FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller said Tuesday he is generally supportive of opening access to new sources of natural gas and believes building energy infrastructure should be a national priority.

“I believe we need more natural gas from every source possible, whether it’s domestic, imported, Alaska, LNG, whatever it might be — get it through more efficiency — now is the time,” Moeller said in remarks delivered at the Natural Gas Roundtable’s monthly meeting in Washington, DC.

“We are likely to have gas prices that are high for a while. We need to deal with it, be ready for it, and with the uncertainty over where we’re going with climate change policy in this country, you know for certain that natural gas will be at least the shoulder fuel for a while until we figure out where the next generation of electricity generation is coming from.

“I’m a big believer in the fact that we need a lot more infrastructure in this country on the energy side of the equation. Particularly electric transmission lines and also natural gas infrastructure, whether it’s new pipelines or LNG facilities or what have you, because of the fact that I believe that we’re behind as a nation. It’s catch-up time. It is an expensive time to be building this infrastructure, but it’s something we have to be working on with a great deal of urgency, frankly. Because, as you well know, natural gas prices, if you look at the futures markets, are going to stay high for a while. It is more of a worldwide commodity than it has ever been and it is likely to stay that case.”

When asked if he believed Congress will open more offshore locations to drilling, Moeller demurred.

“Congress will do what it will do,” Moeller said. “I just hope that throughout this debate on access to resources, whether they are onshore or offshore, that there’s a good discussion of the costs and benefits involved in the policy.”

Moeller said he had not read a recent report from the National Petroleum Council that said traditional oil and natural gas resources will probably not be sufficient to meet the growing global demand for energy through 2030 (see Daily GPI, July 18), but he said he believes it will add to public energy debate.

“It was interesting to hear the discussion of the finiteness of oil, which of course we have very little jurisdiction on,” he said. “You heard in the late ’70s the talk about us running out of oil. I think that issue kind of got raised again through that report. It really doesn’t have much to do with the Commission but, in terms of the discussion of public policy, I thought that was probably the most intriguing part to me.”

Moeller, who was nominated by President Bush, spoke on the one-year anniversary of his swearing in by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. His four-year term expires June 30, 2010. Prior to his FERC appointment Moeller served as an energy policy advisor to U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) from 1997 to 2000, spent time as the staff coordinator for the Washington state Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications, and headed the Washington, DC, office of Alliant Energy Corp.

©Copyright 2007Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.