|
Alaska items still alive in energy bill All but drilling on coastal plain expected to survive House-Senate negotiations; clean coal Healy loan included, AIDEA has other plans; longer Daylight Savings Time may hurt Alaskans Rose Ragsdale Petroleum News Contributing Writer
Congress completed its first day of dickering over national energy legislation July 19 no closer to filling the $8 billion gap in tax breaks proposed in versions of H.R. 6 approved by the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Negotiators from both chambers are racing against the clock to put a final energy package on President Bush’s desk by a self-imposed deadline of Aug. 1.
Among the conflicts to be resolved is the cost of energy production tax breaks, which totaled $8 billion in the House bill and $16 billion in the Senate bill, and legal protection for oil refiners that manufactured a fuel additive suspected of being a carcinogen.
Alaska-related items managed to dodge all bullets July 19 and a provision authorizing the U.S. Department of Energy to make a market-rate loan of up to $80 million to fund improvements to the Healy Clean Coal Power Plant won approval from the conference panel of 47 Republicans and 24 Democrats, according to an aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
Murkowski, a member of the conference committee, championed the slimmed-down version of the provision in the Senate, though it started out as a $125 million proposal in the House bill. The reduction in the loan amount came as new engineering reviews cut estimates for equipment upgrades needed to get the plant operating.
The nearly $300 million, state-owned clean-coal technology power plant near Healy, Alaska, has not operated since its testing period in the 1990s because of concern over the reliability of the plant.
While the energy conferees authorized DOE to make the loan, actual funding for the financing must come later in a separate appropriations bill, Murkowski spokesman Elliott Bundy said July 20. AIDEA working on own plan Ironically, the owner of the Healy Clean Coal Plant, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, views the loan provision as a holdover from the energy bill defeated in the last Congress with relatively minor importance in the plant’s future, according to executive director Ron Miller.
“We think getting the plant operating will cost about $20 million, and we have no intention of borrowing money from DOE,” Miller said July 20. “We’re working on a plan internally that involves getting an operator and getting the plant up and running.”
Miller said AIDEA expects to unveil its plan in the near future. Still, the federal loan could serve to entice a potential buyer or operator for the plant, Miller conceded. ‘More time in the dark’ for Alaska The House and Senate conferees also approved with reservations on July 19 a plan to extend Daylight Savings Time in an effort to gain more energy efficiency. Studies in the 1970s showed the move could save the equivalent of 100,000 barrels a day, and energy use has increased substantially since then, which suggests even larger savings can be achieved, proponents say.
Murkowski is concerned the provision might plunge residents in different parts of the Alaska, especially areas in Southeast, into more darkness for a longer period each year, Bundy said.
“This is bad for Alaska,” said Alaska resident Becky Gay. “It means we’ll spend more time in the dark, and we don’t need another hour of darkness out of the covers.”
Murkowski is hoping a compromise can be crafted later in the conference when Sen. Jeff Bingaman, R-N.M., who opposes the measure, introduces an amendment to change it.
Meanwhile, energy bill conferees were set to resume negotiations July 21, taking up Indian Energy provisions and other items.
While oil and gas exploration on Alaska’s Arctic coastal plain, a provision in the House bill, is expected to die in conference, Murkowski anticipates other Alaska-related items included in the Senate version will survive final negotiations, Bundy said. “So far, everything looks like it will go the way we expect it will,” he added.
| 