Calling natural gas “a key part of the equation,” the Californialegislature’s Assembly speaker formed a special subcommittee onMonday to examine natural gas issues as part of the lawmakers’special session on energy, which so far has concentrated on thestate’s stubborn electricity crisis. The focus will be on cost andavailability as has been the similar electricity subcommittee’scharge.

No hearings have been set, but the panel is expected to look atall gas issues, including those impacting electricity.

An aide to Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg said the naturalgas panel will concentrate on three areas: prices, including thealleged anti-trust and market-power issues related to El PasoNatural Gas; the adequacy of pipeline capacity; and storage issuesrelated to the drawing down of base supplies this winter.

“Soaring natural gas prices have raised energy bills forfamilies across the state,” said Hertzberg in the announcement ofthe six-member subcommittee. “In addition, the natural gas issuethreatens to undermine the progress we’ve made to keep electricityprices under control.”

The speaker’s staff would not attribute Monday’s action to pleaslast week by Republican state legislative leaders to the governorto call a separate special session on gas issues. The staff saidthat although the focus has been on electricity issues, the currentspecial session that got under way the first week of the year wasalways considered an “energy” session that would cover whateverissues-gas or electric-that applied.

Hertzberg also announced that the new subcommittee will use theSanta Monica-based Rand Corp. and its director of environmentalpolicy and science, Mark Bernstein, as a consulting adviser.Bernstein, a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, has beenbriefing various members of the state legislature on Rand’s conceptof “exploratory modeling,” a mathematical modeling used instrategic decision-making. It can help lessen the uncertainty ofmajor decisions that involve a lot of complex variables.

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