Bush sees energy bill work within 20 days
Date: 21-Aug-03
Country: USA
Author: Christina Ling
Bush told reporters he spoke by telephone with key Republican lawmakers - Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana - on Monday night and they assured him they could reach an agreement on the hard-fought energy legislation.
"They believe they can get a conference up and running in the next 20 days to deal with the very important energy bill," Bush told reporters before a round of golf near his Texas ranch.
The blackout could feature prominently in final negotiations between the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in September to finish the legislation - the first U.S. energy policy re-examination in a decade and a top Bush priority.
The focus of the energy bill has been on a controversial plan from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rewrite power grid rules and require U.S. utilities to join super-regional grid groups. But that focus could shift to system reliability in the face of the blackouts.
"One thing is for certain (they are) very confident they'll have a mandatory reliability standards in the energy bill," Bush told reporters. "What that means is that companies transmitting energy will have to have strong reliability measures in place otherwise there will be a consequence to them."
The bill will also contain incentives for investment in the nation's antiquated infrastructure, Bush said.
A joint U.S.-Canadian investigation is looking at three power transmission lines near Cleveland, owned by FirstEnergy Corp. FE.N of Akron, Ohio.
While officials say it is too early to say what caused the massive power outage last week in parts of the United States and Canada, the U.S.-Canadian government task force will likely take weeks, not months, to find the answer, a top official said on Monday.
Electricity providers urged customers to conserve energy because power supplies in New York, the Midwest and the Canadian province of Ontario were still tight as plants downed in the outage slowly restored service.
Bush said he preferred the House version of the energy bill, which among other provisions would allow controversial oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to go ahead.
"Both members are very optimistic they can reach agreement, obviously on infrastructure modernization but as importantly other issues relating to energy," Bush said.
"I'm very pleased with the attitude of the two members, their desire to get a bill done quickly and get it to my desk."
New York, the most populous city in the United States with 8 million people, lost power shortly after 4 p.m. on Thursday in cascading outages that also plunged millions of others in Ontario and eight U.S. states into darkness.
