OIL AND GAS CAUCUS WOULD HELP THE U.S.

Departing Sen. David Boren (D-Okla.) has proposed one of the best energy policy ideas to come out of the U.S. Congress in a long time. Before he retires at the end of the current congressional session, Boren wants to establish a bicameral oil and gas caucus.

Boren's plan, like a similar initiative by Rep. Bill Brewster (D-Okla.), would build on a refreshing consensus that formed around the effort this year in Congress to enact tax and other relief for U.S. oil and gas producers. So far, 117 representatives and senators have supported the relief measure. It's a remarkable number, a sign of what the industry can accomplish when it keeps its legislative goals sensible and broadly based. Formation of an oil and gas caucus would be a victory for the industry even if the relief measure failed.

WHY A CAUCUS?

There was a time when the industry didn't need a formal caucus. It had friendly lawmakers in top positions of the most powerful Senate and House committees. But that has not been the case for many years. If anything, the power centers of Congress have turned hostile to oil and gas interests. For the industry, political victory too often means keeping damage from misguided legislation to a survivable minimum.

Companies and trade associations can't do much by themselves to change the political climate. They are special interests. They often influence but rarely persuade. Politicians will always hold them at arm's length-sometimes at sword's point.

Formation of a caucus would help break oil and gas issues out of the simplistic political mold that casts them as special interests vs. the public. It would recognize that in many states, oil and gas interests and the public are one and the same. It might even recognize that industry and public interests can converge in all states, although that may be too much to hope.

The immediate point is that bad laws and regulations on oil and gas - on energy in general - hurt more than companies, lobbyists, and industries. They hurt people: Americans, workers, families, consumers.

A caucus would give oil and gas people a political forum they do not now possess. And by highlighting the human dimension of oil and gas issues, a caucus might help ease the hostility now aimed at one of the country's largest and most important industries. Caucuses now exist for the beef, corn, aviation, mining, steel, footware, textile, trucking, alcohol fuels., advanced materials, and soybean industries, to name a few. A caucus certainly should exist for oil and gas.

MAKING IT WORK

If it is to work, however, the proposed oil and gas caucus will have to take a broad view from the beginning. It must proceed from the assumption that what is best for people employed in the production, processing, and transportation of oil and gas, what is best for the states where these activities occur, is what best promotes oil and gas as economic fuels and feedstocks. Such an assumption, coupled with an appreciation for mistakes of the past, will dictate a healthy faith in markets, proper concern for consumers, and intense respect for the environment. And such an assumption will steer the caucus toward conflict with forces elsewhere in the political realm that, now largely unchecked, would shove the U.S. economy off its oil and gas foundations.

An oil and gas caucus would offer fresh political hope to oil states and industries in them. But the idea has merit beyond that. If conceived broadly and managed right, the caucus can help protect people - as workers, as consumers, and as taxpayers - from the harm they suffer each time the government errs on energy policy.