Republican Leaders Write New Energy Bill

Consumers Not Expected to Benefit

The new energy bill released by Republican leaders on Saturday won't benefit consumers much, but electric utilities and Big Oil are expected to profit greatly.

Golly! Big Oil and Energy. Doesn't that sound familiar? And it doesn't sound like they're up to much good. Perhaps that's why they released this bill on a Saturday afternoon when everyone, including the press, wasn't paying much attention.

The oil and gas companies will receive huge tax breaks worth about $22 billion under the bill. (That part of the bill was not made public)

Electric utilities will benefit from less regulation and only voluntary oversight under the proposed new Electric Reliability Organization (ERO). The ERO will replace the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to oversee the technical aspects of the country's electrical grid.

The FERC's plans to share electric power supplies more evenly between regions will be delayed until 2007. The plan could have solved many of the problems that caused the Aug 2003 blackout in the Northeast.

The plan was apparently shelved to benefit southern states who do not want to share their facilities, although the bill does enable established power companies to charge newer companies for enabling them to hook into the power grid. The bill also grants the states and the FERC the right to force landowners to sell property for the installation of new power lines.

The federally subsidized catastrophic insurance plan for nuclear power plants will be renewed and the bill provides tax credits for the construction of three to six new plants.

The energy bill also calls for a ban on product reliability lawsuits related to the MTBE additive in gasoline, which has proven to be an ecological disaster. This will nullify all lawsuits filed after Sep 5th, including the large suit planned by the state of New Hampshire.

Gosh! Doesn't this sound like typical Texas politics, much less the pro-oil, pro-energy industry attitude consistently displayed by the Bush regime? It turns out two of the three Congress members who wrote the energy bill are from Texas. The third is from Louisiana. These are the states where almost all of the additives are manufactured!

The bill will eventually ban MTBE additives in gasoline, but includes a loophole that will enable the president to lift that ban. However, the MTBE manufacturers will get $2 billion to stop producing the additive and explore other business opportunities.

Another $2 billion will be made available to develop "clean coal" power plants, despite scientific evidence that these plants do not work very well. Oh well, the Regime is working hard to lower pollution standards, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Consumers are not expected to gain much from this bill. The costs of natural gas, which have risen astronomically in the past few years, are not expected to stabilize for at least five years when a proposed $18 billion Alaska-to-Chicago natural gas pipeline would be completed.

The lack of oversight on the marketing of electric power does not appear to inspire any price reductions in the near future.

The real question is, where are the Democrats? Is this going to be another piece of legislation ramrodded through Congress and shoved down American throats by the Regime? Or are Democrats going to finally demonstrate some fortitude and shoot this bill down?

They had better. If they don't, it will be just another notch in the Regime's swagger stick, and another step backward in the hope of getting rid of Bush in 2004.