When you cast your vote in November's presidential election you also may be voting on whether to eliminate the Department of Energy.
Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) and Sen. Rod Grams (R-Minn.) have filed bills to abolish DOE. They will not be passed this session, but will be reintroduced next year.
Their chances of passage then depend on who wins the election. Republican candidate Robert Dole wants to abolish DOE; President Bill Clinton does not (OGJ, Sept. 2, p. 34).
Partisanship
Last week a Senate energy committee on the issue boiled with political partisanship.
Tiahrt said "At an annual cost to taxpayers of nearly $17 billion, Congress can no longer afford to ignore the reality that DOE cannot continue to be realigned or reinvented every few yeas-it simply needs to be abolished.
"At the time DOE was created, fully 80% of their budget was dedicated to energy related functions. Today this number is reversed, with energy related activities accounting for less than 20% of the DOE budget."
Grams said, "The department has become a patchwork quilt of government initiatives-haphazardly stitched together, lacking any coherent theme, and tacked collectively into a single unwieldy mass of bureaucracy."
Deputy Energy Sec. Charles Curtis testified about DOE's efforts to reduce staff and costs and privatize facilities. He argued the U.S. needs a cabinet level voice on energy policy matters, both domestically and internationally.
Curtis said the rapid rise of gasoline prices last spring shows the need for an energy-wise cabinet level agency to prevent "uninformed and counterproductive" reactions.
"Oil market problems can emerge quickly and sometimes unexpectedly, and they can have serious political and economic implications that will embroil the highest levels of our executive and legislative branches of government.''
Democratic senators argued the Republican plan simply would shift DOE's functions to other agencies, resulting in little or no savings to the government.
But the General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog agency, said a reevaluation is appropriate since "DOE's priorities have changed dramatically since its creation in 1977 in response to the nation's energy crisis, shifting to nuclear weapons production in the 1980s and (nuclear) environmental cleanup now."
No national strategy?
Carole Keeton Rylander, Texas Railroad Commission chairman, claimed that since DOE was created in 1977, it has never devised and implemented a national energy strategy.
Actually, each administration has proclaimed its own energy strategies, some with a lot of fanfare. They may not have worked well, but they were debated and drafted.
Rylander also proposed the federal government delegate to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (Iogcc), representing 29 producing states, the job of devising a national energy strategy-with the aid of several federal agencies.
"Iogcc members, starting with the Texas Railroad Commission, could convene a joint session every 2 years to draft, review, and update our nation's energy strategy.
"DOE doesn't have the focus or the determination or the expertise to draft a national energy strategy," she said.
And the Texas Railroad Commission does?
Copyright 1996 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
