AP Photo As Clinton leans green, the oil industry frets

Leaders of the oil and gas industry had long hoped that Hillary Clinton could be an easier president to work with than Barack Obama — but now they have reason to worry.

In the past three weeks, Clinton has leaped to the left on three of Big Oil’s most prized goals: Arctic offshore drilling, the GOP’s plan to allow U.S. oil exports and the Keystone XL pipeline. And fossil-fuel supporters are starting to ask whether the Democrat who once struggled to connect with her party’s green base will prove to be a bigger problem for the industry than they had expected.


Oil and gas players are well aware that Clinton, reckoning with an unexpectedly close primary challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire, has reasons to build her appeal among activists who oppose any new fossil-fuel production. But they wonder if this will herald a permanent policy shift for Clinton, who had rankled greens as secretary of state by overseeing a series of pro-Keystone environmental studies and creating a program to promote fracking overseas.

“In the industry, there’s starting to be a real disconnect here” when it comes to Clinton, said Marty Durbin, president of America’s Natural Gas Alliance and a former Democratic aide. “I don’t know how you put the pieces back together to say, ‘This could be a president that really recognizes the opportunity we have here to meet all of our goals.’”

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a close ally of his home state’s oil and gas drillers, said he had sensed from them that they “hope that she’d be a more pragmatic liberal than the current occupant of the White House.” But now, amid Clinton’s new appeals to the environmental movement, Cramer offered the industry some advice: “Don’t panic.”

“Everything has to be put in the context of the situation, and clearly she’s trying to stop the slip of polling in her own primary,” he said.

Yet Clinton’s camp sought to portray her Keystone opposition as anything but a recent move to bolster her standing against Sanders. Labor union officials knew in advance about her stance, an aide said Tuesday, and the campaign worked with the White House on the timing of the announcement.

Clinton followed her Keystone comments on Tuesday with a longer statement on Wednesday that called for a stronger global focus on climate change and an infrastructure plan that emphasized securing the nation’s existing energy systems rather than new construction.

“I’m concerned when she says these things that it gives license to those who say ‘She’s with us, we can stop any project that’s out there,’” said ANGA's Durbin. “We’re not going to get to her vision of what we need for this country without getting the necessary infrastructure to make it happen."

Tom Pyle, president of the conservative group American Energy Alliance, urged the oil and gas industry to see Clinton's approach to energy as closer to Obama — whom Cramer called a “true believer” — than her husband.

“At the end of the day, they’re not going to get Bill Clinton, that’s for sure,” he said.

Earlier this year, however, leaders of the American Petroleum Institute sent more positive signals about Clinton than they had offered Obama during his second term.

Regardless of who wins the White House in 2016, “it’s going to be better than what we have now,” American Petroleum Institute director Erik Milito told an audience at April’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

Milito praised former President Bill Clinton for having “actually signed a piece of positive energy legislation” while in office, the industry-friendly Deepwater Royalty Relief Act. But he warned dryly that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, is known as far from “supportive of policies that would help the oil and gas industry.”

API President Jack Gerard, a close friend of Mitt Romney, told TheStreet.com in April that “if there’s anybody that understands the need for lifting the crude export ban, it’s Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton’s time as secretary of state shows that “she knows those European nations are clamoring to have our energy,” Gerard added. API declined to comment further for this story.

Clinton formed the Global Shale Gas Initiative in 2010, marshaling U.S. expertise and technology to help foreign nations develop their expertise in tapping the type of rock that has been behind the domestic oil and gas boom. She acknowledged in a speech that year that touting natural gas “in some places is controversial,” a nod to green groups’ resistance to the fossil fuel with a lower carbon footprint than coal or oil.

“But natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel available for power generation today,” Clinton added then.

David Goldwyn, who worked alongside Clinton on shaping that program as her special envoy for international energy, said oil and gas has nothing to fear from her potential administration — so long as the industry agrees to “stop blocking” any plans to tackle climate change.

“She is somebody they can deal with who is less ideological than the current administration but no less committed to climate,” Goldwyn said, predicting that if she is elected, “both the industry and environmental movement will see more concrete action in the next four years than the last.”

But first Clinton has to dispatch Sanders and Gov. Martin O’Malley in the primary. Both of her Democratic rivals tout their long-standing opposition to Keystone and Arctic drilling as proof that the national front-runner is late to climate activists’ party.

And some of those environmentalists, while elated by Clinton’s recent moves, want to see her go still further left. May Boeve, executive director of 350 Action, said her green group is “still looking for the rest of Hillary Clinton’s plan — to stand up to fossil fuel companies by committing to keep vast majorities of known carbon reserves underground.”

Despite her opposition to Keystone and Arctic drilling, the oil and gas industry still has reasons to see Clinton as a possible partner.

Her comments on oil exports left room for an eventual deal on the issue, so long as any measure to end the 1970s-era ban on overseas crude sales "strikes the right balance." When a New Hampshire activist pressed her on greens' campaign to ban drilling on public lands, her positive but vague response mentioned only the possibility of "cutting back over time."

Goldwyn said her approach to national security "understands the importance of a robust production base" for fuel even as "she demands we have serious action on climate at the same time."

Still, as congressional Republicans lambaste Clinton for calling Obama's EPA emissions regulations "the floor, not the ceiling," the industry is likely to face its own choice between reaching out to Clinton or criticizing her more directly.

Oil interests are “still treating her like they expect her to win and somehow be their friend when she does,” GOP energy lobbyist Michael McKenna said. “They are wrong on both counts."