Public Citizen
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 5, 2005
10:48 AM
CONTACT: Public Citizen
Main Office: 202-588-1000
It's Time for a Knockout: Round III of the Energy Bill Features More
of the Same Giveaways to Corporations, Does Not Protect Consumers or
the Environment; Statement by Joan Claybrook, President, Public
Citizen
Note: Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a full
mark-up of the draft energy legislation.
WASHINGTON -- April 5 -- The latest energy bill - this one a draft
released by House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) -
offers more of the same failed proposals that have doomed energy
legislation in the past two Congresses. It showers nuclear and oil
companies with subsidies, gives polluters a break from protecting the
environment and promotes further electricity deregulation while doing
nothing to protect consumers from high energy prices.
Indeed, oil prices continue to soar despite Congress passing a
billion-dollar subsidy in October 2004 to encourage more domestic
energy production and its March 16 budget vote to open Alaska's
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. You would think that
such a radical change in federal oil production policy (the
successful Senate vote represented the first time in 24 years that
the Senate has approved the measure) would send a clear signal to oil
traders in New York. But the prices of oil and gasoline have only
skyrocketed since the vote, raising doubts about the claim by the
Bush administration and Congress that giving energy producers what
they want will somehow lower prices for consumers.
Energy prices are at record highs because recent mergers have left
domestic oil and gas markets uncompetitive (this week's proposed
merger of ChevronTexaco and Unocal certainly won't help) and the
energy traders that set prices are left largely unregulated. The bill
not only lacks any requirement for strong fuel economy standards to
cut back on overconsumption, but it attempts to undercut strong
standards in the future by limiting the basis for issuing them. It
also extends - rather than ends - a harmful credit to auto companies
that sell dual-fuel vehicles, whose tanks in fact are usually filled
only with gasoline.
In addition, the draft energy bill ends the ability of states to have
adequate input in the siting of controversial Liquefied Natural Gas
facilities. To read Public Citizen's analysis of the bill, click here.
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/electricity/energybi
ll/2005/articles.cfm?ID=13247
_______________________________________________
Biofuel mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable):
http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/