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Energy battle heats up in Washington, D.C. ANWR still in play as energy bill work resumes in Senate Steve Sutherlin Petroleum News Associate Editor
Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski was in Washington, D.C., the week of July 21 to promote oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to seek support for an Alaska natural gas line to deliver North Slope gas to the national market.
Murkowski met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Congressional leaders and Bush administration officials on a variety of issues, including the need for the Alaska projects as new domestic sources of energy.
“The worst thing that could happen — and this is what I pointed out to the vice president — is to have a hollow energy bill,” Murkowski said. “To pass a bill with no source of energy in it — in the sense of increasing supply — is not good public policy.”
Murkowski’s visit to the capital was timely because the Senate was working on its version of a national energy bill. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, called for gas pipeline incentives in a July 29 Senate floor speech. No other source in the United States has such an enormous amount of gas as Alaska’s North Slope, he said.
“I urge Senators to consider what we have to do to get this energy bill passed as quickly as possible and that it contain the legislative authorization that is now in the bill and the tax provisions necessary to get the pipeline built,” Stevens said. House version contains ANWR The Senate version of the bill is not expected to contain a provision to drill in ANWR, but a House-passed version of the bill does. The issue has been contentious in the Senate, however if a House/Senate version of the bill is returned to the Senate from conference committee, it has a good chance of passage because of pressure on both parties to produce an energy bill. (The conference committee, the next step once an energy bill passes the Senate, is where a smaller group of senators and representatives will try to put together a version of an energy bill they can agree upon.)
“Nobody wants to be seen as killing the energy bill,” said Roger Herrera, Arctic Power’s Washington, D.C., representative.
“The belief here is that the president wants an energy bill. He is willing to sign an energy bill with or without ANWR — and with or without Alaska gas pipeline incentives,” Herrera told Petroleum News. “The benefit to the nation is too great to veto an energy bill.”
Herrera said 15 Midwestern states want an ethanol-use provision in the energy bill. Ethanol mandates would greatly benefit South Dakota farmers Senate minority leader Tom Daschle represents.
“There are something like five or six U.S. senators up for re-election in those 15 states, including Daschle,” Herrera said. “If an energy bill has ANWR in it and Democratic senators filibuster it on the Senate floor — or kill it in conference — Daschle won’t be able to deliver on his promise to the South Dakota farmers, who are a pretty conservative group.” Ethanol vital to Daschle An ethanol mandate is seen as vital to Daschle’s reelection, which is expected to be hotly contested. No Republican challengers have filed yet, but former representative John Thune, who narrowly lost his bid last year to unseat South Dakota Democrat Sen. Tim Johnson, is expected to join the race with all the backing the Republican party can muster. President Bush won the state in 2000.
Daschle’s first new television ads for reelection, which began airing in July, focus on the ethanol issue, and claim Daschle is close to passing new energy legislation that would triple ethanol production in South Dakota.
According to the ads, the measure would add 10,000 new jobs in the state.
Daschle has offered to support Alaska gas pipeline incentives in an energy bill, in return for support of ethanol mandates, but that isn’t much of a trade, Murkowski said in a July 29 press conference in Juneau, because South Dakota and other ethanol states need the gas.
Daschle has told the South Dakota press he strongly supports Alaska gasline incentives. He recently told the Aberdeen American News that by winter South Dakotans might have to pay twice what they did for natural gas last winter. Statewide, $87 million more would be spent on natural gas including a hike of $3 million for the state’s nine ethanol plants. Daschle said fertilizer prices for South Dakota farmers have increased by one-third this year, and would go even higher if natural gas prices increase.
Murkowski said a provision to drill in ANWR would be a more appropriate tradeoff for Daschle to offer for an ethanol mandate in the energy bill, given Daschle appears to need Alaska gas.
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