Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA), who is leading the effort to reconcile the Senate and House energy bills, said last Tuesday he expects congressional negotiators to issue a conference report on omnibus energy legislation within two weeks, but others — such as chief Senate negotiator, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) — think the projection may be overly optimistic. Bingaman said while he hoped the conference report can be finished before Congress recesses next month, “I don’t want to be held to two weeks.”

“Yes…absolutely,” said Tauzin of the two-week deadline, adding that the “House and Senate will have a chance to vote on [it]” this year. “I suspect what we’re going to do is produce a bill that 60 or more senators will be able to approve. If that’s true, we’re going to have [an energy] bill this year,” he told reporters at the “Energy Summit 2002” sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC. If Congress fails to pass an energy bill this year, lawmakers will be forced to start over next year.

He noted the Bush administration has made this a priority. “Everything we’ve heard…coming out of the White House is that they have elevated the completion of this conference and the signing of an energy bill…as part of the total effort to secure this country before we [Congress] go home for elections.”

Tauzin and other energy bill conferees met with President Bush last Wednesday to discuss the progress on the energy bill. At the half-hour meeting, the president said he believed an electricity title was “central” to the energy bill, and he stressed the importance of including provisions to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, but he stopped short of saying he would veto an ANWR-absent bill, a Capitol Hill aide told NGI.

President Bush has made no secret of his preference for ANWR. However, “he may get a bill that contains [only] part of which he wants,” said Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Speaking to policymakers and energy executives, Tauzin said that “one by one we’re going through these issues and [we’re] closing them out.” He noted some “tough” issues still face House and Senate negotiators: drilling in ANWR, the electricity title, renewable fuel portfolio standards and climate change. “I know I’ve got to compromise [on these], but the Senate needs to compromise too,” he said. Conferees made little headway on the issues last week.

Contrary to speculation, Bingaman said the conference report will be comprehensive in scope. “I think we’re trying to get a comprehensive energy bill. That was the way we started out, and I think that’s still our intent.”

Negotiators from the House side, which approved ANWR as part of its energy bill, “[are] going to make the Senate an offer they can’t refuse” to win Senate backing for drilling in the Arctic refuge, Tauzin told reporters, but no such proposal ever materialized last week. “We understand the Senate has big concerns [about ANWR] as did many House members who voted against our proposal” to open up the refuge to exploration and production. But “we’re at a point now I think where we can make some serious contributions to those concerns and…make them offers that may be the best environmental offer they ever received in return for [the] ability to go out and produce some of that oil.”

The House on Thursday did submit an offer to the Senate on ANWR, but it essentially was the same measure that’s already included in the House-passed energy bill, with the exception of a “few technical, non-substantive changes.” The House measure would permit drilling on 2,000 acres in the coastal plain area of ANWR. The Senate energy legislation, however, does not contain any provisions to open ANWR.

“We will take the House offer [on ANWR] under advisement and will be back in touch with your next week,” Bingaman told Tauzin, but he showed no signs that the Senate would compromise on the issue. At the “Energy Summit,” he noted the Senate favored initiatives to stimulate domestic oil and gas production, but in “less controversial areas” than ANWR. He declined to say whether the Senate might back ANWR in exchange for a favorable vote by the House on climate change.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), an opponent of ANWR, called on Senate conferees to reject the House ANWR offer. ANWR backer, Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK), asked Lieberman if there was any way he would agree to a compromise, “any lateral movement” on the issue. “I’m always happy to hear proposals…I haven’t seen one [yet] that I would support…but hope springs eternal,” Lieberman responded.

Tauzin said he was “delighted [that] Sen. Lieberman acknowledged there’s hope…but unfortunately we don’t have eternity.” He said the conference committee will revisit the ANWR issue on Tuesday, at which time it will have a “more active and hopefully more involved discussion as to whether we can put an offer on the table that…gets us closer to an agreement [on ANWR], if one is possible.”

A proposal to build a major natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to the Lower 48 states “is still on the table,” Tauzin noted. He said he was working with Murkowski and Rep. Don Young (R-AK) to “come up with a position that we can…offer the administration.” He indicated he wasn’t certain whether the proposal would offer the previously proposed $10 billion in loan guarantees to encourage construction of the Alaska pipeline.

On the power side, Senate failed last week to submit a counteroffer to a wide-ranging House electricity restructuring proposal, crafted by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and endorsed by Tauzin. House conferees approved the Barton-Tauzin measure earlier this month. The House electric proposal would, among other things, ban so-called “round trip” power trades and direct FERC to offer electric utilities incentives to join regional transmission organizations.

Barton last Wednesday pressed Senate negotiators to make a counteroffer on electricity restructuring soon, so House and Senate conferees can wrap up their conference report on broad energy legislation and give Congress a chance to possibly vote on an energy bill before lawmakers recess in October.

Responding to questions from Barton, Bingaman said he expected the Senate to respond with a counteroffer on electricity in the “near future.” He reminded Barton the House has had five months to review the electricity title in the Senate’s energy bill, while “we’ve had yours now for [only] three days…we’re trying to get through it as quickly as we can.” There was no electricity title in the energy bill that was approved by the full House.

“We find problems” with the House electricity proposal, Bingaman noted. The Senate “by and large” stands behind the electricity title in its energy bill, but he said “we’re certainly looking seriously at what they’re proposing and hope there are some things we can agree to.”

Barton offered Bingaman the assistance of House staff to help resolve differences on the electricity issue, which Bingaman accepted. “I’m glad to have staff talk about any and all subjects,” he said.

Bingaman dismissed speculation that conferees were eyeing a proposal to slow down FERC’s proposed standard market design (SMD). “There’s nothing in what they’ve [House conferees] sent us that relates to that, and there’s nothing in our [Senate] bill that relates to that,” he said. “But there is the provision in the energy and water appropriations bill [to that effect], which I think is something that probably has strong support both in the House and Senate.”

The conference committee is split down the middle over a key issue of whether to grant FERC broad authority to review electric mergers. “It’s one of those sticky items that’s in the electricity title,” said Tauzin. He noted the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission already have the authority to review energy mergers. “To do a thorough review at FERC [or the SEC] is the kind of government redundancy and bureaucracy that I ran against in 1980,” he told reporters.

“I don’t see anything wrong in involving FERC in the [merger review] process because they know a lot about the issues. But giving them full operational, expanded merger review is something I hope we can avoid.”

Bingaman, however, favors full authority for FERC. “I think…an essential tradeoff in our bill was if we’re going to repeal PUHCA [Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935], we needed to have additional merger authority at FERC…That’s still my strong view.”

Tauzin said he had “great optimism” the House and Senate tax-writing committees will be able to “resolve the differences” in the tax parts of the two energy bills with two days of “real hard work.” But Bingaman wasn’t quite as optimistic. “There’s going to have to be a lot of negotiating between the two tax-writing committees, and that hasn’t happened yet.”

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