A new day for old energy

If there’s one big takeaway from this week’s energy news, it’s that the decline of old energy was prematurely announced. True, the fate of BP remains unknown despite its capping of the Macondo well, and Gulf of Mexico oil drilling will be more tightly regulated. And U.S. utilities may yet have to abide by regulations and shift away more rapidly from the use of coal. But deepwater drilling proceeds unabated in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Greenland, Norway  —  everywhere it was done before the spill, the Financial Times reports.

Four Big Oil companies say that, after a month of furious work, they are prepared to roll out a $1 billion rapid-response team for the Gulf of Mexico, something that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson suggests in an interview with Angel Gonzalez at the Wall Street Journal that it should have had in place anyway. Even BP, though it may slow down its Gulf drilling until the uncertainty surrounding lawsuits and U.S. government action fades, hasn’t broken its stride elsewhere in the world, including its newly controversial offshore operations in Libya.

In Washington, the coal, oil, and steel industries are also status-quo-ante following their successful slaying of climate-change legislation. They’ll face no new laws governing emissions, but now are pivoting to a pre-existing new shortlist of regulations to be rolled out in January by the Environmental  Protection Agency. This is the next battleground, writes Elana Schor at ClimateWire. Thirteen states have filed briefs backing the EPA plans.