Ending months of doubt over the fate of a FERC designee, the White House has re-nominated Joseph T. Kelliher to one of two vacant seats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Kelliher, a senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy (DOE), would succeed former Commissioner Linda K. Breathitt, whose term expired in December.

The White House has forwarded the nomination of Kelliher to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will schedule a confirmation hearing as the next step. A Capitol Hill observer said he doubted Kelliher’s nomination would encounter “any substantive problems” in the Senate. However, he noted scheduling of a confirmation hearing may be “the biggest challenge,” given that the Senate Energy Committee has a new chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), and will face a round of new hearings on energy legislation.

A spokeswoman for the Senate panel indicated a hearing date might be set in the “next couple of weeks.”

President Bush initially nominated Kelliher, a Republican, to a five-year term on the Commission last May, but the then Democrat-led Senate Energy Committee refused to act on Kelliher until the White House named a Democratic appointee, former New Mexico regulator Suedeen Kelly, to sit on FERC as well. The committee said it wanted to move on the two nominations as a “package deal.”

But the White House never tapped Kelly, and as a result Kelliher’s nomination expired when Congress adjourned in December.

“Clearly, the FERC Chairman [Pat Wood] would have liked to have had Kelliher confirmed in the last Congress,” said an agency spokesman. He “welcomes a speedy confirmation in this Congress, and is “looking forward to bringing Mr. Kelliher’s expertise to bear” at the Commission.

Senate confirmation of Kelliher would give Republicans a 3-to-1 majority at the Commission. This would mean that Bush would have to appoint either a Democrat or Independent to the remaining open seat at the five-member agency, which was vacated by former FERC Chairman Curt Hebert Jr. in the summer of 2001.

Kelliher is liked and respected on Capitol Hill and by the energy industry. In addition to DOE, he has had extensive experience on Capitol Hill, serving as majority counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a staff member to Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), and as director of the House Republican Energy and Environmental Task Force. Prior to that, he was manager of federal affairs for Public Service Electric and Gas Co., and worked for what is now known as the Nuclear Energy Institute.

If confirmed by the full Senate, Kelliher’s term at the Commission would expire on June 30, 2007.

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