House energy bill: A gift to oil industry

Human Quest, Nov/Dec 2002 by Levendosky, Charles

Oil is king. Oil now drives our domestic policy as it has driven a major part of our foreign policy for decades.

In August, a majority of the US House, with the encouragement of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, passed an energy bill (H.R. 4) that would plunder the public lands for oil and gas - while giving these industries tax incentives approaching $36 billion.

The House bill would have all this nation's oil and gas sucked out of the ground in a short period of time, but provides no incentives for designing automobile engines that use less fuel.

The fuel economy provisions in H.R. 4 are cosmetic and full of loopholes. Tellingly, the House rejected an amendment that would have required that US auto makers not backslide on existing fuel economy standards. Instead of making us less dependent on foreign oil, the House bill is a fast track to greater dependence.

In the first six months of this year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the United States imported an average of 10.3 million barrels of oil per day, approximately 53% of our total supply. More than 600,000 barrels of that daily infusion of oil came from Iraq.

With slightly better fuel economy in trucks and sports utility vehicles, the United States could cancel all its Iraq imports. According to a report released in the spring by the National Academy of Sciences, the technology exists for better fuel economy in passenger vehicles, trucks and SUVs.

The Senate passed its own energy legislation back in April. By comparison to the House bill, it speaks with the voice of reason. Half of the nearly $20 billion in tax incentives it offers would provide funding for improving energy efficiency in vehicles and appliances as well as for the development of alternative energy sources. House and Senate conferees were to meet in October to hash out the final version of the energy bill.

The portion of H.R. 4 entitled "Improvements to Federal Oil and Gas Management" contains a number of provisions that grant the oil and gas industries nearly unrestricted access to even rare wild lands and ecologically sensitive areas of public land.

Section 6222 mandates that the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture shall undertake a study to determine the impediments to efficient oil and gas leasing and operations to "identify means by which unnecessary impediments..can be removed." Most of these so-called unnecessary impediments are due to environmental laws that protect the public lands, their wildlife and habitat and other natural or cultural resources for future generations.

The section pushes for the swift approval of leases - cutting the timeframes for application approvals, review processes, recommendations and administrative appeals. In 2001, the Bush administration issued more than 3,800 oil and gas permits - the most ever issued in one year. Not quick enough for the U.S. House.

Section 6223 (a) gets to the pudding: eliminate all "unwarranted denials and stays" to the development of oil and gas on public lands.

Nowhere does the bill define an unwarranted denial or unwarranted stay. If a federal land manager follows the requirements set out by the National Environmental Policy Act, does that constitute an unwarranted denial? Is the necessity of conducting an environmental impact statement an unwarranted stay?

Taken at face value, this provision undermines protections put into place to ensure the quality of our air and water. Would protections for the nation's wild lands and wildlife habitat be considered "unwarranted"?

More than 90% of the public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the Rocky Mountain states are already open to oil and gas leasing and drilling. The House bill targets the other 10%, no matter how fragile, how pristine, how important to our wildlife heritage.

Section 6223 (c) and (d) requires any rejection of a lease and any disapproval or required modification of oil and gas operations be explained in detail by the secretary of the Interior or Agriculture.

If a rejection is based upon a previous resource management decision, "the explanation shall include a careful assessment of whether the reasons underlying the previous decision are still persuasive." In other words, lands once secure from oil and gas development may be open for drilling. Will any reasons be "still persuasive" to the Bush administration?

These provisions create a disincentive for public land managers and their agencies to protect the lands they were mandated to protect for all the people of this nation, not just those who produce oil and gas.

Section 6225 takes away the authority of regional forest supervisors to determine whether oil and gas leasing should be allowed on national forest lands. It gives the authority to the secretary of Agriculture or to an undersecretary - political appointees who are not required to have a background in forestry.

US Forest Service supervisors are professionals who know the land, trees and the forests they manage. Yet, in such critical decisions that affect forest ecology and management, they will no longer have the final say.