Friday, September 29, 2000

GOP seeks to kill plan to use strategic oil By Myron Struck, States News Service

WASHINGTON  Asserting there is no home heating oil crisis, the Republican chairman of the House energy subcommittee and a group of his colleagues said Thursday they wanted to reverse the decision by President Clinton to swap oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

This is very, very bad public policy, said U.S. Rep. Joe L. Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on energy and power. When the oil goes onto the market, there is nothing to stop [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein from bidding on it. Theyre just hoping and praying that theyre going to refine it as home heating oil.

Meanwhile, over the objections of New Englanders  and a coalition primarily of other Democrats  House Republicans voted to scrap an authorization for both the fledgling Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The action puts big oil interests ahead of cost-strapped consumers anticipating a cold winter, said U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, who along with his Democratic colleague from Maine, Rep. John Baldacci, were on the losing side of the 308-118 vote.

The people from oil-producing states, including George Bush and Dick Cheney, are opposed to using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and its wrong, said Allen. Its clear the president will have to veto this bill.

The House action came as part of a vote approving the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. That legislation, which funds the Energy Department and such things as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects, is one of 13 federal spending bills that goes through Congress every year.

Language authorizing the heating oil reserve for the Northeast and reauthorizing the president to withdraw oil from the strategic petroleum reserve had been attached to the funding bill but that language was removed by a joint House and Senate conference committee late the previous night.

Maines Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were blindsided by the conference committee action and subsequent House vote.

This is not a partisan issue in my view, Snowe said. In fact, on this issue, I believe disagreements on policy may fall more along regional lines. I know some Democrats from the South disagree with the Administrations decision, while Republicans in the Northeast tend to be supportive of the policy.

In the Senate, a separate authorization bill for both the oil reserves is still expected on the floor next week.

Also, Clinton has said he will use his authority to set up a temporary reserve. But supporters of the permanent reserve say that wont ensure heating oil is quickly made available to the Northeast because it would require a national emergency to be tapped. New England lawmakers were angry Thursday.

I am stunned by the actions of the Republican leadership, said U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-Conn. By removing the authorization for the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve from the conference report, they are effectively depriving low- and middle-income families and the elderly in New England of one of the tools that could be used to provide affordable home heating oil this winter.

Allen said prices per barrel of crude oil fell on successive days after Vice President Al Gore announced his support for tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and after President Clinton decided to allow a 30 million barrel flow from the reserve to go on the market.

What House Republicans are doing is driving the price of crude, and the price of home heating oil and the price of diesel fuel, up, Allen said. Theyre doing this knowing that theyre moving the market. What we need to do is drive the prices down. Thatll be more incentive for suppliers to store home heating oil.

Barton said he would also contact the Energy Department to determine what legal authority the president had in developing the plan to swap out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil and to request an answer in writing as soon as possible.

Barton said the legal authority was imbedded in a segment of the lapsed oil reserve authorization law, and shouldnt be considered valid. The House action, if it holds throughout Congress, would clarify the issue.

Its a slap at the Northeast and the Midwest by George W., said Allen. It seems to me that we ought to give it a chance to work.

Allen said Barton does not understand what is going on in New England if he takes the position that there is no home heating oil crisis.

Barton took the position that the move to make the swap was designed in the heat of the national presidential campaign to help Gore. Asked how that was true since the administrations opposition from the Energy Department and Treasury Department, as well as the Federal Reserve  crumbled only after a coalition of Senators asked for consideration of the swap.

The Senate coalition was led by Maines Republican Sen. Snowe, and included Sen. Collins, and James M. Jeffords, R-Vt., as well as Democratic leaders such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

We have to deal with this before the oil is gone, Allen said. We cant wait until December. We have to act in time for oil to be released and reach the market. Texas, where they produce oil, just has a different point of view.

http://www.bangornews.com/cgi-bin/article.cfm?storynumber=21610

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 29, 2000