Oklahoma Regulator: The Federal Government is ‘Coming After Natural Gas’

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

State of Oklahoma

Supporters of the oil and gas industry ‘blasted’ environmental regulations and a campaign against fossil fuels at an Oct. 17 energy policy conference in downtown Tulsa, the Tulsa World’s Susan Hylton reports.

Conference speakers included Bob Tippee, editor of the Oil & Gas Journal, who assailed President Barack Obama’s “extremist” environmentalist supporters, and William Yeatman, an energy policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who went after federal regional haze rules.

Patrice Douglas, chairwoman of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission Chairman — which regulates oil and gas drilling and electric utilities —  joined the chorus, according to the World, and echoed a sentiment shared by Oklahoma’s Attorney General:

“Coal is what they’re talking about now, but they’re coming after natural gas,” she said, noting that standards on coal-fired electricity plants are now impossible to meet.

Oklahoma Corporation Commission Chairman Patrice Douglas, who comes from a banking background and is a former mayor of Edmond, said she was appointed to the regulatory agency precisely because she is not a fan of regulation. She said it’s government regulation that could prevent the country from being energy-secure.