WATCHING WASHINGTON ANOTHER WASHINGTON QUOTEBOOK

Many are the times that speakers at oil and gas events in Washington turn a good phrase.

However, Oil & Gas Journal sees its role as more to inform than entertain its readers. So these phrases seldom see print in our news stories.

But that's no reason not to share a few of them with you.

MILLER'S EXCUSE

Although Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) has been making life difficult for oil lobbyists regarding offshore and Alaskan wildlife refuge leasing issues, he's not exactly unfamiliar with the smell of crude oil.

He related, "Somebody asked me why I get so mad at the oil companies. Well, in my youth, I used to clean out crude oil holding tanks. It probably makes my brain work the way it does. That's my excuse, anyway."

Another congressman, Sen. Wendell Ford (D-Ky.), is noted for his wry humor. At a hearing on the Iroquois pipeline project last spring, he observed, "This seems to be an argument between big gas producing states and the big consuming states in the Northeast. I am very pleased just to be a spectator."

Interior Sec. Manuel Lujan admitted to an industry meeting last spring, "Sometimes I get a little too candid and that causes me some problems."

He went on to tell a story about a former Interior secretary who also was too candid. After leaving Washington, the man applied for a mortgage to buy a house. Faced with the standard question, "Do you have any lawsuits pending against you?" he listed all 417 suits still active against him as Interior secretary in federal courts.

This summer, Lujan also offered some insight on his management style.

"I like to look at my life in little squares. I check one off, then go to the next one."

Martin Allday, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman, says his management style is to keep his door open so employees can talk to him anytime about anything. "Peaches is the lady who picks up the trash in my office at night. She and I talk, too," he said.

Harold B. Scoggins, who has resigned as president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, had some advice for the committee picking his successor:

"He should be someone who understands how Washington works. It works a little differently than people out in the oil patch sometimes think it does. (The job requires) somebody with a lot of patience and stamina who can get shot at every day and not let it get to them. That's just the nature of association work-certainly association work in any industry that's under stress, as we have been."

THE IMPORTANCE OF THINGS

Dan Dreyfus, vice-president of strategic planning and analysis for the Gas Research Institute, recently noted the glacial nature of U.S. oil and gas trends. "As a practical matter, the energy picture in the U.S. is tied to hardware and changes very slowly."

Dreyfus is not too distressed by the current Mideast crisis. "Most things that happen don't turn out to be as important as people think they are at the time."

He added, "From a long range point of view, the events in eastern Europe earlier this year probably were more significant than what is going on today in the Middle East."