The US Senate
Environment Committee
failed to pass a Republican-backed refinery and fuels bill Oct 26,
making passage this session of legislation to address soaring
gasoline prices in the wake of recent Gulf hurricanes exceedingly
unlikely.
Panel members voted 9 to 9, and therefore rejected the bill
sponsored by committee chairman James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma)
that would have streamlined refinery permitting processing by
setting a deadline of 270 days for the
Environmental Protection Agency
to approve or deny permits for new refineries and 90 days for
refinery expansions.
The Inhofe bill also would have authorized the Economic
Development Administration to allot funds for building refineries at
recently closed military bases, and make refineries a priority
within the EDA's Defense Economic Adjustment program, which provides
funds to communities with closed bases to help diversify their
economic base.
The bill also sought to reduce the number of boutique fuels by
authorizing EPA to prevent other states from using a particular fuel
blend if one state stops using it.
Liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island joined all the
panel's Democrats, as well as the Senate's sole Independent, Jim
Jeffords of Vermont, in opposing the bill.
Prior to the vote, the panel rejected, by a margin of 10 to 8, a
bid by Jeffords to replace Inhofe's refinery bill with a substitute
that would have established a federally owned refinery to be used in
emergency situations.
That substitute amendment, supported by the committee's
Democrats, would have set up an EPA-run strategic refinery reserve,
which would have operated like the government's Strategic Petroleum
Reserve.
The House earlier this month narrowly approved a refinery bill
that contained many of the same provisions as the Inhofe measure.
That bill was approved in a 212-210 vote, but only after the vote
deadline was extended an extra 40 minutes while Republican leaders
twisted arms to get fellow party members to support the legislation.
Inhofe's bill, while not a companion piece of legislation to the
House refinery bill, was considered the vehicle Republican's would
use to work out a negotiated refinery bill between the two chambers
in an effort to get a final bill passed.
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