With Republicans clearly in control of both the Senate and House following last Tuesday’s mid-term elections, energy industry and Capitol Hill sources said they expect congressional approval of an omnibus energy bill to be delayed, possibly until next year, so GOP lawmakers can craft legislation “more to their liking.” They also foresee an end to “FERC bashing” at hearings.

“I would guess that the Republicans would be interested in taking another crack at energy legislation that is more to their liking” — a bill that is “more production oriented,” said Jerald V. Halvorsen, president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA). “I can’t see Republicans accepting an energy bill that they weren’t wild about. My sense is that they would start over again.”

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) hinted at this outcome last Wednesday, saying it wasn’t likely that Senate-House negotiators would report out a comprehensive energy bill during the lame duck session, which is due to get underway Tuesday (Nov. 12) and last for a couple of days. The bill has been pending in conference committee for several months.

President Bush indicated as well last week that while the “energy bill’s an important issue,” it wasn’t on his short list of legislative priorities for the new Republican-controlled Congress to tackle in the lame-duck session or early next year.

In his first press briefing since July, the president said the “most important item of unfinished business” for Congress when it returns this week was legislation to create an Office of Homeland Security. “I want it done. It is a…priority.” Other top items include appropriation bills, terrorist insurance and economic/tax reform measures, he told reporters.

Republicans now hold at least 51 seats in the Senate, which gives them control of the house that they lost when Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected from the party in 2001. Lott is expected to be elected majority leader this week.

While “it appears less likely they will finish” the energy bill this year, INGAA’s Martin Edwards said he “wouldn’t rule out [the possibility] that the conferees may come back [after this week] and give it one more shot” possibly in December. The Senate GOP may give the Democrats “some sort of ultimatum,” such as “you either accept a certain number of our priority issues or we’ll start over again.”

A Capitol Hill source said he would be “surprised” if Congress decides not to come back in December, but whether it would take up the energy bill then is “the million dollar question.”

Capitol Hill aides and energy sources believe new life will be breathed into the controversial issue of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in a Republican-led Senate. Democrats widely opposed including ANWR in the current Senate energy bill, while the GOP-led House backed oil and natural gas drilling in the Arctic refuge on a limited basis.

FERC Commissioners also will face a less hostile Congress, Halvorsen said. “The FERC can focus on doing its job without [Sen. Fritz] Hollings calling [FERC Chairman] Pat Wood ‘Kenny Boy’s Boy,'” a reference to former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay. “They won’t have that kind of FERC bashing. Some of the pressure will be off of him [Wood] and he can do his job, which is good.”

Committee chairmen, which starting in January will be Republican based on Tuesday’s election results, have the power to set hearings and to bury — unheard — issues they don’t like. Over the last year the Democratic majority has given their leading liberal lights every opportunity to polish their credentials by bashing Republican-led federal agencies.

There will be “less in the way of showboat hearings,” Halvorsen believes, citing an upcoming Senate Governmental Affairs’ hearing — “Asleep at the Switch: FERC’s Oversight of Enron Corp.” — as an example. The hearing is scheduled for Nov. 12.

Edwards agreed, noting that Wood “may have a little bit fewer senators breathing down his neck.”

But this won’t mean that FERC, as well as other federal agencies, will ease up on their investigations into the questionable practices of energy companies, Halvorsen said. “They can’t politically. They’ve got to go ahead with these investigations.”

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) is expected to take over as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the panel that has jurisdiction over most energy issues and FERC nominations. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK), who had been the committee’s ranking Republican, was in line — ahead of Domenici — for the chairman post. But he was elected governor of Alaska last Tuesday, and plans to leave the Senate in a few weeks.

Domenici is “very well respected; he is one of the best Republican senators there is,” said INGAA’s Edwards. He is “very well versed” on energy issues, particularly natural gas and nuclear, he noted.

Both Halvorsen and Edwards could not say whether a Republican-controlled Senate was good news for the stalled nomination of Joseph T. Kelliher to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. President Bush nominated Kelliher, a Department of Energy policy advisor, to a five-year term on the Commission last May, but the Senate Energy Committee refused to act on it. Kelliher, a Republican, was expected to replace current Commissioner Linda K. Breathitt, who is serving out a grace period that will end when Congress adjourns for the year.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will become chairman of the key Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which oversees natural gas pipeline issues. “I don’t know if he would be a huge difference from Hollings,” the current chairman, Edwards said.

Elsewhere in Washington last week, President Bush had only good words for Harvey Pitt, who resigned late Tuesday as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) amid growing controversy over his handling of the job as the nation’s top financial regulator. Pitt “did some very good things” at the agency, such as getting the financial markets open quickly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, ensuring a greater “corporate responsibility ethos,” disbarring executives for illegal activities and disgorging ill-gotten profits, the president said.

The White House is “confident we [can] find somebody soon” to replace Pitt, he noted. Critics, however, believe that finding a suitable successor and getting him or her confirmed by the Senate could take months.

In the meantime, Pitt’s decision to step down has thrown the SEC into turmoil at a time when it is conducting an unprecedented number of investigations into the accounting and trading practices of major companies, including those in the energy industry, sources said. Some believe the agency’s efforts to weed out the lawbreakers in Corporate America and on Wall Street could be hobbled until the SEC has a new head.

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