House Democrats plan to introduce energy legislation, possibly as early as next week, that would include a recycled proposal and some sweeteners in an attempt to boost production of domestic oil and natural gas resources in the Lower 48 states and Alaska.

The legislation still is in the “conceptual stage,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who along with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and other Democrats held a press briefing on Capitol Hill Thursday to discuss the energy proposal.

Democrats said they will incorporate into the bill the “use-it-or-lose-it” proposal (HR 6251), which failed in the House last month, but “this time we’re sweetening the pot to incentivize people to get moving,” Hammill said (see Daily GPI, June 27).

The so-called use-it-or-lose it measure, which House Republicans and producers widely opposed, would require producers to “diligently” develop their existing leases before they can ask the Interior Department for new leases.

Democrats claim producers are sitting on 68 million acres of leased public land in the Lower 48 states, which they estimate could produce an additional 4.8 million b/d of crude oil and 44.7 Bcf/d of gas. Hoyer estimated that there is an additional 20 million acres available in Alaska.

As a sweetener, the bill to be introduced next week would call on the Bush administration to mandate annual lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA), Hammill said. Currently lease sales are held every other year in the NPRA.

The NPRA, a 23-million acre area on Alaska’s North Slope, is estimated to hold technically recoverable resources of 1.3-5.6 billion bbl of crude oil and 39.1-83.2 Tcf of natural gas on federal lands, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. But the economic viability of the natural gas resources hinges on the ability to transport them to markets in the Lower 48 states.

The bill is expected to offer incentives to “facilitate the construction” of a long-line pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48 states, according to Hammill. It also will seek to ban the exportation of Alaska oil, he said. In effect, the House will tell Alaska producers to “bring it [the oil] to American markets,” Hoyer said.

Separately, Pelosi has called on President Bush to release a “small portion” of the crude oil stocks from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to ease the pressure on gasoline prices. “It’s the fastest thing we can to” to bring down prices, she said. The SPR contains an estimated 700 million barrels of oil.

House Democrats also plan to offer a bill that addresses speculation, manipulation and price gouging in the energy markets before Congress leaves for its August recess, Hammill said. The House Agriculture Committee has held two hearings on the issue so far this week, with another one planned for Friday (see related story).

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