The broad-based energy bill being negotiated by House and Senate members of the conference panel may not be finished this year, according to a spokeswoman for the Conference Committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM).

The energy bill conferees “haven’t made a lot of progress” over the past two weeks on four thorny issues — electricity, the Alaska natural gas pipeline, ethanol and the tax package, Marnie Funk told NGI. If negotiators aren’t able to resolve the controversial items within the next two weeks, the energy bill may spill over into January and February, she noted.

This is “enough of a possibility that I wanted to put it out there.” Meanwhile, she said conferees “are trying very hard to get this [bill] done” this session.

Some Capitol Hill aides saw Funk’s comments as part of a Senate strategy to bring parties to the negotiating table. “They may be firing a [warning] shot across the bow at the House folks. I think they’re just trying to rattle the House guys to get serious” about ironing out the differences on the four outstanding issues, said one aide. “These are major; they are crucial parts of the bill.”

Funk was “just not out there hip-shooting,” he noted, adding a delay in the energy bill negotiations was a “real possibility.”

Negotiations on the bill were interrupted when the Senate recessed this week. Senators are due to return on Oct. 14. But the House wants to recess at the end of the month, which would give House-Senate conferees only a narrow window of opportunity to complete the bill this year.

Late Thursday, Domenici said he planned to call a conference session on the bill next week. “I hope that a conference meeting can occur and am working toward that objective.”

Energy experts fear delay would doom the bill. If it is not passed before the end of the session, it would have a hard time making it through the Congress in an election year.

A legislative analyst in the natural gas sector said he was told by Senate staff that there was an “outside possibility” that energy legislation could be deferred until 2004. But the staffers indicated this “was not the most likely” scenario, he noted. “It was not their impression or belief that it is going to take until January or February” to finish an energy bill.

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