After months of being bedeviled by high oil prices, the WhiteHouse has turned its attention to developing an interagency workinggroup to coordinate government’s efforts to help industry achieve a30 Tcf natural gas market by the 2010-2015 period.

“It kind of got off to a slow start because of the oil priceproblem, but now they’re turning to it…..Their charter is to lookat the demand and supply of natural gas for the near-term future tosee if we have the resources and infrastructure in place to addressthe expected need,” said Drew Malcolm, a spokesman for theDepartment of Energy (DOE).

The federal government’s action is in response to a study by theNational Petroleum Council (NPC) in December, which called for thecreation of the working group under the auspices of the WhiteHouse’s National Economic Council (NEC).

The NEC working group should create a strategy at the highestlevel for natural gas in the nation’s energy portfolio, the NPCstudy proposed. It will be “at least six months” before the groupunveils such a strategy, Malcolm said.

So far, government agencies that are members of the workinggroup include the Environmental Protection Agency, TreasuryDepartment, Agriculture Department, Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission and DOE, he noted. The working group also “would like tohave industry representation.”

Among its key objectives, the working group “wants to look atstandardizing the environmental review process” for various gasprojects to “reduce delays, overlaps” between federal agencies andbetween federal and state agencies, according to Malcolm. The groupalso plans to study gas pipeline access to determine whetherthere’s sufficient existing capacity to deliver production tomarket.

Susan Parker

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