Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, along with 15 other senators have submitted the latest round of legislation outlining  a comprehensive minerals policy for the United States. The new bill, S.___ the Critical Minerals Policy Act of 2013, calls for the Department of the Interior to establish a list of critical minerals for the U.S.

PIRA Energy Group, a New York energy market consultancy, released a report this October indicating that the U.S. has surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of oil in 2013. The report’s total oil supply includes all forms of liquid oil supply. The report revealed that the U.S. total supply for 2013 is expected to average 12.1 million barrels per day (MMB/D). The U.S. surpassed Russia to become the second largest global supplier of oil in 2012, and this year U.S. production grew at a faster pace than Saudi Arabia’s.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hosting eleven public listening sessions across the country to solicit ideas and input from the public regarding the best Clean Air Act approaches to reducing carbon pollution from existing power plants. Power plants are the nation’s largest stationary source of carbon pollution, responsible for about one-third of all greenhouse gas pollution in the United States. The EPA hopes to enforce stricter regulations on existing power plants that would cut emissions by 26% by 2020. 

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) has acknowledged that tax credits normally enjoyed by the oil and gas industry are not off the table when it comes to overhauling the United States’ tax code. In an effort to balance the budget and reinvigorate the economy, lawmakers are looking to reform the tax code, which currently sets the majority of corporate tax rates at approximately 40 percent and marginal federal corporate income tax rates at 35 percent.

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology postponed all hearings during the government shutdown. Additionally, other committees were unable to hold hearings because so many furloughed federal employees were unable to testify during the partial shutdown.

Due to a lapse in fiscal year (FY) 2014 appropriations, the government underwent a partial shutdown from October 1 to October 16 until Democrats and Republicans were finally able to pass bipartisan legislation to temporarily reopen the government.

This October, the United States and Russia agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) regarding stewardship of the Bering Strait region. The two international superpowers hope to create an International Park connecting the Beringia National Park in Chukotka, Russia, with the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and the Cape Krusenstern National Monument on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula.

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Budget

The National Science Foundation awarded $16 million in grants to fund a new observation system in the sub-polar region of the North Atlantic Ocean to better understand the ‘global conveyor belt’ – the system of surface ocean currents that carry warmer waters northward, and the deep ocean currents that carry cooler waters southward toward the equator. This initiative is part of the U.S.-led Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP).

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