Aug. 29, 2001 (UPI) -- Congress returns after Labor Day to consider energy legislation that would have profound and long-lasting impacts on the environment. The Senate is to vote on a large energy package that will then be reconciled with the House energy bill passed a few weeks ago.

The Senate bill, called the Comprehensive and Balanced Energy Policy Act of 2001, will address energy research and development, diversification of fuel use, oil, gas and coal production, electric power transmission, carbon dioxide capture and storage systems, climate change policy and many other energy issues. The goals of greater efficiency using fossil fuels and the switch to alternative energy sources will be addressed.

The House version, Securing America's Future Energy Act of 2001, (H.R. 4) contained about $34 billion in tax incentives, mostly to the oil, gas and coal industries. It also gave the green light to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It seems likely the Senate version will be different.

Incentives that increase fossil fuel use rather than promote renewable energy, such as wind and solar, are viewed by many as extending air pollution problems from sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and particulate matter.

Much of the legislation is being considered by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., told United Press International: "The House adopted substantially more in the way of tax incentives than I think there's money to pay for. The expectation that I would have is that if we're able to move some energy-related tax provisions in the Senate, they would add up to closer to $15 to $20 billion over 10 years rather than the $34 billion that the House adopted."

Bingaman said he favors supporting renewable sources and energy efficiency research.

"If we recognize the need to move toward more reliance on more renewable sources of energy that would be the area that would deserve priority consideration," he said. "I would hope that what we would agree to would be provisions that would incentivise action that otherwise wouldn't take place," Bingaman said.

Bingaman opposes drilling in ANWR, the arctic refuge.

"I've opposed opening ANWR to drilling. It just seemed to me we have other available sources for new drilling and new production," he told UPI. "We have quite a bit of the North Slope that is available for leasing that's in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. And we have other opportunities. I just don't see that opening ANWR would be a significant part of the solution to our future energy needs."

The ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski of Alaska, agreed some tax benefits for the large oil and gas corporations included in the House legislation will not be in the Senate bill. However, tax breaks for smaller producers probably will survive, Murkowski told UPI, speaking by telephone from Alaska.

Murkowski favors drilling in ANWR. "I think my position is certainly as clear as the blue sky here in Fairbanks, today," he said. "We have the technology to do it safely and there's no evidence, and I use the word scientific evidence, to suggest otherwise. The action by the House should be regarded as a real environmental victory in the sense that we've limited it to 2,000 acres out of a million and a half acres that's available out of ANWR."

Murkowski said it is not possible to say whether legislation will come out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee with the ANWR provision.

"The votes were very close when we left (for recess.) That was pretty much before there had been the momentum from the House vote," he said. "And I think it's going to present a bit of a dilemma to some in the sense that the traditional allies of some of the Democratic issues have been the environmental groups and labor. On this one, labor obviously is looking to jobs and as a consequence it's not going to be defined as a Republican (versus) Democratic effort."

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has lobbied tirelessly for drilling in ANWR, breaking with its pattern of siding with environmentalists on a number of international trade issues. Jerry Hood, special assistant on energy matters for Teamsters' president James P. Hoffa, spoke to UPI from Anchorage.

"The issue for organized labor is the 735,000 jobs that will be created at a time when 400,000 jobs have been lost since the beginning of the year," Hood said.

Hood challenged the assertion by environmental groups that 50,000 jobs will be created, not 750,000. "They don't know what the hell they're talking about," Hood told UPI.

Hood said he has lobbied about 300 members of Congress or their staffs on the ANWR issue. Other unions have opposed the drilling. He said the official AFL-CIO position is to "explore (ANWR) for oil with safeguards to protect the environment."

One person who questions the notion that 750,000 jobs will be created by ANWR drilling is Eban Goodstein, chair of the Economics Department at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. Goodstein estimates that at the most ANWR drilling would generate 60,000 jobs, about half of them in Alaska. He said if oil exploration and production money were not invested in ANWR it would be invested elsewhere in energy projects, thereby creating other jobs. He said many of the assumptions of the study quoted by the Teamsters, from Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates, are flawed. The WEFA report "is a case of economists for hire," Goodstein told UPI.

"The oil companies have been paying them to do studies about climate change which are also generating these unbelievably large numbers of job losses," he said.

Goodstein is the author of "The Tradeoff Myth: Fact and fiction about jobs and the environment."

The 2,000-acre limit for ANWR drilling operations also is questioned by many who claim the stated guidelines artificially minimize the actual impact, critics said.

The House energy bill has $14 billion in tax incentives for oil and gas production and investment, $7 billion for oil and gas royalties, $3 billion for the coal industry for new technologies and $2 billion for renewable energy sources, according to Patricio Silva, an energy specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Senate Finance Committee will determine the exact amounts of these tax incentives for the Senate legislation. Michael Siegel, spokesperson for Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told UPI, "The $35 billion bill that the House passed, Chairman Baucus has indicated will have to be scaled back some. We simply can't write legislation that can't be paid for."

Improved mileage standards for light trucks and sport utility vehicles are seen as the way in which the United States can most reduce its petroleum consumption and is in legislation proposed by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. But Feinstein is undecided as to whether or not to try to pass the legislation on its own or offer it as an amendment to the energy bill, a spokesperson in her office said.

Special interests that stand to benefit from the energy legislation have made enormous financial contributions to politicians. Federal law prohibits giving any money to an elected federal official for the purpose of influencing actions on legislation. However, should these industries receive back even $15 billion in tax breaks, it could be seen as a good investment, in fact, a spectacular one.

Since 1990, the oil, gas, electric generation and coal industries have collectively given $226 million to candidates for Congress, with 75 percent going to Republicans and 24 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.