NYT: "President Offers Plan to Promote Oil Exploration" (Part 1 of 3)
January 30, 2001 Single-Page Format
By JOSEPH KAHN and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush said today that he was "deeply concerned" that the power crisis was "spreading beyond the California borders" and vowed to make it easier for companies to explore, exploit and transport oil and gas for the production of more electricity.
In a meeting in the Oval Office this morning, which the president described as the first in a series to deepen his involvement in energy issues, Mr. Bush named Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force that he said would devise ways to reduce America's "reliance upon foreign oil" and to "encourage the development of pipelines and power- generating capacity in the country."
While Mr. Bush did not offer concrete proposals today to help California, he appeared to be using its acute electricity shortage to help sell a long-term national energy strategy he often discussed during the presidential campaign.
He said he intended to act "boldly and swiftly" to enact his plan, which includes an effort to pass legislation allowing drilling in protected areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and granting waivers to states that seek to run older plants at full capacity, even if that means violating clean air standards, administration officials said.
"There's a long-term issue as well, and that is, How do we find more energy supplies, how do we encourage conservation on the one hand and bring more energy into the marketplace?" Mr. Bush told reporters.
"And a good place to look is going to be A.N.W.R.," he continued, using the abbreviation for the Alaskan wilderness area.
He added, "I campaigned hard on the notion of having environmentally sensitive exploration at A.N.W.R., and I think we can do so."
Today's assignment puts Mr. Cheney at the center of an issue he knows well as the former chief executive of the Halliburton Company, the oil services giant. Halliburton and its rivals would all probably benefit from an aggressive government push to promote exploration and to weaken environmental controls.
Elements of Mr. Bush's plan will clearly face opposition from environmental groups and some Democrats in Congress. But just as predictions of rising government surpluses and the slowing economy gave a lift to his sweeping tax-cut initiative, the California crisis has aided Mr. Bush's efforts to sell an energy policy that in more normal times would probably have faced intense opposition.
Senator Frank H. Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said that the California crisis had made people wake up to a looming energy crisis.
"With the previous administration we could not even get an acknowledgement that we had an energy problem in this country," said Mr. Murkowski, whose committee will hold hearings on Wednesday concerning the electricity situation. "People are now starting to realize that if you just rely on outsiders for your energy you will pay the piper."
Some environmentalists criticized Mr. Bush's approach sharply, arguing that he used California as an excuse to push an oil industry agenda bearing at best an indirect relationship to the electricity troubles.
"It's just irresponsible to lead Americans to believe that new drilling in Alaska is going to have an impact on their electricity bills," said Adam Kolton, Arctic campaign director for the Alaskan Wilderness League. "Frankly, it does not even pass the laugh test. There's simply no link between the problems in California and the wildlife refuge."
(continued in the next post)
nytimes.com |
