Author Archives: Bruce Kauffmann

Bruce Kauffmann An interview with 2011 NARUC President Tony Clark

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Bruce Kauffmann | Comments Off


It isn’t every public utility commissioner who can boast being a Boy Scout troop leader and an Eagle Scout, but this year’s president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Tony Clark, has that distinction, and in an interview in this month’s issue of American Gas magazine, he talks about why the Boy Scout’s motto, “Be Prepared,” is particularly relevant to his job.

According to Clark that is one reason “NARUC plays a key role in training and educating the nation’s utility regulators,” especially since there is a lot of turnover on regulatory commissions.  “The average commissioner’s tenure is between only three to four years,” Clark says, so getting new commissioners up to speed as quickly as possible is critical.  “No one benefits from poorly equipped and trained regulators.”

In the interview Clark also shares that commissioners need to do a better job of communicating to their key audiences—especially the general public—what it is they do, and why.  Because regulators deal with a number of complicated procedures, including due process rights, notice requirements, ex parte communications and evidentiary-based records, Clark admits, “The regulatory world can be arcane.”

Clark’s prescription is better transparency.  “We regulators need to ensure that all parties feel as though they have an open, transparent way of communicating with us, and us with them.  To do otherwise risks alienating the very people we are there to serve.”

Speaking of being prepared, Clark stresses that with respect to the natural gas industry, the highest priority for both the regulators and the utilities they regulate is the safety of the natural gas delivery system.  Clark notes that among the many issues regulators need to address —  especially in light of a number of recent natural gas pipeline incidents, including the tragic incident in San Bruno, Ca. — is whether pipeline safety program personnel, those responsible for safety inspections, are able to do their jobs properly with the resources they currently have.  According to Clark, “The answer coming back (from safety inspectors) is that more resources are needed.”

Clark also notes that the good news for the natural gas industry, the abundance of shale gas that is currently coming to market, is also good news for the consumer because it means stable, affordable natural gas prices.  As a result, even though some in the environmental community object to the environmental impact of the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) process necessary to produce shale gas, NARUC is, for the most part, supportive of this new supply source.

“Because of the clear importance of the emerging shale plays to the affordability of gas to consumers, NARUC has asked the EPA to consider that state environmental regulators may be in the best position to assess the highly localized potential environmental impact of fracking,” Clark explains. “The concern is that regulatory overreach could shut down a major positive development for consumers, with limited environmental benefit to show for it.”

For a balanced, thoughtful interview with a thoroughly prepared NARUC president, read the entire story by visiting aga.org

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Bruce Kauffmann No Matter the Question, Domestic Energy is the Answer

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Bruce Kauffmann | 1 Comment


Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for National Review Online, wrote an interesting column recently in which he noted that regardless of what question one poses with respect to improving our economy, the proper answer to that question is to increase our use of domestic energy.  For example:

How do we improve the deficit? President Obama is excoriated by his critics for adding trillions of dollars to the deficit.  But Goldberg writes that, according to estimates, if America “unlocked its oil and natural gas reserves, the government could take in somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in additional revenue over the coming years.”  And as he points out, the resulting lower fuel and energy costs also would stimulate the economy, further reducing the deficit.

How do we improve our trade imbalances? Increasing domestic use of oil and natural gas means we import less from overseas, which, by definition, improves our trade imbalance.  This is especially true of natural gas.  According to a number of energy experts, including the Potential Gas Committee, at current production levels the United States enjoys a 100-year supply of natural gas, and rapidly improving technologies mean we should be able to produce even more domestic gas, potentially extending that supply outlook far beyond 100 years.  As Goldberg notes, “it’s quite possible that the United States could be the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”  He also points out that using more domestic energy not only reduces the trade deficit it increases our GDP.

How do we create good-paying jobs? Goldberg puts it succinctly” “You can’t drill for American oil and natural gas in China, Saudi Arabia or anyplace else other than America.”  The more domestic energy we produce, the more domestic jobs we produce, and jobs in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas pay more than twice the national average.

Goldberg agrees that renewable energy is our energy future, although—like many of us in the natural gas industry—he believes the day when renewable energy dominates our energy landscape is farther off than most people think.  What he proposes is a “do-it-all strategy” in which we focus not just on developing renewable energy, but also on the development of our domestically abundant fossil fuels.

The result, he writes, would be “creating good jobs here at home, lowering energy costs, reducing our reliance on foreign oil, and cutting the deficit.”

Funny, that’s what we at the American Gas Association have been saying for years.

