FERC, Interior nominees hit the Hill

With help from Gavin Bade, Alex Guillén and Ben Lefebvre

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Quick Fix

— Two high-profile energy nominees will appear on Capitol Hill today: James Danly for FERC and Katharine MacGregor for Interior deputy.

— House committees involved in impeachment are expected to release the transcripts today from their depositions of former U.S. special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland.

— The Trump administration has officially filed the paperwork to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

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Congrats to Duke Energy’s Vicky Sullivan, who got the trivia win for knowing and naming the four former vice presidents who have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Joe Biden, Hubert Humphrey, Dick Cheney and Nelson Rockefeller. For today: Three vice presidents share a birthday — what’s the birthday and who are they? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to [email protected].

Driving the Day

DANLY’S DEBRIEF: FERC General Counsel James Danly, President Donald Trump’s pick for the open Republican seat at FERC, will appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources this morning, where Democrats are likely to question his ethical chops and his past work as a lawyer for several major energy companies.

As general counsel, Danly helped ensure commissioners and staff complied with ethics requirements, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer questioned his handling of that responsibility Monday, pointing to confusion over whether other commissioners were given the proper advice about avoiding conflicts of interest. Schumer asked the Energy Department’s Inspector General and the Office of Government Ethics to launch a speedy investigation to help the Senate “evaluate” the nomination.

Danly’s résumé also includes stints representing an array of energy companies that likely will have business before the commission. A newly uncovered document that critics are circulating among Democratic offices shows Danly represented energy firm Illinova, now a subsidiary of generator Vistra, in a 2016 legal case when he was at the law firm Skadden. In private practice, he also represented large utilities Exelon, FirstEnergy, NextEra, PacifiCorp and Hydro-Québec, E&E News reported last week, as well as financial firms Barclays and BlackRock.

As general counsel at FERC, Danly stayed away from working on issues affecting companies he represented in private practice, a spokeswoman told ME Monday. “During the required period, James Danly made it his practice to recuse himself from cases involving his former clients,” wrote spokesperson Mary O’Driscoll, who declined to provide further detail. “He has permanently recused himself from particular matters on which he worked while in private practice. Further, in any case where there has been a question of ethics, he has consulted with the Designated Agency Ethics Official and followed his recommendation.”

Just how many cases Danly sat out remains unclear, and O’Driscoll did not say whether he would remain permanently recused from past clients as a commissioner. But if he avoided all his former clients, it would mean sitting out hundreds of FERC decisions, though the administration could have awarded waivers or interpreted his ethics obligations more narrowly.

‘We’ll call Kate': Also appearing at the hearing this morning is MacGregor, one of the few political staffers former Secretary Ryan Zinke brought to DOI who remains. Energy industry reps have almost unanimously praised her as supporting Trump’s focus on energy development and being competent enough to follow through on it, though environmental groups have questioned whether MacGregor has improperly gone around career staff to approve drilling applications that would not have passed muster otherwise. Democrats on the committee will also likely bring up her role in Zinke’s decision to exempt Florida before his official offshore drilling plan was even finished, a source told ME.

On the Hill

RELEASE THE TRANSCRIPTS: The House is slated to release the deposition transcripts for two of the so-called three amigos on the Trump administration’s Ukraine outreach: Sondland and Volker. The name of the third amigo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is likely to emerge in the transcripts.

Questions remain over what was said during a July 10 White House briefing where Sondland reportedly requested that Ukrainian officials investigate the 2016 U.S. election, the Bidens and the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, as POLITICO reported last month.

On Monday, House impeachment investigators released the first two transcripts of their closed-door depositions of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and Michael McKinley, a former top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The Yovanovitch transcript offers a closer look at the United States’ interest in selling LNG to Ukraine. "[T]hat’s like apple pie, motherhood, obviously we would support exporting LNG to Ukraine at the U.S. Embassy,” Yovanovitch said, according to the transcript.

