents of New York are increasingly dependent on
natural gas produced in other states to heat their homes,
according to new data from the US Census Bureau cited by
Scott Waldman and Bill Mahoney of Politico (5 October).
Ready supplies of natural gas mean that heating prices are
expected to be 30 per cent cheaper in upstate Buffalo this
season, the lowest in two decades. Central New York will
likely see a similar drop. New Yorkers are also becoming
more reliant on natural gas for the production of electricity.
While both trends can be seen throughout the country, they
are especially notable in New York, which has both a huge
deposit of shale gas and a ban on the production of natural
gas through fracking.
According to the Politico reporters, polls show that most New
Yorkers support the fracking ban, in effect since late 2014, and
opposition to new natural gas pipelines is fierce. However,
they wrote, “When it comes to staying warm and keeping the
lights on, gas fracked in other states is a growing part of daily
life in New York.”
Dorothy Fabian, Features Editor (USA)