As the U.S. Congress went into the night with what could be its final, and very lengthy, session for the year, there was still a chance the pipeline safety legislation, the only remaining piece of the once comprehensive energy bill, might squeak through attached to another measure. As of press time late Wednesday it was still a possibility.

On Tuesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-LA, was circulating an energy bill that had been whittled down to pipeline safety and extension of a liability cap for nuclear power plants. These were the only two elements that had been passed unanimously by a House/Senate conference committee.

But on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Frank H. Murkowski, newly elected governor of Alaska and ranking member of the Senate Energy Committee, announced that conferees had declared the energy bill officially dead for this year and this Congress. He pointed to a revival of the debate next year, noting the increased need for comprehensive energy legislation in view of the unsettled Middle East situation. “Time ran out, but the need for an energy bill has not.”

It also appeared that the nuclear power plant liability cap extension, a continuation of the Price Anderson Act had bit the dust in the last 24 hours, “because there are indications there would be some opposition on the floor,” a Senate aide said. He held out hope that pipeline safety would be “attached to something” and passed.

The pipeline safety portion is a laborious structure including a major revamping of safety regulation by the Department of Transportation (see Daily GPI, Nov. 12). This is its last chance according to a spokesman for the main pipeline association. “It’s now or never. We won’t support it in the new Congress.” He pointed out that some of the reforms already are underway, and the pipelines don’t want to see those efforts possibly derailed if the Congress goes over it again.

“We missed an opportunity to do something good for the country,” said Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman. “The political will to act did not match the rhetoric of the past two years on the need to address looming problems such as electricity reform, natural gas supply and our increasing thirst for foreign oil for transportation. I think the task of coming up with a comprehensive approach to energy policy, absent a major crisis, will only grow more difficult in the next Congress.”

The original comprehensive energy legislation produced by the two houses that variously would have restructured the rules for the electric power industry, opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling and encouraged an Alaska gas pipeline, added new fuel mileage limits on vehicles and encouraged the use of ethanol in gasoline, repealed the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and provided incentives for domestic oil and gas development.

The key lies in the word “variously,” since the bill passed by the Senate, led by Democrats, included some of those elements and left out others, while the one passed by the Republican-led House had its own twists and turns on the controversial issues.

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