A bipartisan group of senators has called on Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who is expected to release the Senate climate change bill Wednesday, to avoid what they believe was a mistake in the House climate bill — the exclusion of natural gas (see Daily GPI, Aug. 19).

“We write today to advocate for policies which will ensure [that] any climate and energy bill take optimal advantage of America’s abundance of clean-burning natural gas to dramatically lower [carbon dioxide] emissions in both the near and long term,” said the nine-member coalition in a letter to Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“Any Senate energy and climate bill should provide statutory guidance to harness this important resource and stimulate and support even more activity in this sector of our nation’s diverse energy portfolio,” they said.

The senators said they strongly supported preserving the deductions for intangible drilling costs (IDC) and the percentage depletion credit as part of Senate climate change legislation. President Obama has proposed repealing billions of dollars of tax breaks for producers, including the IDC and percentage depletion credit, in his fiscal year 2010 budget proposal (see Daily GPI, Sept. 11).

Moreover, “the bill should include approval of an EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] study to review the risks that hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracing) pose to drinking water supplies, using the best available science, as well as independent sources of information,” they said. The House already has voted out a bill that calls on the EPA to examine the risks of hydrofracing to the nation’s drinking water (see Daily GPI, June 29).

The coalition said it also wants the Senate climate bill to include “appropriate incentives to take more advantage of natural gas in the electric power sector and…to expand the market for natural gas as an alternative fuel for heavy duty and fleet vehicles.”

The senators further proposed that the National Academy reports, authorized in the House climate bill (HR 2454), “expressly address the potential for mitigating climate risk through the expanded use of natural gas in the U.S. electric power sector.”

In addition, they recommended changes for the treatment of fugitive emissions — emissions from equipment leaks or evaporative processes — associated with production and pipelines. Under the House climate bill, “fugitive emissions of uncombusted natural gas, both from production and leakage from pipelines, would be subject to performance standards under Section 811. We would propose to instead consider fugitive emissions under the list of potential offsets outlined in Section 733 as a more efficient incentive. Fugitive emissions, when captured, have significant greenhouse gas reduction benefits and should be considered by EPA to be eligible as offsets.”

The House climate bill includes “significant incentives” to conduct further research into carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal-fired power plants, and the senators believe that natural gas-fired power plants should be eligible for similar incentives “in a way that does not diminish those incentives for coal.”

The letter was signed by Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Mark Udall (D-CO), Tom Udall (D-NM) and David Vitter (R-LA).

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