Congress Set to Pass Far-Reaching Energy Bill, Breaking Years of Stalemate

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After years of stalemate, Congress is set to enact a national energy plan that its supporters say will provide a more diverse mix of fuels, create jobs and spur development of cleaner burning coal and a new generation of nuclear reactors.

WASHINGTON — After years of stalemate, Congress is set to enact a national energy plan that its supporters say will provide a more diverse mix of fuels, create jobs and spur development of cleaner burning coal and a new generation of nuclear reactors.


The Senate was to take up the legislation Friday, a day after it passed the House by a wide margin.


President Bush, under political pressure to do something about the nation's energy problems in light of soaring oil and gasoline prices, is eager to sign the measure into law. He had challenged Congress to provide him a bill before lawmakers depart this week on a five-week summer recess.


Even the bill's sponsors acknowledge the mammoth energy blueprint, covering 1,724 pages, will have little if any impact on today's energy prices or wean the nation away from its thirst for oil -- some 20 million barrels a day, nearly 60 percent of it imported .


"We won't have any answers if the question is what are you going to do tomorrow morning about gasoline prices," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who led the Senate negotiations with the House in crafting the legislation.


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But he said the bill would provide financial incentives and federal policies "that we as a nation will benefit from not tomorrow, but for the next five or 10 years."


The bill provides $14.5 billion in tax breaks and potentially billions more in loan guarantees and other subsidies to encourage oil and gas drilling, improve natural gas and electric transmission lines, build new nuclear power reactors and expand renewable energy sources, especially construction of wind turbines.


It also expands the federal government's authority over siting liquefied natural gas import terminals and electric transmission lines if they are deemed critical to the national power grid. For the first time utilities would have to meet federal reliability standards for the electricity grid to try to avoid a repeat of the massive 2003 blackout that hit the Midwest and Northeast.


A measures that may have a direct impact on the public include a provision to expand daylight-saving time by one month, adding three weeks in the spring and a week in the fall, taking it beyond Halloween. The change would go into effect in 2007.


Consumers also will see tax credits for the purchase of hybrid-electric cars and get tax breaks for making energy conservation improvements in their homes.


Farmers will sell more corn, as the legislation calls for the doubling of ethanol use as an additive in gasoline to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Refiners no longer will have to include an oxygenate in gasoline to reduce air pollution. Refiners say they can meet the air quality rules with conventional gas and will have more flexibility in supplying the fuel to head off shortages.


But critics of the legislation said the bill also eases environmental rules for refiners and for oil and gas exploration. And they're concerned about what's not in the legislation.


"The bill is a series of missed opportunities," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who was the only Senate Democrat to oppose the compromise legislation in the House-Senate conference that crafted the final version this week.


Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said it falls far short of what is needed by not addressing climate change and including nothing that would increase the fuel economy of automobiles, the biggest guzzlers of oil. Just this week, Kerry said, a report was made public from the Environmental Protection Agency showing a decline in automobile fuel economy.


Lawmakers avoided a certain fight in the Senate by leaving out one of Bush's top energy goals: opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. House Republicans promised to pursue that issue separately this fall.


House Republicans also abandoned a provision that would have given the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE protection against lawsuits stemming from the chemical's contamination of drinking water supplies in at least 36 states.


Both the Arctic refuge drilling and the MTBE liability shield were almost certain to have prompted a filibuster in the Senate, dooming the bill, as was the case two years ago. Congress last passed a broad energy bill in 1992. For the past six years it tried to pass another one, coming close at times, but never got the job done.


Source: Associated Press