Tough Fights Ahead in Bid to Forge U.S. Energy Policy : Legislation: Congress is split between advocates of more oil drilling and of less consumption. But, for the first time in a decade, there’s a chance for action.

There’s an old joke that Henson Moore, the deputy secretary of energy, likes to tell when asked how the Administration is faring in the accelerating congressional debate over a new national energy strategy.

“A guy (i.e., the Bush Administration) jumps off the Empire State Building,” Moore says. “As he’s falling past the 25th floor, someone leans out the window and asks how it’s going. ‘So far, so good,’ he replies.”

Working closely with the Administration, Senate Energy Committee Chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) has been steam-rollering his version of a comprehensive energy package through the legislative process with surprising speed.

But the ground is coming up fast and, when the package moves from the committee to the Senate floor next month, it can be expected to slam into the pavement.

“We’ve been pleased with the progress so far,” Moore said, “but the really tough battles are just starting.”

More than 10 years have lapsed since Congress last tried to draft a national energy policy. The Reagan Administration never saw the need for one, and the consensus on Capitol Hill was that the issue was too complex and regionally divisive to wrap into a single legislative package.

But several things have happened recently to change all that.

The initial push came from the Bush Administration, which began crafting an omnibus energy plan 18 months ago. But President Bush’s National Energy Strategy, announced last February, immediately came under fire on Capitol Hill for emphasizing production while ignoring conservation.

Still, the Administration’s active involvement electrified the debate, sparking the introduction of about 20 bills in the House and the Senate that attempt to deal, in whole or in part, with energy-related issues.

Further inspiration was provided by passage last year of a new Clean Air Act, which proved that regionally divisive issues of dizzying complexity could be transformed into legislation if the consensus was there to deal with them.

Finally, the recent Persian Gulf War and the fears it raised of another energy crisis gave proponents of a national energy strategy new reason to believe that a consensus on reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil at long last was within reach.

The Bush plan was widely regarded as dead on arrival on Capitol Hill, but Johnston’s bill bore enough similarities for the White House to work with it. It has competition: a more conservation-oriented bill sponsored by Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.) and favored by environmentalists. But, in the highly conservative Energy Committee, the Johnston bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.), has become the main vehicle for revising energy policy.

Both sides in the debate agree on the need to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. But those who want to do it by producing more energy and those who want to do it by decreasing the amount of energy Americans consume disagree sharply over these issues:

--Drilling: The Bush Administration and some conservative Democrats want to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska to oil drilling. The Interior Department estimates that there is a 1-in-2 chance of finding oil in the 1.5-million-acre plain, which represents the last stretch of U.S. Arctic shoreline not open to oil exploration. Environmentalists argue that the unspoiled area, where polar bears hunt and caribou migrate every year to give birth to their young, is the heart of a fragile ecosystem that could be destroyed by development.

--Fuel Economy: Conservationists say that increased production is unnecessary if Americans can “kick the oil habit” by using less petroleum and by developing alternative forms of non-oil-based fuels. One thing they would do is increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard of cars, which is currently set at 27.5 miles a gallon. This means that, although individual models may get more or less miles to the gallon, the average fuel economy of all models made by a manufacturer must be no lower than 27.5 m.p.g. Wirth’s bill would increase that standard gradually by 40%, which, according to proponents, would save the nation an estimated 2.5 million barrels of oil a day by the year 2000.

Opponents, who include auto manufacturers and the Bush Administration, argue that the technology does not yet exist to increase the standards by that amount without making cars so light and small that safety might be compromised.

Johnston proposed this week to raise the standards more gradually, by almost 32% over the next 15 years. But Democrats who want higher standards and Republicans who want none at all teamed up Wednesday to kill that compromise, 13 to 7.

--Regulatory Reform: The Administration wants to streamline existing rules to encourage the development of nuclear power and to make it easier for utility companies to expand their operations.

The committee already has approved a controversial proposal for “one-stop” licensing of nuclear plants. Under current law, a utility must obtain two licenses--one to build a nuclear power plant and another--when the plant is ready to produce power--to operate it. In both the Johnston bill and the Administration plan, the operating license would be combined with the construction permit. That, opponents say, would eliminate an important public safeguard.

Casting his first environmental votes against the Administration, Sen. John Seymour, California’s new Republican senator and the committee’s newest member, has voted for two amendments that would have blocked “one-stop” licensing. The amendments failed but may fare better on the Senate floor.

An even bigger fight looms over electric utility reform. The Administration wants to exempt large electric power producers from regulation under the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act, saying that it would encourage competition. But the utility industry itself is split over the issue, with smaller producers afraid the change will allow bigger ones to cross state lines and take over their businesses.

The Administration warns that it will veto a bill with a tough automobile fuel economy provision, but many analysts fear that the committee’s refusal to include stringent standards will doom the bill to failure on the floor.

Johnston’s strategy all along has been to pair the two most contested issues--drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge and the fuel economy standards--in the belief that Congress will not pass the former without the latter.

However, that strategy was upset Wednesday, when the committee refused to amend the bill’s current language, which merely directs the Department of Transportation to determine the “maximum feasible” fuel economy standards that auto companies can meet with available technology.

The situation in the House, where no fewer than nine committees have jurisdiction over energy issues, also is far from certain.