Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
2/1/13
Effective today, the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) will see new leadership—at least on an interim basis—from the head of its oil and gas program after Assistant Secretary Chuck McConnell announced his departure Jan. 29. As FE’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oil and Natural Gas Chris Smith moves up to the Office’s No. 2 position as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, he will now take the helm of FE on an acting basis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in an e-mail to employees Tuesday. McConnell’s deputy, Scott Klara, also leaves FE headquarters today to return to his previous position as Deputy Director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh.
McConnell did not disclose why he is leaving or what his future plans are. “I am honored to have had the chance to serve and progress the fossil agenda by focusing strongly on the business case and business community needs for commercial reality, energy security and environmental sustainability. I am looking forward to continuing my efforts as an active part of the energy marketplace both domestically and internationally,” McConnell told GHG Monitor in an e-mail on Tuesday.
McConnell and Klara’s departures, along with Deputy Assistant Secretary for Clean Coal Jim Wood’s exit in December, have effectively cleared all officials with distinct ‘clean coal’-related backgrounds from FE’s upper ranks. McConnell in particular made the issue of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), specifically sequestering carbon via enhanced oil recovery operations, as one of his top issues during his 20 months at FE. Immediately following his nomination, McConnell zeroed in on CO2 utilization as a necessity to drive CCS forward during a time with little prospect for federal climate legislation. “Let me be clear, it’s not a change in policy by any stretch. It is, as much of anything, a realization of where we are today to continue to move the ball forward,” he said in a September 2011 speech.
During an all-hands meeting Jan. 29, Chu told FE employees that even with a new official in charge, little will change in terms of the office’s priorities. “The Office of Fossil Energy is committed to carrying out its mission with effective project management and will continue to focus on its fossil energy research priorities with Christopher Smith, deputy assistant secretary for Oil and Gas, moving into his new role as the Acting Assistant Secretary,” DOE spokesman Bill Gibbons later told GHG Monitor.
Is a Directional Change Imminent at FE?
But while DOE’s leadership insists that little will change, many involved in DOE’s CCUS programs said in interviews this week that they are worried the industry may have lost a powerful ally at headquarters. “Chuck’s departure will have an outsized effect,” said one DOE contractor who did not wish to be identified. Others also expressed concern that the idea of CO2 utilization will lose momentum under new leadership, even though it is currently unclear whether Smith will later be nominated to permanently head FE. “Smith’s background in the oil and gas industry could make a difference in terms of policy emphasis,” said one industry executive interviewed by GHG Monitor. “With Chuck gone, we may have lost a vocal advocate for coal and CCUS.”
Tom Brouns, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Clean Fossil Energy business manager, said that more broadly, the policy focus of a specific assistant secretary often has more of an effect on the long-term vision of FE rather than on short term, day-to-day research. “For example, Fossil Energy’s emphasis on the ‘utilization’ part of CCUS didn’t substantially change the technical issues and our research focus on carbon capture and storage. Where we saw a shift with the utilization emphasis was in the focus of the field projects within the regional partnerships,” he said.
Some Anticipate No Change
Others speculated that the leadership change will have little effect in the long run if budgets and programming choices stay consistent. “At DOE, regardless of who’s in charge at Fossil, you have the contracts and projects already in place. Overall, the work goes on,” said one national lab employee who requested they not be identified. “The one issue that could have a real impact is the budget, because at the end of the day, DOE is more program-based and less leadership-driven than other agencies.”
Battelle Senior Research Leader Neeraj Gupta, who worked closely with McConnell when he was head of the company’s CCS program, said most DOE programs have remained consistent regardless of who has led FE over the last several years. “Having seen the changes over the last seven or eight heads of Fossil Energy, I’ve not seen the program go down or become less influential,” Gupta said in an interview. “I don’t anticipate any loss in momentum since we already have a very established CCS program with the regional partnerships and large-scale demonstrations.”
McConnell Aimed to Streamline FE Ops
In his e-mail to employees, Chu, who announced his own departure from DOE Feb. 1, lauded McConnell for helping bring a “sense of urgency and adopting some best practices from the private sector to help further the agency’s mission.” “Chuck enthusiastically supported a new strategy, carbon capture, utilization and storage, which uses carbon produced by the burning of fossil fuels for enhanced oil recovery … If we can continue this progress, and continue driving down the price of captured CO2, the effect could be transformative,” Chu said in the e-mail.
Even though McConnell led FE in an acting capacity since May 2011, he was confirmed by the Senate only last March after his nomination was held up—along dozens of other non-controversial nominees—for months by Republicans in protest of recess appointments made by the Obama Administration in late 2011. Previously to FE and Battelle, McConnell spent several decades at the industrial gas company Praxair.
In June 2012, McConnell rolled out a new management strategy for FE that aimed to adopt several corporate-world strategies in order to streamline operations and more methodically root out inefficiencies during a time of smaller budgets. He also championed a so-called ‘One FE’ agenda aimed at uniting headquarters, NETL and DOE’s field offices—many of which face an omnipresent organizational and cultural divide—under one “seamless operation.” He brought in Klara as his deputy to split time between NETL and headquarters to help further bridge that gap. But FE’s budget remained tight during McConnell’s tenure, with the Obama Administration forgoing most spending increases tied to advanced coal technologies in favor of beefing up other DOE programs like the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. In its FY2013 budget request to Congress, the Obama Administration aimed to cut Fossil Energy R&D’s budget by more than 20 percent. McConnell’s departure notably comes days after DOE received its FY 2014 ‘pass back’ from the White House Office of Management and Budget in preparation for the FY14 budget request.
