Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) last Wednesday said that he thinks that the Senate will back incentives for a Trans-Alaska gas pipeline as part of a broader energy bill working its way through Congress.

“I think the incentives are going to do fine,” Domenici said in response to a question at a Washington, DC, press briefing. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) has proposed a finance package that includes carrots for the line.

“I think we are going to pass as part of our bill those incentives because if they did not have a lot of momentum a month ago, Alan Greenspan has given them about as much of a boost as any big, potential natural gas delivery to [the] continental United States could possibly get,” the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee added.

Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently commented on natural gas supply issues in an appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week (see NGI, June 16).

Domenici noted that “there [is] a whole batch” of big, natural gas-fired power plants scheduled to come online in the U.S. “A couple of them have decided, ‘We’re too far out there and by the time that time arrives there’s not going to be an assurance of supply, so we’re not going to build them,'” he said.

U.S. Rep. John E. Peterson (R-PA) recently disclosed that he is mulling the introduction of a bill that would bar new construction of natural gas-fired power generation facilities and would establish a seven-member independent commission to undertake a “comprehensive analysis” of gas supply and demand issues in the U.S.

“It’s obviously very expensive to get it down here, and it’s very large in quantity,” Domenici said in reference to bringing Alaskan gas into the U.S. and the rationale behind the tax incentives offered by Grassley.

“And then we say in our bill, let’s get all of the natural gas we know how to produce here at home, so we take that offshore gas here and we modify the royalties so that we can produce whatever deep gas we’ve got,” Domenici went on to say. “So at least we can be saying in our bill, whatever we can do to enhance natural gas production, we’re doing. That Alaskan piece will be part of that pressure and that push to get that done.”

The Senate earlier this month voted to retain a section of the energy bill that calls for the Department of Interior to conduct a major inventory of potential oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf, including those in coastal areas where drilling has been banned by Congress for the past 20 years (see NGI, June 16).

Domenici expressed optimism that the energy bill will be completed before the Senate takes a break later this summer. “I want to tell you that before the United States Senate goes on its August recess, we will have an energy bill so that the month of August can be used to conference the bill and so that in the month of September, we can pass a conference bill in both houses,” the Senator said. “Of that, I have absolutely no doubt.”

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