House committee grills Energy Secretary

by MIKE MARTIN, UPI Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, June 21 (UPI) -- House Science Committee members grilled Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today on issues ranging from offshore oil drilling to science funding cuts.

"Will the present moratorium on offshore oil drilling be lifted?" asked North Carolina democrat Bob Etheridge. "I can assure you that North Carolinians and this congressman don't want to see oil platforms off the pristine North Carolina coast."

Abraham said he agreed with recommendations to retain the moratorium but deferred the matter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

"While I may be Energy Secretary, I don't have all the power on every energy issue," Abraham told the committee.

Abraham also took criticism directed at the President.

"He's my president and I don't want him to look dumb, but can you explain to me how cutting the energy budget in the middle of an energy crisis isn't just purely dumb?" asked Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.

Abraham responded that specific energy department cuts represented a necessary departure from the Clinton Administration's priorities.

"We didn't think it was a good approach to just put together a budget that reflected the last administration," Abraham responded. "We didn't want to keep spending money on pre-existing policies that were going nowhere. I, for one, have very strong concerns relative to how we are spending $6 billion a year on environmental remediation that makes only the most minimal progress on real cleanup."

Bartlett agreed with Abraham's assessment of nationwide environmental remediation.

"Seventy percent of remediation funding going to lawyers is indeed a national disgrace," he said.

President Bush's hands-off management style met with criticism from Tennessee democrat Bart Gordon, who zeroed in on Abraham's apparent confusion over Executive branch direction on energy policy.

"Why are you trying to divine what the President wants?" Gordon asked. "You have regular cabinet meetings -- why not just ask him?"

"He lays out a general strategy in those meetings," Abraham said. "We implement those strategies."

Gordon attacked the administration's logic on tying conservation funding to oil royalties from the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, or ANWAR.

"You're going to be in office maybe eight years so why are you linking funding for renewable energy sources and conservation projects to royalties from ANWAR, which won't produce a dime for at least ten years?" Gordon asked. "You may have to leave a note on the door for the next guy."

Abraham explained that offshore oil royalties from sources other than ANWAR would provide a majority of funding for conservation programs.

Abraham also fielded questions about alternative energy sources such as nuclear and hydroelectric power and fuel cells.

"We will definitely have a strong nuclear component in our balanced energy program," Abraham told the committee. "That includes reauthorizing the Price-Anderson legislation and re-licensing existing nuclear facilities and a general expansion of nuclear plants. As you all know, it's been since the early seventies that any new nuclear plants were built."

The controversial Price-Anderson Act, enacted by Congress in 1957, established funds that would be available to the public in the event of a nuclear incident. The act has been critcized for excusing nuclear generators from some of the damages which could result from a major nuclear accident.

California democrat Lynn Woolsey objected to Abraham's nuclear power position.

"I cannot stress strongly enough that we can't use nuclear power until we learn how to properly deal with the waste," she said. Abraham agreed that nuclear waste was the central problem with atomic power.

Hydroelectric power generation is bogged down in lengthy re-licensing procedures, Abraham said, that destroy the cost-effectiveness of new plant construction. He said he wants to streamline the process.

"We are also concerned by the issue of fish migration around hydroelectric dams,"Abraham said, although he provided no concrete details as to how the Bush Administration would resolve this issue.

Abraham conceded that funding for the basic physical sciences must increase in light of similar funding increases in the life sciences.

"I think by focusing on only one of the three major science organizations, the National Institutes for Health, we may have disadvantaged the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation and we need to shore them up," Abraham said.

Abraham was not without praise from House committee members, however.

"I applaud you and the adinistration for at least moving us ahead," said Michigan republican Nick Smith.

"You and the Administration have held firm to your free market principals and prices are going down," said California republican Dana Rohrabacher. "Surprise, surprise, surprise, something else is happening too. People are starting to conserve."

Rohrabacher told the committee high prices lead naturally to more conservation.

"We've had a governor insisting on price caps right on up to the poor house," Rohrabacher said. "Our $8 billion surplus has evaporated under the leadership of our democratic governor. Every time you negate the laws of supply and demand, you have a disaster."

"I can't believe that two people who represent the same state and sit across the same table from one another could have such vastly different views," said Lynn Woolsey, in response to Rohrabacher's comments.