Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) expressed concern last Thursday that patience is running out for the Senate to pass energy legislation in a comprehensive form.

“I’m worried senators…[that] people aren’t going to wait around too much longer for this bill,” the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said during a hearing examining the price, demand and supply outlooks for crude oil and natural gas.

“They’re going to start picking the good pieces” from the Senate’s pared-down energy measure (S. 2095), and try to pass them as stand-alone bills or piggyback them to other measures, Domenici warned.

In fact, the process has already begun. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley last week lifted several energy-related tax provisions from the Senate energy bill and offered them as an amendment to a corporate tax bill.

“Whether each and every one of us agrees on all of it or not, I hope that we believe we can pass something before the year’s out,” Domenici said in an appeal to committee members. Senate Republican leaders earlier had indicated that an omnibus energy bill would be a top priority in 2004, but Domenici’s comments appear to cast doubt on that.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) said last week he believed the Senate now had the 60 votes that are needed to bring the energy bill to the floor for consideration, and that he was working to persuade Democrats not to filibuster the measure.

But the “missing question in his [Daschle’s] statement” is how many amendments will Democrats offer to the Senate bill, Domenici noted. Will it be “five, 10 or 30?” he asked.

But Senate Democrats aren’t Domenici’s only worry. Rep. Joseph Barton (R-TX), in his first news briefing as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said last week he does not plan to back down on the issue of a liability waiver for producers of the gasoline additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE).

Barton indicated that the House and Senate stalemate over the MTBE safe-harbor issue would likely be the death knell for the omnibus energy bill this year, according to a report in the Congressional Green Sheets.

If the Senate does not follow the House and include the MTBE waiver in its measure, “then there won’t be a bill,” Barton was quoted as saying.

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