FACTBOX - Details of Final US Energy Bill
Date: 27-Jul-05
Country: USA
After the full House and Senate approve the legislation, it will be forwarded to the president to sign into law.
The bill focuses on increasing production of oil, natural gas and other energy sources but critics say it does little to encourage more oil conservation or reduce oil imports. The United States now imports 60 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil consumed each day.
Key elements included in the energy bill are detailed below, along with several items that were dropped in recent days:
COST:
* Offers about $11.4 billion in tax breaks and incentives over 10 years, mostly to boost wind and solar power, with lesser amounts going to oil and natural gas production.
OIL/GAS:
* Requires a delay of at least 141 days in a US government review of the Chinese-government owned CNOOC Ltd oil company's $18.5 billion bid for American-oil giant Unocal .
* Offers energy companies royalty relief for drilling in Gulf of Mexico deep waters.
* Requires an inventory of offshore oil and natural gas resources, including areas off Florida where drilling is banned.
* Gives Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, not the states, exclusive authority to approve LNG import terminals.
* Expands Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 300 million barrels to 1 billion barrels.
* Bans oil drilling in the Great Lakes.
* Dropped language in Senate bill requiring the federal government to find ways to cut US oil demand, or to require better fuel mileage on new sport utility vehicles and other gas-guzzlers.
* Dropped language to open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to drilling, but this is expected to be added to a separate government funding bill later this year.
MOTOR FUEL:
* Requires the use of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year as a gasoline additive by 2012, almost double the current use.
* Allows parties in liability suits related to contamination from methyl tertiary butyl ether to remove ongoing cases to a federal court. Does not extend liability protection to makers of MTBE, which has contaminated state water supplies.
UTILITIES/NUCLEAR:
* Repeals a Depression-era law, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which prevents certain utility mergers.
* Offers $2 billion in federal insurance to cover delays in building 6 new nuclear power reactors.
* Imposes reliability operating standards on utilities to protect the US electric grid from blackouts.
* Extends expiring accident insurance protection for owners of nuclear power plants by 20 years.
* Spends $1.3 billion for experimental Idaho reactor that would also produce hydrogen fuel.
* Permits power lines across federal public lands, overriding federal agency objections to siting decisions.
* Dropped proposal that would have required US utilities to generate 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as windmills by 2020.
MISC:
* Moves the start of daylight-saving time in 2007 from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March, and extends it by one week to the first Sunday in November.
* Increases funding to develop low-emission power plants fueled by coal.
* Creates a federal panel to promote technologies that reduce greenhouse gas intensity, but does not mandate specific cuts in US global warming emissions.
* Studies the health impacts of people living close to petrochemical and oil refineries.
