-Caveat Lector- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1116-01.htm
Published on Sunday, November 16, 2003 by Knight-Ridder Newspapers Utilities, Oil Companies Stand to Benefit from GOP Energy Bill by Seth Borenstein and Sumana Chatterjee WASHINGTON - Electric utilities, especially southeastern ones, and oil companies that make a gasoline additive that taints drinking water are some of the biggest winners in the new energy bill that Republican leadership released Saturday. Oil and gas companies are thought to be huge recipients of massive tax breaks, worth about $22 billion, but that part of the energy deal was not made public late Saturday afternoon. The bill is so comprehensive that "there are parts of the bill for every member of Congress to be uncomfortable with and for every member of Congress to support strongly," said energy industry lobbyist Scott Segal. Consumers may not notice a direct benefit from the energy deal except an eventual stabilization of skyrocketing natural gas prices in at least five years when an Alaska-to-Chicago natural gas pipeline is built, said Severin Borenstein, a business professor who is director of the University of California Energy Institute. "For consumers I think this will have a pretty minimal effect on the energy picture," Borenstein said Saturday. The bill provides $18 billion in loan guarantees to private companies to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska, where there is an abundance of natural gas but no way currently to get it to the lower 48 states. The first major energy legislation in about a decade was spurred on by August's massive Northeast blackout. Utility industry officials and Republican leaders who crafted this bill said this would help fix some of the causes for the blackout, which started in northeastern Ohio and spread quickly north and east. The bill, a Republican-crafted combination of House and Senate energy legislation, gives authority to a new Electric Reliability Organization that will oversee the technical aspects of running and interconnecting America's electrical grid. It "becomes a traffic cop who can write tickets" to enforce technical standards that have been only voluntary, said Jim Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a utility lobby. At the same time, marketing and business aspects will get only voluntary oversight and less regulation than the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had planned. The bill delays until the year 2007 a FERC plan, called standard market design, that could have shared the power supply and loads more evenly between regions. The FERC plan would have benefited western and northeastern utilities and forced southeastern utilities to share more, the University of California's Borenstein said. FERC's plan could have fixed many of the causes of the blackout, said Paul Joskow, director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. The legislative language banning FERC's plan until 2007 "is most unfortunate," he said. Bill-drafters bowed to powerful southern lawmakers who worried that their constituents and local power companies would bear costs of power sharing with other regions. Established utilities get to charge newer power plants costs associated with hooking them up to existing grids, a provision that southern utilities wanted. States and FERC will get a long-sought ability to force landowners to sell property so that new powerlines could be built. The makers of MTBE, an additive designed to make gasoline burn cleaner but that has ended up tainting public water supplies around the country, would benefit from a nearly unprecedented ban on product liability lawsuits. More than $100 million in lawsuits have been settled on the tainted water issue with many more pending. Almost all of the additives are made in Texas and Louisiana, where three powerful House members who crafted the bill live. The legislation would protect those companies from product liability lawsuits filed after Sept. 5, which includes a massive one from the state of New Hampshire and more than 20 other suits filed Sept. 30. It also eventually would ban MTBE from gasoline, but allow the president to lift that ban. And the MTBE-makers would get $2 billion to phase out of the business. "It's a raw deal for the public," said Katie McGinty, Pennsylvania's environment secretary. Segal, who represents MTBE makers, said this was "a way to hasten the transition of MTBE manufacturing to other products." There are handouts of $2 billion to build so-called "clean coal" power plants, that scientists and environmentalists say don't work that well. The nuclear industry gets the renewal of a multi-billion dollar federally subsidized catastrophic insurance plan. There are also tax credits to build three to six new plants. California, Alaska and states along the Gulf of Mexico would get $1 billion over ten years to fight erosion from oil and gas drilling. The legislation would make it easier for oil and gas companies to drill on public lands - where there is no existing ban - by reducing federal rules. Copyright 2003 Knight-Ridder ### www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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