President Bush announced yesterday he is setting up aCabinet-level task force that will be led by Vice President RichardCheney to tackle the worsening energy problems facing the nation.

The “task force that’s being assembled will not only deal withthe very short-run issues” in the California and the western powermarkets, “but obviously the longer-term [energy] issues that willbe confronting our country for awhile, unless we’re willing to actboldly and swiftly, which we will do,” Bush said Monday during astrategy meeting on energy at the White House.

He noted that yesterday’s session was the first in what would bea series of meetings to be chaired by Cheney to discuss nationalenergy policy.

“This is a matter of high concern for this administration.Andwe’re going to formulate a strategy to deal with it,” Bush said.vice president Cheney will “report back to me and to the nation[on] how best to cope with high energy prices and how best to copewith reliance upon foreign oil; how best to encourage thedevelopment of pipelines and power-generating capacity” in thenation.

“We have been dealing with this issue, obviously, because of thestate of California’s woes,” said Bush, who added “it looks likethey’re making progress in California” to fix the power shortagesand escalating prices. He believes “the situation is going to bebest remedied in California, by Californians.”

The administration is “very aware” that the turmoil in theCalifornia bulk power markets “is beginning to affect theneighboring states,” raising the concern of the governors ofseveral western states, Bush said. He noted the White House wasconcerned as well, and said the task force would take up the issue.

On Sunday, White House officials made it clear that Californiashouldn’t expect any more help from the Bush administration oncethe emergency orders requiring suppliers to sell power and naturalgas to the state’s cash-strapped utilities expire on Feb. 7.

“They should expect no more help from the White House,” saidLarry Lindsey, Bush’s top economic advisor, during the CBS “Facethe Nation” show. “It’s not that we don’t want to give them help.If we could send thunderbolts into the electric grid to runelectricity, we would do it. We can’t,” he noted.

“If that’s their decision, they [the Bush administration] needto be ready to live with that and come out with a federalresponse,” said a gas industry lobbyist in Washington D.C. Byfederal response, he said, “we need a national energy policy whichwould entail several actions that might help alleviate thesituation in California, but would also deal nationwide withenergy.”

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