If you think Washington policymakers have ignored the oil industry's problems this year, just wait until 1993.
Consider this:
The House and Senate have approved-in a manner that pretty much assures eventual passage - omnibus energy legislation that virtually sweeps the decks of pending energy issues.
Although the legislation really does nothing to encourage U.S. oil production and only a little for the gas industry, congressmen will be in no hurry to take up new bills in 1993 under the impression they "fixed" energy in 1992.
The 1993 congressional session will be lethargic anyway, as they always are in the first year of a new presidential term.
Should President Bush be reelected, the most his administration, which has worked for 2 years to get the omnibus energy bill passed, will do is to go through the motions of advocating leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain.
Should Bill Clinton or Ross Perot be elected, they typically will spend their first year getting key personnel in place and determining policy directions.
Energy is not likely to be a priority with any of the three as long as oil and gas are so plentiful and prices are so low.
Similarly, federal agencies typically offer few policy initiatives in the first year of a presidential term.
Offshore leasing will be a forgotten issue. The Minerals Management Service's new 5 year offshore leasing plan calls only for the usual central and western Gulf of Mexico sales.
The Department of Energy will be limited to continuing some research programs and the Environmental Protection Agency to issuing rules implementing the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments.
Even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency, faces a relatively light agenda.
This spring it issued Order 636, a pipeline rate restructuring rule that completes the transition to a decontrolled natural gas transportation market.
After it revises Order 355, the pipeline construction rule' the only major blip on FERC's screen will be to explore Commissioner Branko Terzic's initiative to offer gas pipelines an incentive rate regulation scheme.
No doubt there is a mathematical relationship between energy prices, the time elapsed since the last energy shortage, and the level of Washington's energy policy making.
How about calling it the energy apathy formula?
Plot the data from that formula on a yearly basis, and you will see a curve showing a rising level of apathy in 1992 that will flatten in 1993.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