ANOTHER SNUB? Wells Griffith, the senior director for international energy and environment at the National Security Council, is scheduled to testify in closed session today as part of the House’s impeachment probe, but it’s not clear whether he will appear. It’s more than likely he’ll follow other Trump officials and snub the House’s request.

TIME’S RUNNING OUT: Time is running out for lawmakers in both chambers to compromise on a dozen fiscal 2020 funding bills. Just three weeks remain before the current stopgap funding measure expires on Nov. 21, and so far the Senate has managed to pass an initial bipartisan package of bills that would fund key parts of the government, including the Interior Department and EPA.

But a test vote on a second package that includes the Energy-Water fiscal 2020 measure failed along partisan lines. POLITICO Pro DataPoint’s Tucker Doherty breaks down the progress in a DataPoint graphic. Want to add DataPoint to your POLITICO Pro account? Learn more.

Around the Agencies

WE WON’T ALWAYS HAVE PARIS: Trump has kept his promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, with the administration filing paperwork Monday to make it official, POLITICO’s Eric Wolff reports. The landmark deal struck under former President Barack Obama calls on nations to set individual targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“President Trump made the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because of the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses, and taxpayers by U.S. pledges made under the Agreement,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Keep in mind: Complete withdrawal cannot take effect until one year after the paperwork is filed, so the U.S. will not leave the agreement until Nov. 4, 2020, the day after Election Day.

Weighing in: Former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel penned an op-ed in The Washington Post telling voters they could send a message in 2020 that the U.S. should rejoin the agreement. “Monday marks a dark day among those of us who believe in working with allies to share the burden of solving tough problems — especially a climate crisis that demands a World War II-style mass mobilization before it’s too late. … Americans can pull the lever for the clearest choice ever on climate action to ensure that on Day One of a new administration, America will be back.”

EPA FINDS RISK IN PAINT THINNER CHEMICAL: A solvent still used in consumer paint strippers and other products presents an unreasonable risk to human health, EPA says in a new 487-page draft risk evaluation. N-methylpyrrolidone, aka NMP, can cause fetal death from acute exposures and fertility and toxicity issues from chronic exposure, EPA found. Along with paint strippers, EPA found unreasonable risks from several other NMP uses, including as a cleaning solvent and in antifreeze, lubricants and lab chemicals.

The Obama administration proposed banning NMP in paint thinners, but that effort was shelved by the Trump administration. If finalized, this risk evaluation would require EPA to consider restricting or prohibiting its use, as it did earlier this year for retail paint strippers containing another chemical, methylene chloride. As with that chemical, major retailers like Home Depot, Lowe’s and Sherwin-Williams have already voluntarily phased out sales of strippers containing NMP, but a future EPA rule could potentially go even further. EPA will take public comment for 60 days once published in the Federal Register, and the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals will meet for a peer review Dec. 5-6.

GREENS, STATES SUE DOE: Fourteen states and six advocacy nonprofit groups joined forces to sue the Energy Department on Monday over its reversal of Obama-era rules on lightbulb efficiency standards, Eric reports. The lawsuits argue that DOE created less stringent efficiency rules that violated anti-backsliding provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

COAL PLAYS ROLE IN TRUMP-UKRAINE RELATIONSHIP: Trump’s dealings with Ukraine stretch further back than the infamous phone call at the center of the House’s impeachment probe. The New York Times reports that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “waged an artful campaign including trade deals to win [Trump] over.” As part of that effort, advisers to Poroshenko pitched the idea of buying millions of dollars’ worth of American-mined coal to help supply Ukrainian power plants.

The Grid

— “Mysterious mold and smog abound after federal inaction,” via E&E News.

— “Keystone oil pipeline in North Dakota remains closed, leak source unclear,” via Reuters.

— “Coal-burning utility boosts lobbying, may get eased regulations,” via Roll Call.

— “Banned ozone-harming gas, once on the rise, declines again,” via The New York Times.

THAT’S ALL FOR ME!