The expected next step is a conference committee with the House of Representatives, to reconcile the Senate legislation with a more politically contentious House bill. While shifting away from traditional fossil fuels, coal in particular, would go farther in reducing carbon emissions and countering climate change, the Senate bill stops short of doing so.
Advertisement
On Tuesday, Murkowski told E&E Daily she hopes to start the reconciliation process with the House as soon as possible and finish before the August recess to avoid the issue being pushed to a lame-duck congressional session after the November elections.
“So we can look at the calendar, and we’ve got some work to do. I’d like to see it done and out before we break at summer”. “Both the House and Senate provisions on pipeline permitting matters are modest in nature, providing incremental transparency and accountability in the permitting and approval of natural gas pipelines”.
Last week, Stabenow and a handful of other senators relented and lifted their blockade of the energy Bill. Instead, the Senate bill includes changes to the program meant to avert a repeat of the department’s blown investment in Solyndra, the failed solar company.
Neither difference is insurmountable, she said, adding that she’s optimistic there will be a successful conference. Its passage alone is somewhat momentous; that it was by an 85-12 margin signals that energy diversity can transcend partisanship – in the Senate at least.
Their bill has no single signature issue.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, tried to assuage opposition to the bill by liberals in Congress, some of whom are against LNG exports.
Murkowski noted that bipartisan efforts helped move the bill, saying 80 senators have “some level of ownership” over the bill’s contents. “Otherwise I don’t know how significant the bill really is, to be honest”.
The debate over Cornyn’s bill underscores the challenges of providing the victims’ families with closure and compensation almost 15 years after al-Qaida extremists hijacked four airplanes and killed thousands of people on US soil September 11, 2001. “Revenue sharing is not only about fairness, it is about Louisiana’s survival and American energy security”, he said.
The latter two items are considerably less popular with the environmental community – since more LNG exports could, in turn, spur more exploitation of natural gas through fracking and associated technologies domestically.
Since passage of the last major energy law, the United States has gone from fearing oil and gas shortages to becoming the world’s leading producer of both fuels. The bill also requires the US Energy Secretary to make a decision on gasline permit applications within 45 days of an environmental review.
It would have been a fairer deal if Sen. Although the Sierra Club praised the bipartisan approach, it opposed the final bill, citing the biomass and LNG measures, as well as language encouraging research into tapping undersea methane hydrates for energy.
Advertisement
The bill also would speed federal approval of projects to export liquefied natural gas to Europe and Asia, where prices are higher than in the US following a yearlong boom in domestic gas production.
