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Energy bill supporters still looking for votes No political agreement reached on moving bill to Senate floor for a vote Larry Persily Petroleum News Government Affairs Editor
Congressional energy bill supporters were looking for votes last fall as the baseball season came to an end and, six months later, with a new season opening this week supporters are still trying to find enough votes to pass the legislation.
And though the baseball season will run until October, the energy bill’s chances for passage will fade quickly the closer Congress gets to its summer breaks. Presidential politics, always a problem in the nation’s capital, will get worse, said Chuck Kleeschulte, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
“Politically, it’s much better to get done early … it will be hard to get anything passed after Memorial Day,” Kleeschulte said.
Alaska is closely following the bill for its provisions to encourage private investment in building a pipeline to move billions of dollars of North Slope natural gas to North American markets.
The earliest the bill is likely to come to the Senate floor for a vote would be the week after the congressional Easter recess, Kleeschulte said. If that doesn’t work, the next deadline would be the Memorial Day break. After that, Congress will return to work until the Fourth of July holiday, but lawmakers will break again for political party conventions later in the summer. Senate-House still at odds Senate leadership remains at odds with House leaders over a product liability waiver for the octane-boosting gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, MTBE. The House insists on the waiver to protect manufacturers from any lawsuits, while the latest Senate committee version of the energy bill does not include the provision.
“Both houses of Congress appear to be locked into mutually exclusive positions on a comprehensive energy bill,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, at a March 31 press conference in Washington, D.C., called for action on the energy bill to help boost domestic oil and gas production, especially to bring in natural gas from Alaska.
The biggest problem with the bill, MTBE, is an old battle, going back to last fall. The more recent problem of multiple amendments eating up valuable time in the Senate is another concern keeping leadership from moving the bill to the floor for a vote, said John Katz, director of Alaska’s office in Washington, D.C. Too many amendments also a problem “There’s partisan wrangling over the number and the nature of amendments that would be proposed on the Senate floor,” Katz said. After deducting for holidays and other breaks, Congress has less than 90 work days left in the session, and leaders can’t afford to burn up limited time on too many amendments, he said.
“There’s been a lot of rhetoric but seemingly very little in the way of results,” Katz said of the ongoing House-Senate, Democrat-Republican negotiations to reach a compromise on the bill. The House passed the energy bill last November but the measure has been stalled in the Senate since then.
Perhaps this past winter’s high natural gas prices and recent record-high gasoline prices will create enough constituent pressure on lawmakers to pass a bill, Katz said. If not, groups could start bailing out on the bill, looking to add their favorite provisions to other legislation moving through Congress.
“We’ve been looking at that for some time,” Kleeschulte said. The key is looking for a bill that is sure to pass, rather than risk adding oil and gas provisions to a bill that has its old problems, he said.
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