US energy bill, Alaska plans, may wait until 2002
Date: 26-Oct-01
Country: USA
Such a delay would leave hanging in the balance the Bush administration's hope to decrease reliance on foreign oil by opening up the Alaskan Wildlife Reserve to drilling.
As it now stands, the House passed a bill in August supporting Bush's Alaska plan, leaving Senate Democrats who oppose it, and Senate Republicans who support it, to work out their differences.
"The events of the last week have made it less likely that we would get time to seriously consider an energy bill on the Senate floor," Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico senator who heads the committee, told reporters.
The closing of Senate and House office buildings for the last week because of anthrax fears has shut down congressional hearings and slowed most legislation.
Bingaman said once energy committee staff are allowed back into their offices, within seven to 10 days later he hopes they will finalize an energy bill that would be presented to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
It would then be up to Daschle to schedule the bill for a Senate floor vote. Lawmakers are hoping to adjourn next month and return to work next January.
Even though time is running out for the Senate to act this year, Bingaman said he will not scale back his energy bill and still wants comprehensive legislation that boosts domestic energy supplies and promotes energy conservation.
"We're not trying to doing energy-lite," he said.
Bingaman said the energy bill will likely have between $15 billion and $20 billion in energy tax incentives, though he declined to elaborate.
Those tax incentives are being drawn up by the Senate Finance Committee and will be presented to Daschle, who will then decide which ones will be included in the energy bill.
Noticeably absent from Bingaman's bill will be language to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska and other Senate republicans plan to unveil their counter energy bill yesterday that would give oil firms access to the refuge.
In early August, the House of Representatives passed its broad energy bill that would open the refuge.
Bingaman declined to comment on the merits of the Republican bill, except to say that once that legislation is introduced the measure "goes on the (Senate) calendar and it stays there."
Republicans claim they have a simple majority in the Senate to pass such a bill, but Daschle has told them they must get the 60 votes needed to end a threatened filibuster by Democratic lawmakers who oppose drilling in the refuge.
Republicans won't say if they have the critical 60 votes, but they claim that since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon other lawmakers that were against opening the refuge now favor the idea in order reduce oil imports from the volatile Middle East and secure U.S. crude supplies.
"Nobody has told me they are switching," Bingaman said.
Government estimates say the Arctic refuge could hold as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, enough to replace the amount of crude the United States imports from Iraq for 70 years.