Apparently, even $80 oil is not strong enough to break through the partisan politics currently playing out in Washington. Despite a full-court press by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) to pass a comprehensive energy bill in July before the annual Congressional summer recess, now there is a logjam.

At press time, more than half-way through September, Congress was back in session. But the energy industry still had no clue as to when-or even whether-the two chambers of Congress will meet on energy, name their conferees and start to resolve the glaring differences between HR 2337 passed by the House and HR 6 passed by the Senate.

But to add insult to injury, the process requires that, prior to naming conferees, the two bills each possess the same tracking number. This has led to a back-and-forth discussion between the leadership of each chamber as to which one will renumber its respective energy bill.

In addition to these thorny parliamentary difficulties, more than 11 committees in the House had contributed parts of its bill, so it would be easy to see a House Conference Committee with more than 50 members of Congress-unwieldy at best.

On the policy front, differences between Speaker Pelosi and several strong committee chairmen have led to widespread speculation as to exactly who she may name as the House conference chairman. To make matters more complicated, given that the Senate was unable to pass a tax title in its bill, staff of the House Ways and Means Committee has suggested that holding a conference before the Senate has passed its version of an energy tax title is not likely.

Beyond these procedural problems are the very specific and substantive differences between the two bills, and the overall differences both have with the wishes of the Bush Administration. For example, the Senate bill calls for 35 miles per gallon in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard-but the House does not mention CAFE.

The House installed a 15% Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) which requires a minimum renewable content for electricity by 2020, while the Senate remains silent on this topic. The Senate passed a Renewable Fuels Standard mandating 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022, while the House chose to pass on the topic for the time being.

Lastly, the White House has announced it will attempt, under current authority and by executive order, to pursue President Bush's announced program of a 20% reduction in fuel usage in 10 years, and it will adopt an alternative-fuels-program approach rather than the renewable-only approach chosen by the Senate.

Following the passage of each Congressional chamber's energy bill, Bush threatened a veto, citing differing provisions in each bill as the reason. This brings us back to the basics of politics. If the Democrats need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto, they will need to garner a significant number of Republican supporters-especially in the Senate-if they are to make good on their pledge to redirect the nation's energy policy.

It is clear that being excluded in large part from the early legislative negotiations in the House, many Republicans are not eager to participate in a compromise-let alone give the Democrats a victory to talk about next November.

In addition, the House leadership's desire to pass both CAFE and RPS, and raise taxes on the oil industry, has placed many energy-state Democrats in a difficult position in terms of final passage.

In a city where anything can happen day-to-day, the ability of both chambers to reach a compromise agreement on one U.S. energy bill is certainly not a slam dunk and indeed, has lots of hurdles.



-Michael J. McAdams is a lobbyist and executive director of government affairs for Hart's Downstream Energy Services Group in Hart Energy Publishing's McLean, Virginia, office. He can be reached at mmcadams@hartenergy.com.

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