Having worked as a legal practitioner in the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Obama administration, Hilary Tompkins appreciates the adversity among various energy policy stakeholders.
Now a Washington, D.C.-based partner with the international law firm Hogan Lovells, former Interior Department solicitor Tompkins recently offered Rigzone her insights on two contentious policy areas in the context of the 2020 campaign for the White House: hydraulic fracturing and offshore oil and gas development. Moreover, the environmental attorney presented a pathway for how various players might actually reach some sort of consensus.
Read on for Tompkins’ perspective.
Rigzone: On the topic of hydraulic fracturing, what stands out most to you regarding Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s position versus Republican incumbent President Donald Trump’s?
Hilary Tompkins: Trump’s position was to repeal the Obama-era hydraulic fracking rule on public lands, relying on local regulation as a solution. The legal sufficiency of the Trump repeal is under review in the (federal) Ninth Circuit court of appeals. Candidate Biden’s approach is to not permit any new fossil fuel development on public lands but his silence on existing uses is likely in recognition of the fact that existing operations, including hydraulic fracking, are authorized under existing leases and canceling such leases has legal implications for the government.
Rigzone: Same question as above, but for offshore oil and gas development?
Tompkins: The Trump administration had flirted with the idea of opening the Atlantic to offshore oil and gas development, but the idea was quickly shut down by coastal governors. Given its zero-emission targets, a Biden administration would likely follow the Obama administration’s position that prohibited oil and gas leasing in the Atlantic. Biden has also come out strongly in opposition to such development in the Arctic. The Interior Department issues five-year lease plans regarding oil and gas development offshore, which will likely be amended to reflect Biden’s energy agenda if he is elected.
Rigzone: The oil and gas industry has sustained widespread job losses, particularly this year. How does Biden effectively sell his energy and environmental proposals to voters in oil and gas-producing states who may view such planks in his platform as threats to their livelihoods?
Tompkins: Biden has said he will address the economic welfare of communities that were the backbone of the industrial revolution. He will establish a task force on coal and power plant communities to identify new economic development opportunities through both public and private investments and incentives. His various climate initiatives include alternative fuels, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration programs and the like, and he will need to have a team that is able to translate these new climate initiatives into jobs and economic growth for rural, industrial and manufacturing communities.
Rigzone: You have worked for a Democratic governor (Bill Richardson) in an oil and gas-producing state (New Mexico), and you’ve worked in the Interior Department in the Obama administration. In your experience, what’s been the most effective way to reach some sort of common ground among competing interests – regardless of who is in office?
Tompkins: The key is having divergent constituencies talk with one another. I was amazed at how often the various parties had never gotten in a room together and talked to one another. More often than not, they had misunderstood each other and actually had more in common than originally assumed.
The Interior Department is the living embodiment of conflicting missions, but more often than not we would sit around the Secretary’s conference room table and find a workable solution that protected conservation values, allowed for domestic energy development in the right places and struck a balance between honoring the agency’s institutional positions while exercising the agency’s authority to adjust to emerging needs. Those collaborative solutions are not headline-grabbers, so you don’t hear about them as often, but they do exist and give me hope that collaborative solutions are possible.
Rigzone: Would you like to add any comments?
Tompkins: Now that I have some years under my belt as a lawyer, I tell young lawyers that it is much easier to fight and be adversarial and it is much harder to negotiate and find a resolution to tough, long-standing conflicts. I believe the current state of energy law and policy will test many lawyers in whether they can bring productive, long-term solutions to their clients and build a bridge between competing viewpoints. Every interest has something important to say, and the key is listening to find a common thread.
To contact the author, email mveazey@rigzone.com.
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