BODY: Give Senator Frank Murkowski this much. He has
offered the first major bill in a decade aimed at overhauling the country's
energy policies. But the Alaska Republican's 300-page measure is not by any
stretch a blueprint for a measured policy that balances responsible development
with energy conservation. Despite some nods toward energy efficiency, it is
essentially an oil driller's bill. The larger danger is that it could serve as a
template for the cabinet-level task force appointed by President Bush to devise
a comprehensive national energy strategy. That panel, which is led by Vice
President Dick Cheney, an oilman himself, is already disposed to honor Mr.
Bush's campaign pledge to sweep away regulatory impediments to new exploration.
If the panel endorses Mr. Murkowski's approach, environmentalists and their
Congressional allies should be ready for a protracted and difficult struggle on
Capitol Hill.
Mr. Murkowski's stated purpose is to
reduce the nation's use of foreign oil from 56 percent to 50 percent, partly
through tax breaks for the oil and gas companies but mainly by opening up more
tracts of land for exploration. The bill also includes an array of incentives
aimed at encouraging cleaner fuels and alternative fuel sources like wind power,
as well as rewarding consumers who buy super-efficient cars and appliances. But
these provisions, some of which appeal strongly to environmentalists, are
secondary to the main thrust of the bill, which is to increase production. The
centerpiece of that strategy, in turn, is to open up the coastal plain of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploration.
This
page has addressed the folly of trespassing on a wondrous wildlife preserve for
what, by official estimates, is likely to be a modest amount of economically
recoverable oil. A majority of Mr. Murkowski's colleagues seem to share these
doubts. Barring a radical change in sentiment, any measure that seeks to open
the refuge to drilling will probably fail in an up-or-down vote in the House
and, in the unlikely event that it succeeds there, will not survive a Senate
filibuster promised by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
But there are other unsettling aspects of the bill that could survive
and, at the very least, could infect the thinking of the White House task force.
One of these would transfer to the states the federal government's supervisory
authority over drilling operations on federal land. Mr. Murkowski says this is
merely an efficiency move. But conservationists fear that once operational
control passes to state oil and gas commissions, environmental values like water
quality and the protection of fish and wildlife will inevitably be
subordinated.
What is especially annoying about this
provision is that it is based on the premise, assiduously cultivated by the Bush
campaign, that environmental concerns have inhibited exploration on America's
public lands. For the most part, they have not. In the so-called overthrust belt
in the Rocky Mountain states, only 5 percent of 116 million acres of land
managed by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management -- containing a
mere 2 percent of the lower 48's natural gas reserves -- are off limits, either
as wilderness or national monuments. The environmentalists are merely asking
that the job of safeguarding the millions of acres that are open to development
not be transferred to notoriously indifferent state agencies.
A second worrisome section is a provision that would provide $1 billion
for "clean coal" technology, which is aimed at making coal -- the most plentiful
but dirtiest of all fossil fuels -- more acceptable environmentally. Washington
has already spent $6 billion on clean-coal research. The bill not only would
dump an additional $1 billion into an admittedly uncertain technology, but also
would temporarily relieve any company investing in such technology from
compliance with an important component of the Clean Air Act.
The bill has other problems, but these two alone suggest that it is a
bill that will inspire more argument than enlightenment. And enlightenment on
energy is what America needs most.
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