After bipartisan rebuff, Manchin abandons private legislative deal to help fossil fuel projects in the West
As Senate Democratic Leader Joe Manchin found himself backtracking from his pledge not to sign onto a private energy export provision in last session’s bipartisan energy bill, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington D.C. reached an agreement to help the Trump administration’s “dirty” fossil fuel projects in the West through a series of private and public sector transactions and investments.
The bipartisan deal was first revealed in a Washington Post article published Friday morning, but a version of the agreement was also circulating on Twitter.
The Senate deal will put in place a so-called “private energy infrastructure bank” intended to help oil and gas infrastructure projects by providing billions in funding and a government-backed guarantee of up to $10 billion in public support over the next 25 years. While the bank’s backers have yet to release any details about the bank, it’s likely to see its start with an initial $250 million commitment in 2020, followed by another $10 billion in support by 2025. An initial commitment of $25 million for 2020 alone could set the bank off to a $100 million profit in 2021, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month.
The deal, dubbed the West Texas Infrastructure Bank Act, is yet another one of Trump’s infrastructure pet projects, which also include the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Gateway Pipeline, two of the largest fossil fuel infrastructure projects in the United States. While the administration supports these projects with mixed reviews, Trump’s commitment to the project are more than likely due to his political aspirations.
The president has repeatedly pointed out that he wants to complete the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, and that both pipelines have bipartisan support in the Senate. While Trump has since claimed that he wasn’t committed to the Dakota Access Pipeline in the first place and had no say in the Senate’s decision, the president has backed away from his previous comments regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.
The new West Texas infrastructure bank would allow the Trump administration to circumvent the Congressional appropriations process in its favor, and also have little regulatory oversight over the projects under its auspices. The