Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) has accused President Bush of failing to deliver on any of the promised benefits in his national energy plan, which marked its three-year anniversary last week.

Since the energy plan’s debut in the spring of 2001, “the United States has experienced several troublesome energy-related incidents, including a major electricity blackout” last August, and a rise in crude oil prices to around $40 per barrel and natural gas prices above $6/Mcf, wrote Byrd, the ranking minority member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a May 14 letter to President Bush.

“I remain concerned that businesses, local communities and citizens have yet to receive the benefits that your energy plan promised to provide,” said the senior most member of the Senate, now in his 51st year of service.

In light of the national energy policy’s anniversary, “I, along with other senators, have asked the General Accounting Office to undertake a broad and comprehensive review of the federal government’s energy funding, policies and overall goals to determine whether the U.S. does, in fact, have a strategic plan in place” to address energy problems.

“No energy bill currently before this Congress can adequately rectify [the] problems. Despite your continued call for passage of an energy bill, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, which has examined a number of energy policy provisions currently before the Congress, has concluded that a number of these policies will likely have a negligible effect on energy production, consumption or prices,” Byrd said.

He urged the Bush administration to take a number of “near-term steps” to bring down energy prices, beginning with the suspension of the delivery of oil in-kind to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until market conditions improve. President Bush made clear last week that he opposed such a move. “Second, given the record profits being made by energy companies in the first quarter [of this year], I encourage you to call on the Federal Trade Commission to review whether consumers are being unfairly squeezed.”

Byrd also recommended that the Bush White House press the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase oil supplies to help stabilize global prices. “These near-term actions would constitute just the first steps for our nation to consider in the development of a more integrated approach.”

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