By OGJ editors
WASHINGTON, May 26 -- A US Senate committee on May 26 reported comprehensive energy legislation that raises a proposed mandate for ethanol in gasoline and lacks two key provisions supported by the oil and gas industry.
The bill, by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, would phase in a mandate that US gasoline contain 8 billion gal/year of ethanol by 2012 (OGJ Online, May 26, 2005). Earlier proposals, including one in an energy bill passed Apr. 21, set the peak ethanol requirement at 5 billion gal/year.
The full Senate must vote on the bill, which the committee passed by a vote of 21-1.
Measures sought by the oil and gas industry and missing from the Senate bill are approval of leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain and protection from product-defect liability for makers and blenders of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether.
The House bill contains both provisions (OGJ, May 2, 2005, Newsletter). Disagreement over the MTBE measure is a reason the House and Senate have been unable to reconcile energy bills in the past.
The House and Senate also have differed in the past over ANWR leasing. In March, however, the Senate showed that its traditional resistance to the measure has weakened when it voted 51-49 to reject a bid to remove a leasing proposal from a budget bill (OGJ, Mar. 21, 2005, Newsletter).
Among other oil and gas provisions, the Senate committee bill would:
—Provide incentives for gas production from deep wells in shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
—Authorize suspension of federal royalty for production from leases in more than 400 m of water, subject to volume limits and price thresholds determined by the secretary of energy.
—Provide for royalty suspension for marginal offshore production in Alaska.
—Provide a $20 million/year authorization for 5 years for development of a program to deal with abandoned wells on federal land.
—Authorize tar sands leases separate from oil and gas leases.
—Require federal leasing of land for oil shale research and development.
—Make the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the lead agency for administration of the National Environmental Policy Act.