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Visiting VP candidate Paul Ryan's record on energy

Written by Carl Romanos on . Posted in Archives

Recently named Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan hasn’t spoken much about Marcellus Shale, but it seems that he is poised to as he begins to take campaign stops across Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Mr. Ryan is holding a rally at Beaver Steel Services in the Rosslyn Farms Industrial Park in Carnegie on Tuesday afternoon. As he continues to tout the Romney-Ryan ticket across the mid-Atlantic states, Mr. Ryan's record on energy issues will be more heavily scrutinized. 

Here's an introduction to that record:

romney_ryanMr. Ryan has received $244,250 in donations from the oil and gas industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Indeed, according to VoteSmart.org, a nonpartisan voting research organization, Mr. Ryan’s voting record on key energy issues reveal that he is as staunchly conservative in energy issues as he is in financial issues.

- Ryan voted in support of Domestic Energy and Jobs Act, which makes federal lands available for oil/gas extraction by default.

- Ryan voted against Cap and Trade, the regulatory system which uses greenhouse gas permits to regulate greenhouse gases.

- Ryan voted in support of the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which limits the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases through taxation.

This article from Politico shows how Mr. Ryan’s general energy philosophy "deflates greens":

“The Wisconsin Republican has been an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama’s clean energy agenda, offering a fiscal plan earlier this year that neatly mirrors the GOP’s policy priorities. The plan would expand oil and gas drilling, limit the reach of the EPA and kill the Energy Department’s clean energy loan program.

Mr. Ryan may have more in common with Pennsylvanians than meets the eye. According to the Daily Beast, he and his wife are leaseholders who work with some of Pennsylvania's biggest drillers:

“The financial disclosure report Ryan filed with Congress last month and made public this week shows he and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan's budget plan.

"Ryan's father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil."

The Romney campaign didn't specify what Tuesday's rally would entail, but the campaign's plans to use Mr. Ryan as a state liason are sure to bring greater scrutiny to his plans for the state's natural gas industry.