If the United States’ fuel mix included a “three-legged stool” of coal, natural gas and nuclear energy, with some reliance on wind, “it would really take the pressure off of natural gas prices,” Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said Tuesday.

“I don’t think the United States should be totally reliant on any one source” of energy, Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said during an interview on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Tuesday. In the “immediate future,” he estimated that 95% of the nation’s energy needs would be met by crude oil, natural gas, coal and, to a lesser extent, nuclear energy.

The omnibus energy bill, which currently is pending before Barton’s committee, seeks to lessen domestic energy demand, while bolstering U.S. supply. The measure “would make it somewhat easier [for producers] to get permits to drill on existing federal land. [And] it will allow more natural gas to be imported” into the U.S., he said. Barton cited “horror stories in New Mexico,” where it took producers 13 years to get permits to drill a single well.

He noted that environmentalists might express some concerns with the House energy bill, particularly the provision regarding permitting for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. “I would hope they wouldn’t trash the [entire] bill because there’s a lot of good things in it for them,” Barton said. But he does not expect environmentalists to be “enthusiastic supporters” of the House energy measure.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, House Resources Committee and House Ways and Means Committee are expected to complete mark-ups of their portions of the energy bill this week and forward the measures to the House Rules Committee, where they will be merged into one major bill and sent to the House floor for consideration next week.

Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), chairman of the House Resources panel, “has assured me that ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] will be in his bill,” Barton said.

The House Ways and Means’s proposal reportedly calls for $7.7 billion in energy tax breaks and incentives, which is less than a third of the $25.7 billion in energy tax breaks approved by the House in late 2003.

In a related development, the American Gas Association (AGA) has called on Barton to “do everything in your power to reduce natural gas prices” as his committee resumes marking up the energy bill later Tuesday. “We ask you to take aggressive action to increase natural gas supplies, expand the pipeline delivery system, promote energy efficiency and protect low-income families.”

It called on the House energy panel to clear the way for more LNG supplies. The AGA said the energy legislation “should help connect the U.S. to the vast, worldwide market for liquefied natural gas by facilitating the siting of LNG receiving terminals.”

The energy bill also would offer consumers “relief from high prices” by bolstering gas supplies from a number of domestic sources, including the Intermountain West, deep gas from the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and production from the Outer Continental Shelf, the group told Barton.

In addition, AGA called on lawmakers to “help local natural gas utilities deliver more natural gas to more consumers at a lower cost by changing the depreciation period for new natural gas distribution facilities from the current 20 years to 15 years.”

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