Senate May Slow Energy Bill But Not Stop It
Date: 20-Nov-03
Country: USA
Author: Charles Abbott
Written by Republicans who allowed almost no input by Democrats, the bill provides about $31 billion in tax breaks, incentives and new federal spending over a decade to expand production of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear power and electricity.
Senate approval was the last hurdle before the bill could be sent to the White House. The Bush administration had to give up on a prime objective - oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge - to get the bill through Congress. The House passed the bill, 246-180, this week.
Up to a dozen senators, mostly Democrats and from the East and West Coasts, said they would try to talk the bill to death rather than allow a vote on it. A common complaint was the waiver the bill would give the gasoline additive MTBE from product-defect lawsuits.
"It is completely immoral," said California Democrat Barbara Boxer, because it would cut off a successful avenue for cities and water utilities to sue MTBE makers. Methyl tertiary butyl ether, the formal name for MTBE, is blamed for fouling water supplies in more than 1,500 communities.
A sizable number of Democrats from central states were expected to join Republicans in voting for the bill, however. They cited provisions to double the use of ethanol, distilled from corn, and incentives for biodiesel fuel and wind power.
North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad said the MTBE waiver was "an outrageous provision" but he would vote for the bill. Senators from farm and energy-producing states "are more likely to support it," Conrad said.
"It's good for agriculture, good for jobs in Nebraska," said Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, citing the ethanol section.
Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici said there would not be a successful filibuster.
"I believe the support will be so overwhelming that we will prevail in short order in the U.S. Senate," said Domenici, a New Mexico Republican.
In a statement from London, Bush urged the Senate to pass the bill promptly.
"America will be more prosperous and more secure when we are less dependent on foreign sources of energy," Bush said. "Reliable and affordable energy is critical to our economic security, our national security and our homeland security."
Republican lawmakers said the bill would create up to 1 million jobs, an important boost for an economy that has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the past three years.
Democrats in the House faulted the bill for weakening consumer protection from utility mergers, allowing some cities to delay curbing air pollution and failing to impose stricter fuel efficiency standards on vehicles.
"The West ought to secede if this is energy policy," agreed Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. She said the bill did little for energy conservation and hurt safeguards for air and water purity.
Key measures in the bill, which spans 1,200 pages, are:
OIL/GAS
* Doubling production of ethanol blended into gasoline to 5 billion gallons (19 billion liters) by 2012;
* Sharing oil royalty payments to give Louisiana and other coastal states some $1 billion for restoration projects;
* Cutting royalty payments for small oil or gas wells when prices fall below a set threshold;
* Offering $18 billion in loan guarantees to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Midwest;
* Offering $1 billion to help MTBE makers convert to other lines of business before the chemical is banned in 2015;
* Ordering the Interior Department to approve or deny within 30 days each application to drill on federal land.
ELECTRICITY
* Imposing nationwide electric reliability standards to prevent a repeat of the August blackout;
* Barring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from issuing nationwide rules for electricity markets until 2007;
* Granting $165 million in tax breaks for new nuclear power plants, and
* Funding for a $1 billion nuclear power reactor that will use advanced technology.