Posted in energy, Natural Gas | 1 Comment

Bruce Kauffmann At the Energy Solutions Center an Endless Variety of End-Use Ideas

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Bruce Kauffmann | 2 Comments


The cover story for the November issue of American Gas magazine describes the wide variety of new, highly efficient and environmentally friendly ways natural gas can be used in our homes, businesses and industries, be it heating our water, heating our homes, providing on site generated electricity, cooking our food and more.  The story is written by David Weiss, who runs the Energy Solutions Center (ESC), which is located in AGA’s headquarters here in Washington, D.C., and which concentrates on solving energy challenges by matching the right natural gas end-use product with a particular energy need.  The story is a timely one for several reasons, not the least of which is that growing natural gas demand in the end-use market has become a very high priority for the natural gas utility industry.

The story cites several examples of the new natural gas end-use equipment that is now available, including natural gas water heaters that use up to 40 percent less energy than standard models, or gas “tankless” water heaters that, among other features, allow consumers to save energy and money by setting their water heater temperatures depending on the need—higher temperatures for washing clothes, for example, lower for washing dishes.  There are even hybrid water heaters that use solar energy (at no cost) to heat water during the day and natural gas to heat water at night or when it’s cloudy.

Natural gas space heating is another major market, and new equipment includes condensing furnaces that are more than 90 percent efficient, and micro-combined heat-and-power units that can provide homes with gas-generated electricity and also use the waste heat generated to meet a variety of home heating needs.  While expensive, these micro-CHP units provide energy more reliably, in a greener way, and at lower costs.

The ESC even has ways to keep us healthy.   Flu season is upon us, and according to many scientists dry air can cause nasal and throat membranes to dry out, making us more susceptible to colds and viruses.  One solution is a highly efficient natural gas-fired humidifier, which means better indoor air quality, which means healthier families in the home, and healthier employees at work.

Speaking of work, any professional chef will tell you that natural gas is the preferred energy for cooking, even more so today thanks to highly efficient natural gas-fired combi ovens, which are compact, meaning they are easier to fit in crowded commercial kitchens.  Yet while they have shrunk in size, their combination of moisture and heat actually reduces the amount of shrinkage during the cooking of meat, meaning higher yields and bigger profits.

These and many other highly efficient, green and innovative technological solutions to virtually all of our energy needs in the home and business are described in David’s story, which I would highly recommend.   You can also learn more about the ESC and the energy solutions it offers by visiting www.energysolutionscenter.org.

Posted in Natural Gas | Tagged | 2 Comments

Bruce Kauffmann Parker interview-part one

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Bruce Kauffmann | Comments Off


The cover story for the October issue of AGA’s flagship publication, American Gas magazine, is an interview with AGA President and CEO David Parker in which he shares his thoughts on his 13 years as AGA’s leader, the changes to both the natural gas industry and AGA over those 13 years, and what he thinks the future of AGA and the industry will look like.  The following is an edited excerpt of one of that interview’s questions and answers.  Look for others in subsequent weeks or read the whole interview here.

AMERICAN GAS: What other specific measures [related to increasing AGA’s visibility and voice on Capitol Hill] can you talk about? Right away you decided we needed a business operating plan, for example.

PARKER: Well, to me, increasing our visibility meant increasing it in the federal arena, which is in Washington, D.C. Whether it was working on Capitol Hill or in the regulatory agencies, we needed to be closer to the power centers, so we ultimately ended up at 400 North Capitol Street, which is very close to Congress, just two blocks from FERC [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission], just across the Mall from the Department of Transportation and Office of Pipeline Safety, as well as just down the street from EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency]. Bottom line, we are much closer to the bodies that oversee our members’ legislative and regulatory priorities.

As for the business operating plan, when I came to AGA I discovered that many of our activities had very little focus—there was no central measuring stick that staff with management responsibilities could use to review how their responsibilities fit in with the association’s ongoing priorities. So … we developed a plan to poll our members to determine their advocacy priorities. With those priorities established—it was basically a scorecard—we then created a plan to determine how those priorities would be achieved, what resources they needed, how well we were progressing and so forth. That’s how the business operating plan was established, and every February at our board meeting, both our advocacy priorities and business operating plan are approved by the board.

Then at subsequent meetings throughout the year we measure our progress, and at the end of the year we tally up how we did. And I’m pleased to say that over the last dozen years that we’ve had this plan, we have successfully accomplished 75 percent of the things that we sought to do. We moved probably another 15 to 20 percent of those remaining items forward—they are ongoing. As for those three or four key things we didn’t accomplish, in large part it wasn’t because we didn’t manage them properly. It was because the federal or legislative agenda changed on us.

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