DOE head Abraham touts energy plan progress
Date: 14-May-02
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
"We have made very significant progress toward every one of our goals," Abraham said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, pointing at efforts to boost U.S. energy supplies and encourage conservation.
However, the Senate last month voted down a plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, a crucial part of the administration's energy policy.
Critics of the administration's energy plan, including environmentalists and public interest groups, have attacked it as kow-towing to Big Oil while leaving consumer and green advocates in the cold.
An energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney released a pro-oil drilling, pro-nuclear list of 105 policy recommendations last May.
Abraham called on the U.S. Congress to pass an energy bill that allows drilling in ANWR to offset imports from Iraq - the nation's sixth-largest crude oil supplier.
The energy bill passed by the Senate would keep the refuge in northern Alaska closed for drilling, while a bill passed by the House of Representatives allows drilling there.
Abraham said he is hopeful that ANWR drilling will be included in a final bill which will be approved by the House and Senate at the end of negotiations slated to start this month.
"At a time when (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein threatens an oil embargo against America it makes sense to tap a source that could offset 35 years of Iraqi imports," Abraham said with regard to ANWR.
Hussein on April 8 suspended Iraq's oil exports for a month in protest of Israel's incursion into Palestine areas of the West Bank.
Iraq also wanted other Arab oil producers to cut their production by half and ban all oil sales to the United States and Israel. Arab nations have yet to act on Hussein's demand.
Despite inaction on ANWR, Abraham pointed to advances in encouraging development of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, as well as cleaner automobiles.
He also reiterated the Bush administration's support of a plan to bury radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Such a site is needed to allow U.S. nuclear generators to expand their generation, another plank of the energy plan. Nuclear generation provides about one fifth of the nation's electricity supply.
Abraham applauded a House vote to override a veto from Nevada and build the nation's first permanent nuclear waste storage site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. He also called on the Senate to make a similar approval.
Over the next 20 years, electricity demand will rise by 45 percent, with natural gas and crude oil demand expected to be up 50 percent and 33 percent respectively, Abraham said.
