WASHINGTON, May 27 (UPI) -- Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico is currently the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He is expected to become the chairman of the committee in early June as a result of a shift in the Senate to a Democrat majority.

Bingaman was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1982. Prior to that, he was elected attorney general of New Mexico in 1978. He obtained his B.A. from Harvard and his law degree from Stanford. He served in the army reserves from 1968 to 1974.

Q. There are a lot of different issues being addressed in the energy debate. What issues do you think are some of the most important and why?

A. Well, I guess I think that there are a great many. I think a major issue we need to try to address is how we improve the transmission system nationwide for electricity. And also how do we facilitate the construction of the pipelines that are going to be needed, and the refining capacity that's going to be needed, over the next several years and also provide incentives for conservation. Clearly there are many ways we can be conserving energy, all kinds of energy, and we need to see what the Congress could do and what the federal government could do to urge people to do what makes sense from that perspective.

Q You mentioned transmission system and refining (capacity) and conservation. Do you see significant differences in those areas between Democrats and Republicans?

A. Well, we don't know yet a lot of detail about what the administration's position is on these subjects and therefore it's hard to know. Going into the discussion, I don't see any reason why there ought to be any major partisan differences on those subjects. Most of the actions that the federal government can take that are helpful to dealing with our energy problem ought to be done on a bipartisan basis. I think there may be, when you get into the environmental effects or the environmental impacts of some of the proposed actions, there we might have disagreements.

Q. On the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards: The Democrats are calling for no more than a 5 percent increase by 2008 for light vehicles. Then you have the Snowe-Feinstein legislation on SUV's talking about light trucks being increased from 20.5 to 27.5 mpg, but technology could let us go a lot further, theoretically. How far are you personally going to recommend we push the envelop in terms of CAFE standards?

A Well, in the proposal that I've made here, in the energy bill we introduced earlier, we did not specify what should happen to CAFE standards. What we argued was that we should look more broadly at the question of fuel efficiency and figure out what are all of the different ways in which we can move to less use, or a slow down in the growth of petroleum going into the transportation sector. And CAFE may be one of the tools that we need to look at strengthening in order to accomplish that, but it's possible that that's not the right way to go. We out to look at tax credits for fuel efficient vehicles. We ought to look at a whole range of things, all of which would help reduce the amount of petroleum we use in the transportation sector.

Q. Tax credits. And what would be some of the other approaches?

A. I mean, issues such as managing congestion, reducing congestion to a more significant degree. Incentives to get the vehicles that are least fuel efficient off the road. That may be something that makes sense to look at.

Q. The next question is about nuclear. The Senate energy committee statement from the Democrats and the Republicans is essentially the same words. In one case it says "The president supports," and in the other case it says "the Democrats support research on advanced technologies for nuclear power and want safe disposal of nuclear waste." Is there no difference of opinion on pyroprocessing and the potential for plutonium proliferation?

A. Well, again, I think we really need to get down to more detail about what the administration is proposing before we know where are differences are. I think what we've proposed is that we need additional research on safe uses of nuclear power and we need to reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act and we need to put some resources into continued training of scientists and engineers in this area. To the extent the administration is suggesting a course of action that would lead us to an increased proliferation problem, then we may have a disagreement.

Q. What kind of price caps -- I'm assuming that you favor price caps for California -- what kind of price caps would you propose, if that's indeed the case?

A. Well, what I favor is for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to carry out its responsibilities under the federal power act and that is to insure that the rates for wholesale power are, as the act says, just and reasonable. And if they are not just and reasonable, then to set a just and reasonable rate. That's what I would favor seeing happen. I don't see that as a cap. The way I'm thinking of it, to the extent that FERC would be required to step in, I would assume that they would do it by reference to the cost of producing and providing the power and they would factor in a reasonable profit for the companies that are doing that and they would do it on as temporary a basis as possible in order to insure that prices were just and reasonable.

Q. Do you think the bi-partisan legislation to control carbon dioxide back to 1990 levels by 2020 has a chance of being incorporated in some omnibus energy bill?

A. I don't know. I just don't know if we can get the votes to do that. I think having some goal that the country is working toward and some set of actions to achieve that goal that is well-designed is very important.

Q. Do you personally favor the Jeffords-Lieberman (CO2 emissions control) legislation?

A. I don't know enough of the detail to tell you.

Q. Do you think ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) drilling has any chance of being passed?

A. No.

Q. Are you proposing any subsidies to coal, oil or gas?

A. We have variety of tax proposals that I've introduced. In fact, I offered an amendment this week to the tax bill that was pending in the Senate to provide tax incentives not only for conservation but some for production as well. Most of the tax related proposals are so-called counter-cyclical proposals in that they would only take effect, or click in, once the price of oil would drop below a certain level.

Q. Carbon sequestration is being funding at $20 million a year by the Department of Energy and seems to offer a way around a lot of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Do you favor increasing the research budget for carbon sequestration?

A. Well, I believe I do. I want to hear from the Department of Energy and some of the researchers who've worked in this area to see whether they believe the opportunity to make progress is great enough to justify higher appropriations, but I expect that it is.

Q. Where do you see the major areas of compromise will be necessary in this broad-ranging energy legislation that your committee, because you will be the Chair, will be working on? Where do you think the most compromise will have to be done?

A. Well, I think in each of the areas we've talked about there are going to be questions about the relaxation of environmental standards and the environmental impact of taking certain actions. And I think you may well see discussion and the need for compromise in some of those areas. I think that the Democratic position, the one I've embraced, fairly consistently, is that we can put in place a good national energy policy without compromising our environment and I hope we can succeed in sticking to that.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.