Here is source for energy news. also Gas off Nova Scotia is Mobil/exxon and pipeline through New England was completed a year or two ago. It's strange with new natural gas coming into New England that they have pricing problems.
December 26, 2000
Looming Energy Problems May
Create Headache for Bush Camp
By JOHN J. FIALKA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Take a problem that is beginning to threaten the
nation's economy, add to it a sprawling, troubled agency, and you have the
recipe for what could be President-elect George W. Bush's first crisis:
energy.
High natural-gas prices and tight heating oil supplies could give the new
administration fits in New England and the upper Midwest this winter.
Spring may bring gasoline shortages because fuel demands are outstripping
the nation's refinery capacity. And once air conditioners are cranked up,
summer holds the promise of regional electricity shortages similar to those
now plaguing California.
The problems have taken a long
time to evolve, and the Bush
administration doesn't want to be
blamed when consumers get socked
with high heating bills this winter.
But Bill Brier, a vice president of the
Edison Electric Institute, which
represents private utilities, notes
there is plenty of blame to be
shared. "It's a lack of public
consensus on what national energy
policy ought to be," he says. "Until
you get these price spikes, it's not
high on peoples' visibility. You can
say it's Bill Clinton's fault, but that's the easy way out."
To be sure, some Clinton administration policies have contributed to
skyrocketing natural gas prices. The Environmental Protection Agency's
emphasis on cleaning up coal-fired power plants pushed utilities to build
generating plants fueled by natural gas; more than 90% of new power
plants today are powered by natural gas.
At the same time, the slump in oil prices caused many energy companies to
stop drilling, while the strong economy stoked the demand for fuels.
Because both Mr. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, come from oil
and gas backgrounds, they are painfully aware that short-term solutions are
hard to come by. So are potential candidates to run the Department of
Energy, some of whom have quietly said, "No thanks."
"This job is a dead end for a politician," warns Henson Moore, who was
deputy secretary of energy in Mr. Bush's father's administration. When Mr.
Moore's name briefly surfaced as a prospect last week, he quickly took
himself out of the running. "It's going to be a tough, unglamorous job for
somebody," he says.
Mr. Bush's plans are ambitious. In his first detailed policy statement as
president-elect, Mr. Bush says he will promote ways to find more gas and
to move it "expeditiously" to markets. In various campaign speeches, he
has vowed to open more federal land in the Rockies and the coastal plain
of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration. He
has also promised to spur government permits for a gas pipeline planned
by producers in the U.S. and Canada that would pump gas from Alaska
and the Northwest Territories into the upper Midwest.
There are likely to be many jarring bumps in the nation's energy road
before these projects reach fruition.
During the campaign, Mr. Bush had said he would "improve the regulatory
process" to encourage more refining capacity and try to stimulate three
energy sources -- coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power -- whose fuels are
cheap, domestic and stable. "There's been very little capacity growth to
keep up with soaring demands for energy," explains Red Caveny,
president of the American Petroleum Institute. "We haven't built a new oil
refinery in this country in 25 years."
Over the next 10 years, Mr. Bush promises, his administration would
devote $2 billion in additional federal research money for "clean coal"
technologies and an additional $1 billion to help utilities buy nuclear power
plants. He says the relicensing process for big power dams -- currently
clogged with environmental complaints -- will be "streamlined."
Joe Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, hopes for a
resurgence of nuclear power -- with smaller, safer and more profitable
generating plants. In some recent years, the government has put little or no
money into nuclear-power research, he says. Until "the rules of the game
settle," he says, "nobody is going to put a lot of capital into anything."
Charles H. Goodman, a vice president for Southern Co., one of the
nation's largest utilities, hopes the new research money will hasten projects
to make cleaner-burning gas out of coal and use the resulting fuel to run
turbine-driven power plants, similar to new plants that burn natural gas.
Mr. Bush has said he will address the environmental problems by
proposing a law that reduces emissions of four troublesome pollutants:
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide. Issues papers
released by his campaign say the law would also impose a moratorium on
further pollution regulations to give utility planners "certainty" that they can
design and finance new plants without "fear of new litigation."
One of the near-term fixes for the nation's energy shortfalls is Canada,
which along with Mexico, will be part of what Mr. Bush calls his
"hemispheric energy policy." As he has described it, the plan includes more
"cross border energy trade." Quebec, whose electricity needs peak in the
winter, has excess hydroelectric power that could prevent summer
brownouts and blackouts in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, if more tie
lines were built to carry the capacity south.
Unlike the U.S., which has banned most offshore drilling, Canada is
producing natural gas off the coast of Nova Scotia, which is beginning to
supply fuel-short markets in New England.
Write to John J. Fialka at john.fialka@wsj.com |
