McDonnell talks up nuclear energy, offshore drilling

Comment: Taking care of Northern Va, blowing our mountains and our piedmont for uranium and coal!

By Ray Reed
Published: August 22, 2009

Bob McDonnell brought his gubernatorial campaign to Lynchburg on Friday, urging donors and campaign activists to help in a race where a president, sitting governor and national labor unions are supporting his opponent.

The Republican said he’s running against not just Democrat Creigh Deeds, but also against the support Deeds is getting from President Obama and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. “They’re pretty capable people,” he said.

McDonnell mixed with a lunchtime crowd at the Depot Grille downtown before visiting the Areva nuclear company and heading out to a Lions Club food festival in Appomattox.

“Virginia has the most nuclear capacity of any state in the U.S.,” McDonnell told the lunch crowd, naming Areva, Northrup Grumman, the U.S. Navy, Dominion Power, and Babcock & Wilcox as the state’s nuclear assets.

“We are going to be in the forefront of the energy picture for a long time to come,” McDonnell said, adding that coal and natural gas also are Virginia resources.

“I’m a strong supporter of drilling offshore in Virginia,” he said to diners’ applause.

“Virginia is going to be the first state to drill offshore in 2011. It’s already set.

“I will be the governor that will see that through,” and it could mean transportation dollars for Virginia roads, McDonnell said.

Later, McDonnell explained that the federal government is preparing an auction of offshore leases to oil companies and “we are supposed to be first.”

If that sale goes through, and if oil companies’ explorations are fruitful, and if Congress approves sharing royalties with Virginia as it did for Gulf of Mexico states, Virginia could start receiving oil money by 2014, McDonnell said.

McDonnell said he would earmark the oil revenues 80 percent for transportation and 20 percent for green energy development. The revenues could be $200 million per year, he said.

“If you don’t earmark it right now for transportation, it will get carved up 10 different ways” by the General Assembly, McDonnell said.

Those oil revenues would be shared throughout all of Virginia’s nine transportation districts, McDonnell said.

Another part of his transportation plan, which calls for selling the state-owned liquor stores to private vendors, also would generate revenues to be shared among all transportation districts, McDonnell said.

The sale would produce $500 million for the stores and $200 million per year of sales tax from them afterward. All of it would be designated for transportation, he said.

Other aspects of McDonnell’s transportation plan are earmarked for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

He proposed that a share of sales tax revenues stay in Northern Virginia to be used for transportation, and that growth of revenues from Virginia’s ports stay in Hampton Roads for highways, bridges and tunnels. Both those areas have heavy traffic congestion, he said.

State Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, said he hoped to have further conversations with McDonnell concerning a U.S. 29 bypass around Charlottesville.

“It’s going to take gubernatorial action to break the logjam” in which state funds allocated for the Charlottesville bypass have not been spent on the bypass, Newman said.

Although the bypass wasn’t mentioned in McDonnell’s transportation plan, “having a plan is the first step,” Newman said.

http://www2.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/mcdonnell_talks_up_nuclear_energy_offshore_drilling/18798/